GEOFORMATIONS: Developing new frameworks for just governance models

Discussing her research background and the project’s goals with the Office of the Dean of Research, Murphy highlighted the importance of adaptive, inclusive, and just development cooperation governance as complex needs continue to accelerate, and trust and legitimacy in traditional institutions and actors are weak and declining.

Why the focus on governance assemblages in the civil society space? As Murphy notes, Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) play an important role in development cooperation activities. Recent World Bank estimates suggest the number of financed projects involving an NGO or other civil society organisation (CSO) has risen from 21% in 1990 to almost 90% in 2018. Approximately 15% of the total bilateral official development assistance flows through non-governmental and civil society organisations, with an estimated 37,000 NGOs operating in the development cooperation space (Brass et al, 2018), yet no research has systematically examined the relational and spatial dynamics of NGO governance processes and linkages. Meanwhile, comprehensive evaluation frameworks for governance assemblages in the non-profit space have yet to be established.

In response to rising instability, uncertainty, and increasing levels of complex needs, driven by interacting and intersecting socio-political, economic, and environmental crises, the international development cooperation sector has responded by proposing a range of new ways of working. This sector, which is comprised of states, intergovernmental organisations, non-governmental organisations, business and private sector actors across multiple scales and geographies, is moving towards increased localisation, greater coherence across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus (the triple nexus), a shift to adaptive and inclusive development, and deep structural investments in strengthening civil society relations and cooperation across spaces.

Supporting just governance practices in Civil Society Organisation transnational partnerships

Operating through transnational networks of partners to design and implement development solutions, CSOs are positioned to lead in the transformation of this sector towards greater localization, enhanced local ownership, and improved coordination and coherence across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. However, the number of partners and partnerships is unknown, with no recognised system for recording or evaluating partnership models. And, while there’s a lot of research in the areas of humanitarian and developmental work, key institutions, actors, and agencies remain largely siloed.

This is where GEOFORMATIONS comes in, as it will develop new conceptual and analytical frameworks to inform the design and evaluation of just governance models. From her time working there, Murphy knows “there are lots of fantastic practices in there, but we haven’t had the opportunity to gather the lessons learned or design frameworks for evaluating governance models to support partnership practices which are essential to build trust and, more importantly, deepen the effectiveness and coherence of development cooperation efforts.” As private, non-profit professional organisations with independent legal charters concerned with public goods and social well-being, little is known about how organisations collaborate and partner to deliver services and support advocacy. There is a lot that can be learned that may enhance development effectiveness and support organisational partnerships in moving towards deeper forms of localisation.

Indeed, the lack of current research is underscored by the fact that, currently, there is no definition of what partnership means in civil society spaces: “There is no agreed consensus, either conceptually or practically, around what constitutes a partnership and how governance does and should function between entities in this space.” GEOFORMATIONS will address this gap, gathering an evidence-base to inform the nature, structure, and operation of governance assemblages within this space.

Combining Theory and Practice

Civil society spaces are composed of collectivities of private non-profit organisations collaborating to design, deliver, influence, and enhance public goods, services, norms, and values. The overarching aim of GEOFORMATIONS is to understand how governance processes and structures within and between civil society organisations can and should be understood, conceptualised, operationalised and evaluated.

The space between theory and practice is precisely where Murphy has located her scholarship. Between her MA in Political Theory and her PhD, which examined the philosophical foundations, limits, and extent of the duty to aid, Murphy spent over a decade in industry, working for both non profit and private sector organisations. This includes eight years with Accenture working as a manager in the infrastructure outsourcing division where she worked with internal and external clients across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India (EMEAI). Bringing to bear her professional experience and academic training, Murphy’s work focuses on the spaces between policy and practice, law and lived experience, to explore the barriers to inclusive and just development, and the opportunities for transformative change.

GEOFORMATIONS brings these elements of theory and practice together with a focus on governance systems that are essential for transparency, effectiveness, meaningful participation, and deep localisation. “What makes this urgent is that in many places development is in retreat. Poverty, inequality and conflict are increasing, and climate breakdown is accelerating. Development theories and practices of the past, centred on economic growth through maximum exploitation, extraction and expansion, do not offer a blueprint for the future. Indeed, transforming development pathways and economic systems towards ecologically and socially sustainable futures is the most pressing challenge facing communities and states today. Who is involved in deciding what and how this transformation is achieved matters. Inclusive and just governance processes are necessary to oversee and inform transformative development outcomes. The challenges we face are technical, practical, and philosophical.”

Localisation and Development

Localisation is a term that Murphy returns to throughout the interview. What does this focus on localisation bring to the nexus of humanitarian aid, development cooperation and peace-building? It’s about “challenging and rebalancing power relations, centring development practices around the voices, values, and vision of affected populations, and ensuring that funding and decision making is flowing to organisations on the ground.”

Currently, there’s a drive to ensure that accountability to and active participation of community groups who are recipients of developmental support is “meaningful rather than a tick box exercise.” This is evident elsewhere in her work, such as her role as PI on the Gender Awareness and Transformation through Education (GATE) Project, a partnership project between Dar es Salaam University College of Education (DUCE), Tanzania, and Trinity College Dublin (TCD). There, she worked with local experts to unpack local understandings of gender dynamics and situational and cultural barriers to gender equity initiatives in Higher Education. Together the research team identified and implemented a range of locally appropriate and locally led interventions to support gender equity objectives.

Geography matters so much, according to Murphy, in terms of life expectancy, job opportunities, education, resources, and health. “When we think about justice, justice is very much concerned with addressing those arbitrary social factors that affect one’s opportunities to flourish, yet geography continues to be a huge determinant of this.” When it comes to addressing just governance, core geographic concepts of place, space and scale are essential tools for exploring what’s happening in between theory and practice, law and lived experience, and to address key analytical questions.

GEOFORMATIONS will draw upon ground-breaking methodologies of assemblage thinking and critical realism, to provide radical new insights into the governance geographies of place-based development cooperation practices which can be used to radically redesign international development cooperation governance theory, policy, and practice.

Evaluation Frameworks and Community Voices

What will the five years of GEOFORMATIONS look like? The project will have five different research objectives with points of reflection built in to enable the research team to examine their progress and adjust when needed. One of the initial steps is systematically mapping the landscape of regulatory structures at international, national, and institutional scales. The second and third objectives entail deep engagement with the practice community across spaces and scales to understand how governance assemblages form and function over time. Her team will collaborate with civil society development organisations early on, to ensure they are engaging with as wide a network as possible. This will allow them to undertake case studies around how partnership structures inform the flow of decision making and action.

As an international project, Murphy anticipates engaging international and national NGOs, working within the triple nexus in development cooperation partner countries across East Africa. The project also entails community participant assemblies, to gather voices of affected communities in order to analyse their perspectives on the governance systems and the strategic thinking that feeds into programming activity. Ultimately, Murphy explains, “we would like to develop an evaluation framework for organisations to use, to examine and understand the extent to which their governance structures are, or could be, sufficiently inclusive, just, and locally led and owned.”

For Murphy, GEOFORMATIONS is the culmination of so many years of thinking. After starting a research group for climate justice a few years ago, she realised, “for me, it is the dominant mainstream theory development that is the nub. It’s development pathways that have led us to the geopolitical, societal and global climate crisis that we’re in, and such mainstream development pathways continue to sustain a global economic order that drives absolutely unacceptable radical multi-dimensional inequality within and between states, and it is governance in that space that is crucial to realising any forms of just practice.”

Development theories, practices, and policies are changing. This is to be welcomed. GEOFORMATIONS, Murphy reflects, is an important opportunity to examine the barriers and opportunities for accelerating change across the triple nexus, recognising the role of CSOs a critical drivers of change, centring and amplifying the voices of affected communities.

- Article written by Dr Sarah Cullen

Works Cited

Brass, Jennifer N., Wesley Longhofer, Rachel S. Robinson, and Allison Schnable. 2018. ‘NGOs and International Development: A Review of Thirty-Five Years of Scholarship’. World Development 112 (December): 136–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.07.016.