Disclaimer:
Please be aware that the content herein has not been peer reviewed. It consists of personal reflections, insights, and learnings of the contributor(s). It may not be exhaustive, nor does it aim to be authoritative knowledge.
Title
Please provide a name for your action learning plan.
Toward more and better citizen participation, trust, and social capital in Paraguay
Challenge statement
Challenge type: If you are working on multiple challenges, please indicate if this is your "big bet" or "exploratory" challenge.
Please note: we ask you to only submit a maximum of 3 challenges - 1x Big Bet, 2x Exploratory. Each challenge must be submitted individually.
EXPLORATORY
Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)
Our challenge has two different levels. On a more general level, participatory governance opportunities and capacities are limited in Paraguay, while at the same time, where they exist, they are linked to lower levels of economic vulnerability, stronger social capital, and increased levels of trust. Therefore, speaking broadly, we face the challenge of understanding how to design, promote, facilitate, test, and, generally, improve participatory institutions, processes, and practices as a way to achieve sustainable development.
On a more specific level, our challenge is to identify key opportunities for empowering and significant citizen engagement and to find ways to increase the quality and quantity of this engagement in Paraguay.
Background: What is the history of your challenge? What is causing or driving it? Who is involved? How does the current situation look like? What undesired effects does it produce?
Participatory institutions are incipient and underdeveloped in Paraguay. The country maintains high levels of administrative and fiscal centralization. Most participatory processes are symbolic or consultative in nature, institutional, and political contexts are riddled with barriers to meaningful and binding citizen participation. Political and partisan polarization prevent effective planning in most public policy areas, and so does the limited data there is about citizen's needs and policy preferences. Despite these barriers, collective action and community participation take place in both rural and urban areas. Our own sensing and exploration of this challenge has produced evidence on the role of participatory governance (particularly, around community commons) in reducing economic vulnerabilities, aided by social capital (particularly, its linking forms). Additionally, community collective action is a staple of vulnerability mitigation across all local communities in Paraguay and has played a significant positive role during the pandemic. Another main finding of our national survey on Social Capital is that higher institutional trust can increase participation in the management of community commons, which in turn, decreases economic vulnerability. However, the increment of institutional trust reduces the amount of mutual-aid collective action organized by individuals within the territories. This tension between participation and institutional trust in Paraguay, and the way they are linked to social capital, particularly, linking social capital, is part of the phenomenon around which we are building a portfolio of both exploration and experimentation, where citizen participation sometimes acts as an enabling factor for other interventions, and is sometimes the focus of the intervention itself. Finally, there is a lot of empirical evidence about the benefits of investing in citizen participation: from improving civic skills and knowledge, to strengthening organized civil society and improving government decision-making practices.
Quantitative evidence: What (official) data sources do you have on this challenge that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge? You can add text, a link, or a picture.
Several of our learning loops during the first two years of the lab have created a portfolio of learning about participation, social capital and trust. Throughout our cycles, we have used official data from the National Statistics Institute, unofficial data collected by citizens (e.g., AyudaPY), and new original and systematic data generated or facilitated by our lab (e.g., a national survey on social capital, the impact evaluation of a recycling pilot that has community trust as one of its pillars, the participatory mapping initiatives such as Wendá). All these initiatives have generated useful quantitative data that links to this challenge. Below, some links where we refer to this data.
Qualitative evidence: What weak signals have you recently spotted that characterizes its urgency? Please provide qualitative information that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge. You can add text, a link, or a picture.
Many of our activities within this topic have generated qualitative observations and insights about why more and better participatory governance can unlock sustainable development. On one hand, (1) we designed and facilitated multiple social dialogues and co-design activities, many times to respond to requests from our institutional and strategic allies, and on the other hand, (2) we conducted learning activities that indicated the importance of citizen participation in achieving objectives and results. The main lesson from (1) is that one of the key challenges for participatory governance in Paraguay is related to its design and facilitation aspects: citizen or community participation depends largely on the quality of its facilitation and process design to creatively circumvent social, institutional, political, and cultural barriers and enable significant, authentic and empowering participation. The key insight from (2) points to the importance of community participation to enable good governance performance while strengthening local community organizations.
In addition, some of the participatory processes and dialogues we have designed and facilitated include: (a) a series of “scientific dialogues” with academics and science-related civil society organizations to discuss and identify consensus and dissensus regarding national R&D programs, (c) participatory workshops with the National Strategy of Innovation to identify the frontiers challenges for innovation policy at the national level, (d) participatory dialogue with members of the Paraguayan Network of Evaluation (https://repae.org.py/) regarding the future of public policy monitoring, as well as evaluation tools and methods, (e) an upcoming participatory forum to co-create a future innovation center for family agriculture, organized with the National University of Asunción and a local community of producers who donated part of their land to the University for the construction and operation of a local campus where this future innovation center will be located.
Some of the learning activities that generated insights about the role of participation include: (a) a case study about Family Health Units (USF) focused on positive deviance examples of good performance of their staff members, (b) a follow-up experiment to evaluate the impact of a training for USF´s staff members on participatory methods and principles to improve the quality of their planning, (c) the experimental use of participatory co-creation and decision-making methods in the context of innovation challenges such as Moiru and the Social Innovation Challenge of the National Council for Science and Technology, (d) participatory mapping and evaluation of activities in the context of UNDP´s inclusive recycling interventions in a community of informal waste pickers.
Value proposition: What added value or unique value proposition is your Accelerator Lab bringing to solving this challenge? Why is it your Lab that needs to work on this challenge and not other actors within UNDP, other stakeholders in the country respectively? Why is it worth investing resources to this challenge?
Our team can add value with (1) expertise and knowledge about methods and tools for designing and facilitating participatory processes, (2) integrating civic technologies and participatory evaluation methods into development action, and (3) providing good conceptual frameworks and practical tools to make impact evaluations of participatory processes something feasible for UNDP allies and organizations that are working in the same area of this challenge.
UNDP is uniquely positioned as a trusted ally to engage communities, organizations, and public institutions in a wide range of participatory processes. Not many institutions in government offer opportunities for participatory processes with the aim of generating binding decisions for public officials, which makes the challenge more difficult, but also positions participatory governance in a space where any potential learning will be highly strategic.
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
👉🏼 From generating new data about social capital, economic vulnerability and collective action, to designing and facilitating participatory governance experiences, UNDP's #AccLab🇵🇾 is tackling civic engagement and trust to build a brighter and more democratic future.
Partners
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the Parter:
We are in the process of establishing our key partnerships for this challenge. At the moment, we are exploring alliances in four areas, naming within each, organizations and groups in order of importance. Here the first group: (1) public institutions that offer opportunities to test participatory governance process in real life (National Planning Secretariat (STP for the Spanish acronym), Local Governments, and the Social Cabinet Ministries),
What sector does our partner belong to?
Government (&related)
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
The STP regulates the creation and delivery of local development plans, and requires citizen participation, even though this mandate is not specified in its forms and processes. We are exploring the opportunity of working with Local Development Councils to engage them in participatory processes that commit more community members in planning process. With the Social Cabinet Ministries, we are exploring possibilities to experiment with participatory processes that address how social programs can be better applied in the territories.
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
No
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the Parter:
Here the second group: (2) national and international civil society organizations that are working in participatory governance initiatives (People Powered, Asunción+B, reAcc!on, CIRD, CEAMSO)
What sector does our partner belong to?
Civil Society
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
Many participatory processes in Paraguay are locally organized and managed by local communities or civil society organizations that promote citizen participation initiatives. We are (1) exploring collaborations with these organizations to better understand the challenge thorough their experiences, both here in Paraguay and worldwide, and (2) we are advising some organizations about how to incorporate impact evaluation and participatory methods in their citizen participation initiatives, particularly, one of these collaborations is focused on facilitating parents participation in monitoring the delivery of national school meals program.
Learning questions
Learning question: What is your learning question for this challenge? What do you need to know or understand to work on your challenge statement?
¿What are the institutional, cultural, political, and social barriers to enabling participatory forms of governance? ¿What is the space of opportunity to design, develop and implement binding participatory processes in decision-making processes of interest for citizens at different levels (community, city, region, country)
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Explore
Usage of methods: Relating to your choice above, how will you use your methods & tools for this learning question? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
Our sensing phase taught us to what extent participatory governance plays a key role in reducing economic vulnerabilities, how important trust can be for enabling collective action, and how limited the capacities of our institutions are to design and facilitate participation in decision-making processes. Although we already observed the importance of participatory governance, and its potential impacts, we do not know the specific mechanisms or conditions under which this participation is or could be taking place. Our exploration questions call us to deepen our understanding of the different types of contexts in which participatory governance initiatives are taking place or could take place in Paraguay. We are going to use these participatory action research methods in the exploration and documentation of interesting case studies of citizen engagement across the country, to uncover the factors that explain both success and failure, look for solutions to the underlying problems that limit citizen participation, and identify opportunities for experimentation a feasible and highly beneficial way.
Existing data gaps: Relating to your choice above, what existing gaps in data or information do these new sources of data addressing? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
(1) Information on existing participatory institutions and their official mandates and design, (2) There is very little organized and systematic documentation on the history of participation at different levels of Paraguayan society, and (3) there is a gap between available open-data, open-government initiatives and the use of this data for decision-making processes.
Learning questions
Learning question: What is your learning question for this challenge? What do you need to know or understand to work on your challenge statement?
What is the impact of participatory governance processes and practices on interpersonal and institutional trust, social capital, and cohesion? What is the impact of participatory processes on the quality of the design and delivery of public goods, services, infrastructure, and policy?
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Test
Usage of methods: Relating to your choice above, how will you use your methods & tools for this learning question? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
Pilots projects and -if we find the opportunity- randomized controlled trials that test participatory governance initiatives will be the focus of our learning activities to answer these questions. Our lab and its institutional partners will organize and facilitate these initiatives, propose methodologies for participatory design, and, more broadly, any method that enables the emergence of collective intelligence. In this case, it is expected that our allies allocate a part of their budgets or resources to carry out these initiatives If we cannot find the right opportunity to test participatory processes in a real scenario, we will simulate small-scale binding participatory processes, with funding provided by the lab, and with a focus on designing and implementing public common goods in specific communities and territories. The goal of our portfolio of experiments is to build a proof-of-concept of what a binding citizen engagement process looks like in the Paraguayan context.
Existing data gaps: Relating to your choice above, what existing gaps in data or information do these new sources of data addressing? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
(1) Information on existing participatory institutions and their official mandates and design, (2) There is very little organized and systematic documentation on the history of participation at different levels of Paraguayan Society, and (3) there is a gap between available open-data and open-government initiatives and the use of this data for decision-making processes.
Closing
Early leads to grow: Think about the possible grow phase for this challenge - who might benefit from your work on this challenge or who might be the champions in your country that you should inform or collaborate with early on to help you grow this challenge?
National regulatory reforms led by STP have opened a path to require participation in local government. This represents an opening for a phase of potential growth focused on a partnership with this ministry. Our local CO’s Governance program has also started investing in participatory accountability pilots projects, where our contributions are taken into account to shape how these pilot programs enable participation. At the local government level, new leadership in some places is starting to push for a more participatory agenda. And finally, with a series of learning cycles and experiments completed during 2021, our portfolio has now produced an interesting amount of evidence and learnings that we are socializing with different government agencies, at all levels, as well as with civil society, opening new doors for collaboration and for potentially integrating some of our participatory governance ideas into their practices.
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11Sustainable cities and communities
16Peace, justice and strong institutions
17Partnerships for the goals
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