 An impact evaluation team conducts a scoping visit with cocoa farmers participating in the USAID-funded Supporting Deforestation-Free Cocoa in Ghana activity. The evaluation aims to provide an evidence base for outcomes with respect to strengthening land rights and land governance.
Against the complex backdrop of democratic backsliding and rising challenges, the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG)’s 2024 DRG Annual Learning Forum emphasized the need for adaptive, evidence-based approaches to DRG programming. Across the nine virtual sessions, more than 800 participants worldwide joined from USAID, implementing partners, donors and other stakeholders to engage with academic researchers and practitioners to share evidence, approaches, and key programming implications. This year’s Forum highlighted the findings of the research completed under USAID’s 2021-2023 DRG Learning Agenda.
 USAID’s 2021-2023 DRG Learning Agenda Questions.
This edition of the DRG Learning Digest highlights the following key points from this year’s Forum that you can apply in your DRG programming:
- Customize your program’s response to democratic backsliding by understanding the type and drivers of backsliding.
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Promising practices for information integrity, including ways to make media literacy programs more effective.
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Addressing corruption by leveraging the right entry points, windows of opportunity, and effective programmatic interventions.
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Tips and tricks for understanding a program's impact.
Responding to Democratic Backsliding
As a third wave of autocratization may have crested, key questions remain on how to forestall and reverse democratic backsliding. Experts from Cornell University, Georgia State University, and The Central European University joined the “What do we know about how to support democratic openings?” session to share their findings. Check out the Literature Review, Executive Summary of Case Study Report, and the Full Case Study report. The research team detailed differences in the sequencing and nature of democratic breakdown, with recent erosions being driven more internally than externally and taking place incrementally over time. Recent declines are a result of democracy being threatened not by those who fear losing power but more often by those who win elections and then seek to consolidate further power.
 Resistance and Recovery Strategies to Democratic Backsliding
The researchers identified three major types of backsliding: executive aggrandizement (the most common), exclusionary nationalism, and elite collusion. Within executive aggrandizement there are three major categories: legislative capture, presidential coup, and plebiscitary overrides. DRG program designers need to better understand the specific type of democratic backsliding happening in their country in order to design appropriate resistance and recovery approaches and avoid unintended consequences. For instance, certain types of institutional resistance strategies are unlikely to be useful for executive aggrandizement but may be more appropriate in cases of exclusionary nationalism and elite collusion.
Promising Practices for Information Integrity
The “Interrogating Information Integrity: Insights on What Works” session focused on findings on information integrity - the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of information - which has become increasingly critical to the successful functioning of democratic institutions and processes. Researchers from the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, American University, Brown University, and Dartmouth College developed a list of key interventions, clustered into four categories: Informational, Socio-psychological, Educational, and Institutional, and identified high-quality research evidence to assess their efficacy. Check out the full Literature Review and the Research Database.
 USAID media literacy training in Bamako.
The literature review identified where there is strong evidence in the Global North and South for certain interventions such as prebunking and inoculation, mixed evidence for media literacy, and opportunities to integrate frictions/reflection prompts in programming. The review also identified promising practices on how to improve the effectiveness of media literacy interventions, noting that:
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Interventions are more effective for individuals with more education and digital literacy, when coupled with interventions that appeal to emotions, norms, group attachments.
- Intensive interventions are not more effective than light-touch interventions, and both types of interventions rarely produce longer-term or durable outcomes.
 Evidence-based recommendations on improving media literacy programming.
Addressing Corruption
It is common to hear that anti-corruption efforts are frustrated by “low political will,” but this term doesn’t shed much light on the process or systems that result in a failed or successful reform effort. In their study on what to do in low political will environments, researchers from Duke divide political will into five different logics to inform a diagnosis of low political will. The five logics include:
- The official benefits personally from the corruption and is unwilling to forgo the income or other pecuniary benefits that it provides.
- An official may owe their political power to their ability to distribute corrupt rents to other elite politicians.
- An official may be captured by economic actors, such as state-owned enterprises, connected companies, or powerful oligarchs, who are resistant to reforms and put pressure on the politician to thwart them.
- An official may be sincerely interested in anti-corruption but may face roadblocks from powerful subordinates who benefit from the status quo.
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Lack of capacity can be confused with will, such that an official may be incentivized to tackle corruption but may lack sufficient resources and expertise.
Using this model, a political economy analysis could explore if reform will be difficult because a high-level official benefits from corruption or because they face roadblocks from powerful subordinates, and provide valuable insight to practitioners to address the challenges accordingly.
The black box of political will: how do inputs produce outcomes?
The authors further recommend adopting a sectoral strategy. This means identifying and exploiting opportunities within a specific sector with the end goal of improving sector-level policy outcomes (e.g., improved education or health) while in the process also reducing corruption, rather than pursuing anti-corruption as an end in itself. A review of the literature finds that four programmatic approaches are particularly attractive for these challenging environments: transparency initiatives, social audits, e-governance reforms, and procurement reforms. In addition, a study of four cases finds that even when little political opportunity exists in the present, building a reform coalition with access to information and resources will allow reformers to exploit future windows of opportunity. Check out the infographic and full report.
The “What we’ve learned about countering corruption: political will, transnational corruption, and behavioral change” session also profiled new research on how USAID might better understand and address the transnational elements of corruption and kleptocracy, including strategic corruption in both Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa. For example, to address transnational corruption in elections, study authors identified several entry points, including a stronger focus on political finance, support to investigative journalists, regional research, and incorporation of transnational corruption into existing early warning systems. Finally the session concluded with research on how social and behavior change (SBC) approaches can address corruption. For example, a focus on norms and behavior change offers particular promise for reducing the risk of unintentionally fostering a sense of fatigue, resignation, and wariness around anti-corruption efforts.
Tips and Tricks for Understanding a Program's Impact
The Annual Learning Forum also shared how we learn and share evidence, best practices, skills, and resources. This year, USAID hosted two salon sessions focused on key considerations for selecting robust DRG indicators and designing Rigorous Outcome Performance Evaluations (ROPEs) to more easily measure program results when impact evaluations aren’t feasible.
Considerations to Design Robust DRG Indicators
In the Forum Salon session, “Did we succeed? All you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask about developing robust outcome indicators,'' the DRG Bureau’s Evidence and Learning Team, along with colleagues from USAID/Paraguay and USAID/Krgryz Republic, partnered with academics from Brandeis University and University of California, Los Angeles for two interactive sessions on developing robust outcome indicators that help us understand the impact of our programs. Several resources were shared over the two sessions, including:
- the need to ensure measurement validity, such as content validity and convergent/discriminant validity, which development practitioners can use to validate outcome indicators;
- mapping indicators to the theory of change to better evaluate causal pathways, which are the direct and indirect relationships between causal factors and changes (intended, unintended or unchanged) in a system; and
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approaches to develop local indicators like the Grounded Accountability Model, which outlines a research approach that engages community members to define everyday indicators of key concepts (such as peace, empowerment, justice) that guide the intervention. The community-designed indicators can then be integrated into monitoring and evaluation efforts, as well as project activities and the broader program design.
Leveraging Rigorous Outcome Performance Evaluations (ROPEs) to Measure Results
When it comes to evaluation, most people want to know: did it work, was it impactful, was it effective? To answer these kinds of questions, the best methodology is an impact evaluation with a comparison group, but impact evaluations only make up about nine percent of USAID DRG evaluations. Instead, USAID tends to commission basic performance evaluations, typically entailing three weeks of largely qualitative field work, that aren’t well suited to answering these kinds of questions. Clearly as a sector we need to be doing more impact evaluations, but what if it isn’t feasible to do so for a particular activity? For example, what if there are too few treatment units? To answer this question, this session introduced the concept of Rigorous Outcome Performance Evaluations (ROPEs), which entail measuring outcomes over time and using a method called process tracing to consider progress along an activity’s theory of change and explore alternative hypotheses. While not without limitations, process tracing is an attractive approach because it takes into account other factors in the context and focuses on the causes of an outcome, rather than just the effect of the intervention.
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Process tracing: Changes in outcomes and alternative explanations along the theory of change.
Stay tuned! We plan on finalizing the key priorities for the 2024-2026 DRG Learning Agenda this Spring. If you have ideas, please let us know by emailing us at drg.el@usaid.gov!
Further Assistance
With so much robust research to share, this edition of the DRG Learning Digest has only highlighted a portion of the sessions and salons from the 2024 Annual Learning Forum. Please check out all the recordings, reports, and other resources shared during the 2024 Annual Learning Forum on DRGLinks.org. You can also learn more about USAID’s DRG Learning Agenda and products by contacting the DRG Bureau’s Evidence and Learning Team (drg.el@usaid.gov).
DRG Learning Events
March DRG Cadre Conversation: Gender – On March 21, USAID’s DRG Cadre Conversation was led by the DRG Bureau’s Gender Team and provided an overview of their programming, and information on the resources they currently have available and those that are forthcoming this year, including videos on gender in DRG, updates in progress to the 2016 Gender Integration in DRG Programming toolkit, and mechanisms for technical assistance.
Social and Behavior Change Community of Practice – On March 21, members of the Social and Behavior Change (SBC) Community of Practice gathered for a presentation and guided discussion on types of SBC interventions and programming, with an eye toward identifying gaps in recommended programming and how to expand the ways in which we encourage SBC-informed programming in the DRG sector.
Tuesday Group: Debt Transparency and Oversight as a Global Democratic Norm – On March 19, the Tuesday Group featured Kristen Sample and Corina Rebegea from the National Democratic Institute (NDI) who shared programming approaches aimed at enhancing borrower and lender accountability through: civil society monitoring and advocacy, legislative policy-making and oversight, specialized research, monitoring and advocacy focused on women and marginalized communities, open government solutions, and international advocacy/dialogues aimed at establishing debt transparency as a global democratic norm.
Evidence and Learning Fireside Chat – On March 13, facilitators in the Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Stabilization/Center for Conflict and Violence Prevention (CPS/CVP) and USAID/Yemen led a thoughtful discussion from our colleagues working on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and Women's Political Participation across the world. A few highlights from the discussion and breakouts included:
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Representation ≠ Participation: Missions shared their experiences working to overcome institutional and cultural barriers to women’s meaningful participation in political, civic, and economic life.
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National Approach: Missions identified the need for USAID support for WPS National Action Plans, passage and enforcement of laws targeting gender-based violence (GBV) and gender inequity, and capacity building for host governments and organizations.
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Working with Men and Boys: Missions exchanged the strategies being used across the span of our work to engage men and boys as WPS allies.
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Analytical Insights and Tracking Progress: Missions shared challenges in assessing the space and opportunities for engagement, and tracking progress in women’s political participation and USAID’s long-term gender work, highlighting the need for measurable indicators, analyses, and assessments.
USAID colleagues, please join us for our next Fireside Chat on the DRG Learning Agenda, April 30, 2024!
Evidence and Learning Talk Series: Autocratization Deepens Worldwide but Democracy's Bright Spots are Gaining Ground – On March 12, Professor Staffan I Lindberg, Director of the V-Dem Institute, shared the latest global trends for democracy and autocracy based on V-Dem's 2024 Annual Democracy Report. The dataset for this report covers the world up until the end of 2023 and provides analyses of movement up and down on V-Dem's Liberal Democracy Index. Among other conclusions, the report finds that the level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen is at the same level as it was in 1985. V-Dem estimates that 42 countries are autocratizing while only 18 moved upward on the democracy index. Despite these concerning results, V-Dem finds an increase in “bright spots” - countries making a U-turn on a previous path of autocratization. You can access the recording here and the PowerPoint slides here.
Use Our Resources!
Welcome to the DRG Learning Digest, a newsletter to keep you informed of the latest learning, evaluation, and research in the Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) sector. Views expressed in the external (non-USAID) publications linked in this Digest do not necessarily represent the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government.
Check out past editions of the Learning Digest here. Want the latest DRG evidence, technical guidance, events, and more? Check out the new DRGLinks website: https://www.drglinks.org/.
Don't forget to check out our DRG Learning Menu of Services! (Link only accessible to USAID personnel.) The Menu provides information on the learning products and services the Evidence and Learning Team offers to help you fulfill your DRG learning needs. We want to help you adopt learning approaches that emphasize best fit and quality.
The Evidence and Learning Team is also excited to share our DRG Learning, Evidence, and Analysis Platform (LEAP) with you. This Platform contains an inventory of programmatic approaches, evidence gap maps, the DRG Learning Harvest, and inventories of indicators and country data portraits - all of which can be very useful in DRG activity design, implementation, evaluation, and adaptation. Some of these resources are still being built, so check back frequently to see what has been newly added.
The DRG Learning Harvest on LEAP is a searchable database of DRG learning products, including summaries of key findings and recommendations, drop-down menus to easily find documents related to a particular country or program area, and links to the full reports on the DEC.
Our friends at the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute are also seeking to expand their research partnership with USAID on the complex nature of democracy by inviting research questions from you for V-Dem to work on. If there's a DRG technical question you've been wondering about, please email the Evidence and Learning Team at drg.el@usaid.gov.
Each month the DRG Bureau will be sharing with Missions and practitioners a wealth of evidence and learning resources on the themes below. These themes are scheduled a month ahead of international days or months of commemoration in order to get evidence and learning to Missions and practitioners in time to apply it during the month/day being celebrated or honored. In the month following the monthly theme, there will be a Fireside Chat for Missions to engage with the resources shared throughout the month and provide an opportunity for Missions and OUs across the Agency to share and exchange learning and experiences. If you are interested in contributing to one of the monthly themes or would like to be invited to the Fireside Chats, please reach out to drg.el@usaid.gov.
We welcome your feedback on this newsletter and on our efforts to promote the accessibility, dissemination, and utilization of DRG evidence and research. Please visit the DRG Bureau's website for additional information or contact us at DRG.EL@usaid.gov.
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