Recording from SweDev and SEI’s dialogue series on development research on 26 September 2024.
Image: TheBlowup / Unsplash
SweDev and SEI’s Development Policy and Finance Team proudly present Dr. Dan Honig as the keynote speaker for the Dialogue on Development Research held on 26 September.
Topic
Join Dr. Dan Honig for a discussion on how development cooperation can support “management for empowerment” to achieve better development assistance. Dr. Honig will present his new book, ‘Mission Driven Bureaucrats: Empowering People to Help Governments Do Better’, and explore the benefits of allowing public sector workers to perform their work driven by a desire to deliver on the goals of their agency. Aid agencies manage projects in (differentially) narrow ways, often requiring varieties of reporting that can crowd out judgment and undermine performance, particularly when tasks are hard to measure and monitor. This induces local government partners to use accountability systems that constrain mission-driven bureaucrats in recipient countries, inducing through “management for compliance” rather than “management for empowerment”. Dr. Honig explores the role of autonomy, cultivating competence, purpose, and creating connection to peers in accountability systems that might best help partners attract, retain, and support high performing ‘Mission Driven Bureaucrats’.
Speakers
Dr. Dan Honig has a long and traveled career within global development and public policy advocacy. Currently, Dr. Honig is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at University College London and at Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy. He is a member of Georgetown’s Better Government Lab; a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development; an associate of Harvard’s Building State Capability Program; an SNF Agora Faculty Affiliate; a member of the Scholars Strategy Network; a senior fellow at Artha Global, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Public Policy, amongst other appointments. His work extends beyond academia, ranging from running a local non-profit focused on helping post-conflict youth in East Timor to being an advisor to successive Ministers of Finance in Liberia.
Rebecka Kitzing-Ivarsson, currently Senior Advisor on Results Based Management & Adaptive Management at Sida was the discussant for this dialogue. She has long experience from various organisations in the development sector, such as e.g. the UNDP, the Council of Europe and Swedish local and state authorities.
The moderator for this Dialogue on Development Research was Janet Vähämäki, Senior Research Fellow and Team Lead at SEI.