Key messages
When considering how well international non-governmental organisations understand the local power dynamics that shape community security, particular organisational characteristics appear at least as influential as the sophistication of their analytical models.
Three general logics can be distinguished that influence how organisations envisage their development programmes: ‘centralised and directive’, ‘centralised and facilitative’ or ‘decentralised’. Each organisational logic has implications for how community security programmes will be conceptualised and implemented.
It matters where analytical capability is located in such organisations, what the level of analytical specialisation is, how the process of analysis is structured and how the budget for analysis is allocated. This creates potential strengths and risks for the analysis that supports community security programmes.
The previous sections have suggested that there is a strong case for more and better analysis of the power structures that influence the shape of, and local arrangements for, community security. The concepts of ‘safeguarding’, ‘enforcement’ and ‘recourse’ provide analytical lenses to understand such structures and enable mapping of the local security actors and power holders, and the incentives that inform their behaviours. These lenses can be used to sharpen existing open-source tools that also focus on the power dynamics of (community) security (see Box 4 below).[52]
However, a complementary insight is that neither the sophistication of analytical models, nor the complexities of the local environment, are necessarily the main determining factors in how well organisations are able to understand and respond to the local power dynamics that shape community security. Particular organisational characteristics of the intervening organisation appear to be at least as influential. Focusing on international non-governmental organisations, the study identified two sets of characteristics that appear to determine an organisation’s ability to conduct useful analysis of power structures relevant to community security and to apply that knowledge to programming choices.
The evolution in thinking about politics and power, and its salience for development and security programme design, has resulted in a number of open source analytical frameworks:
Stability Assessment Framework (Clingendael, Conflict Research Unit): This tool helps develop the institutional capacities necessary for a coordinated and integrated policy including governance, security and socio-economic development in a specific country.[53]
Do-No-Harm Framework (Collaborative for Development Action): This framework addresses the impact of humanitarian and development assistance in conflict settings, in particular the risks of aid being misappropriated by conflict parties for political or military interests.[54]
PEA in Conflict, Security and Justice programmes – Toolkit (ODI): This framework assists practitioners in conducting a political economy analysis at the design or inception phase in order to incorporate findings into conflict, security and justice programming.[55]
Power Analysis (Sida): This learning process helps staff, partners and other stakeholders to recognise different forms of power that reinforce poverty and marginalisation as well as to identify positive types of power that could be mobilised to fight poverty and inequality.[56]
Making Sense of Turbulent Contexts (World Vision): This 4-day workshop stimulates macro-level analysis of national or regional conflicts based on the insights and experience of local actors, aiming to generate practical recommendations for aid positioning and strategy.[57]
Organisational structures that influence development programming
The first set of these characteristics is the general structure of the organisation undertaking community security initiatives. Interviewees were asked about, among other things, who had the authority to select community security activity sites, hire and manage country-office staff and local partners, determine monitoring and evaluation indicators, and design or adapt activities and project objectives. Based on the range of responses, we can generally categorise organisations according to three distinct organising logics: ‘centralised and directive’, ‘centralised and facilitative’ or ‘decentralised’.[58] None of these organisational forms in itself is necessarily better than the others. Each has strengths and weaknesses that influence, among other things, the ability of their organisation to conduct useful political analysis in the service of programming. Basic descriptions of these three labels are given below; they are not unique to community security programming, but rather reflect the larger corporate environment in which community security programmes are organised, developed, funded and evaluated.
‘Centralised and directive’ refers to organisations in which headquarters retains most or full authority over organisational activities and focuses more on setting organisational direction and ensuring control than on the empowerment of particular country offices. Programme strategy, design and reporting, as well as budget allocation, fundraising and results reporting are usually driven and signed off by headquarters. While headquarters provides a ‘service bundle’, its constituent elements are not typical services in the sense of being on-demand or client-focused and are better seen as corporate interventions. Country offices are consulted regularly, but they are primarily implementing and administrative agents. Directives, programme design parameters and funds make their way from headquarters to country offices, while reporting and financial data make their way from country offices to headquarters.
‘Centralised and facilitative’ organisations are also those in which headquarters retains most authority over organisational activities but focuses more on the empowerment of country offices. This is accomplished by providing country offices with a service bundle that is more client-oriented and more on-demand. Such services tend to include programme and trouble-shooting support, coordination support (convening partners, organising workshops), as well as fundraising support (advocacy, grant writing). While headquarters tends to preserve a final say over most ‘services’, sometimes under the denominator of ‘quality assurance’, this is carried out in a collaborative way with greater weight attached to the competence and role of country offices. For example, country offices may be primarily responsible for programme implementation, while analysis and programme design are undertaken jointly, likely with a final-sign off by headquarters.
‘Decentralised’ organisations operate more as a network, comprised of country offices that are either partially or completely autonomous and which are united more by a shared corporate philosophy than by central structures. In the partially autonomous variant, country offices and headquarters have clearly delineated competences with a modest corporate centre. In the completely autonomous variant, country offices are served by an even ‘lighter’ headquarters that provides a limited number of shared services. In both cases, headquarters focuses on advocacy and fundraising and may offer some technical support.
The general strengths and weaknesses of these organisations are reflected in Table 1. This provides a broad-brush impression of how these organisations are likely to approach the type of analysis that the preceding sections outlined as necessary for good community security programming.
Organising logic | Centralised & directive | Centralised & facilitative | Decentralised |
|---|---|---|---|
Potential strengths | Good traceability and accountability of decisions Greater likelihood of objective analytical distance Good ability to mobilise resources behind decisions More effective competitor vis-à-vis other organisations | Better mix of objective analytical distance and proximity Good likelihood of effective knowledge-sharing Service empowering mindset and organisational culture Still an effective competitor | Implementation strongly attuned to local realities More effective management of local stakeholder relations Greater longevity of staff experience Better selection of local opportunities and partners |
Potential risks | Insufficient analytical proximity Suboptimal use of local knowledge and resources Limited or no downward accountability to country offices Likely limited transfer of skills | Confusion over ‘jurisdictions’ can emerge, be created or manipulated Dilution of responsibilities and roles Reduced organisational focus | Lack of comparative perspective and experience Difficult to develop niche competencies Local decisions can be undermined by poor central fundraising or coordination |
Centralised organisations often display a more streamlined and systematic approach to programming, which helps ensure clarity on objectives, resource allocation and strategy. However, such structures tend to minimise opportunities for adaptation at implementation level and are more likely to rely on generic theories of ‘what works’ rather than contextually specific analyses,[59] risking discrepancies between strategic goals and local realities.[60] More decentralised organisations, on the other hand, assert the context-responsiveness of their programmes and rely upon their country offices’ ability to take decisive action and manoeuvre more fluidly. However, these organisations also experience difficulty in objectively monitoring or charting clear progress or obtaining concrete and consistent reporting on achievements.
Purely from the perspective of these organisations’ ability to effectively analyse the power dynamics influencing community security, the ‘centralised and facilitative’ arrangement appears the best suited, a priori, to match local knowledge with comparative experience while maintaining critical analytical distance. This is assuming that procedures are in place to create and maintain adequate clarity in respect of roles, responsibilities and processes. As a result, an initial cue for exploring better community security initiatives would be how ‘centralised and directive’ and ‘decentralised’ organisations could introduce elements of ‘central and facilitative’ approaches into their approaches to analysis.
For example, interviews with country office staff in Kabul, Afghanistan, indicated that making country offices responsible for domestic fundraising could increase national staff’s local leverage (vis-à-vis local donors and partners) and their incentives to participate in strategy development, context analysis and programme design. In most cases, such a strategy would need to be accompanied by significant investment in staff capacity at the country level and should be weighed against the risks of exposing smaller organisations (country offices or local organisations) to political manipulation.
The organisation of analysis in international organisations
The second set of characteristics that has a bearing on how well international organisations are able to analyse the power structures of community security consists of different sub-organisational aspects. Since these aspects do not map neatly on the more generic organisational types outlined above, they are each best considered as a range of options – each with their potential strengths and risks. The research identified the following four aspects:
the locus of analytical work in the organisation
the level of analytical specialisation
the structure and process of analysis
the allocation of budget for analysis
The locus of analytical work refers to where in an organisation the analytical function is based. For example, is analysis commissioned, planned and overseen from a central office, or are these tasks the prerogative of regional or country offices? This is an important factor in designing good community security programming because the acute influence of local politics on local security arrangements requires analyses to strike a balance between objective distance (to retain impartiality and integrity) and subjective proximity (to understand and engage local power holders). Table 2 reflects the options the research identified and maps their respective strengths and weaknesses before discussing strategies to enhance or mitigate them.
Locus of analysis | Headquarters staff | Country office | Mixed teams | Consultants |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Potential strengths | More ‘objective distance’ in analysis Comparative perspective Better integration of analysis as evidence in advocacy and fundraising efforts
| Greater local proximity and attentiveness to local dynamics Experience with local issues, stakeholders and area More feasible recommendations likely to emerge | Relies on local insights while placing ‘checks’ on their coherence, validity and relevance Builds consensus and capacity throughout the organisation Can more easily combine rigorous methodology with adaptability to the local context | Can deliver on short timeframes while relieving regular staff Can be highly specialised Can facilitate access to areas or people otherwise out of reach Can convey more neutrality of analysis |
Potential risks | Introduces a template approach to analysis A lack of appreciation for contextual idiosyncrasies Can promote ‘silver bullet’ recommendations across different contexts | Can limit headquarters’ awareness of local power dynamics Personal or institutional interests to continue current programming can influence analysis Local bias may influence validity of analysis | Disagreements can spark ‘competition’ and undermine local stakeholder relations Power imbalances between centre and country office prevent truly ‘equal’ collaboration Responsibilities, roles and procedures become unclear | Little knowledge transfer Inadequate knowledge of capabilities of a commissioning organisation Lower accountability to local stakeholders Can be overly rigid, sticking strictly to terms of reference |
Key strategies for enhancing strengths and mitigating risks can be culled from combining potential strengths from the different options discussed above to address corresponding weaknesses. This would not fully resolve the issues highlighted, but building awareness of strengths and risks at different organisational levels is a first step in identifying measures to improve the quality of analytical capability. This could, for example, result in headquarters staff engaging local research partners to a greater degree when conducting analysis to compensate for their lack of local awareness. Headquarters staff could also arrange for strong peer review processes that would expose their thinking to local expertise. Conversely, if country office staff conduct the analysis, they would need to organise, at a minimum, dedicated challenge sessions in which, for example, colleagues from other country offices or headquarters would have the opportunity to critically interrogate their data and assumptions, and offer comparative experiences from elsewhere.
The extent of analytical specialisation refers to the degree to which analytical competences are concentrated in dedicated research-type roles or are considered a generic skill that most employees should demonstrate to a certain level. A follow-up consideration is how well human resource policies subsequently promote the development of analytical competences, irrespective of the dominant organisational model. These are pertinent factors for good community security programming because conducting sensitive and in-depth analysis of power structures requires appreciable competences and diplomatic skills within the programming team – whether analytical skill is envisaged as specialisation or generalisation. Table 3 makes explicit the respective strengths and weaknesses of the two options, before elaborating on how to enhance the advantages and mitigate the associated risks.
Analytical specialisation | Specialised experts | Generalised responsibility |
|---|---|---|
Potential strengths | Creates a professional community with an interest in analysis of high quality standards, based on tested methods and good practices Likely to increase analytical rigour and credibility Increases the level of accountability for analysis | Increases likelihood that analysis will actually impact programming Engenders a sense of responsibility throughout the organisation for being analytically conscious May encourage building analytical skills among (local) staff |
Potential risks | Analysis produced may be too technical Analytical methods may be too rigid, increasing time and cost Recommendations less likely to be sufficiently relevant to policy or programming | May result in insufficient investment in analytical capabilities among staff Analysis becomes neglected when it is seen as ‘add on’ instead of ‘core’ Focus comes to lie on whether analysis has been conducted instead of how good it is (‘tick the box’) |
Key strategies for enhancing such strengths and mitigating risks should be a function of two factors: the volume of analysis that an organisation conducts and the quality of its staff development policies to stimulate analytical skills among employees.
Where volume is high and staff development policies basic, a dedicated improvement initiative is urgently required, possibly aiming for the creation of an in-house group of specialists.
Where volume is high and staff development policies good, the core organisational logic of the institution should guide a decision on whether to create a group of specialists or to ensure every programme manager is also a competent analyst. ‘Central and directive’ and ‘decentralised’ organisations would seem better served by groups of specialists, whereby ‘central and facilitative’ organisations would likely benefit from having analytical skills scattered throughout country offices and headquarters as a loosely linked community of practice. Additional consulting capacity may be required in this combination of factors.
Where volume is low and staff development policies basic, outsourcing analysis is a good option.
Where volume is low and staff development policies good, mainstreaming modest analytical skills appears efficient, as the economies of scale that merit a specialist unit are unlikely to be in place.
The structure and process of analysis refers to the extent to which an organisation utilises specific tools and pre-designed frameworks and cycles to carry out its analysis, or whether research is conducted in more spontaneous, ongoing or unstructured ways. For example, some organisations see field trips, strategic meetings and ad hoc workshops with local partners as contributions to a continuous and largely undocumented process of updating and assessing local political realities. For others, analysis is carried out in a more methodical, overt and transcribed way. Consideration must also be given to which components of analysis are supported or required by internal procedures, and therefore more likely to be carried out in a consistent way, and which are left to the discretion of a programme manager. The structure and process of analysis is a relevant factor for good community security programming as its local nature, gradual development and permanent sensitivity probably necessitates a hybrid of analytical structure and analytical fluidity. Table 4 lists the potential advantages and weaknesses of each option. It is followed by a discussion of strategies to maximise these strengths and reduce risks.
The structure and process of analysis | A dedicated, specific process and tool | An ongoing process that can be informal |
|---|---|---|
Potential strengths | A standardised process is likely to produce ‘absorbable’ recommendations Can be used across, but tailored to, specific Theories of Change or internal programme strategies A pre-set methodology can increase rigour and thereby credibility of results Having a variety of pre-defined tools, for a variety of contexts or issues, accelerates analysis and makes analysis transparent | Quick to execute in response to shifting local power dynamics Supports adaptive programming more easily as it is more flexible Increases opportunities for continuous knowledge exchange Is more likely to contribute to capacity building of national staff if good coaching is in place Can help build dialogue and trust among local stakeholders May save costs |
Potential risks | Analysis is undertaken as an end in itself rather than as an integrated part of programming Can be resource intensive, which reduces frequency Can take so long that results are obsolete before they can be put into programming Can be too rigid in process or methodologies Emphasises ‘hard data’ over ‘intuition’ or ‘local knowledge’ Formal written reporting (e.g., in high-level English) may reduce the role national staff can play | Can focus narrowly on micro-dynamics Creates over-reliance on ‘intuitive’ knowledge of local staff, who may be biased Vulnerable to staff turnover and loss of knowledge More difficult to share outcomes for the purpose of general knowledge accumulation and synthesis More difficult to verify sources of information, which reduces reliability and can increase bias |
Key strategies for enhancing these specific strengths and mitigating risks should be calibrated to organisational size combined with levels of decentralisation. Larger organisations will generally need to improve their analytical processes as they face greater volumes, higher transparency demands and more complex, interwoven work processes (i.e., an output of one phase becomes an input for another). However, large organisations could also be decentralised (consider the Oxfam confederation), in which case analysis could be done more informally at country office level. As long as adequate validation and challenge strategies are in place, for example by soliciting input and reviews from constructively critical peers, analytical quality does not have to suffer from bias or groupthink. Smaller organisations and/or more decentralised organisations have less need for structured analytical processes but will benefit from a dedicated knowledge-gathering and sharing function, and the occasional expert input on more specialised topics, to ensure that the assumptions implicit in their analysis are surfaced and tested.
The allocation of budget for analysis refers to how money for research is distributed and who manages and oversees those funding lines. Some organisations have an explicit budget line to fund research and analysis, independent of specific projects or programmes. In other cases, (additional) funding for research and analysis may be made available as a designated part of a project or programme budget. The two are not mutually excluding, but rather demonstrate unique strengths and pose specific risks. This is a significant factor for good community security programming, as the way in which analysis is funded may partially determine the analytical objectivity and depth of understanding of local power structures. If analysis is initially conducted independently from programming this may create the space needed for ‘inconvenient’ truths. Table 5 maps the identified strengths and weaknesses of each before discussing strategies to enhance or mitigate these.
The allocation of budget for analysis | A separate budget line or fund | A portion of each programme or project |
|---|---|---|
Potential strengths | Enables research before a programme is funded or designed Enables unprejudiced analysis Underlines organisational commitment to analysis for programming Can be allocated more flexibly, as contexts or changing dynamics require | Facilitates integration of analysis into programming as the programme manager is likely to be responsible for both Facilitates design of effective monitoring measures Helps ensure each project has a clear analytical baseline Helps ensure analysis is fit-for-purpose for a particular programme |
Potential risks | Increases ‘overhead’, which can reduce organisational competitiveness May disassociate analysis from programmatic needs May reduce programme managers’ sense of responsibility for analysis May enable or encourage previous analysis to be ‘cut-and-paste’ into various project or programme proposals | The programme might already be far along in its development before analysis is initiated May result in analysis as the first phase of a programme, which can rush the process to get to results Analysis becomes a ‘tick-the-box’ activity for donors rather than a preponderant strategy of the organisation As the budget will be allocated up front, it is difficult to conduct more analyses when needed once the budget is depleted Funds might be re-appropriated away from analysis |
Key strategies for enhancing these specific strengths and mitigating risks could focus on combining elements of both options. For example, an initial analysis of a country or theme that precedes programming could be executed from a dedicated, separate budget line to ensure the greatest measure of objectivity and quality without undue pressure from programme owners or managers. Subsequent analysis, conducted after the decision to launch a particular programme, could, in contrast, be funded from the programme’s budget on the proviso that this allocation cannot be unilaterally reduced by the programme manager. Such an approach could combine the benefits of analytical independence and those of analytical responsiveness. It might generate two analytical products that arrive at different conclusions of course, but this could be turned into an advantage by triggering a productive conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of the respective analytical approaches, assumptions and findings. Finally, convincing donors of the need to have programme (proposals) feature dedicated research budget lines and continuously engaging them on the results of such research could help prevent analysis becoming a ‘tick-the-box’ exercise, and could also generate deeper understanding of programme dynamics.
Other digestible approaches for understanding the power structures of local security include: Hudson, et al. (2016) Everyday Political Analysis, Developmental Leadership Program, Birmingham; Bennett (2014) op. cit.
Verstegen, et al. (2005) The Stability Assessment Framework: Designing Integrated Responses for Security, Governance and Development, Clingendael Institute, The Hague.
Collaborative Learning Project (2004) The Do No Harm Handbook (The Framework for Analyzing the Impact of Assistance on Conflict), The Collaborative for Development Action, Cambridge.
Denney (2016) op.cit.
Pettit (2013) Power Analysis: a Practical Guide, Sida, Stockholm.
World Vision International (2015) ‘What is MSTC?’, Factsheet, available online:
link (accessed May 2016).
‘Organising logic’ refers to how decision-making processes, financial management, the programme cycle and results reporting, as well as advocacy and fundraising, are structured.
Denney and Domingo (2015) ‘Turning the Gaze on Ourselves: Acknowledging the Political Economy of Development Research’, Humanity Journal, online periodical, 4 December 2015.
Interview, Afghanistan Country Director for a Dutch INGO, October 2015.