Local Development Strategies
For this specialization we advise you to register in the Major Governance, Policy and Political Economy (GPPE), but other Majors also give access to this specialization.
The public sector, private enterprises and social organizations are exposed to globalization, increasing competition and decentralization as forces that bring challenges and opportunities to their regions. They become central stakeholders in developing local governance and complement each other’s roles. While they seek to balance the twin objectives of boosting competitiveness and increasing equity, they need to strengthen their capacities to protect or increase well-being in their localities and regions. The Local Development Strategies specialization addresses this need by building on professional competencies to coordinate complex collective action and strategic activities at the regional level. Policies and politics are connected to conflicts of interests, typical of local governance processes. The LDS Specialization adopts a meso-level, interdisciplinary and comparative approach that combines practical experience with theoretical debate. LDS enables students to identify and analyze key economic, sociopolitical and territorial processes. The specialization offers essential insight for those with working experience in the public sector (central and local government), NGOs, civil society and development organizations, academic institutions and private enterprises.
Specialization courses
- Actors in Local Development
- Poverty, Gender and Social Protection: Debates, Policies and Transformative Interventions
- Promotion of Local Development
TEACHING STAFF
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Erhard Berner holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Bielefeld, Germany, and is Associate Professor of Development Sociology. He has done extensive research on urban poverty and community responses in the Philippines and elsewhere, and published a book and numerous articles on the subject. He has also served as a consultant to UN-Habitat, the World Bank, international and Dutch NGOs, and government institutions in the fields of urban poverty, housing, basic services, and small business promotion. Current research focuses on local effects of globalization, urban governance, microenterprises and poverty alleviation. Teaching experience includes universities and institutes in the Philippines, Indonesia, Uganda, Namibia, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic and Germany.
For more information, see: www.iss.nl/berner
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Peter Knorringa is Professor of Private Sector and Development. He is a development economist with over 15 years’ experience in research, teaching, capacity building and advisory work. His areas of specialization are: private sector & development; private governance and standards; development relevance of fair trade, ethical trade, and Corporate Social responsibility; Small enterprise development, industrial clustering, value chain analysis, entrepreneurship, local economic development, industrialisation; Role of trust, networks and social capital in development; Survival business and income and employment generation as part of (urban) poverty alleviation; Monitoring and evaluation of civil society interventions in the areas of work mentioned above. He has an extensive experience in India and Vietnam, and has also worked in China, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, South Africa and Russia.
For more information, see: www.iss.nl/knorringa
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Georgina M. Gómez has been Lecturer on Institutions and Local Development at the Institute of Social Studies since January 2009. She completed her PhD with distinction at the ISS in April 2008, with a thesis on Complementary Currency Systems in Argentina. She obtained the Herbert Simon Prize for Young Scholars in 2006. Her fields of interest centre on the organization of economic activities, including both market and non-market schemes framed by the poor and unemployed. She has published on complementary currency systems, the Argentine Redes de Trueque, the meanings of money, alternative economic spaces and local economic development.
For more information, see: www.iss.nl/gomez
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Bert Helmsing is a professor of local and regional development. He studied economics at the University of Tilburg (where he obtained his doctoral degree cum laude) and Development Studies at the Institute of Social Studies. He worked in various projects of inter-university cooperation which aimed at setting up departments or centres of regional studies. In between these projects he taught at the ISS. Since the ninety nineties he has been active as an international advisor with the World Bank Institute and with bilateral donors such as MinBuza, Sida, Danida and DfID on fiscal decentralization reform and local governance. For the Donor Committee of Small Enterprises and for the Netherlands ministry of Foreign Affairs he organised conferences on small enterprise development policy and structural adjustment. In the past 12 years he has been engaged in evaluation of NGO programs.His current research interests concern theory and policy of local economic development; institutional and evolutionary economic theory and decentralisation and local economic governance. His latest book (2011) concerns value chains, inclusion and economic development.
For more information, see: www.iss.nl/helmsing
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Joop de Wit is a social anthropologist (PhD Free University Amsterdam) teaching as Senior Lecturer Public Policy and Development Management Before joining ISS in 2000, he worked at the Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies (I.H.S.) in Rotterdam. He also worked with the Netherlands Ministry for Development Cooperation first as the local Program Advisor of an urban poverty project in Bangalore, India, and subsequently as Institutional Development Advisor at the Ministry in The Hague.His regional interest is in Asia (India, Vietnam and Indonesia) but he also worked in Namibia, Ethiopia and Surinam. His publications include books, articles and chapters on his key research interests of urban poverty alleviation, urban (local) governance and politics, decentralization, and community dynamics and (informal) community-government interfaces. A recent book is a co-edited volume ‘New Forms of Governance in Urban India: Shifts, Models, Networks and Contestations (with Isa Baud, Sage).
For more information, see www.iss.nl/dewit
Local Development Strategies Courses
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Actors in Local Development
After completion of this course students will be able to understand the interests and behaviour of actors in local development and analyze their potential points of conflicts and coincidence. Students will acquire insight into:
- the characteristics and roles of the local government, development organizations, and the private sector as actors in local development;
- their relations as expressions of individual and collective interests and intentions:
- the changing role of these actors within the overall process of globalization and decentralization; and
- the possibilities of bringing about the convergence of interests and actions through strategic negotiation.
This course analyses the key actors in local development strategies and their inter-relationships.The first block, on local government, offers an understanding of the functions, roles and responsibilities of sub-national governments in the context of decentralization, local governance and local development.The second block, on development organizations, reviews various types of non-state and non-market organizations from the perspective of multi-actor governance and the logic of collective action. Its main focus is on labour unions, co-operatives, NGOs and community-based organizations.The third block, on entrepreneurship and the private sector, examines the actual and potential role of businesses as actors in development. It focuses on small and micro enterprises and discusses entrepreneurship development, corporate social responsibility and the possibilities of achieving competitiveness through small firm clustering.The fourth block is meant to connect the dots: the intentions and interests of the local actors are brought together in a strategic negotiation process that frames local governance.
Poverty, Gender and Social Protection: Debates, Policies and Transformative Interventions
This course examines debates, policies and interventions aiming at poverty reduction. It provides an interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional gendered poverty lens to assess the experience of poverty/vulnerability/social exclusion and programs of social protection and poverty reduction. It provides a standpoint to address asymmetry in access to resources and the care economy, the opportunity for voice and ‘citizenship in practice’, and other aspects crucial to well-being. It examines the viability of targeted and universalist approaches in the assessment of interventions such as microcredit, safety net programs, public employment schemes and slum upgrading. Participants are introduced to transformative approaches that incorporate the unpaid "care economy'', basic income, housing/land rights, and people/gender budget analysis. Linking issues of redistribution of resources with issues of recognition of multiple identities and agency, the course will enable students to conceptualize and apply the links between gender justice and social and economic justice.
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Promotion of Local Development
After completing this course students will be able to identify, collect information on, and formulate joint, collective and public action to promote economic development in a particular locality or region. They will also be able to identify appropriate institutional arrangements and strategic plans and negotiate implementation, and in particular to:
- understand and assess the rationale, goals, instruments and implementation issues of policies aimed at strengthening local economic development;
- devise differentiated policies for local economic development;
- evaluate the relative 'fit' between the goals, instruments and implementation tools of policies to strengthen local development; and
- assess the possibilities of bringing about convergence of interests and actions through processes of negotiation and strategy formulation.
The course discusses current approaches, strategies, policies and instruments to promote local economic development, in terms both of strengthening competitiveness and of increasing equity. The course centres on the role of micro, small and large enterprises in a market context and with the issues and instruments associated with the identification and implementation of local development initiatives.
The first block introduces local economic development theory and policy. It starts with reviewing theory and policy perspectives, after which it discusses a number of policy practices, ranging from incubators, clusters, value chains. local exchange and trade systems, community economic development and locality development. This block includes a series of case studies, a simulation game and group learning exercises. The second block, on strategic analysis and negotiation, presents basic concepts of strategic thinking and strategy formation. It discusses the possibilities and limitations of attempting to bring about convergence among local development actors. The module will have two synthesis workshops based on small group assignments.The first block introduces local economic development theory and policy. It starts with reviewing theory and policy perspectives, after which it discusses a number of policy practices, ranging from incubators, clusters, value chains. local exchange and trade systems, community economic development and locality development. This block includes a series of case studies, a simulation game and group learning exercises. The second block, on strategic analysis and negotiation, presents basic concepts of strategic thinking and strategy formation. It discusses the possibilities and limitations of attempting to bring about convergence among local development actors. The module will have two synthesis workshops based on small group assignments.
