Development Research: Can it be good research?

My intention here is not primarily to pre-sent an outline of the two studies that have resulted from these reviews (Helland: Norsk Utviklingsforskning – utviklingstrekk og utford-ringer, [‘Norwegian development research–evolution and challenges’] and Sørbø and Helland: Danida and Danish Development Research: Towards a New Partnership. Report to the Commission on Development Research), but rather to call attention to a disturbing aspect of development research in these two countries. In my view, the most important and the most ominous feature shared by development research in Norway and Denmark alike is a marginalisation of research on topics and issues referring to the developing world. National research policies and the national research budgets in both countries seem increasingly to exclude the situation of the developing countries as an important, interesting, legitimate and respectable field of inquiry. Most importantly, development research is now increasingly perceived as the concern of the development agencies, rather than an issue in national research policy.

The insistence in both countries on the importance of research to all aspects of the ‘knowledge societies’ that both nations seek to become does not extend to their respective relations with developing countries, to the conditions that shape their future or the issues that are at stake. Development research has, for all practical purposes, been purged from the research policies and research strategies in Norway as well as Denmark and has been relegated from the research systems proper to a precarious existence in the respective ministries of foreign affairs.
I cannot offer any good explanations as to how this has come about. Perhaps the definitions of development research are partly at fault, since there is considerable overlap and confusion between:
• research aimed at understanding the broadest possible range of phenomena particular to the developing countries;
• research aimed at understanding societal change and development in the developing countries (‘the development process’);
• research aimed at improving the quality of development assistance provided;
• research as activities aimed at improving the research system in developing countries;
• research as research co-operation with institutions in developing countries;
• research as an international public good, provided for the benefit of developing countries.

Development researchers themselves may also be partly to blame. Most of the development research in our countries was rooted in an activist tradition that was not content with understanding the issues, but also sought to influence them. Relations with the developing world are still dominated by the normative project of inducing change, and many development researchers see themselves as bridging the gap between knowing and doing, perhaps achieving neither.
Research policies in both Denmark and Norway have charged public agencies responsible for particular sectors of society with the added responsibility of promoting research within their respective sectors. This particularly extends to applied research or to research seen as relevant to the exercise of public policy, while the universities and research councils are responsible for basic research or research of an academic rather than a practical interest. As development research has become increasingly perceived as being of little interest except in an instrumental sense, it has clearly become the responsibility of the ministries of foreign affairs. This seems to have happened in both Norway and Denmark. There are some interesting differences, however, between the practical expression of these policy responsibilities in the two countries.

The Danish study
The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates that it spent some DKK 400 million on development research in 2000. It has created its own research council (Rådet for u-lands-forskning, RUF) aimed at supporting development research in Danish research institutions as understood by any of the first three definitions above. RUF, which is entirely managed by Danish researchers based at various research institutions, received DKK 59 million from Danida, the Danish development agency, in 2000. In addition, funding is provided for a number of specialised research institutes and research networks in Denmark primarily aimed at promoting research as an international public good. The research agenda here relates to research questions from the developing countries and the results are primarily produced for the benefit of the developing countries. Danish funding of international research efforts (DKK 91 million), e.g. through the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) system and other international institutions, or the UN (DKK 85 million), must also be seen in this light. Finally, Denmark also supports Danish research co-operation with developing countries through the Enhancement of Research Capacity (ENRECA) programme (DKK 59 million) and provides various investments in the research systems of a number of developing countries through the development assistance budget.

The other main contributions to development research in Denmark come from the universities that provide their staff with research time to actually engage in research. While this contribution no doubt is significant, it is difficult to express in financial terms.

The Norwegian study
In Norway, the latest available figures are from 1999 and are structured so that a direct comparison with the situation in Denmark is difficult. The official figure for disbursements on development research was NOK 688 million (the NOK is worth between five and ten percent less than the DKK), but this is based on a categorisation where items in which “at least 50 percent of the expenditure is related to research” in fact are counted as research. There are thus considerable margins of error in this figure. An indication of the magnitude of these margins of error is provided by an independent and detailed examination by NIFU—a research institute dedicated to studies on research and higher education—of the line items in the budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for 2000. According to NIFU, the line items that displayed expenditures of NOK 688 million in 1999, contained direct research-related budgetary provisions amounting to only NOK 226 million in 2000. This seems the more realistic figure.

Similarities and differences
The most significant difference relates to the funding of research as an international public good. A large portion of the Danish budget set aside for this purpose is spent on research institutes in Denmark (DKK 90 million out of a total of DKK 266 million in 2000). The Norwegian figures indicate that far less is spent overall on international research. The 1999 figures indicate contributions of NOK 61 million to CGIAR, NOK 36 million to WHO and NOK 58 million to various other international and regional research efforts.

Although it is difficult to know how much research funding is hidden within the wide statistical categories of the Norwegian figures, particularly with regard to research funds provided in bilateral development assistance budgets, it is possible to compare support to some of the domestic activities in both countries. The Danish ENRECA programme has its parallel in Norway, where it is known as the NUFU (the Norwegian Universities’ Council Committee for Development-Related Research and Education) programme. Both programmes support research co-operation and capacity building, but while ENRECA is managed directly by Danida, the NUFU programme is managed by the Norwegian Universities’ Council. A new five-year NUFU programme agreement was signed in January 2001, through which NUFU is provided with an annual budget contribution of NOK 60 million. This compares quite well with ENRECA’s DKK 59 million budget. Recent evaluations of both programmes show a number of additional similarities between the two, perhaps the most interesting being a high degree of dependence on the individual efforts and energies of university staff members.

Research funding in terms of funding for academic research (the first three definitions above) shows the greatest discrepancy between the two countries. Compared to the RUF budget of DKK 59 million in 2000, the Norwegian figure for support of domestic research in 1999 was NOK 42 million. NOK nine million of this amount was earmarked for core funding to Chr. Michelsen Institute, while the parallel institution in Denmark—the Centre for Development Research in Copenhagen, received a core grant of DKK 24 million, that was provided over and above the RUF budget. If Danida support to all the development-related research institutes is included, support to development research in Denmark amounts to DKK 149 million (in 2000) as compared to NOK 42 million for development research provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Norway (in 1999).

Responsibility unresolved
The Norwegian Parliamentary White Paper no. 42 (1987–88) Om u-landsrelatert utviklings-forskning (‘On development research relating to developing countries’) remains the fundamental policy paper in Norway. Here, a division of labour between the development agency and the research authorities was assumed, in which funding for domestic development research was clearly assigned to the ministry responsible for research and higher education. This White Paper at the time accorded development research legitimacy in terms of public policy and implicitly assumed public funding responsibility for it. After an initial burst of resources, particularly relating to various initiatives within ‘Environment and Development’ made popular by the Brundtland Report of 1987 (Our Common Future), funding for development research has dwindled.

An argument is made that the funding responsibility is exercised through block grants to institutions involved in the field (both universities and the Research Council of Norway), and that it is up to these institutions to prioritise allocations. This may be so but it is becoming increasingly hard to find traces of such allocations. Development research has been purged from virtually every scientific research panel in the Research Council, with the exception of the unit for Environment and Development, where development studies is definitely the poor relation, to the extent that development research is not even represented on the board. An increasing part of the funding for development studies in Norway, to the extent that it now enjoys a virtual funding monopoly, has come from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is all well and good, but is probably also part of the problem. The Ministry is primarily responsible (in terms of official research policy) for applied research, and in its own policy document on development research it reserves the right to decide which are the relevant and useful research topics to be funded.

It is my assertion here that the abandonment of development research by the regular research establishment in Norway and Denmark and the assumption of responsibility for funding by the development agencies have produced some serious unintended consequences that now are becoming apparent.

Relevance and quality
Most researchers committed to development studies would like to see an increase in the level of attention and the volume of funding directed at development research. In fact, most researchers within any field hope for increases. Within development research, particularly in Norway, we seem to be dealing with an additional problem. Here development research is firmly tied into the research programme and the research ambitions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This seems to isolate the component disciplines of development research from their respective research communities. The Ministry’s insistence on approving research programmes and setting the research agenda seems to repel rather than attract interest of the research communities. Its strategy differs significantly from the Danish one, where such strategic decisions are made by the research community itself (through RUF). But also in Denmark the argument is heard that RUF is isolated from the academic mainstream and is preoccupied with research agendas that fail to excite interest in the wider community of researchers.

Development research, particularly in Norway, is not only poorly funded, but seems also to have gained a reputation of being second-rate research, struggling hard to maintain quality or to be relevant. Indisputable cri-teria for assessment of quality as well as relevance are hard to come by, but the importance in both cases of active exchange of ideas, results and criticism is not in doubt. The issues and problems of development research do not seem to excite much interest or command much attention from the research community. Within some fields there is definitely a stigma attached to doing research on topics from developing countries, frustrating careers and driving away students and young researchers alike. Researchers who are interested in development research are increasingly being isolated from the mainstream events and debates in their respective ‘mother disciplines’. In an age of globalisation, the Norwegian research community in fact seems to turn its back on the largest portion of the globe. International health research has brought attention to the so-called 90/10 problem, which expresses how 90 percent of global research resources are directed at problems that concern (probably far less than) 10 percent of the world population. This problem is not restricted to health research.

Conclusion
A new balance has to be found between interesting research, academic quality and scientific progress on the one hand and solidarity, social responsibility and activism on the other. First and foremost, the research community must be encouraged to see that the developing world contains research topics and research issues that are important and interesting in their own right. Development research need not be second-rate research, if it ever was that, and research careers can be made there. Second, development research raises issues that are important not only to the developing world, but to an ever increasing extent, also to us. Examples abound within every field, if we care to look for them. The spectacular horrors that have occupied us all lately should be ample demonstration that quaint and distant phenomena, like in this case radical Islam, suddenly also concern us.

Literature on Nordic Development Research Policies
Commission on Development-Related Research funded by Danida, Partnerships at the leading edge: a Danish vision for knowledge, research and development, Copenhagen, 2001.

Helland, Johan: Norsk utviklingsforskning – utviklingstrekk og udfordringer (‘Norwegian development research–evolution and challenges’), Oslo: the Research Council of Norway, 2001.
www.forskningsradet.no/fag/mu/utredning-helland.html#_toc514138243

Sørbø, Gunnar and Johan Helland, “Danida and Danish development research: towards a new partnership”. In Partnerships at the leading edge: a Danish vision for knowledge, research and development, Copenhagen, 2001.

World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, 1987.