Our People .
Senior Advisor, Center for Politically Informed Programming Santiago Villaveces-Izquierdo
Santiago Villaveces is a democracy and governance expert with nearly 25 years of experience in conflict and post-conflict settings in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Baltics. He is an expert in strategic planning and foresight, project design and implementation, thinking and working politically (TWP), political economy analysis (PEA), and political settlements analysis. He has authored various publications on human rights, police reform, organized crime and politics, and conflict and violence. He has also led PEAs for USAID in Nepal and Colombia. Since consulting for Chemonics in 2017, he has assisted with developing the company’s own TWP framework across all core business. Santiago holds a Ph.D. in political/legal anthropology from Rice University and an M.A. in development and a degree in economics from the Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia. He is also a trained Buddhist who teaches in Brazil, Colombia, and Portugal.
by Santiago Villaveces-Izquierdo
Coding ‘Thinking and Working Politically’ into a Project’s DNA
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…
Beyond a Buzzword: What Thinking and Working Politically Looks Like in Practice
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…