Governance Support at Critical Juncture, Delegates Conclude

Worldwide, donors spend millions of euros on governance support but are often left assessing a mixed bag of results.  Delegates at a recent workshop in Brussels considered why it is so hard to achieve reliably good results and concluded that the time is ripe for a change in approaches to supporting governance.

“Governance is not a project, it’s a society transformation,” and trying to assist such a transformation from the outside is very difficult, said Mr Bossuyt.

Summarising the lessons drawn from the seminar participants, Mr Bossuyt said: “The message here was clear: If you want to have results, change the way in which you support governance.”

He offers four insights of directions that may help to provide a more effective governance support. To him, governments should assess the risks involved; engage more deeply with different political entities such as NGOs and civil society; they should do more networking in order to get as many people working in the same field involved, and finally making sure that they have the capacity to promote development.

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