Monitoring and Donor Alignment Phase

The final phase builds on the Roadmap in order to ensure its impact on the policy or policies at stake and to consolidate the level of trust and consensus achieved by the stakeholders during the previous phase. Here, the impact of the dialogue process will be assessed in terms of the influence exerted on the policy in question. To be fully effective, this capacity to influence must remain dynamic and go beyond the Roadmap, the implication being that the stakeholders will have to adapt its recommendations and commitments to the circumstances of an ever-changing context.

Instead of remaining a single document, the Roadmap must be operationalised and translated into a series of Recommendations for Institutional and Policy Reform to be shared with the government and the donors.

Implementation Monitoring

Throughout this third phase, the multi-stakeholder alliance guided by the hosting structure should capitalize on the impact of the dialogue initiative in order to consolidate the Roadmap as a key milestone for policy reform. This involves continuous monitoring of the implementation of the Roadmap and, if needed, the adoption of advocacy measures to increase the chances of implementation. More importantly, this regular work to be undertaken on the basis of the previous dialogue process is what should allow the different stakeholders involved to keep developing their bonds and animate the third key outcome of INSPIRED: its issue-centred Policy Network.

Indeed, it is usually at this stage that the interactions among the wide array of political actors, civil society organisations, think tanks or public institutions that the hosting structure has been brokering all along will materialise into the sort of policy network that can ensure the sustainability of the cooperation dynamics fostered through INSPIRED. Such multi-stakeholder networks have been proved a central feature of modern-day policy-making, as they bring together professionals that can switch positions over time (what due to some unethical cases has become infamously known as the phenomenon of “revolving doors”) but whose careers still remain linked to the same policy area, as well as their acquaintance, experience and know-how.

At the end of the day, the interplay among these circles of specialised professionals is the lifeblood of policy networks and one of the key factors for the quality of the outcomes in a given policy area. By identifying them throughout the dialogue and even depicting their interactions through social network analysis mapping tools, INSPIRED presents donors with a unique opportunity to understand the real dynamics in a given policy area behind the institutional façade and ministerial organigrammes.

The involvement of the international donor community is especially important at this stage, as it can allow for incentives to be built and for further joint initiatives to be developed. Needless to say, if national decision-makers are committed to translating truly inclusive and participatory roadmaps into policy measures, it can only be in the interest of donors to support them. For this purpose, the Hosting Structure, in close cooperation with both the government and donors interested in the targeted policy area, should identify those capacity gaps (in public institutions and among stakeholders be they CSOs, think-tanks, unions, political parties, etc.) that need to be addressed in conjunction with the issues identified through the dialogue process.

Donor Alignment

Interestingly enough, the multi-stakeholder approach adopted throughout the dialogue would allow both the donors and the stakeholders themselves to assess their actual capacities as a whole and according to the policy objectives contained in the Roadmap, instead of as isolated entities, which is, unfortunately, the way in which many institution-building programs are still being devised. In doing so, both governments and donors will be in a better position to avoid the capability traps resulting from “isomorphic mimicry: the tendency of governments to mimic other governments’ successes, replicating processes, systems, and even products of the “best practice” examples”.

As a result, the Roadmap can contribute directly to the alignment of international assistance with the broader reform agenda developed by the key domestic stakeholders.

This will, in turn, enhance local ownership over the definition of reform priorities while improving the coordination between democracy support activities and technical assistance. Which in the end should result in better-designed programs that take as their starting point the reality in the country and policy area to be supported instead of ideal models that seldom fit into the existing practices and tend to neglect the full potential and capacities of domestic actors.

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