Governance Reform Under Real World Conditions: Citizens, Stakeholders, and Voice

"In the real world, reforms will not succeed, and they will certainly not be sustained, without the correct alignment of citizens, stakeholders, and voice."
This World Bank publication is intended to demonstrate to a broad audience - including governments, think tanks, civil society organisations, and development agencies - the ways in which communication research can help address development challenges, particularly in the area of governance reform in developing countries.
In addition to including specially commissioned articles and case studies, the book is a compilation of papers submitted for discussion at the May 2007 dialogue of the same title (see Related Summaries, below). Held at the World Bank headquarters at the behest of the Communication for Governance and Accountability Program (CommGAP), the dialogue and this book that emerged from it support CommGAP's commitment to bringing together theory and research from the academic world to provide systematic and evidence-based backing for best practices in the field.
The contributors explore a range of communication approaches and techniques for effectively dealing with 6 of the central challenges that impede the success and sustainability of reform efforts. These questions, which correspond to 6 of the major sections of the book, are:

1. How do we use political analysis to guide communication strategy in governance reform?
   • Sina Odugbemi develops two main arguments: first, that public opinion is a critical factor in governance and second, that a democratic public sphere is a critical part of the architecture of good governance.
   • Thomas Jacobson and Antonio G. Lambino II use Jürgen Habermas's work as a background against which to present a framework for scoping communication challenges facing government reformers.
   • J. P. Singh analyses the terms dialogical communication and monological communication.
   • Sumir Lal shows how relevant the analytic skills of a reporter can be when lent to the task of assessing political dynamics in development planning and implementation.
2. How do we secure broad leadership support for change by reaching out to political leaders, policymakers, and legislators?
   • Matthew Andrews makes the case for using the idea of space to focus on the need for 3 key factors to be present in change efforts: acceptance of the need for change among stakeholders, the political authority to make change possible, and the individuals along with organisations possessing the skills to effect change.
   • Lori Ann Post, Charles Salmon, and Amber Raile dissect the ways that the political will to change in many ways depends on public will to change.
   • Thomas Webler and Seth Tuler review the literature on deliberative processes used to reach out to stakeholders and engage them in change.
3. How do we gain the support of public sector middle managers and foster among them a stronger culture of public service?
   • Stanley Deetz and Lisa Irvin argue that private sector organisations can advance both long- and short-term goals by harnessing the energies and interests of public, as well as civil society stakeholders.
   • Peter Malinga, working from the perspective of an information, education, and communication (IEC) specialist in Kigali, Rwanda, provides an account of a multi-sector capacity-building programme that demonstrates why it is important to gain the support of middle management for any change in strategy, policy, or reform.
   • J. Kevin Barge details an "appreciative inquiry" approach to cultivating collaborative norms of professionalism within middle management.
4. How do we build broad coalitions of pro-change influentials?
   • John Forester analyses differences between dialogue, debate, and negotiation; he offers lessons that to consider when stakeholder talks are difficult.
   • George Khroda demonstrates the success of a consensus-based, stakeholder-driven, decentralised approach to building coalitions around water reform efforts in Kenya.
   • Robert de Quelen proposes coalition building with a stakeholder relations approach, which requires engaging people with credible messages, backed up by research and proof points and delivered by credible messengers with the aim of building trust.
5. How do we help reformers transform public opinion into support for reform objectives?
   • Karen Johnson-Cartee reviews the uses of framing in communication, which can improve the odds that messages are presented in ways audiences can properly understand.
   • Rey Anthony G. David Jr. shares lessons from a Philippine reform project summarised in the form of an equation, 6R = 1R (a combination of Research, Reason, Reach, Resources, Record, and Review will produce Results).
   • Phil Noble looks at of the democratising potential of the internet and new communications technology, with a plea for "six big ideas".
6. How do we instigate citizen demand for good governance and accountability in order to sustain governance reform?
   • James Fishkin shares his work to improve the often poor-quality information obtained from standard polling techniques, replacing it with well-considered opinions gathered from citizens after they have deliberated collectively on public issues.
   • David Cohen reviews ways to help citizens fight institutional corruption and suggests policies designed to foster a citizenry that is engaged with public and civil society institutions.
   • John Gastil details skills and resources required to facilitate face-to-face citizen discussions and meetings of anywhere from 5 to 500 participants.
   • David Apter offers a view of what has been learned over decades of development work, an approach organised around a collection of "questions and caveats".

An additional section presents 9 case studies of large-scale governance reform projects in 8 countries from which can be drawn best practices covering these challenges; some also illustrate what can happen when best practices are not observed. To cite only a few examples: With her account of a Delhi, India, water sector reform, Avjeet Singh shows how lessons can be learned from projects that surely would have been more successful if communication contingency planning had been undertaken early in the process. And David Prosser describes the BBC World Service Trust project Bangladesh Sanglap, in which radio and television programmes present politicians to their audiences, who interact with positive results.
The first appendix condenses lessons from the aforementioned dialogue and groups them into approaches and techniques designed to address each of the 6 challenges. The second appendix presents a Grounding Path Toolkit, which is a graphic representation of social and political processes relevant to each of the key challenges that is intended to remind reformers of the need to conduct political analysis in every situation as well as to use evaluation as an essential tool of programme design.
Throughout the book, recurrent themes emerge related to: the importance of leadership, even in consensus-building efforts; the importance of networks; the concepts of dialogue, deliberation, decision making, and negotiation; the ideas of participation and the public sphere; and the idea of strategic communication, which refers to systematic efforts to engage communication thoughtfully and proactively, rather than in a post-hoc manner, and to use all available communication tools - ranging from media campaigns, to participatory stakeholder dialogue, to collective decision making.