Institutional Context and Performance of Capacity Building Projects

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the concept of capacity building as a field of knowledge production and international development practice. It is organized around three articles. The first is a systematic review of the scholarly literature. The second is conceptual, examining the rigor and relevance of the scholarly literature. The third article is empirical, addressing the conceptualization of the context of capacity building projects and project performance. Article 1 reviews the scholarly literature on capacity building based on 72 peer-reviewed articles. The article, published in the journal Public Administration and Development, sought to answer the following questions: what do we know about the evolution of the concept of capacity building? What does this tell us about the strengths and weaknesses of the concept? The article shows that while capacity building has benefited from conceptual renewal, the idea behind it is as old as development itself. This renewal is due to the weak theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the concept. Article 2 is a conceptual article. It examines the scholarly literature on capacity building through the lens of the gap between methodological rigor and practical relevance. The article shows that the production of knowledge on capacity building is oriented towards practical relevance while neglecting methodological rigor. We propose new pragmatism as an epistemological background to reconcile methodological rigor and practical relevance. Article 3 is empirical. Using Scott's (2011) institutional theoretical framework, it analyzes the conceptualization of the context of capacity building projects based on two comparative case studies from West Africa. Using a qualitative approach, the article measures the degree of integration of the regulative (project governance rules), normative (professional standards), and cognitive-cultural (beneficiaries' shared beliefs) pillars. The results indicate that the regulative pillar is largely compiled with in both projects, while the normative and cognitive-cultural pillars are to some extent neglected. Thus, while the projects appear successful in terms of project management, this does not necessarily guarantee development success.