Conclusions

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Conclusions © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Margit van Wessel, Tiina Kontinen, and Justice Nyigmah Bawole; individual chapters, the contributors Published version Wessel, Margit van; Kontinen, Tiina; Nyigmah, Bawole Justice Wessel, M. V., Kontinen, T., & Nyigmah, B. J. (2023). Conclusions. In M. van Wessel, T. Kontinen, & J. N. Bawole (Eds.), Reimagining Civil Society Collaborations in Development : Starting from the South (pp. 327-341). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003241003-27 2023 22 CONCLUSIONS Margit van Wessel, Tiina Kontinen and Justice Nyigmah Bawole Introduction This book seeks to provide significant contributions to the debate on needed changes in North–South collaborations concerning power, control, accountabilities, and colonial mindsets and help catalyze innovation. The book has aimed to provide ideas for reimagining CSO collaborations from the perspective of ‘starting from the South’, exploring the roles, relations, and processes shaping CSO collaborations in development. First, focusing on roles, who does what in CSO collaborations was reimagined, starting from the perspectives and agency of Southern CSOs. Second, exploring relations, the questions of who matters and how were addressed, with an attempt to move beyond the North–South binary. Third, focusing on processes, the nature of new collaborations if leadership from the South were more prevalent was considered. The five sections of the book have provided reimaginings from different angles: (1) how Southern CSOs could reclaim the lead, (2) how the North–South dyad could be displaced, (3) what Southern-centred questions emerge, (4) what kinds of new roles Northern actors could assume, and (5) what the new starting points for CSO collaborations could be. This chapter returns to the questions posed in the introductory chapter, reflects on the answers to these provided by the individual chapters, and reviews the main insights emerging from the five sections of the book. The chapter also presents overall conclusions and suggestions for research and practice on how to move towards ‘starting from the South’. Reimagining roles, relations, and processes The chapters of this book touch on widely relevant elements of CSO collaborations in development, broadly conceived, addressing the domains of advocacy, service delivery, and capacity development. Similarly,the chapters consider DOI: 10.4324/9781003241003-27 328 Margit van Wessel et al. broadly relevant aspects of development programmes, such as agenda setting; strategizing; the production and usage of various forms of k nowledge, skills, and relations; and the building of legitimacy. Notwithstanding this broadness, when it comes to roles, the chapters consistently argue that Southern CSOs are positioned to shape development in context-specific ways. The chapters ‘start from the South’, in that they view, analyse, and reimagine collaboration from within Southern settings and portray Southern CSOs as drivers of development acting from their own contextually relevant knowledge on issues, strategies, legitimacy, relational capital, and perspectives. The situatedness of development in Southern contexts and the capacity of Southern CSOs to relate to these contexts make these CSOs capable of leading development, as the chapters argue. To start with roles then: Southern CSOs’ agency in realizing their existing and p otential leadership is stressed throughout the book. The chapters also emphasize the relevance of diversity among CSOs and their different roles, including social movements, individual activists, communitybased organizations, professional non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at the domestic level, and international NGOs (INGOs). However, typically, the chapters assign leading positions to organizations taking up roles closest to the people they work with and focusing on domestic constituencies. Here, collaboration is also mostly conceived with a domestic focus, drawing attention to the roles of different CSOs within the same country setting, which has thus far received little attention in debates on CSO collaboration. These debates tend to be skewed towards global processes around internationally defined issues, with a prominent role for large INGOs. CSO roles are defined through their interactions with allies, their constituencies, and various other actors including the state and other domestic CSOs, as well as INGOs and Northern CSOs, which constitute only one form of relevant other. The chapters in this book thus relativize the prominent role of INGOs and Northern CSOs in development; some do see the role of such organizations as potentially highly relevant – but on new terms. INGOs and Northern CSOs and INGOs are called on to adjust – following the leadership of Southern CSOs and taking up supporting roles based on that lead, such as facilitating, linking, training, funding, and translating. The capacities, resources, and power of INGOs and Northern CSOs are seen as relevant in many ways. They can bring in much-needed support that otherwise would not come through – for domestically sensitive topics, for example. With their high levels of prestige, these types of organizations can help amplify local voices. By providing funding, they can facilitate the growth and flourishing of Southern CSOs. Given the centrality of contextually embedded CSOs in development, Broadly speaking, most of the chapters in this book call on international CSOs to take more supporting roles, carefully geared towards the agendas defined by Southern CSOs, and to accept Southern CSOs’ leadership. It must be acknowledged here that the degree and nature of such support will depend at least partly on civic space – there are many contexts today where international civil society is delegitimized, especially when it comes to advocacy and sensitive topics. In short, reimagined roles Conclusions 329 involve contextually embedded Southern leadership, diversity in roles, and a repositioning of INGOs and Northern CSOs in supporting roles. When it comes to relations, the embeddedness of CSOs in relations within their own contexts is shown to be a crucial resource for shaping action and navigating questions of legitimacy and effectiveness, which are largely defined by domestic relations. CSOs’ domestic relations with constituencies, state agencies, and other non-state actors of various kinds are thus brought to the fore. The chapters draw attention to these relations, illustrating their prime importance for the survival of organizations and the success of their endeavours. The chapters also indicate the high demand for organizational capacities and resources associated with managing these relations and reimagine relations with INGOs and Northern CSOs as based on recognition of Southern CSOs’ resources and capacities and the validity of their perspectives as starting points for collaboration. INGOs, to the extent they will be involved, are asked to act as facilitators and investors, furthering the leadership of Southern CSOs to contribute to development in their own contexts. In a few chapters, interdependence between CSOs is stressed, given their exchange of various resources. In one chapter, independence from INGOs and Northern CSOs is stressed as a viable and logical option, considering the resources that can be mobilized and the heavy price that must be paid without this independence, in terms of pandering to INGOs’ and Northern CSOs’ requirements and assumptions. The book thus aims to shift attention to how CSOs’ relations with various actors at the domestic level shape locally owned development. However, some chapters also show that domestic CSO relations can mimic and reproduce the inequalities and disempowerment frequently associated with North–South CSO collaborations. Connected with the emphasis on starting out from Southern contexts is the message that relations are to be built on new terms. These terms evoke mutuality and include aspects such as recognition, trust, solidarity, connectedness, respect, sharing, transparency, reciprocity, interdependence, networking and acknowledgment of the multiple relations CSOs have. Processes shaping the reimagined collaborations similarly shift attention away from linear North–South relations defined through contractual relations and towards processes of development influenced by conditions and dynamics in Southern contexts. Collaboration processes need to facilitate relating effectively to these contexts. Processes such as knowledge production and management, strategy development, and building organizational legitimacy are defined within Southern contexts. Collaboration should facilitate such processes and work towards strengthening the role of Southern CSOs in leading these processes within their contexts. Connected with this emphasis on centring process on Southern contexts, identified elements of good collaborative processes again evoke mutuality. They are reimagined to help grow meaningful collaboration together and include aspects such as reflexivity, learning, co-creation, exchange, negotiation, connecting diversities, building assets and linking up with what is there. 330 Margit van Wessel et al. Plural vantage points The main message of this book thus revolves around the notion of starting collaboration from contextually grounded Southern CSO leadership, which can grow with mutuality as a guiding principle. With the five sections approaching this idea from different angles, each offering specific ways in which our thinking on roles, relations, and processes in civil society collaborations in development can be approached. Each section of the book presents analyses of varied aspects and provides practical recommendations rooted in these analyses. The sections all offer opportunities for the fundamental reorientation of CSO collaborations in development. The first section, ‘Reclaiming the lead’, emphasizes the basic point that Southern CSO leadership can be reclaimed based on what Southern CSOs offer, with implications for Northern-based actors (e.g. CSOs and researchers), who are asked to relate to Southern CSOs from a more facilitating, supportive stance, rooted in the recognition of Southern CSOs’ agency, capacities, and resources. The chapters in this section show how collaborations can be practically rooted in the lived experiences of Southern communities and CSOs, highlighting the key role of acknowledging, mobilizing, and working with contextual knowledge while doing justice to constraining conditions. The second section, ‘Displacing the North–South dyad’, shifts attention from this dyad to a wider orientation on CSO collaborations, emphasizing different types of roles, relations, and processes of exchange, interaction, and interdependence. The chapters in this section highlight the multiplicity of CSO relations, legitimacy requirements, and resources being exchanged, thus expanding our understanding of key aspects of CSO collaborations in development. The third section, ‘Southern-centred questions’, shifts the attention from international CSO relations to different questions, centring on the dynamics among Southern CSOs and others in their contexts (e.g. other CSOs, constituencies, and the state). The chapters in this section argue for recentring legitimacy relations to focus on communities and constituencies; explore domestic CSO collaborations; present African CSOs’ perspectives, roles, challenges, and opportunities around the desired shift of power; conceptualize Southern CSO roles as independent and home-grown; and zoom in on the centrality of trust to the gifting practices of local communities, as something that can be built and harnessed for financing development projects and programmes. These chapters thereby propose a reorientation of what relations matter and relativize the relevance of INGOs and Northern CSOs by viewing their roles in a wider, contextually defined frame. The fourth section, ‘Learning new roles for the North’, focuses on what the recentring this book proposes implies for INGOs’ and Northern CSOs’ roles. While chapters in other sections of this book also discuss this question, here, specific assumptions and starting points commonly shaping these CSOs’ roles are brought to light, and alternatives are suggested for knowledge management, Conclusions 331 power sharing/shifting, and programming. The chapters in this section show what ‘starting from the South’ will require in practice, emphasizing shifting mindsets and fundamentally reorienting Northern roles, relations, and processes. Openness to different interpretations and priorities while developing more horizontal forms of learning and facilitating rather than leading roles are important here, as is an expanded understanding of power that includes ‘power to’ and ‘power with’. The fifth section, ‘New starting points for collaboration’, provides i nspiration for imagining new ways of collaborating, offering different principles and approaches that may support making CSO collaborations more oriented towards Southern contexts and more Southern-led. The chapters in this section primarily reconsider the foundations of CSO relations, mostly moving away from formal dimensions and addressing the roles and intricacies of the informal, focusing on elements like recognition of multiple identities, lived experiences and agency, the relational dimensions of autonomy, and the role of personal and trust-based relations. ‘Starting from the South’: a transformative stance The chapters and sections of this book recentre the shaping of CSO collaborations, directing attention to the various contexts that we refer to as the Global South. Rather than linking with previous approaches to reimagining civil society collaborations, which have mostly been situated within the aid system, seeking to change it, the chapters in this book take a transformative stance. They relativize international collaboration at a fundamental level, asking INGOs, Northern CSOs, and their donors to follow the lead of Southern CSOs, with their contextually geared perspectives, resources, capacities, and ways of working. INGOs and Northern CSOs are to provide support from a stance of recognition of these elements, while also shifting focus to different, wider sets of relations that are, again, contextually defined. This book thus addresses the need for reimagining of the roles of INGOs, which are mostly Northern-based. These roles are currently thoroughly shaped by management-centred approaches sustained by control over funding and entrenched mindsets and practices. Thus far, the debate on reimagining CSO collaborations in development is highly concerned with shifting and sharing this control. The question of what is to become of INGOs and Northern CSOs, with a ‘fundermediary’ role of passing funds to other actors through building and managing multi-country programmes as their main function (Sriskandarajah, 2015), has not previously been directly addressed. One of the editors of this volume, who regularly interacts with INGOs and Northern CSOs on the subjects of Southern ownership and leadership, often finds staff members struggling for ways to imagine how to transfer leadership to the South. The questions raised often concern management and accountability 332 Margit van Wessel et al. for funding. How can programmes be managed? How can the funds spent be accounted for? How can the risks involved be managed? Accountabilities associated with the fundermediary role are a main area of attention. Less openly discussed are concerns around the loss of organizational relevance and the loss of jobs, which sometimes come up in more personal conversations. Often, therefore, the questions and concerns are negatively framed, with reference to the existing system. How can a new system fit the requirements we are facing? Fundamental structures and assumptions shaping the aid system set up around the principles of management and control remain firmly in place. How to change roles, relations, and processes in fundamental ways can indeed be hard to imagine. Longstanding starting points that shape these three elements, arguably, are losing their self-evident primacy, but there are no new starting points on which to anchor the imagined transformed system. The new foundations that would be needed are not there yet. Many changes that have been worked on thus far – theoretically, and sometimes also in practice – such as ‘giving’ ownership to Southern CSOs (Sander, 2021), imagining or working towards adaptive management (Gutheil, 2021), or addressing questions of epistemological justice (Icaza & Vázquez, 2013) do not truly question INGOs’ and Northern CSOs’ fundermediary role, the programming prerogative that comes with it, or the centrality of the North–South dyad above other types of relations. It is this foundation that is addressed in this book by the different chapters and the book as a whole, with the message that emerges from the collection of chapters together and our situating them in the existing broader debates in practice and theory. By emphasizing ‘starting from the South’, the book calls for starting civil society collaborations from the capacities, understandings, resources, and perspectives held by Southern CSOs within their own contexts. It also offers first steps towards reimagining roles for Southern CSOs as leaders, showing how this leadership is contextually rooted for CSOs in the Global South, taking no evident heed of ‘capacity development’ as administered by INGOs. At the same time, many chapters present INGOs and Northern CSOs as relevant or potentially relevant. The book thus also offers first steps towards reimagining roles for INGOs and Northern CSOs grounded not in their programming prerogative but in their capacity to offer support and to invest, following the lead of the Global South because of recognition of the validity of Southern leadership and the need to offer support that is context-specific and thus flexible and diverse. We present an imagining of collaborations that works from knowing how different actors matter to a change process in different ways. This imagining is open-ended and rooted in recognition of what each organization stands for and brings to the collaboration. Such collaborations must also be based in meaningful connections linking capacities, perspectives, and goals. This signals a move away from managerial perspectives that may be rooted in the best of intentions and energized by laudable objectives but tend to come with constraints. Managerial approaches are centred on alignment with predefined agendas and understandings. They require that Southern CSOs exhibit a readiness to comply with international frameworks and ‘tools’ that they must work with to shore up Conclusions 333 collaborations. With such approaches, Southern CSOs must also ensure that all spending is accounted for and that all activities are in line with what the donors were promised, working towards documenting prespecified outcomes. Ultimately, then, while the task of reimagining collaboration among CSOs in development may seem enormous, there is also a simplicity to the idea of moving away from complex multi-country programming, at least in the eyes of the authors of the different chapters in this book. ‘How can we help?’ is the question to be asked by INGOs and Northern CSOs, accepting that Southern CSOs are already agents, whose efforts others may be able to support with various resources, knowledges, relations, and capacities. How to find the freedom to provide these kinds of assistance is a more complicated question, and this may well be where INGOs and Northern CSOs (and maybe also Southern-based CSOs working with institutional donors) will face the most significant challenges. These organizations, too, are enmeshed in a system that keeps them in a constrained position, making them work as managers at the expense of their roles as change agents, even though they are likely much more driven by a will to contribute to change than by a desire to manage funding streams. Indeed, although it is generally Southern CSOs whose enforced mission drift is problematized, others in the development system also appear to suffer under the present system, with so much of their attention going towards procedurally oriented tasks. Donors are a crucial part of this system, and any transformation will have to take shape in close coordination with them. An agenda for research and practice Drawing on the analyses presented in the different chapters in this book, as well as our reflections on them, we have identified a range of questions for research and practice that require further exploration, research, design, and experimentation concerning reimagining civil society collaborations in development. Research and the work of practitioners are integrated here, as they will need to feed into each other to advance the fundamental transformations called for in this book. Here, we present these remaining issues as six overarching themes. Towards Southern-led CSO collaborations There is a need for further research that focuses on how the changes and transformations CSOs seek could be supported through different types of collaborations. This research should consider more thematic and strategic aspects instead of the management questions that have thus far dominated both research and policy agendas. The insights and recommendations emerging from the various chapters in this volume, and this concluding one, could provide valuable entry points for the needed research pursuits. However, although this book offers such entry points for further research on ‘starting from the South’, more should be done to support donors and wellresourced INGOs and Northern CSOs in dealing with the question of how 334 Margit van Wessel et al. to let go of old practices and adopt new ones. Taking the example of multicountry programming as discussed in Chapter 17, INGOs and Northern CSOs have been encouraged to shift from a project approach to a programme approach to avoid fragmentation of their activities and to achieve greater impact. However, although the adoption of programme approaches has built stronger coherence from the point of view of INGOs and Northern CSO, it has also introduced new challenges to be addressed. Programmes are designed on the basis of principles and understandings of how change comes about that have limited space for contextualization. They are also often developed before ‘Southern partners’ are brought in to fit the programme goals. How to start collaboration from Southern organizations rather than beginning with predefined, large-scale Northern programming is an open question that will require further research, process design, and experimentation to identify new solutions. The same can be said about the notions of capacity and capacity development. Questions of whose capacities are to be brought in, how this should be done, to strengthen whom, and for what purpose deserve to be rethought and redesigned, exploring these issues from Southern perspectives and with an acknowledgement of existingcapacities. The insights and claims in this book also come with fundamental challenges on other fronts. As the authors in this book claim, other questions, such as what constitutes a ‘good’ partner and how to assess whether organizations are leaders in their own contexts when determining which Southern CSOs to work with by playing supporting roles, need more scrutiny. While some CSOs may be in a position to lead, the question of how to validate such claims remains u nresolved. Questions of who and what they lead, by what (and whose) standards, and towards what goals become urgent when the criteria of fitting into Northern CSO programmes and goals are no longer prioritized. Similarly, while the book has sought to imagine what ‘starting from the South’ could look like, it is important to realize that the drivers and motivations of INGOs and Northern CSOs may often not fall in line with these possibilities. The INGOs and Northern CSOs appearing in the chapters in this book mostly have at least some level of interest in more equal collaboration. However, some INGOs and Northern CSOs may have strong economic and ideological reasons for maintaining control over certain issues and areas in the South, to the extent of competing with each other. In such situations, there is not much impetus to change practices to move in the direction of Southern leadership. Moreover, relinquishing their grip on the conception, design, execution, management, and control of development would run counter to the interests and perceptions of good practices held by many, including back donors. This book’s theme and goal did not include examining the complex dynamics between INGOs/Northern CSOs and their donors or how these can be addressed in the reimagined collaborations. Answering these questions, however, is crucial to thetransformations called for throughout this book. In the complex global power dynamics of building alliances for control and influence in general, INGOs and Northern CSOs may also Conclusions 341 Gaventa, J. (2021). 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