A critical issue in international development is how donor-funded programs can support sustainable and long-lasting changes in assisted countries. Among the factors associated with sustainability is improved governance. However, many donor-funded initiatives are focused on achieving results in specific sectors, such as health, education, and agriculture. How can how governance interventions contribute to achieving sector-specific results? This brief explores this question and discusses how international development practice has incorporated recognition of the links between governance and sector outcomes. The brief develops a stylized continuum of how governance elements relate to sector interventions and contribute to expected outcomes. We discuss factors that either impede or impel governance integration and close with some observations regarding prospects for integrated programming. The audience for the brief is the international development policy and practitioner communities, and secondarily, academics with an interest in the topic. Key take-aways include: (1) there is ample evidence of positive contributions from improved governance to sector-specific outcomes, but few guideposts exist for practical and effective governance integration; (2) barriers to integration include urgent sector priorities that overshadow governance concerns, requirements to demonstrate progress towards ambitious sector targets, and complex choices related to measurement; and (3) sustainability and self-reliance are major drivers for integration and are facilitated by the flexibility and adaptation that governance integration enables.

A critical issue in international development is how donor-funded programs can support sustainable and long-lasting changes in assisted countries. Among the factors associated with sustainability is improved governance. However, many donor-funded initiatives are focused on achieving results in specific sectors, such as health, education, and agriculture. How can how governance interventions contribute to achieving sector-specific results? This brief explores this question and discusses how international development practice has incorporated recognition of the links between governance and sector outcomes. The brief develops a stylized continuum of how governance elements relate to sector interventions and contribute to expected outcomes. We discuss factors that either impede or impel governance integration and close with some observations regarding prospects for integrated programming. The audience for the brief is the international development policy and practitioner communities, and secondarily, academics with an interest in the topic. Key take-aways include: (1) there is ample evidence of positive contributions from improved governance to sector-specific outcomes, but few guideposts exist for practical and effective governance integration; (2) barriers to integration include urgent sector priorities that overshadow governance concerns, requirements to demonstrate progress towards ambitious sector targets, and complex choices related to measurement; and (3) sustainability and self-reliance are major drivers for integration and are facilitated by the flexibility and adaptation that governance integration enables.

Understanding the governance of complex social-ecological systems is vital in a world faced with rapid environmental change, conflicts over dwindling natural resources, stark disparities between rich and poor and the crises of sustainability. Improved understanding is also essential to promote governance approaches that are underpinned by justice and equity principles and that aim to reduce inequality and benefit the most marginalised sectors of society. This book is concerned with enhancing the understanding of governance in relation to social justice and environmental sustainability across a range of natural resource sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa. By examining governance across various sectors, it reveals the main drivers that influence the nature of governance, the principles and norms that shape it, as well as the factors that constrain or enable achievement of justice and sustainability outcomes. The book also illuminates the complex relationships that exist between various governance actors at different scales, and the reality and challenge of plural legal systems in much of Sub-Saharan Africa. The book comprises 16 chapters, 12 of them case studies recounting experiences in the forest, wildlife, fisheries, conservation, mining and water sectors of diverse countries: Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Cameroon.Through insights from these studies, the book seeks to draw lessons from the praxis of natural resource governance in Sub-Saharan Africa and to contribute to debates on how governance can be strengthened and best configured to meet the needs of the poor, in a way that is both socially just and ecologically sustainable.

Achieving broad-based socio-economic development requires interventions that bridge disciplines, strategies, and stakeholders. Effective sustained progress requires more than simply an accumulation of sector projects, and poverty reduction, individual wellbeing, community development, and societal advancement do not fall neatly into sectoral categories. However, researchers and practitioners recognize key operational challenges to achieving effective integration that stem from the structures and processes associated with the current practice of international development. Integration calls for the intentional linking of intervention designs, implementation, and evaluation across sectors and disciplines to achieve mutually reinforcing outcomes. In this report, we summarize the results of a study we conducted to explore the challenges facing governance programs that integrate with sector interventions to achieve governance outcomes and contribute to sector outcomes. Through a review of policy documents and project reports from recent integrated governance programs and interviews with donor and practitioner staff, we found three integrated governance programming variants, an emphasis on citizen and government collaboration to improve service delivery, interventions that serve as the glue between sectors, and a balancing act for indicators to measure contribution to sectoral outcomes. Our analysis identified four key success factors: contextual readiness, the application of learning and adapting approaches, donor support, and recognition of the limitations of integrated governance. We then discuss recommendations and implications and for answering the challenge of integrating governance and sector programming to achieve development outcomes.

As the global community works toward the Sustainable Development Goals, closer integration between governance and sectoral interventions offers a promising, yet unproven avenue for improving health service delivery. We interrogate what value an integrated governance approach, intentionally combining governance and sectoral investments in strategic collaboration, adds to health service readiness and delivery using data from a study in Senegal. Our quasi-experimental research design compared treatment and control communes to determine the value added of an integrated governance approach in Senegal compared to health interventions alone. Our analysis shows that integrated governance is associated with improvements in some health service delivery dimensions, specifically, in aspects of health facility access and quality. These findings—that health facilities are more open, with higher quality infrastructure and staff more frequently following correct procedures after integrated governance treatment—suggests a higher level of service readiness. We suggest that capacity building of governance structures and an emphasis on social accountability could explain the added value of integrating governance and health programming. These elements may help overcome a critical bottleneck between citizens and local government often seen with narrower sector or governance-only approaches. We discuss implications for health services in Senegal, international development program design, and further research.

This book highlights the use of an outcome-oriented view of performance to frame and assess the desirability of the effects produced by adopted policies, so to allow governments not only to consider effects in the short, but also the long run. Furthermore, it does not only focus on policy from the perspective of a single unit or institution, but also under an inter-institutional viewpoint. This book features theoretical and empirical research on how public organizations have evolved their performance management systems toward outcome measures that may allow one to better deal with wicked problems. Today, ‘wicked problems’ characterize most of governmental planning involving social issues. These are complex policy problems, underlying high risk and uncertainty, and a high interdependency among variables affecting them. Such problems cannot be clustered within the boundaries of a single organization, or referred to specific administrative levels or ministries. They are characterized by dynamic complexity, involving multi-level, multi-actor and multi-sectoral challenges. In the last decade, a number of countries have started to develop new approaches that may enable to improve cohesion, to effectively deal with wicked problems. The chapters in this book showcase these approaches, which encourage the adoption of more flexible and pervasive governmental systems to overcome such complex problems. Outcome-Based Performance Management in the Public Sector is divided into five parts. Part 1 aims at shedding light on problems and issues implied in the design and implementation of “outcome-based” performance management systems in the public sector. Then Part 2 illustrates the experiences, problems, and evolving trends in three different countries (Scotland, USA, and Italy) towards the adoption of outcome-based performance management systems in the public sector. Such analyses are conducted at both the national and local government levels. The third part of the book frames how outcome-based performance management can enhance public governance and inter-institutional coordination. Part 4 deals with the illustration of challenges and results from different public sector domains. Finally the book concludes in Part 5 as it examines innovative methods and tools that may support decision makers in dealing with the challenges of outcome-based performance management in the public sector. Though the book is specifically focused on a research target, it will also be useful to practitioners and master students in public administration .

As the global community works toward the Sustainable Development Goals, closer integration between governance and sectoral interventions offers a promising, yet unproven avenue for improving health service delivery. We interrogate what value an integrated governance approach, intentionally combining governance and sectoral investments in strategic collaboration, adds to health service readiness and delivery using data from a study in Senegal. Our quasi-experimental research design compared treatment and control communes to determine the value added of an integrated governance approach in Senegal compared to health interventions alone. Our analysis shows that integrated governance is associated with improvements in some health service delivery dimensions, specifically, in aspects of health facility access and quality. These findings—that health facilities are more open, with higher quality infrastructure and staff more frequently following correct procedures after integrated governance treatment—suggests a higher level of service readiness. We suggest that capacity building of governance structures and an emphasis on social accountability could explain the added value of integrating governance and health programming. These elements may help overcome a critical bottleneck between citizens and local government often seen with narrower sector or governance-only approaches. We discuss implications for health services in Senegal, international development program design, and further research.