Dialogue in Pursuit of Development - Are you looking for one of ...

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out and involve all the stakeholders in each country, the evaluators were
still informed that the methodology was rigid, less inclusive and not adequately
participatory. This is an important lesson for those opting to carry
out dialogue as a philosophy and methodology of assistance. It is very demanding
in resources – time and human skills – and above all it takes a very
long time to effectively reach out to all important stakeholders. The second
related issue is that of relating to stakeholders as equals and avoiding the
risk of overshadowing them or creating the traditional shortcoming of past
development assistance strategies – dependency syndrome. In the three cases
of Guatemala, Burkina Faso and Nepal, where IDEA chose to reduce its
visibility and engagement in favour of its institutionalized contact group,
the difficulty has been their inability to sustain their funding and activity
levels without IDEA’s fundraising efforts. This has obviously been too demanding
for IDEA’s limited resources.
The other issue related to the length of engagement and the timeliness
for reduced involvement with a given partner has been when to leave the
country and when that happens what guarantees there are that the project
will be sustained. On average IDEA has spent up to four years in each country
where it has worked. However, according to the evaluators a much longer
time frame is required for this type of work to be sustainable. In the case of
IDEA the evaluators raised two key issues of structural relevance and resource
management. First, they received concerns about centralized management
of projects and resources at headquarters. Second, they were concerned
by the lack of local management capacity of projects. The staff was
inadequate and/or too junior to manage at appropriate levels.
Conclusion
The methodology of dialogue is complex, very demanding in time and human
resources and its impact takes a very long time to realise. The issues of
inclusiveness, participation and partnership; sustainability and process orientation
are critical for a successful process of dialogue. While these are
complex and demanding issues it is clear from the case studies presented
here that, first, the stakeholders appreciate dialogue very much, and second,
that in the area of political assistance there is no other option but a dialogue
process. Furthermore, although dialogue is a process it still requires to be
underpinned by a methodological framework which entrenches the values,
milestones and expected outcomes. IDEA has learned immeasurably from
this approach and continues to refine it with more field cases and further
dialogue.