tracK 1: national institutions,
povertY reDuction
strateGies anD aiD
The track in ‘National Institutions, Poverty
Reduction Strategies and Aid’ focuses on the
analysis of the interaction between national
institutions, local politics and external actors.
The basic question addressed concerns why
development interventions are sometimes
successful but more often fail. This leads to
further, more operational questions. Which
lessons have been learned from the study of
past failures and successes, and how
convincing are current prescriptions and
paradigms for development policy? The
programme teaches students to use
appropriate analytical frameworks and to
apply relevant scientific methods in evaluating
results and drawing policy conclusions. It
introduces students to various kinds of
evaluation, based on quantitative as well as
qualitative techniques.
This track is intended for participants who
have work experience or who aspire to a career
in government institutions (including public
research institutions), donor agencies
(including international NGOs, bilateral and
multilateral donors), civil society (including
research institutes, universities). Candidates
work in the field of development intervention
or poverty reduction initiatives, and they are
oriented towards macro-level policy.
Professionally, they are middle managers with
policy responsibilities and/or responsibility for
managing the interface between different
policy levels (e.g. national to international,
national to local) or between different arenas
(e.g. government-donors, INGO-national
NGO).
tracK 2: Development interventions
anD local institutional cHanGe
The track in ‘Development Interventions and
Local Institutional Change’ conceptualises
socio-political and economic development as
the outcome of interactions between a
conditioning institutional environment and
the agency of local, national and international
actors, including multilateral and bilateral,
governmental and non-governmental aid
actors. Special attention is paid to the
importance of micro-level institutions and
processes, as well as to how they condition
the effectiveness of development efforts in
improving livelihoods and neutralising
processes of social exclusion. The detailed
exploration of how local contexts transform
processes involving the planning,
implementation, monitoring and evaluation of
development interventions is of crucial
importance to recognising opportunities for
resolving the poverty conundrum.
This track is intended for participants who
have work experience or who aspire to a
career in civil society in the South (e.g. at
research institutes or universities, or with
local NGOs or entrepreneurial associations),
donor agencies (including international
NGOs, bilateral and multilateral donors) and
government institutions. Candidates should
be involved in development interventions or
poverty reduction initiatives in micro-level
or meso-level projects and programmes.
Professionally, candidates are middlemanagers with policy and/or managerial
responsibilities at the interface between
different policy levels (e.g. local to national,
national to international) or between different
arenas (e.g. civil society-government,
government-donors, INGO-national NGO).
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