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ESID at DSA2020 Conference Online – New Leadership for Global Challenges

This year’s DSA annual conference is taking place online from 16 to 19 June. The conference will focus centrally on ‘New Leadership for Global Challenges’, while also encompassing the broad range of development studies interests. The aim is to investigate where and how leadership is emerging at global, regional and local levels to address critical issues such as climate emergency, identity-based inequalities, poverty, violence, ill-health, resource plunder and digital surveillance.

See below for lots of exciting panels and papers from ESID experts:

Parallel Panel Session 1 – Tuesday 16 June

PAPER – The gendered politics of social protection: The case of social cash transfers in Zambia
Author: Kate Pruce
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the gendered nature of policy design and targeting debates in Zambia, identifying a ‘double burden’ placed on women, who are expected to earn and take care of their families. In this case, cash transfers have failed to challenge existing gender relations and roles in communities.
Paper long abstract:
Approaches to social protection have been accused of being ‘gender-blind’, with considerations of gender within social policy usually being limited to the inclusion of women as a target group. However, gendered narratives of dependency and deservingness continue to shape debates on welfare and social protection policies. For example, in Latin American countries, the focus on motherhood as the basis for welfare provision has served to reproduce traditional roles and social divisions, in which the primary duty of women lies within the family. This paper examines the targeting debates around social cash transfers in Zambia through a gender lens. My PhD research found a predominant belief that able-bodied people – both male and female – should be working to support themselves and their families. This view seems to subvert the stereotype of women’s ‘traditional’ roles as dependants and caregivers to some extent, but does so in a punitive, rather than a transformative way. While there has been an apparently empowering shift towards increased flexibility in gender divisions in the labour market in Zambia, this has not been accompanied by a change in attitudes to unpaid care work. Caring and homemaking roles continue to have low status and are considered to be ‘feminine’ work, leading to a ‘double burden of labour’ for women. By failing to recognise these unequal responsibilities within the household, social protection designs can perpetuate rather than challenge existing gender relations and power structures, including the high expectations placed on women to earn and take care of their families.

Parallel Panel Session 5 – Thursday 18 June

PANEL – Leadership, political settlements and bureaucratic ‘pockets of effectiveness’: Exploring the role of ‘technopols’ in delivering development
Author: Sam Hickey
Short abstract:
The role of bureaucratic ‘pockets of effectiveness’ in delivering development often relies heavily on the role of ‘technopols’, leaders of both governments and organisations who not only possess a technical command of their field but also an ability to navigate difficult political terrains.
Long abstract:
It remains a puzzle that certain parts of the state function remarkably effectively in developing countries, despite being located in governance contexts that many characterize as dysfunctional. Often referred to as ‘pockets of bureaucratic effectiveness’, PoEs, can be defined as public organizations that are reasonably effective in carrying out their functions in otherwise dysfunctional governance contexts. PoEs have played essential roles in establishing the conditions for economic growth, avoiding problems associated with the resource curse, delivering services and performing a range of regulatory functions. Leadership has been identified as a particularly important variable in enabling PoEs to emerge, flourish and be sustained. More specifically, the literature has identified a particular type of leader as often defining PoEs, namely ‘technopols’. Technopols are leaders of both governments and organisations who not only possess a technical command of their field but also an ability to navigate difficult political terrains. We welcome papers that examines the role of technopols and other forms of leadership that are critical to PoEs, and which locate PoEs in their political context, including with reference to wider strategies of state-building and regime survival.
PAPER – Leadership matters: the role of ‘technopols’ in Zambia’s economic institutions during an era of technocratic consensus, 2001-2011

PAPER – The politics of state capacity and ‘pockets of effectiveness’ in Kenya
Author: Matthew Tyce
Paper short abstract:
Employing an expanded political settlements approach, this paper explores the political economy factors that have explained the emergence and persistence of ‘pockets of effectiveness’ in Kenya
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the role that ‘pockets of effectiveness’ (POEs) have played in Kenya’s recent developmental trajectory, as well as the political economy factors that explain their emergence and persistence over time. Drawing on in-depth primary research conducted at a number of Kenyan public-sector organisations, the paper finds that the country’s competitive-clientelist political settlement creates an environment that is largely unconducive to the emergence of POEs, and certainly to their sustenance. This is because ruling elites are generally preoccupied with their own short-term political survival and are reluctant to invest in the longer-term venture of building and protecting state capacity. Instead of being top-down initiatives, as in many dominant political settlements, POEs in Kenya tend to be the result of multi-stakeholder initiatives, making them especially vulnerable to fluctuations in the interests and/or influence of various actors within the political settlement. That said, the paper identifies several factors that have played a kind of countervailing role on Kenya’s competitive political settlement, helping to sustain certain POEs over considerable periods of time. These factors include ideas, which have occasionally motivated political leaders to support and protect organisations that they deem critical to their developmental visions, as well as transnational actors, who have offered significant support in terms of capacity-building and oversight, especially within the macroeconomic technocracy. Also important have been the leaders of POEs themselves, who by juggling both developmental and political goals have been able to maintain sufficient autonomy for their organisations to operate effectively.
PAPER – The politics of bureaucratic pockets of effectiveness in Ghana: The primacy of ‘technopols’ over technocrats
Authors: Abdul Gafaru Abdulai, Giles Mohan
Paper short abstract:
This paper highlights the centrality of technopols for understanding how and why bureaucratic pockets of effectiveness emerge and persist within Ghana’s largely dysfunctional public sector.
Paper long abstract:
This paper highlights the centrality of technopols for understanding how and why bureaucratic pockets of effectiveness emerge and persist within Ghana’s largely dysfunctional public sector. It focuses on the experiences of the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Ghana, two public sector agencies that have been widely acknowledged to have maintained relatively high levels of performance overtime, although with significant dips in performance both across and within ruling coalitions. Across both case studies, we find that the specific moments of good performance were those characterized by leaders who combined technocratic expertise with significant political influence within the ruling coalition. Unlike pure technocrats, such ‘technopols’ are often better able to push through relevant but difficult reforms because of the political trust that they wield within ruling coalitions. These findings support recent observations that in contexts of personalised forms of governance as in much of Africa, public sector agencies can enhance their effectiveness, not by isolating themselves from politics, but instead by cultivating ‘strong political relations’ and engaging in various forms of ‘political bargaining’ with powerful political and bureaucratic elites.
PAPER – PoEs, political settlements and technopols: From state-building to regime survival in Uganda?
Authors: Sam Hickey, Badru Bukenya, Haggai Matsiko
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how the interplay of political settlement dynamics and organisational leadership shapes public sector performance in Uganda, and how Uganda’s PoEs have increasingly come to reflect the politics of regime survival rather than any wider state-building project.
Paper long abstract:
Uganda’s impressive levels of economic performance over much of the past three decades have often been linked to the performance of certain ‘pockets of effectiveness’ (PoEs), including the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Uganda and, more unevenly, the Uganda Revenue Authority. The President’s extension of political protection to these (and other) PoEs has been central to their success, as has been the appointment of ‘technopols’ to lead these organisations, and who have proven capable of managing both the political and technical aspects of their briefs. However, the performance of these organisations has varied considerably over time, with all coming under considerable pressure as a result of shifts within Uganda’s political settlement, which moved from being broadly ‘dominant-developmental’ to ‘vulnerable-populist’ in character from the early 2000s onwards. This shift profoundly altered the ’embedded autonomy’ that PoEs had previously enjoyed, in ways that have undermined their capacity to deliver on their mandate. This paper explores how the interplay of political settlement dynamics and organisational leadership shapes public sector performance in Uganda, and how Uganda’s PoEs have increasingly come to reflect the politics of regime survival rather than any wider state-building project.

Parallel Panel Session 7 and 8 – Friday 19 June

PANEL – Gatekeepers and gamechangers: How women matter for promoting equitable change
Convenors: Sohela Nazneen, Ayesha Khan
Short abstract:
The panel explores how women’s leadership matters in bringing about and consolidating gender equitable policy change. Using case studies the panel highlights how women leaders can be game changers and strategies they use to tackle gatekeepers and counter backlash against gender equity gains.
Long abstract:
The panel focuses on the micro-politics of policy making and what role women’e leadership play in bringing about change. Using primary research on case studies of specific policy change conducted in Nepal, Peru, Pakistan and Uganda, the panel will explore how women leaders emerge as critical actors for securing policy change and consolidating the policy gains made. The policy cases explored in this panel are related to matters that require challenging male power, religious/ cultural norms- such as land rights, reproductive rights, violence against women. The panel explores the different strategies women’s movement actors and women inside the state (political heads, and femocrats) use to bypass the political gatekeepers and diffuse resistance in policy spaces. It makes the argument why presence of powerful women and collective leadership matter, and how pro gender equity advocates relational and inter-personal capital plays a critical role in making change. By investigating how women matter the papers also reflect on whether women’s leadership style is different, how do women leaders navigate various gendered institutional norms and constraints that limit their agency. The panel collectively will also reflect on when do women leaders become critical actors and what factors enable them to become ‘game changers.’ Given that in many of the case study countries there is a push-back against women’s rights and the nature of the civic space is shrinking, the panel hope to offer important insights into how women leaders may continue to matter.

Parallel Panel Session 8 – Friday 19 June

PAPER – Leaders, coalitions and political settlements: Operationalising a new approach to the study of political settlements
Author: Tim Kelsall
Paper short abstract:
This paper provides an introduction to the approach and findings of ESID’s ‘defining and measuring political settlements’ programme.
Paper long abstract:
Over the past three years ESID’s ‘Defining and Measuring Political Settlements’ project has devised a system for coding and measuring political settlements based on the relative strength and social composition of the de facto political leader’s support coalition. This, introductory, panel paper provides an overview of the project and a brief preview of the findings of a 42 country survey, of which a subset was chosen for a QCA.
PAPER – Unpacking the effectiveness of leadership: Political settlements and state capacity
Authors: Matthias vom Hau, Sam Hickey, Benjamin Chemouni
Paper short abstract:
Studying the effectiveness of leaders raises questions about state capacity. This paper explores the impact of different political settlements on state capacity. Initial illustrative evidence comes from case studies of Zambia and Uganda, and Rwanda and Burundi.
Paper long abstract:
The effectiveness of leaders inevitably raises questions about state capacity—why states in some parts of the world have become more effective at providing valued social goods than in others. In this paper I draw on insights from political settlements analysis and explore the likely impact of different power configurations on state capacity. Specifically, I analyze (1) the political cohesion of the political settlement, that is, the groups in control of political authority and state resources, and (2) its social foundation, or the amount of support and resistance the governing coalition faces from the wider population. I expect a unipolar settlement to be more effective than a multipolar one in accomplishing what they set out to do (for better or for worse), largely because they allow state leaders to operate within a longer time horizon and enable the political protection particular state agencies. The expected impact of social foundations on state capacity is less clear-cut and likely varies across different policy domains (e.g., economic projects, social provision). Initial evidence to illustrate the insights and limitations of this framework will be drawn from comparative case studies of Zambia and Uganda, and Rwanda and Burundi.
PAPER – Do political settlements matter? A qualitative comparative analysis
Authors: Nicolai Schulz,  Tim Kelsall 
Paper short abstract:
Conducting a QCA of six selected countries (and 64 country-periods), using data from our “ESID Political Settlements Survey”, this paper studies whether the relative size, strength and social composition of the leader’s support coalition affect a country’s development trajectory.
Paper long abstract:
The aim of this paper is to explore whether there are relationships between political settlement types and countries’ development experiences. In particular, does the relative size, strength and social composition of the leader’s support coalition affect a country’s willingness and ability to implement inclusive growth or social policies, and to what extent is this mediated or affected by other variables such as economic ideologies or systemic threats? To approach this goal, it conducts a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of six selected countries (and 64 country-periods), using data from our “ESID Political Settlements Survey”. The six countries – Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Myanmar, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka – were selected since all are medium-sized, predominantly agricultural, resource ‘poor’, coastal, former British colonies, thus enabling us to hold these potential explanations constant in the QCA while leveraging variation in other factors. Allowing for equifinality, QCA analysis is particularly powerful as a first tool to identify parallel potential pathways that can explain developmental success and other outcomes of interest in developing countries. It hereby provides important guidance for future analyses.

Parallel Panel Session 7 and 8 – Friday 19 June

PANEL – Private sector leaders, processes and linkages in the Global South: Changing structures and the pursuit of the SDGs
Conveners: Jessica Sklair, Farwa Sial, Jo-Anna Russon, Aurelie Charles
Short abstract:
This panel explores the emerging leadership roles played by private sector development actors and institutions in the Global South, particularly in pursuit of the SDGs. It will examine how Southern actors are helping redefine businesses as leaders and executors of the sustainable development agenda.
Long abstract:
This panel explores the DSA2020 theme of ‘New Leadership for Global Challenges’ by examining the emerging leadership roles played by private sector development actors and institutions in the Global South. We are seeking papers that examine the role played by private sector actors in providing leadership on meeting the SDGs and responding to diverse development challenges. The role of the private sector in development is changing, with new private sector actors and emerging networks recreating the traditional domain of development. Prominent examples include the rise of outsourced management consultancies specializing in development, philanthropic institutions and CSR initiatives and a series of contractors that engage with international organizations such as the UN. New processes building on on-going financialisation, such as metric-based institutions specializing in impact and social investing and insurance companies redefining risk in relation to international development are also important dimensions of this change. These transformative shifts redefine the earlier notion of development assistance as a transfer of resources from one state to another making it a complex arena of multiple private sector interests, and challenging traditional flows of aid. The SDGs are central to this shift, helping to both equate sustainability with business interests and redefine the role of business actors as both leaders and executors of the sustainable development agenda. This panel aims to conceptualize these transformations by focusing on the actors and institutions leading these processes in the Global South, and emerging linkages between private sector actors in the South and North in pursuit of the SDGs.