Tomas Bridle has more than 20 years of experience designing and implementing democracy and governance projects world-wide. Tomas is joining the DG Practice from USAID where he served as the Senior Advisor at the Center of Excellence for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (DRG). Here he provided support to USAID missions on program design, country cooperation…
This case study is one in a series highlighting Chemonics’ experiences and lessons learned with thinking and working politically and applied political economy analysis (APEA). Drawing on the Chemonics-implemented USAID/Guatemala Biodiversity Project, this case study highlights the process, findings, and tools of the project’s baseline APEA (and second APEA iteration) and how these APEAs oriented…
Bryce Watson is the specialist for Chemonics’ Center for Politically Informed Programming. Bryce has experience delivering technical assistance on thinking and working politically (TWP) to over 20 projects across the globe, and in developing innovative approaches to programming such as Systems Prototyping. He also has experience building the capacity of staff to effectively implement these…
In May, Chemonics, the Urban Institute, and USAID co-hosted a panel discussion and interactive breakout sessions to explore approaches for fostering commitment to more transparent, sustainable financial governance. This summit highlighted experiences and lessons from three USAID projects — including the Chemonics-implemented Fiscal Reform for a Strong Tunisia (FIRST) project — that have successfully built…
For decades, the international development community has struggled to prove its effectiveness by ensuring that programs deliver politically viable solutions that respond to locally led processes. Guaranteeing these principles is a shared responsibility between donors and implementers. While donors need to shed the straitjackets of untested theories of change, pre-established project activities, and onerous reporting…
Stop, Look, and Listen! Preventing Recruitment of Youth into Illicit Activities in Southern Colombia
This post originally appeared on Harvard’s Center for International Development’s Building State Capability program’s blog. The authors successfully completed the 15-week Practice of Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation online course. This is their story. As development practitioners, we tend to rush in with solutions to deal with complex problems. We impose so-called best practices without digging…
Development is not working — at least not at the scale or pace needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. This is the central, fact-based premise behind calls and movements to do development differently from host-country recipients of aid, international organizations, donors, and implementing partners. Such calls emphasize adaptive, locally-owned, problem-solving approaches to tackle chronic development challenges.…
What do forest and species loss have to do with politics? A great deal, in fact. Conserving and protecting natural resources involves a complex set of power dynamics, interests, and economies — licit and illicit — that affect how a program can operate within an existing local system. Biodiversity programming must embrace a Thinking and…
Thinking and Working Politically (TWP) is all the buzz these days, with political economy analysis (PEA) being included in tenders, and project designs across sectors. But what does TWP-PEA look like beyond design, as an integral part of implementation? During program design and even start-up, PEAs can provide recommendations while acknowledging context complexities, actors and…
Susan Kemp is the former global practice lead on the Democracy and Governance Practice.
Jennifer Swift-Morgan is an education and governance specialist with more 20 years of experience designing, managing, and evaluating innovative programming in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. Her expertise includes education systems strengthening for learning, assets-based political economy analysis to inform public service delivery reform, and applied research for iterative program adaptation. Jennifer served…