MODULE 3
Regional and district institutional profiles

Why do institutional analysis?

• Failure to adequately understand the institutional context is the main reason why development projects fail

• Institutions can be enabling or disabling for rural poverty reduction

• Projects implemented in a disabling institutional context tend to fail, despite good intentions

• Success of rural development projects in reaching the poor and ensuring their participation depends on choosing the "right" institutional entry point and implementing partners

• Projects that select the wrong partners and delivery channels can unwittingly bypass the poor

• Poverty reduction efforts can be undermined by elite capture of benefits

• Local ownership of the project on all levels can be important for implementation success

  Local implementing agencies' understanding of a project concept may differ from that of project planners

• Sustainability of benefits beyond the project depends on local capacity for operation and maintenance at district and community level

• Mobilization of local resources in support of project implementation depends on local leadership

• Replicability depends on whether or not local government and communities have learned to repeat the process of community-based planning and implementation with minimal external support. Local institutions and organisations cannot be taken at "face value". We must try to understand what goes on beneath their "surface".

Institutional entry point issues at national level

Most missions spend a few days in the capital city at the beginning and end of the country visit to enable them to confer with officials in their host ministry, as well as other relevant ministries, international agencies and donors. Unless mission members have already visited the project area on other occasions, these preliminary meetings often take place before mission members have the opportunity to visit the project area and to confer with local stakeholders. During these meetings, Governments may take important decisions about project scope, contents and implementing agencies.

The choice of the "right" national ministry to host the mission is particularly important for agriculture and rural development projects. Usually government assumes that any future project will be implemented by the same ministry that hosted the mission. FAO's entry point for development projects is usually a sectoral ministry^[5] such as the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) for issues relating to crops, livestock, land use planning and fisheries, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment for forestry, land and environment, Ministry of Water Resources for irrigation, Ministry of Rural Development for small rural infrastructure, etc. Because each ministry has a specific sectoral domain, the choice of entry point has important implications for project contents. The question is not only "what sector?" but also "what administrative level?"

The dilemma often faced by project design missions that adopt a livelihood-based approach is that the livelihood systems of the poor can involve a combination of crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries, hunting and gathering, non-farm enterprises and migration. Likewise, community-identified problems and priorities tend to cut across narrow sectoral boundaries. In such cases, the mission runs the risk of affiliating itself prematurely with a ministry whose mandate only covers crops and livestock or only forests while the target group is asking for schools, drinking water and a comprehensive package of assistance.

Whenever a rural development project is intended to be community-driven, the design team should consider the option of placing the project management unit in a multi-sectoral ministry such as Local Government and Rural Development or Ministry of Finance and Planning.

Key questions to guide the mission in selecting an institutional entry point include:

• Does the mission or project already have a pre-determined sectoral focus?

• If so, what sector(s) does it cover?

• If the focus is still to be determined, which sector(s) are within the sphere of influence of the organization sponsoring the mission?

• What livelihood assets and activities are relevant for these sectors?

• What institutions affect access and control over resources in the chosen or probable sectors?

• What national ministries have the mandate for these sector(s)?

• How does each possible implementing ministry rate in terms of its capacity, outreach, poverty focus, client-centeredness and bottom-up orientation?

• Which service providers or delivery channels does the government expect to use to reach villagers?

• What is local community members' opinion of these possible service providers?

• Are there alternative service providers whom community members might prefer?

District or municipal institutional profiles

Interviews with key informants in the project area at various administrative levels usually form the core of most conventional project design, supervision or evaluation missions. There has been a tendency for missions to rely far too heavily on the opinions or priorities of project staff or public officials which often differ from those of villagers. It is essential for visiting missions not to limit their interviews to public officials. They also need to interact directly with a wide range of community stakeholders to make the mission aware of such differences.

The purpose of preparing a district institutional profile is to assess to what extent the local institutional set-up is conducive to reaching the poor and to responding to the demands of local citizens and what could realistically be done to improve the situation. It is therefore important for the mission to know the point of view of all players on this issue, including local officials, politicians, elected assembly persons, traditional leaders, private sector, NGOs and civil society organizations.

Who should be interviewed?

• Local public administration - including relevant department heads of line agencies
• Project management unit and staff (if there is already a project)
• Elected local government councils
• Front-line service providers (community development, agriculture, health, etc.)
• NGOs and civil society organizations

• Private sector: shopkeepers, produce traders, input suppliers, transporters, as relevant

Topics:

• Local livelihood systems as seen by key informants
• Vulnerability context
• Impact of shocks on different socio-economic categories of people
• Trends in living standards (reasons for improvement/decline)
• Local institutional context - SWOT analysis (strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats)
• Livelihood-related problems of villagers as seen by each key informant
• Opportunities/priorities for project intervention as seen by each key informant
• Agency policies on community-driven development
• Agency view of its own clients (to assess the extent of poverty focus)
• Agency views on the rural poor and how best to serve them
• Perceived constraints for bottom-up development and for reaching the poor
• Key informant views on who (government, NGOs, private sector) should deliver what assistance to whom and how
• Local power structures and their implications for reaching the poor