2 The nature and range of interventions
The diversity of development interventions is truly mind-boggling. A recent article described it thus:
“Intervention” describes a deliberate involvement in a process or system intended to influence events and/or consequences. The term may refer to single activities but often refers to sets of activities organized within a project, program, or instrument. We use the term “development intervention” or simply “intervention” to refer to the activities of a project, program, or instrument in the field of international development.
To understand the nature and range of interventions, they can be broken down by considering the macro, meso and micro levels, starting first at macro-level interventions. These are large-scale systemic interventions. Macro-level interventions range from building infrastructure to profound interventions in governance systems – for example the establishment of the foundations of democracy. These interventions tend to be initiated either by national governments, regional development banks, or by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank.
Meso-level interventions are still substantial interventions with broad goals. These interventions aim to shape the way in which a country ‘works’ – its operational capacity. For example, this might include work to strengthen a specific sector of the economy, or government department to improve efficiency or accountability. They typically include both technical and political aspects. These interventions may be intended to address issues of inequality, division and institutional failure.
Most meso-level interventions will be targeted at state institutions and are thus just as ideologically and politically coloured as macro-level interventions. Debates tend to focus on the appropriate role of the government in development; or whether it is best to have a minimal state, or a state that is sufficiently large to be efficient and to govern well.
Finally, we turn to micro-level interventions – and this often means the development ‘project’. This is often what people think about when they think of development work. Micro-level interventions are often targeted at specific groups or communities in a local area. These might include projects such as setting up a health post in a rural area, initiating a community saving scheme, or conducting an awareness raising campaign around a specific issue in the local area.
You may have noticed intervention and project are used interchangeably in this course. But what is a project? A project is a time-bound intervention, usually lasting between one and five years. It’ll be based on some sort of legal agreement, a cluster of contracts, and a set of rules. The intention will be to generate a pre-determined set of results, and the success or otherwise of the project will generally be judged via audit/evaluation.