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Center for Politically Informed Programming.

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  • Center for Politically Informed Programming
The Center for Politically Informed Programming serves as a resource hub to build awareness of thinking and working politically (TWP) and related approaches.
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The development community has increasingly recognized that it must take a politically savvy approach to ensure its efforts are technically sound and politically viable. Chemonics has incorporated thinking and working politically (TWP) and applied political economy analysis (APEA) into projects in recent years and is now orienting its systems to scale the TWP approach across all sectors. Building on initial experiences, lessons, and successes with TWP in Chemonics’ projects, the Center for Politically Informed Programming serves as a resource hub to build awareness of TWP and related approaches — such as local systems and problem-driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) —to do development differently. It supports action research to highlight how TWP and politically informed programming contribute to development impact and sustainability.

The center focuses on three main areas:

1. Capacity development. This includes promoting the use of TWP and building the capacity of staff in our field and home offices to implement the approach. The center is establishing a more systematic process for building the knowledge and skills staff need to incorporate TWP into our work.

2. TWP implementation. This includes supporting and delivering a TWP approach throughout our work from proposal development to implementation, monitoring, and learning. The center provides on-demand assistance to the company’s projects across regions and sectors.

3. Industry participation. This includes Chemonics’ participation in events and activities to share lessons and exchange experiences with practitioners, donors, and the broader development community. Through the center, Chemonics is a member of the Global Delivery Initiative and serves on the steering committee of the DC-based working group of the TWP Community of Practice.

If you are interested in learning more or partnering with us, please email TWPTeam@chemonics.com.

Center Team

Santiago Villaveces-Izquierdo
Sharon Van Pelt
Susan Kemp

Designing Real-Time Advocacy Strategies

Charles Abani, Chief of Party for the USAID Nigeria Strengthening Advocacy and Civic Engagement project, discusses the design of real-time advocacy strategies and the impact it can have on democratic reform.

Thinking and Working Politically

Panelists discuss how donors and project implementers can support politically savvy interventions to better respond to dynamic local contexts and sector-specific outcomes.

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  • Specialists

Susan Kemp

Director, Democracy and Governance Practice

Sharon Van Pelt

Director, Democracy and Governance Practice

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An infographic illustrating how connectivity on the internet can promote global collaboration.

How to Conduct Applied Political Economy Research in a Pandemic

Applied political economy analysis (APEA) is a qualitative field research methodology that supports more effective, politically feasible, and actionable development strategies and relies heavily on field data collected in person at multiple sites in the project country or region. Globally, COVID-19 ushered in rapid and unanticipated travel, health, and safety constraints that make primary data…

Hands holding a printout of a line graph

Three Questions on Financing Self-Reliance with Mario Kerby

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…

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…

People standing in front of mural of child's face

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…

Can We Actually Think and Work Politically?

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.…

The Politics of Biodiversity: Two Experiences with Thinking and Working Politically

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…

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…

Politics Matter: How Implementers Can Do Development Differently

It makes intuitive sense at many levels: power and politics matter. We know this to be true in our own hometowns, organizations, or governments: different formal and informal alliances, power imbalances, and motivators — stemming from kinship or affinity, party politics, economic interests, cultural ties, race and gender relations, and other informal systems — determine…

Approaches that Projects Can Learn from the Democracy and Governance Sector

What is cross-sectoral democracy, rights, and governance (DRG) programming and why is it important? Cross-sectoral DRG programming recognizes that development issues are not single-sector problems — they overlap with other sectors; exist in a political context; and are as much, and often more, about power and relationships as they are about technical solutions. Solving a…

Think Your Project Isn’t Political? Think Again.

All changes and reforms are driven by interests and incentives. We generally understand this and, therefore, we try through our projects to foster positive incentives and collective interests that lead to the change we want to see. Sounds fairly straightforward, but clearly we know it is not, regardless of if we work in agriculture, climate…

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