Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy

NIMD Director Roel von Meijenfeldt started the session with a presentation on the NIMD multiannual plan 2007-2010. He explains that the second multi-annual programme is currently being implemented. While during the first years since its establishment, NIMD’s focus has mainly been on establishing partnerships and trust, NIMD is now transforming into a more mature and professional organization, shifting its focus to its institutional strengthening and to knowledge sharing with partners and the international community.

After Roel’s presentation on the NIMD approach and its underlying principles, the 2007-2008 programme objectives and institutional objectives, and the NIMD intervention instruments (please refer to the handout), Pepijn addresses the main gaps in NIMD’s performance, to be discussed during this session:

In order to provide an incentive for increased accountability NIMD aims to fund the bilateral programmes (mainly in Africa) on the basis of performance based finance. However, in practice, this seems difficult to realize. How to address this issue remains a question.

NIMD is working hard to get the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of its programmes up to standard. To this end an M&E officer has been contracted (who will start in February 2009). There is a strong need to develop suitable formats and good indicators at various levels, in order to improve the way in which we map, present and communicate results, both at NIMD HQ and in the field.

With regard to knowledge sharing: a mapping of tools, instruments and methodologies has been initiated, but there is a need to expand this and communicate more effectively with partners on this.

NIMD needs to invest in building more long-term strategic partnerships. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will remain our main funder, but there is a strong need to expand our finance base. However, donors appear to be hesitant to fund multi-annual programmes, or to fund institutional costs needed for programme implementation, which poses a threat to our country programmes. CMD’s are well-placed to play a harmonizing role at the country level.

Inclusivity: NIMD aims to focus also on underrepresented groups. To include inclusivity as cross-cutting issue in all country programmes remains a challenge on which NIMD’s needs to work hard.

Institutional development of political parties: whereas NIMD is able to show results on objectives 1 (multiparty system) and 3 (relations civil and political society), it appears very difficult to show clear results with regard to the institutional development of political parties. How to measure this, how to make it visible? It takes a long-term progress.

Additional Challenges

An additional challenge mentioned by some of the African partners present is NIMD’s lack of (financial) flexibility when it comes to emergencies (like in Kenya) and/or situations in which multiparty democracy is endangered (like Zimbabwe). They plead for an emergency fund and a reflection on possible solidarity and preventive strategies. A proposal for such an emergency fund was already included in the “accountability proposal” presented to the Ministry which is currently in suspense.

Other challenges mentioned by those present include the need for aligning NIMD objectives and activities with national (budget and electoral) cycles, and national reform processes in order to increase its impact and sustainability; the need to link our programme objectives more effectively to sub national levels; the need to reflect on the objectives and results of peer exchanges; the challenge to design our programmes on the basis of a thorough political analysis and to adapt them when the political circumstances dictate so; and finally the fact that CMD’s are often considered as donors and that the incentive for political parties to participate in CMD’s seems to be mainly a financial one.

Two of the above mentioned challenges are discussed in depth by those present:

Measuring the achieved results with regard to the institutional development of political parties: There seems to be a general consensus that we need to look at institutional support to political parties in a broader sense than just looking at the bilateral programmes. For instance: democracy schools also have an indirect influence on political party capacities. And changes in the multiparty system as a whole (laws, regulations for instance) also have an impact on political party strengthening. In other words, NIMD’s objectives may sometimes mutually reinforce each other (just like they might sometimes oppose each other). Thus, we need to reflect on how we measure and communicate our effects on the institutional development of political parties.

It is stressed that institutional development of political parties is a very long-term process, and can not be reached overnight. A number of the people present underline that all NIMD interventions aim to strengthen the parties’ institutional development in the long run and that we have to be patient. However, wishful thinking might creep in when stating that our interventions will only in the long run lead to certain results. We need to remain critical: Do certain interventions really lead to the stated objectives? What is the effectiveness of our interventions?

Moreover, the NIMD should clearly explain that in some cases it is not feasible to directly support political parties. When strengthening political party structures only adds to the tension, it is wise to focus on our two other main objectives.

A specific question regarding bilateral funding of political parties is raised several times: the main incentive for parties to participate in cross-party programmes is the bilateral funding. Thus, the carrot is a financial one: what does that imply for the legitimacy of CMD’s work? We will need to think about other ways to keep parties on board; offer for instance more interesting multiparty activities that show concrete results.

Flexibility in planning, monitoring and evaluation: One of the participants refers to Thomas Carothers, who states that sometimes, when you see a crisis arrive, it might be better to sustain the situation instead of following a fixed planning, focusing on objectives. Need to readjust your objectives which are they appear to be very ambitious. We are afraid to acknowledge that the political situation in a country is worse than we expected – this acknowledgement is needed to be able to adjust. We should not be too apologetic in explaining that things have gone different than planned.

Everyone agrees that we need to reflect on how we can we tell our story in a better, less bureaucratic way, that better reflects our field of work. We look to more innovative tools, acknowledging that logframes and monitoring templates are not opposed to flexibility and responsiveness: a good monitoring system hinders neither flexibility nor efficacy.