IDRC recently analyzed why and how it has worked in countries in transition during the past three decades — in transition from dictatorship to democratic rule, from centrally planned to market economies, from war to peace. The goal was to better understand how IDRC gathers and shares pertinent information to inform programming and decision making. How was the Centre alerted to impending transition? How did it investigate the situation? How did it respond?
Case studies were prepared on Algeria, Burma, Cambodia, Kenya, South Africa, the Southern Cone, Vietnam, and the West Bank and Gaza. Together, with an introductory brief, these eight cases show that IDRC has long been prepared to work in high-risk contexts before and in early transition periods, has played a distinct role in supporting research and policy-making for development and has usually succeeded in adapting its programming to the fluid context.
Issues and Lessons
Development research is risky work — and never riskier than in conditions of political, economic, and social transition. But transitions in developing countries can open radically new opportunities for research that informs political change and relieves poverty, while advancing development that is both equitable and sustainable. In fact,development itself is commonly defined by these dangerous, promising transitions from dictatorships toward democracy, from failing economies to well-governed markets, from war to peace. For all their risks and sudden reversals, transitions can generate real possibilities for productive development research.
Algeria
IDRC had been present in Algeria in earlier decades — supporting small, episodic programming from the 1970s through the 1990s, mostly in agriculture, natural resource management, and information sciences. But even these modest projects were abandoned by the late 1990s as conditions of political violence and repression rendered development research impossible. The security of IDRC staff and Algerian partners became intolerably compromised in Algeria’s civil conflict, while limits on free expression and other civil and legal rights curtailed the conduct of useful research.
Burma
Burma in the 1990s ranked among the most repressive and self-isolated countries in the world. But the occasional appearance of a few hopeful signs of possible transition prompted IDRC’s interest in the potential for development research. For about five years in mid-decade, IDRC conducted detailed assessments of the chances for political transition in Burma. The assessment measured the probability of change, the capacity and independence of Burmese researchers, and the likelihood of good research influencing policy and action. It also took into account the Canadian government’s declared disapproval of Burma’s dictatorship. In the end, IDRC decided against investing in programming for Burma. Yet the case illustrated the value of gathering careful intelligence for research decisions — and the difficulties of judging whether a transition is genuine or illusory
Cambodia
Cambodia has undergone a radical transition from the devastations of civil war, foreign occupation, and the ferocious misrule of the Khmer Rouge. The 1991 Paris peace agreement established a ceasefire and committed Cambodians to democratic elections. An interim administration under United Nations supervision set conditions for civilian government. Elections in 1993 returned the country to the promise of a democratic future — and to the long work of sustainable government. From the earliest years of transition and throughout, IDRC has actively supported Cambodia’s development research efforts
Kenya
Kenya’s 2002 general election, replacing a notoriously corrupt regime with a coalition government committed to reform, was seen as a landmark event in the country’s history. IDRC, active in Kenya for some 30 years by then, reacted quickly with a package of projects expressly designed to advance and take advantage of the promised governance changes. Within months of the election, the Kenyan transition was displaying potential for responsive, policy-relevant research. But it would also soon show its vulnerability to setback.
South Africa
Ruled for decades by the systematic, violent injustice of apartheid, South Africa by the mid-1980s was subjected to international sanctions and near-universal condemnation. It was in this period — long before transition seemed likely — that IDRC opened its own new assessment of its approach to South Africa. An intensive, highly structured campaign of fact-finding and analysis, championed by IDRC executives and staff, was launched in late 1985. It would result, some three years later, in a program of development research support designed expressly to prepare South Africans for a non-racial democracy.
The program certainly had influence: When the first freely elected majority government took office in 1994, more than half the members in the new South African cabinet had earlier participated in IDRC projects.
Southern Cone
In the 1970s, the countries of South America's Southern Cone shared most of the common and ruinous features of their dictatorships: murder, torture, persecution of democratic political movements, purges of university faculties — and the terrifying phenomenon of disappearances. Among researchers and scholars, none were more threatened than social scientists, whose probing work and discoveries often challenged the regimes themselves. In Chile alone, some 3 000 social scientists left the country after the 1973 coup; in 1980, more than 500 professors were fired from Chilean universities in a single semester. The coercive suppression of social science research menaced lives and livelihoods — and undercut the region’s prospects for future development
Vietnam
Vietnam has embarked on a far-reaching transition of unusual character — an attempt to transform the country’s economy, through market liberalization, without altering its centralized political structure. Doi Moi, (roughly, “reconstruction”), the term adopted in 1986, described a set of policies designed to foster a “market socialism through large measures of free enterprise while preserving the political primacy and governing power of the Communist Party. At its inception it was a dramatic and outward-looking course change for Vietnam, and it led IDRC to explore the potential for supporting development research in the new policy environment. Careful fact-finding and consultations with Vietnamese researchers and government officials revealed undoubted challenges — and compelling opportunities. Early project initiatives, undertaken with the eager collaboration of Vietnam’s government, have since matured into a continuing and productive research relationship.
West Bank and Gaza
Palestinians have been beset by violence, poverty, and social dislocation for more than half a century. At times, imagining transition toward a prosperous peace has seemed fancifully optimistic. Yet change has occurred; progress sometimes follows reversals. And Palestinians have proven themselves capable of productive development research under the harshest conditions of danger and privation. This is research that can prepare a stronger transition for the future — and inform better governance for the present. Supporting this research compels fortitude, and repays patience in relationships of trust.
PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW TO ACCESS THE DOCUMENT FOR EACH COUNTRY
