(through neighbouring countries, private investors, aid donors and international institutions). Attempts by governments to directly ‘empower poor people’ are also liable to be self-defeating. Empowerment is not something that is done to excluded groups, but something they must do for themselves within an enabling environment that the state, among others, can contribute towards creating. For governments, this means that policies aimed at empowering excluded groups and individuals are necessarily messy, characterised by complexity, uncertainty and the absence of full control. States therefore should avoid the temptation to simply set out, in advance, a blueprint for empowerment and then try to implement the plan. Instead, they should consider adopting an ‘empowering approach’ that: • Creates the enabling conditions required by excluded groups and individuals to empower themselves • Develops a process through which all parties come together to search for solutions to collective action problems, by working with the grain of existing institutions and traditions • Is willing to ‘cross the river by feeling the stones’, testing different options and discarding the least successful options. This approach has been termed ‘problem-driven iterative adaptation’ or, more memorably, ‘purposive muddling’ (Andrews, 2013) • Recognises that change is likely to be discontinuous and responds to the importance of ‘critical junctures’ (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012), such as economic and political shocks, that are likely to create particularly fertile conditions for both empowerment and disempowerment Such an approach is less a stand-alone strategy and more a new way of thinking and working. It is easier to build in some contexts than others. Effective experiences of empowerment tend to involve a ‘magic triangle’: active civil society organisations, committed public officials or political leaders, and enforcement mechanisms that guarantee that initiatives ‘have teeth’. That means that civil society organisations are an asset and their weakness or absence a problem. Governments need to nurture independent, active civil society organisations and protect the space in which they can operate. Findings from a World Bank evaluation of community empowerment projects discovered that the strongest performance was in cases where low income communities had built up strong representative organisations over a considerable period of time such as SEWA in India1 and AKRSP in Pakistan2. This suggests that governments need to recognise and work with existing institutions rather than try to create new ones. Even in contexts where civil society organisations are weak or absent, reserves of ‘social capital’ may exist in the shape of faith organisations or traditional authorities. The absence of blueprints and best practice guidelines for empowering people may be inconvenient, but it is no obstacle to success. Quite the opposite. History appears to be firmly on the side of empowerment, as the global broadening and deepening of human rights since the creation of the UN system unambiguously demonstrates. Endnotes 1 http://www.sewa.org/ 2 http://www.akrsp.org.pk/ Box 3: A long-term process Responding to civil society initiatives – co-production of sanitation in Karachi Orangi is a large informal settlement in Karachi, Pakistan. In 1982, residents suffered from high child mortality rates linked to appalling local living conditions. A local NGO called the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) developed an alternative model for sanitation: the residents of a lane or street paid for the lane investment in sanitation while the municipality took on responsibility for the sewer network into which this fed, and also the waste treatment plants. After initial reluctance, the municipality eventually agreed to this co-management arrangement and the idea of community-installed and managed sanitation spread rapidly through the settlement. Results: • The process has strengthened local organisations and made them more likely to engage with formal political structures, rather than operating through clientelist networks • In Orangi, 96,994 houses built their neighbourhood sanitation systems, by investing Rs. 94.29 million (US$1.57 million) • Twenty years after the work began in Orangi, the city of Karachi decided that the strategy should be supported throughout the city. Source: MITLIN, D. 2008. With and beyond the state: co-production as a route to political influence, power and transformation for grass roots organisations. Environment and Urbanization. Duncan Green is senior strategic adviser for Oxfam GB, where he was previously head of research (from 2004–12). He is author of the ‘From Poverty to Power’ blog (www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/) and book (2nd edition, 2012) which build on over 25 years’ work in the fields of poverty reduction and global justice. Sophie King is a doctoral candidate within the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester. 126 D e v e l o pme n t : E q u a l i t i e s a n d s u s t a i n a b i l i t y Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2013/14
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