So, many times we do reform or we do
policy interventions, we get carried away
with the solution. We get carried away
with our idea because it's such a good
idea. We've seen it work in other places,
and we're really itching to introduce it
into our context, into the place where we
are, where we know that there's gaps and
things don't work that well. Then we
introduce it and two or three years down
the line, we found that the project
didn't complete or the solution didn't
really work that well or the minister
who said that she supported it is no
longer there, and it kind of all just
fizzles away. One of the reasons we think
that this happens is because we don't
pay enough attention to the context. We
really, really get carried away with the
solution at the expense of paying
attention to where we are. Where you are,
there's always stuff; there's always past
solutions; there's always people with
interests. Some of them will support you,
some of them won't support you. Now, we
often don't see these things because we
don't look at them, and we don't pay
attention to the context. But another
reason why we don't see them is because
the things that you can see in the
context are often not the full story. We
like to think about an iceberg metaphor
to reflect on this. Think about an
iceberg. If you are watching the ocean,
you see the top of the sea, and you see
the top of the iceberg. You say, "well that's
not a big iceberg." Underneath, however,
it's really significant. Now the top of
the iceberg in many places is where we
see the rules, and the laws, and the
regulations.
It's where, perhaps, we would see the
revealed political identities and the
relationships that people have with each
other. Underneath it are the social norms
or the cultural understandings of things,
and those things are often deep, and they
often are very, very difficult to
describe. But typically they're the reasons
why people don't, kind of, follow through
on things. I'll give you a very, very
short example. In Malawi, the country had
a big corruption problem and introduced
an anti-corruption commission
that had a whole lot of stuff above
the iceberg. It had rules, it had
regulations, it had a budget, it had a
building, it had people who worked there.
Those people were meant to be
investigating corruption claims, etc., etc.,
etc. Ten years into its existence, the
country had a huge corruption crisis, and
people said, "well, what have you been doing?"
The answer was, "not that much." 15 years
afterwards, same thing happened again.
When we started to look at this we said,
"Well, you do have these things over here,
but actually there's nothing under that
iceberg because the whole values that
underpin that kind of model aren't there
in Malawi." What you really found in
Malawi was a completely different
iceberg
that overwhelmed it, where there were
norms, and there were cultural frameworks
and, there were political relationships
that emphasized relationships that
you don't want to call corrupt, but
certainly we're leaning in that
direction. And that gigantic iceberg that
went deep into the society just kept on
getting in the way of all the
interventions that were being attempted.
Now, what this requires: it requires that
if you serious about policy, and you're
serious about reform that you pay
attention to the icebergs in the context
where you're working. You pay attention
to the hidden parts of the icebergs that
are underneath the water, and you pay
attention also to kind of how big your
iceberg is and whether or not your
iceberg is actually competing with those.
It's a very important lesson about
context and one that we ignore at our
peril.
