Pablo Yanguas – Page 18 – Governance / Reform facilitation / Strategy and learning

The hard truth about development practice is -at least- 20 years old

Post author By Pablo
Post date 8 April 2014

Planning must be viewed as an incremental process that tests propositions about the most effective means of coping with social problems, reassessing and redefining both the problems and the components of development projects as more is learned about their complexities and about the economic, social, and political factors affecting the outcome of proposed courses of action. Complex social experiments can be partially guided but never fully controlled; thus, analysis and management procedures must be flexible and incremental, facilitating social interaction so that those groups most directly affected by a problem can search for and pursue mutually acceptable objectives. Rather than providing a blueprint for action, planning should facilitate continuous learning and interaction, allowing policy-makers and managers to readjust and modify programs and projects as they learn more about the conditions with which they are trying to cope.

Dennis A. Rondinelli (1993), Development Projects as Policy Experiments (New York: Routledge).

Tags Foreign aid, Reinventing the wheel

Development Movies

Marxodology: Good governance

Post author By Pablo
Post date 8 April 2014

Tags Governance, Marx Bros.

GeekDev Analogies Pop culture

Weber on Westeros

Post author By Pablo
Post date 6 April 2014

I don’t really like Game of Thrones: it is basically a soap opera with no clear narrative arc and too much gratuitous despair for my taste. I read the first book in George R. R. Martin‘s series and watched the show until the infamous “Red Wedding”. By that point I had decided there were way too many characters whose names or motives I did not know, too many factions whose background I ignored, and no clear pattern of relationships. But – like everything else in pop culture – I can still use Game of Thrones to demonstrate how my favorite social scientist was a genius. Hence this guide to Westeros through the lens of Weberian theory.

Tags Game of Thrones, Theory, Weber

Africa Great Books

A political economy analysis of Ghana… Sixty years ago

Post author By Pablo
Post date 4 April 2014

In appearance, Kwame Nkrumah is a slender man in his early forties, of middle height, with a mop of frizzy hair, big soulful eyes, a sultry, sensual expression and a trace of petulance, of prima donna touchiness, in his manner. He is, I am sure, a born actor, with all the magnetism, emotional sensitivity and panache of a good players. To say this is not to suggest insincerity. A true actor believes entirely in the reality of his characters. Nkrumah’s part is that of the savior of this people from foreign oppression. To give point to the part he has had to invent the oppression, but that was not difficult, nor in his eyes wrong. Nationalism is a passion, not an exercise in logic, and to passion’s servant all means are justified.

Tags Cornell, Elspeth Huxley, Equality, Ghana, Political economy analysis, Reinventing the wheel

Development Gaming GeekDev Analogies Pop culture Social science

Wizards and clerics, democracies and autocracies

Post author By Pablo
Post date 31 March 2014

This years marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). For those unfamiliar with it, D&D was the grandfather of tabletop roleplaying games (RPGs), which mix storytelling, improv, strategy and chance: each player assumes the role of one character with attributes and skills, vices and virtues, and together they face the challenges put forth by one of the players – the Dungeon Master or Game Master – who controls the narration and plays all other characters and creatures. It’s a simple notion, but over the last forty years D&D has had a considerable influence on a large swatch of modern pop culture.

Tags D&D, Foreign aid, Governance, Theory, Weber