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Potential Evaluation Issues and Topics
Here we suggest some issues of particular interest and potential evaluation themes.
5.1 Overall Issues of Special Interest
The following overall issues would appear be among those that stand out as central and thus need to
somehow be dealt with in any evaluation.
Processes of Institutional Change
As clarified above, supporting institutional development is not only a matter of identifying the relevant rules
to be established or altered, but also – and perhaps more importantly – of understanding and promoting
the process of how to get there, that is the dynamic process of change. Hence a central issue would seem to
be to increase our understanding of how institutional change actually takes place and how such processes
can be supported. As suggested above, there is some knowledge to be found in the research literature on
institutions, but it is also likely that substantial knowledge based on practical experience is vested among the
actors involved in international development co-operation. What are the components and phases of proc-
esses of institutional change, and who are the actors? What factors contribute to facilitating such processes
of change – for instance how can formal change be effectively implemented?
Role of Donors
And what is the role of donors in all this – donors are actors but what role shall they play? In particular,
given the contextual and complex character of institutional change – embedded in the specific historical,
social, political and economic context where institutions interact with actors, other rules as well as beliefs
and values – what can an external agency like Sida do to successfully promote inherently internal proc-
esses of institutional development in partner countries? As discussed in the introduction, this would seem
to be an important question to be addressed. Besides, Sida is not the only donor active in partner coun-
tries, but only one of several in a large donor community. This means the role of other donors must be
taken into consideration, as well as recent but strong tendencies towards increased donor co-ordination
of support and harmonisation of procedures. So one question is what Sida can do in the light of what
other actors do and increased donor co-ordination.
Role of Informal Rules
As stressed in this paper, institutional development is not only a matter of formal rules, but also informal
rules and the relationship between the formal and the informal ones. A set of questions is related to infor-
mal rules. Apart from the general questions as to the relationships between formal and informal rules, in
particular during processes of institutional change, there is the issue of how donors relate to informal
rules. To what extent are donors aware of informal rules and their importance and role, and to what
extent and in what way are these taken into consideration? And what are the consequences of not con-
sidering them? Are, for instance, informal rules targeted and in what way? Are they targeted directly or
indirectly, for instance through efforts to influence societal norms of behaviour, such as towards the appli-
cation of human rights, gender equality and environmental considerations? And to what extent and how
are informal rules taken into consideration and possibly adapted to development co-operation activities
whether these directly aim at institutional development or not? How do informal rules influence the out-
come of the activities supported? And how does the adaptation to or lack of consideration of informal
rules influence the success of the support?
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Role of Informal Power
In particular, are donors aware of informal (or formal, for that matter) political rules and power relation-
ships and their role in the functioning of the formal political system and the entire public administration,
including the judicial system, for instance? How are these relationships dealt with – adapted to, taken into
account? Or are efforts made to influence them? Are donors aware of the consequences of such informal
political rules for the effectiveness and impact of support for formal processes of democratisation as well
as for support for public sector and governance reform, such as decentralisation?
Role of Socio-Cultural Rules
The importance of understanding and recognising the socio-cultural institutional context in which inter-
national development co-operation takes place has been stressed here, and gives rise to similar questions
as those above. To what extent are they understood, taken into consideration and adapted to or otherwise
made use of ? Is their role for the functioning of the economic and political systems recognised, for
instance in efforts to promote rural and private sector development as well as good governance and public
sector reform? The perhaps most intriguing question concerns the extent to which change in formal rules
is adjusted to existing traditional or indigenous rules, in order to ensure consistency between them and
increase the chances that the formal rules gain legitimacy in the eyes of the population and become effec-
tively applied? And when socio-cultural rules are ignored what are the consequences for the success of
donor efforts to support formal reform?
Institutional Inter-Relatedness
The questions about the roles of socio-cultural and informal rules and power relationships discussed above,
are all variations on the theme of institutional inter-relatedness. An institutional perspective involves taking
the relationships between various types of rules into account – between formal and informal, socio-cultural,
political and economic rules as well as between rules as various levels. It is partly this inter-relatedness that
accounts for the complexity of change in rules, and central questions of course concern how donors manage
to deal with that inter-relatedness in development co-operation. Given the current tendencies towards pro-
gramme support at central government and sector level, and stress now placed on capacity development,
dealing with complexities becomes all the more pertinent. However, recognising the inter-relatedness between
rules is important at all levels, ranging from the constitutional to the organisational.
5.2 Possible Evaluation Topics
The following evaluation topics are just preliminary ideas of possible areas on which specific evaluations
might focus – to be discussed, considered, questioned and complemented or even substituted. Nothing
has been decided yet, the purpose is just to get the discussion started and get some feedback on already
existing ideas. New ideas are more than welcome, and the evaluations subsequently undertaken may turn
out to be in entirely different areas.
Property Rights
Support for the definition, security, development and change of property rights might be an interesting
area to examine, not least in the light of the fact that property rights are found to be one of the most
important institutional factors for economic growth. By property rights we refer to a bundle of rights
related to property, including ownership, user and tenure/heritage rights. Property may include land, real
estate, urban squats etc. as well as collective and common property. There are various options here: one
is to look at property rights broadly; another is to focus on land rights specifically. It is also possible to
consider ownership rights in general, but focus on women’s property rights in particular – as a special
case. Regardless of which option is chosen, considering both formal and informal/traditional rights and