Option 2—Sceptical Development Doctrines—‘We Do Not Need a Tin-Opener’: Ignorance as the Central Principle of Reinvention

Abstract

This chapter explores options if organisation is based upon an asserted belief that the context is not predictively knowable. Since the formal pressure from the DAC is so great, it is hard to find materials to illustrate development interventions that are, literally, anathema to the social epistemology of the mainstream. As we saw, studies suggest that the main reasons why INGOs use the log-frame is that it is required by their funders—official aid agencies. IT contrasts two evaluations of bridges over the Mekong River to show how an arguably more effective practice can use evaluation methods that do not assert ‘what happened’ as a single cause–effect truth. Indeed the fact that social change appears unpredictable can be seen in how sovereign states manage their aid relationships. An illustrative example given is a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed in April 2013 between Australia and China, providing the framework for governing an Australian aid program to support the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. The chapter discusses other examples, somewhat eclectically. It concludes that the discussion shows that formal organisation based upon scepticism, were it to be trialled in aid work funded by DAC member countries, would have much to draw upon. Removing the log-frame, the chapter suggests, would require, for example, treatment of Results-Based Management (RBM) in ways that allow for multiple accounts of cause–effect relations, avoidance of denial of voice, greater use of trust and so a shift of resources away from expertise that asserted predictive knowledge and towards better dialogues over differences in meanings: one of the Mekong river bridge evaluations, technically violating DAC guidelines, points in this direction. It concludes also that we find widespread evidence for how the log-frame, and the RBM that accompanies it, lose clarity as one looks more closely. Repeated evaluations of the same intervention lead to different results.