Community-driven development decision tools for rural - IFAD

communities and local governance in matters of rural development. Identifying ways toimprove communication and the capacity to communicate are necessary to improve theinstitutional environment of poor rural communities, which are often isolated and deprived ofaccess to key information.At the level of the community, institutional analysis helps to• identify and understand the community’s own institutions (i.e. the “rules of the game”accepted by the members of the community) and how these can be used to devise selftargetinginstruments in favor of the poor;• acquire insights about factors influencing change and identify those changes that determinecommunity preferences and effective demand;• monitor the inclusion/exclusion of the poor and women in community public affairs andthe impact of inclusiveness on the role of the poor and women in managing communitypublic affairs;• understand issues of elite dominance and assess the risk of local elite capture of the benefitsof an intervention.This information is essential to design project interventions that maximize the autonomousdevelopment of the CBOs and contribute to poverty reduction.Equally important is analysing relationships between the communities and the outsideforces that influence their opportunities and development. This process includes:• identifying who in the local system of governance has the power to make decisions aboutproviding specific services to communities;• assessing the mandates of the different levels of local government;• determining the scope for autonomous initiatives at the community level;Box 12Addressing the learning process: how caninstitutional analysis help?Because governance issues are important informulating CDD policy and projects, there is aneed for tools to help better understand theenvironment within which a CDD approach isapplied, to assess CDD’s chances of success,to identify the themes and the proper venuefor policy dialogue and to designimplementation strategies.Methods of institutional analysis can greatlyimprove the learning process by helping to• understand the institutional and politicalsystem within and around the communities;• map the institutional architecture and theroles and functions of organizations;• assess strengths, weaknesses andcapacity-building needs;• identify enabling and disabling agencies andactors in the public sector and amongCSOs and commercial operators;• assess the constraints to empowering therural poor;• map policy and project implementationarenas;• streamline project organization andmanagement arrangements, including thecrucial area of implementation procedures.Box 13Examples of enabling instruments• improved tools to understand power in andaround the rural communities;• monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systemsthat track governance results;• institutions that recognize the public utilityfunctions of CSOs working for pro-poorrural development and instruments fortransferring public resources to them;• more flexible planning methods;• highly simplified procedures to approveCBO-initiated projects, release public fundsfor them, procure goods and services andexercise control over the use of funds;• improved communication.22