Practices: Democracy & Governance
Fragile and failed states pose exceptional challenges for development and governance reform.
Political institutions that are transparent and accountable to citizens, a vibrant civil society encouraging pluralism and participation, effective rule of law, elections, legislatures, and peaceful conflict resolution are all key elements of democratic governance. Fragile and failed states pose exceptional challenges for development and governance with priorities including stability, security, reform and institutional capacity.
SI offers innovative solutions to improve the effectiveness of governance programs, create demand for better government services and to make services work for poor people. Our work in fragile and transition states helps to catalyze democratic processes and to manage conflict with a view towards longer-term development and governance reform.
Range of Services
- Fragile States Programs-strategy development, program design, monitoring and evaluation in fragile states paving the way for longer-term development.
- Decentralization and Democratic Local Governance-increasing participation, accountability and transparency at all levels of government by working with state and non-state actors.
- Civil Society Strengthening-strengthening civil society organizations and networks and their capacity to advocate for social issues and governance reform.
- Legislative Strengthening-improving the capacity and performance of legislatures in their representative, lawmaking and oversight functions.
- Managing Conflict-identifying and responding to the root causes of conflict and evaluating the effectiveness of peace building programs.
- PROJECT details
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Jordan Media Strengthening Program: USAID, 2006-2009
The USAID-funded Jordan Media Strengthening Program (JMSP) is the Middle East's first comprehensive media program. The IREX-implemented JMSP works with media outlets, training institutes, journalism faculties, and media NGOs to improve the professionalism and sustainability of the Jordanian media sector. SI is responsible for preparing and implementing JMSP's monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system. As designed, the M&E system provides useful, timely information for results-based management, decision-making and learning purposes. SI is responsible for preparing and implementing a comprehensive M&E system that is fully integrated into program implementation. The M&E system also includes a capacity building element that employs a collaborative approach to involving key stakeholders, including journalists, in defining priority performance indicators and targets, collecting and analyzing data, and making recommendations for program improvement.
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Strengthening Programs in Fragile States: USAID Office of Transition Initiatives: Program Development Quickly (PDQ), 2003-08
USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) advances peace and democracy in conflict prone countries. Through a contract called Program Development Quickly (PDQ) SI helps strengthen OTI's global program and country projects. Through twenty plus task orders, SI has conducted country assessments (Sudan), strategic planning (Afghanistan, Congo, Liberia, OTI global program), team building and management reviews (Headquarters) and program evaluations (Macedonia, Angola, Afghanistan, Sudan, Burundi and Congo). SI also developed an innovative Toolkit for Monitoring and Evaluation in Fragile States for OTI. Other USAID bureaus can access SI and its partner Eastern Mennonite University, Conflict Transformation Program through the PDQ contract quickly and without competition. Learn how to acquire SI services through the PDQ contract.
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Strengthening Global Decentralization and Local Governance: USAID (2005-2010)
As part of the DAI consortium SI supports USAID's global program for decentralization and local government. The shared ceiling for the contract is $250 million. The program aims to: i) increase participation, transparency and accountability at all levels of government by working with state and non-state actors; and ii) increase the capacity of government and NGOs to manage and deliver public goods and services. SI leads the consortium in the areas of monitoring and evaluation and supports gender-sensitive programming, design and implementation of mechanisms to increase citizen's voices in local governance (social accountability), participatory planning and results-based management for local governments, training and NGO capacity building. Learn how to acquire SI services through the Decentralization contract.
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Building Recovery and Reform through Democratic Governance (BRDG): USAID, 2005-10
As part of the DAI Consortium, SI provides state-of-the-art expertise to promote democratic governance in countries in all stages of political development and especially weak and fragile states. The shared ceiling for the contract is $750 million. The focus of the program is on reinforcing legitimacy of state structures, policies, and functions; strengthening public management; and building government and civil society capacity for strategic planning, policy, and institutional reform. SI supports the Consortium in the areas of performance monitoring and evaluation; strategic planning, gender and social analysis; participatory planning and assessments; and building the results-based management capacity of governments. Learn how to acquire SI services through the BRDG contract.
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Legislative Strengthening: USAID, 2004-09
As part of the DAI Consortium SI works to improve the capacity and performance of legislatures in realizing their lawmaking and oversight functions. The shared ceiling of the contract is $100 million. The global program assists legislatures and other deliberative bodies to become stronger, more effective, democratic institutions through activities designed to increase their transparency, accountability, and pluralism; strengthen public participation and representation; and build policy, law-making, and oversight capacities. SI leads the consortium in the areas of monitoring and evaluation, and provides support in the areas of gender and social analysis, NGO development and collaborative planning. Learn how to acquire SI services through the Legislative Strengthening contract.
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Building Capable Local NGO Partners: USAID, 2003-07
USAID and other donors place a high priority on building the capacity of local NGOs to strengthen civil society and to accomplish development results. As part of the AED team on this global program, SI provides technical assistance to strengthen the capacity of local NGOs and NGO networks. Capable Partners (CAP) provides a fast and easy "pre-competed" mechanism for USAID to acquire a full range of capacity building services for local NGO partners and networks. SI also provides national and sector level civil society assessments as part of this mechanism. Learn more about how to acquire SI services through CAP.
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Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan: The Civil Society Support Initiative (CSSI), 2003-2005
SI is supporting Counterpart International to strengthen civil society networks in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan under USAID's Civil Society Support Initiative (CSSI). CSSI's purpose is to establish local, intermediary networks that mobilize civic organizations and citizens in democratic reform. SI has been using an assets-based approach to institutional capacity building called Appreciative Inquiry (AI) that strengthens network financial sustainability, demand-driven services, democratic governance and management structures. With SI's support, significant results have been achieved in each of these areas.
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Promoting Social Accountability: World Bank, 2004
For the World Bank , SI synthesized global good practices on 'social accountability'-mechanisms for making local governments more accountable to everyday citizens-and developed a training program that the Bank is rolling out to local government officials and civil society groups around the world. The course builds on SA practices in over 20 countries such as Ghana, Uganda, Croatia and Philippines and provides practical skills for designing and launching approaches such as citizen's report cards, participatory public budgeting, public expenditure tracking surveys and other initiatives as a means to strengthen democratic local governance.
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Bosnia and Herzegovina: Performance Government Accountability Project (GAP), USAID and the Swedish International Development Agency, 2004-2008
Since the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, Bosnia and Herzegovina has been consolidating its emerging, multi-ethnic, and representative government. GAP helps facilitate the consolidation process by building the capacity of selected municipalities to better serve their citizens within a policy and fiscal framework of good governance. Through a full-time officer in Sarajevo, SI manages GAP's integrated performance monitoring & evaluation (M&E) system. The M&E approach relates program activities to demonstrable impacts, thereby helping to foster political legitimacy for the government, and ultimately helping to facilitate sustained peace and inclusion.
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Kosovo: Performance Management for Kosovo Media Assistance Program (KMAP): USAID, 2005-08
The Kosovo Media Assistance Program (KMAP) is helping to develop a sustainable and professional independent media system to help the citizens of Kosovo participate effectively in political and economic life. SI developed KMAP's Performance Management Plan (PMP), developed a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Handbook and provides ongoing support for the M&E system during program implementation. The handbook includes user-friendly step-by-step instructions to facilitate ease of use with the program's highly tailored M&E data collection tools: Media Content Analysis Tool; Media Outreach Measure; Advocacy Index; Scorecards and Client Surveys. These tools are currently used to manage KMAP and to report on results.