Drivers of Change Approach

 
The development community increasingly recognises that effective programmes must be grounded in an understanding of the economic, social and political factors that either drive or block change within a country. The Drivers of Change (DoC) approach has emerged within the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) as a way of applying political economy analysis to the development of donor strategy.

What are Drivers of Change?

In particular the role of institutions – both formal and informal, and underlying structural features is being recognised. The Drivers of Change approach has sought to incorporate each of these components, and to better understand the interaction between them. 

A conceptual model has been developed and a number of terms defined: 

• Change includes negative as well as positive change. 
• Agents refers to individuals and organisations pursuing particular interests, including the political elite; civil servants; political parties; local government; the judiciary; the military; faith groups; trade unions; civil society groups; the media; the private sector; academics; and donors.
• Structural features includes the history of state formation; natural and human resources; economic and social structures; demographic change; regional influences and integration; globalisation, trade and investment; and urbanisation. These are deeply embedded and often slow to change.
• Institutions include the rules governing the behaviour of agents, such as political and public administration processes.  They include the informal as well as formal rules. Institutions are more susceptible to change in the medium term than structural features.

Agents can affect structural features and vice versa.  However the impact of one on the other is mediated through institutions as illustrated below. This leads to the conclusion that institutional performance is important to understanding change processes and how they will impact upon the poor. For this reason DFID’s Drivers of Change analysis focuses on formal and informal rules, power structures, vested interests and incentives within these institutions. 

What is the Drivers of Change Approach?

Drawing on the work of others, including that of other donors, the Drivers of Change team has concluded that a single blueprint approach to Drivers of Change analysis is inappropriate. Instead, country offices have been encouraged to ask themselves a structured set of questions about the dynamics of pro-poor change, loosely grouped into one of six levels:

1. Basic country analysis – covering the social, political, economic and institutional factors affecting the dynamics and possibilities for change.
2. Medium-term dynamics of change – covering policy processes, in particular the incentives and capacities of agents operating within institutions.
3. Role of external forces – including the intentional and unintentional actions of donors.
4. Link between change and poverty reduction – covering how change is expected to affect poverty and on what time-scale. 
5. Operational implications – covering how to translate our understanding into strategies and actions.
6. How we work – covering DFID’s organisational incentives, including those promoting or impeding the retention of country knowledge.

 What difference has Drivers of Change made?

To date, over twenty DFID country offices have completed or undertaking a Drivers of Change study. The benefits of the studies are already being felt. Here are some examples:

• Making explicit and challenging the assumptions behind current programmes.
• Making clear the extent of ‘political will’ for reform and determining the risk this posses to a programme’s success.
• Prompting country teams to revise and often extend programme timetables to take account of the country context rather than DFID staff changes.
• Identifying the role that the non-poor groups have in change processes, and suggesting collaboration with non-traditional partners.
  Prompting a country team not to pursue a programme of work by providing the evidence that it is unlikely to succeed at present.
• An additional, but major benefit, has been to enable staff from different disciplines and backgrounds to debate and share diverse perspectives. This has contributed to team building and enhanced goal sharing. It is anticipated it will also strengthen the institutional memory of offices.
  

 The above text is based on:

Department for International Development, 2004, 'Public Information Note: Drivers of Change', DFID, UK.
Available online at: http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/DOC59.pdf

Governance and Social Development Resource Centre (GSDRC): Topic Guide Drivers of Change.
Available online at: http://www.gsdrc.org/go/topic-guides/drivers-of-change

Further reading:

Learning for Social Change. Exploring concepts,methods and practice Peter Taylor, Andrew Deak, Jettro Pettit and Isabel Vogel 2006 This document is an outcome of a dialogue on facilitating learning for social change (FLASC) which took place through e-fora and aninternational workshop in the Spring of 2006. Is learning important? The answer, inevitably, depends on what we meanby "learning".The gut reaction is to say "yes, of course", but perhaps we respond in this way without first reflecting on what, how and why we learn. FLASC_FINAL.pdf (927kB) URL: http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/Part/docs/FLASC.pdf Topics: Change Management, Generative Dialogue, Organisational Development and Change

Lessons learned – planning and undertaking a Drivers of Change study DFID 2005 Over 20 DFID country offices have engaged with the Drivers of Change (DOC) approach, the majority by commissioning a study. Three-quarters of these studies have produced reports and in some cases a large number of sub-study reports. This note presents a synthesis of the lessons learned as a result of this work, and suggests ways in which new and on-going studies could be conducted for maximum benefit. DOClessonsLearnt.pdf (387kB) URL: http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/DOC84.pdf Topic: Change Management

Using Drivers of Change to improve aid effectiveness DFID 2005 The development community increasingly recognises that effective programmes must be grounded in an understanding of the economic, social and political factors that either drive or block change within a country. The Drivers of Change (DoC) approach has emerged within the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) as a way of applying political economy analysis to the development of donor strategy. briefingdrivers.pdf (559kB) URL: http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/DOC83.pdf Topics: Change Management, Multi Stakeholder Processes

The Drivers of Change Approach Debbie Warrener 2004 DFID and other aid donors have been gradually moving ‘upstream’ in their approach to aid and poverty reduction. Recent work to increase the effectiveness of aid breaks with this interventionist thinking, advocating a historical, political view of specific country contexts as the analytical basis for aid strategies. SueUnsworth2002SueUnsworth2003.pdf (207kB) URL: http://www.odi.org.uk/rapid/Projects/R0219/docs/Synthesis_3_final.pdf Topics: Capacilty Development, Change Management

DRIVERS OF CHANGE DFID 2004 Donors are good at identifying what needs to be done to improve the lives of the poor in developing countries. But they are not always clear about how to make this happen most effectively. DFID is looking for ways of improving its knowledge through an approach called Drivers of Change. A Drivers of Change team in Policy Division has led the work in close collaboration with country offices and a number of research centres and consultants. This note explains the Drivers of Change approach and the impact it is beginning to have on DFID’s policies and programmes. DriversofChange.pdf (111kB) Topic: Change Management