The paper presents the current state of the process of agencification in Croatia, pointing out both the process and the institutional design. The agency model in Croatia consists of several types of more or less autonomous administrative organizations, situated at different distances from the central government. The most evident pressures for agencification come from decentralization, managerial responses and Europeanization. The reversal of the process in recent years has mostly happened because of the need for rationalization of the public administration system, which is also under pressure because of the economic crisis. The key problems of the agency model are over politicization on the one hand, and insufficient and inadequate control on the other. The adequate legal framework for agencies would enhance institutionalization of the agency model, ensuring effectiveness and legal certainty and maintaining a sufficient level of independence.
Two broad and interlinking themes have dominated much of the recent literature on local governance1 and participation: the dynamics, spatialities and temporalities of the ‘neoliberalization’ of local governance; and the relationship between local governance and democracy, especially the ‘meanings, potentials and pitfalls of “participation” ’ (Melo and Baiocchi, 2006: 596). Taking the latter first, Beaumont and Nicholls (2008) in identifying new research issues emerging from a symposium have highlighted a range of questions: frictions between representative and participative local democracy; distinctions and overlaps between participation, democratization and social movements in cities; and the tools for deepening democratic engagement with impoverished and marginalized communities in cities of the global North and South. Purcell (2007) argues that there is a need for more and more sustained work on the political as well as the economic dynamics of city regions, and that this means engaging with questions of democracy as well as of citizenship. Melo and Baiocchi suggest there are two key questions: whether deliberative, ‘horizontal’ governance structures favour middle-class and elite interests; and what are the conditions under which participatory arrangements can be both democratic and governance-enhancing. A related issue is the potentially problematic power relationship between elite forms of local governance — for example the influence of unelected local notables in institutions such as local partnerships — and participatory practices (Geddes, 2006). The abundant literature on decentralization initiatives in many Southern states frequently questions the extent to which such initiatives have been able to embed effective and democratically accountable institutions at the subnational level (Stren, 2004; Batterbury and Fernando, 2006). These issues of the politics of local governance — the interplay of participation and partnership, social movements and the representative democracy of political parties and leaders — are central to this symposium. Many, if not all, of the contributors to the above debates position issues of democracy and participation in the context of processes of neoliberalization, and the ‘market democracy’ or ‘market citizenship’ associated with neoliberalism (Kohl and Farthing, 2006). The concept of neoliberalism is complex, diverse and contested, and works on a number of levels. These range from institutionalized cognitive principles —‘a deep, taken-for-granted belief in neoclassical economics’, through consequent normative principles favouring free market solutions to economic problems, to a set of policies implemented during the 1980s and 1990s to promote a lean welfare state, low taxation and flexible labour markets (Dumenil and Levy, 2001: 5). In an important recent contribution, Harvey (2005: 19) argues that neoliberalism should not be understood as a bundle of characteristics, but as a political project, a process of neoliberalization ‘to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of economic elites’, and specifically to disembed capital from the constraints of the ‘embedded liberalism’ of social democracy and the Keynesian welfare state (ibid.: 11). When theoretical neoliberal principles clash with the need to restore or sustain capitalist class power, or when such principles lead to tensions and contradictions, ‘then the principles are either abandoned or become so twisted as to be unrecognisable’ (ibid.: 19). He cites the rhetorical commitment of neoconservatives to democracy as an example. Harvey reflects on the important role of urban crisis — such as the New York fiscal crisis of the 1970s — in paving the way for neoliberalism, and also points to neoliberal forms of elite, closed governance such as partnership, which circumscribe both ‘old’ representative and ‘new’ participatory democratic processes (Fuller and Geddes, 2008). In this vein, other key contributions have resonated widely in the recent literature. Jessop (2002: 466) noted how key global neoliberal strategies envisage a growing ‘role for cities in managing the interface between the local economy and global flows, between the potentially conflicting demands of local sustainability and local wellbeing and those of international competitiveness, and between the challenges of social exclusion and global polarization and the continuing demands for liberalization, deregulation, [and] privatization’. Along similar lines, Brenner and Theodore (2002: 369–72) referred to the ‘neoliberalization of urban space’ (or ‘neoliberal localization’) as one of destructive creation in which the old local state apparatus is replaced by new forms of local governance — including ‘networked’ forms of governance based upon public–private partnerships; ‘new public management’ strategies; privatization and competitive contracting of municipal services. In a widely cited formulation, Peck and Tickell (2007) distinguished two phases of neoliberalism in the UK context: roll-back (when a primary objective was to roll back the pre-existing political economy of the social democratic welfare state, via deregulation and public expenditure cuts) and roll-out (the extension and deepening of neoliberal forms such as networked governance, fiscal responsibility and reregulation). Cerny (2008), emphasizing the importance of place in the global evolution of neoliberalism, identifies a ‘social neoliberalism’ in which welfare is not rolled back but restructured and marketized in highly complex ways. Thus: the neoliberal ascendancy of the past three decades has been associated with a series of paradoxical and contradictory ‘double movements’ . . . neoliberalism involves the simultaneous and iterative roll-back of institutional and social forms (especially those associated with Keynesianism) together with the roll-out of restructured institutional and state forms (Peck and Tickell, 2007). While this literature initially focused primarily on the changes encountered by urban institutions across countries and regions in Europe and North America, there is now increasing recognition that the neoliberalization of local governance is a global phenomenon (Leitner et al., 2007). An insistent skein in the increasingly globalized literature has been the call to recognize the diversity of ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’. Larner (2005: 17), for example, is concerned to move beyond neoliberalism as a monolithic hegemonic entity in order to understand its uneven, contested and contingent nature, and recognizes that institutional landscapes are characterized by diverse, ‘contradictory spatialities, socialities and subjectivities’, operating through divergent political, institutional and regulatory strategies that are characterized by contradiction and contestation. It is also important to recognize that policy change can involve a degree of the ‘pragmatic and opportunistic’ (Peck and Tickell, 2007: 30). There are, though, important differences between perspectives which essentially identify variants of neoliberalism, and others which talk in terms of hybrids between neoliberalism and other political projects. In this perspective, many rationalities and approaches are prioritized by the state, which come to form a ‘hybridity of approaches and rationalities’ (Purcell and Nevins, 2005; Raco, 2005: 325), in which there is no assumption of the dominance of neoliberalism (Barnett, 2005). Exploring both the temporal and spatial dynamics of neoliberalization, Geddes (2005) suggests that the transition to a neoliberalized local governance remains highly differentiated. Beyond a neoliberal heartland (US, UK, Australia, New Zealand) there are marked differences between a ‘new Europe’ eager to embrace neoliberalism, a social Europe still as yet with a markedly different vision, and a transitional Europe, itself divided into several trajectories. Beyond Europe, there can be not just mimicry of European/US models, but also very different local governance initiatives, some of which challenge neoliberal prescriptions. Summarizing a symposium on the geographies of neoliberalism in America, (2005: that spatial and . . . processes of state and the of neoliberal landscapes and a but also that is a as well as destructive . . . which for or social emphasizing that such of are at the by neoliberal In and neoliberalization has been associated with the deepening and of market the role of the state and its relationship with its in order to and and 2005; and Farthing, 2006). In no a local been on the social its role has been in with the neoliberal by recent 2008). The spatial and temporal dynamics of neoliberalization can a contested and (Leitner et al., in which of neoliberalism can itself a not as a to neoliberalism, but also of the of neoliberalism by and practices and with (ibid.: 5). that to in terms of neoliberalism are (2005: for example, argues that of neoliberalism to of which are not to neoliberalism and from the not how this While that not is to neoliberalism, in that neoliberalism has the to with such which in the context of phases of symposium with debates local governance, and especially participatory in global from the UK and this to and this and (Geddes, this While and the cities on which of the not of more a of global to issues in a set of very different — including the and different past the global and countries and with both and very different governance and this of by to the literature. In this with the issue of what to the of ‘actually forms of local governance under suggest that such an to two of both of the upon which the process of neoliberalization and other to that of neoliberalization, which are also on local latter in to local governance are processes of with a in contradictory relationship to neoliberalism, as Harvey is one of with in which are in both and in formulation, . . . . . . the of across and when and are In the of this primarily on which to of in local also reflects the that the contributors to the symposium different the extent to which neoliberalization of and the of a of The in the symposium primarily on neoliberalism — that is to in one on the extent to which processes in local governance in very different local not understand a to and the in which both tensions and neoliberalism, and forms of in complex of local governance both and now under — the social and political and and the process — which are in different in the of the The of the state, including the extent — or — of democratic political institutions is a primary local noted Jessop and Brenner and Theodore to the process of the local neoliberal Harvey the neoliberal state is a contested political form a number of and tensions to the between and democracy; in the of the existing social order which neoliberal and extension of between and In to the of and forms of The countries and cities in this symposium such tensions and the local of both and Southern and and and in which the extension of democratic forms markedly different The of the states which the cities are are important in of local governance in at three which are the of the state, the of the local state and its In the UK the countries in the the social democratic state a form of ‘embedded liberalism’ 2005: which the neoliberal has to the extent of this the of the UK state, to the of neoliberalism to on the of social democracy and its in have for neoliberal local state forms and In in the other states — and — the transition neoliberalism has place or state there are also important differences between The states in and very of political in the state to its the was and still is characterized by a level of political and and 2006: The characterized by social that in local political and in the of the of and the of local et al., In in the can be that when with neoliberal to have complex of participation urban In forms of have in the important on local state policy in movements have participatory local institutions by the neoliberal In both and the of neoliberal state forms with the transition from has been a in this still be to In the of argues that in the the transition to a neoliberal urban governance was as was the to be to a new state the of economic and In the of the transition from of its with the of has also with with and as and and is is In neoliberalism in the 1980s in the crisis of an and but the neoliberal with local participatory to its was to the changes of which the neoliberal to the of democratic processes the The a of from those neoliberalism characterized by an of political and has been able to a degree of from its with the transition to democracy, to those its with democracy is and its more It is also as for similar to from political strategies by states with different and in social democratic and have similar participation as of and similar competitive economic The to are in at to the influence of the state in the form of the in neoliberal urban economic and social different social democratic of the countries and cities in the degree of decentralization of political power to the local level governance and in terms of is for example, with the of and based on from across America, of the complex between neoliberalism, democratization and and the that decentralization is associated with either neoliberalism or there is a between the decentralization of power in which has more for local in to the position in the urban has been to with and this local governance in both and is well and In the of local is into the but the to local in in to the of means that the of local governance arrangements is more contested in cities local state is of or are complex and of are much In (Geddes, this local across the in the and constraints have been especially The in the the and of the state at both and local levels. It is also important to recognize the role of state institutions and now an increasingly important role in policy and such as the and its the the of Europe, and international have been important in the of and neoliberal policies different global regions example under the of the which from the neoliberal in and The of governance principles by is for many countries to of the which and to is upon with the neoliberal economic principles which 2007). the key points of have in of what is between and the and in and more participatory forms of democracy and political emphasizing the principles of and local democracy similar with forms of participation, to promote of participation 2007). there is growing recognition of the which frequently between the of participatory institutions and and 2005). The some contributions to for more to how democratically local are and to the issues by Beaumont and Nicholls frictions and distinctions between participation and democratization and the need for deepening democratic engagement of marginalized movements and have been key in local governance, as was the with the in during the and the in one perspective, the of social movements in more recent is a to the of social movements have the political of the by neoliberalism to of the neoliberal state and politics et al., 2007). the of neoliberalism, local strategies have been and social capital to be as a to state and in which and are are in neoliberal local (2005: the is the extent to which social movements have become into a of neoliberal state argues — with many others — that participatory processes such as those in and well more as for the of social as means of that much of the governance literature on a of power an in the power of a in state power, argues that engagement with the literature is the of power beyond a and emphasizing the continuing of in governance is at to that such for participation, be what was on The latter a neoliberal forms of engagement well more social democratic local is also is to such local participatory initiatives the of neoliberalism and neoliberal local In for example, on such initiatives is with that on economic In the context of the UK, the New for across by the New have no on the economic context of economic in one such participatory processes can be as one in a ‘social neoliberalism’ primarily class to social be more to the of state policy in with on the of the neoliberal state, in to which such participatory social are of be from and In this the of the latter for a local state are The of and are also of the way in which social can be local state which are to and by the central state, in a relationship as et is . . . are to to of but are to to neoliberal A very different is in the local social movements of the and are in and at from the assumption that is by the state, to influence local state policy is in a context of social and at the of the local and (2007) the of of and engagement in as to both and the These very different be the for local social movements of a position which is both and the state — in a position in which can influence the state in The challenge to social movements has (2007) to that should to participation in institutions such as local which that such an engagement is — such as participatory in — to have on the of local social movements with a local to and with or in the of from in countries the UK, social demands to be into a and increasingly by the local state there are still important — such as in and — of participation in a range of forms of across local and global which or by the In the of many social movements both in communities and in urban both with a of to the state, has not social movements to but has to form the for of the neoliberal and 2007). governance has the on social movements to to the of partnerships and forms of neoliberal participation, and in so has to the participation of the 1980s in countries such as and beyond 2005; 2007). others 2005; and Farthing, and the not but to forms of and to forms of political participation by the not an neoliberal practices of the of neoliberal institutions by in very different by different or local governance has increasingly the of the has been the of the power and of local and political The of and political parties via local has been by and has been with participative and forms of local democratic The of partnerships has to local to the of one many the primary in local political leaders have been on the one to become more and on the other to new based on the of political and more on or in a In countries such as the UK, local political is increasingly concerned with in the of the different a the and of local political has been as important in and to from of and 2005). local is not to the political leaders in cities in and have also this to power et al., with as and The of and in have local and public to with the creation of new forms of and such as and participation There is much though, of by political leaders in the by and the of which have the of also local of is the local of the literature on local suggests in the context of a neoliberal local politics of governance, should be or the contributions of local leaders from and In some countries has been that local political has to from a to a range of different in a more democratic (Melo and Baiocchi, can also be the that and of old have of in many of America, the of leaders still remains In for example, the of as has the of and that remains between the of political and of a politics in which and in some countries such as the UK, policies have to promote the importance of in one as a way to local democratic and and 2005). the which is one in which local and parties — of both and and in countries — have to of the new of local governance, but in the process different and to governance such as the by of political parties of partnerships in which theoretical of and the and competitive of local this through the example of the in which in the 1980s a more for the of the the city the and as the the that has been to the city and the urban the political of the by the in In America, both and parties have been concerned with and effective While is the that the of has been more in including and social and the that neoliberal can local participatory structures which new to local not be The of the and policies in and how the process of a between the of a a social and the social as well as across and can have for the of local the of a policy or either the or to a different can also a in the of governance of the political in The of the participatory process from to other but also to many cities is the example of how local can the of a governance et al., 2008). and the global urban the important spatial of the economic and social across the by the neoliberal a set of that local that by the the urban of In that the of Europe, North and and the be the and be with and the and the regions the in between and 2007). In the of and These are local governance in an increasingly and has been with urban governance an of the extension and of urban as a of and with the of in strategies to a global competitive are a more competitive and local have to place and new forms of local but have also for new strategies of social and place policies have been by the creation of and and with other cities the and the Southern et al., 2006). cities are the international and are not at the of the global urban but are cities at the level of the that is a dominated by the city of the and important at a level the power of of the global and the initiatives which have been are a continuing of local governance In and in a context of strategies have the a city and of old the for the of 2006). the urban influence the extent to which different cities strategies the local governance in terms of the of institutions and from and beyond and the of and across different the of local governance institutions to to is also by the of the other three which cities have example, of of between the and levels. the of and have as much in with the of as with the in to global changes in and which of and that level cities have and social and are highly in and and have governance the of in and is much in the of urban governance to such is more and some strategies of social by the state — such as participatory participation, partnerships and social — have become to urban social 2004; and many of have been by social movements and forms of other more and also the of the and in cities and of in the the of communities in and 2004; 2004; and increasing in the North are other such as in the UK, which have and spatial on marginalized 2004; this is a that has been associated with and the economic and social The has the role of as a to the of the at the as the has to policies in political in have to institutions and of as a way of a democratic and and this In and political of both and have in the of based on to partnerships and in this symposium are emphasizing the urban is also important to recognize the of In the between the and many of the social movements of should that the is not with social The of movements in in the 1990s and of this have been central to to neoliberalism, and have in structures in urban as a of (Kohl and Farthing, 2006). the of as well as urban local governance the importance of of the of the of has been to a in which very different and urban have been to to a political that and have become of ‘new and the processes change in both how and to local governance in city in and ways. The key between the two cities was the political context in by the transition from the to a democratic that of urban governance, characterized by decentralization and a of participation, was from The on of to two the governance that a of state and and across to a of not a of state that an in participation not an in on and the for local governance of a at the urban those related to issues such as or urban which call and to the on the of the for the urban and the of neoliberalism in the to with the state, a more especially for cities in to a more for In this the importance of as the of public at the subnational and the central place of or in the urban and for In the Geddes suggests that is to the of two of local governance — neoliberal and is not to or the diversity of existing but to to the terms of He reflects on local governance in in the 1980s and 1990s a for the new neoliberal but now a of as a of the recent of the the of the neoliberal on He suggests a of and of neoliberalism is in the tensions and complex temporalities of the between neoliberalism and to in and
Alina Profiroiu, Tudorel Andrei, Marian Nica, Elena Daniela ŞTEFĂNESCU
The reform process of the state and implicitly of the public administration was a priority for the past governments of Romania. During 2004- 2009, within the reform process, the main actors involved in the coordination, implementation and monitoring of reform measures were: the Prime Minister, the Superior Council for Public Administration Reform, Public Policy Coordination and Structural Adjustment, the Ministry of Public Finance, the General Secretariat of Government, Ministry of Administration and Interior (renamed for a short time Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reform), the Central Unit for Public Administration Reform, National Institute of Administration, the National Agency of Civil Servants, and the National Modernizers Network. For evaluation of aspects related to the reform process it was designed a selective research within the members of the National Modernizers Network, for assessing their perception of the public administration reform undertaken by the institutions presented above. Evaluating their opinion can be an important point in the revitalization of the area of the administration reform process. Also, the research conducted aimed at assessing the degree of modernizers’ involvement in activities related to important aspects of the reform process: strategic planning, formulating and evaluating public policies, financial management, human resources management, decentralization, introduction of new information and communication technologies and administrative simplification.
This study aims at assessing the performance of local government in Palestine in regard to fiscal and administrative decentralization. Data was gathered from the Ministry of Local Government, Ministry of Finance and a questionnaire was sent to 12 municipalities' key officials. It was found that the government is organized into the central government headed by the president, the cabinet, the governorates, mayors and village councils. The main functions of the local governments are to provide the necessary needed services. It was found that there is a degree of decentralization in providing the intended services as the functions of each level is clearly defined by the law, even though there is an overlapping amongst these functions due to the current situation instability The study explains several aspects including organization of the local government, decision making process, functional responsibilities, partnership among local government and the performance of these partnerships, employment, training programs, the most urgent issues regarding decentralization process, local government finances, financial standing of municipalities, relationship between central and local governments, and decentralization reforms under preparation, The study ends up with conclusions and recommendations. تهدف هذه الدراسة إلى تقييم أداء الهيئات المحلية في فلسطين فيما يتعلق باللامركزية الإدارية والماليـة. وقد تم جمع البيانات اللازمة للدراسة من وزارة الحكم المحلي ووزارة المالية، إضافة الى استبانة كانت قد أرسلت إلى 12 مسئولاً من مسئولي 12 بلدية. وتبين من البحث أن التنظيم الإداري للحكومة يتكون من الحكومة المركزية والمحافظات والبلديات والمجالس القروية. ووجد أن وظائف الهيئات المحلية تتركز في تقديم الخدمات الأساسية للمواطنين. وتبين أن لدى هذه الهيئات درجة كبيرة من اللامركزية في تقديمها لهذه الخدمات، لأن وظائف هذه الهيئات محددة بشكل واضح في قانون الحكم المحلي الفلسطيني، إلا أن هناك بعض التداخل في بعض الصلاحيات نتيجة للظروف الحالية. وأوضحت الدراسة العديد من القضايا الخاصة باللامركزية المالية والإدارية منها: التنظيم الإداري للهيئات المحلية، وعملية اتخاذ القرارات، والمسئوليات الوظيفية، والتعاون بين الهيئات المحلية في تقديم الخدمات، القوى العاملة في الهيئات المحلية والتدريب والحوافز، والقضايا الملحة فيما يتعلق باللامركزية، وتمويل الهيئات المحلية، والأوضاع المالية لهذه الهيئات وعلاقاتها بالحكومة المركزية، والإصلاحات الجارية الخاصة باللامركزية. وانتهت الدراسة بالخلاصة وعدد من التوصيات.
The important issue, for both central and local governments in the 2000's is financial reconstruction and administrative reform. And, pursuing a policy of government decentralization has been regarded as an important issue in 1990's, and since 1999 it has received much attention at the central government and local government levels. In 1999,the Government Decentralization Law was passed. As expected, that the relationship between the central and local government has changed drastically. This report gives a study of Basic Concepts of Reform of Public Sector Accounting System in Local Government, and so on, is presented as follows : 1. Introduction. 2. Central Public Finance and Local Public Finance : An Overview. 3. Issues of Public Sector Accounting System in Local Government. 4. Conversion of Public Sector Accounting System in Local Government. 5. Development of Public Sector Accounting System in Local Government. 6. New Public Management. 7. Conclusion.
This research attempted to gain an insight into the experiences and perspectives of staff in the Vocational Training Council (VTC) on the devolution initiative being implemented in its technical institutes. The research was developed from the conceptual framework of centralization and decentralization. It adopted a qualitative case-study approach to inductively understand human experience in context-specific settings. The data collection techniques consisted of documentary analysis, observations and in-depth semi-structured interviews to achieve the objectives of methodological triangulation. Before the introduction of the devolution initiative, the Technical Institutes Division Headquarters was the supervisor of the technical institutes. It was considered to stifle the initiatives of the technical institutes because of its strong controlling emphasis. The strategic and organizational review of the VTC conducted in 1996 acted as a catalyst to set off the changes. It appears that the main thrust of the devolution initiative is to achieve effectiveness and efficiency. Staff in general welcomed release from the management and control by the headquarters, but considered the pace of change to be too fast. There was a remarkable degree of concurrence among staff in focusing student learning outcomes as the key to change. Although the devolution initiative is a major cultural change in the VTC, the senior management have paid little attention to the organizational culture of the technical institutes. Since staff have not been consulted and empowered, most of them are indifferent, or even resistant, to this far-reaching change. The scope of decentralization with respect to the use of resources, participative decision-making and curriculum development is limited. Changing the organizational culture, flattening out the hierarchy, opening up opportunities for teachers to contribute meaningfully to the decision-making process, and fostering greater professional development, together with good management and adequate autonomous funding, are promising strategies to change the VTC towards a more entrepreneurial one.
B. Balamurugan, T. Poongodi, M. R. Manu, S. Karthikeyan · 5 authors
The moving image archive of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) includes a copy of the film The Double Day (1975), cataloged in the series Moving Images Relating to International Development Programs and Activities, 1979–1991, a collection of more than eight hundred titles “created to provide information on assistance programs supported by the Agency for International Development (AID).”1 Yet, The Double Day does not, in fact, directly depict or engage with any specific development or aid initiative. Instead, the film—directed by US-based Brazilian filmmaker Helena Solberg as part of the International Women’s Film Project collective and described as “the first Latin American feminist documentary”—examines the gendered dynamics of paid and unpaid labor through the testimonies of women from Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico.2 Its presence in the USAID archive is likely a consequence of its funding history, having received support from the Inter-American Foundation, a USAID-affiliated entity; the development agencies of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; the United Nations Development Program; and US philanthropist Calvin Cafritz.3These transnational funding structures not only enabled the film’s production but also determined its archival destination, which renders legible its place within the history of international development.4 The Double Day’s institutional trajectory reflects the shifting configurations of aid, gender, and media during a historic moment when women were being repositioned at the center of what Arturo Escobar has described as development’s “regimes of visuality.”5 Especially relevant to The Double Day’s production and exhibition was the international institutional framework of Women in Development (WID). Emerging in the early 1970s and culminating in United Nations’ proclamation of 1975 as International Women’s Year, WID emphasized women’s participation in the global economy as both an index and mechanism of development. Indeed, The Double Day premiered at the World Conference of the International Women’s Year, held in Mexico City.6 Within this context, the film forms part of a broader trajectory of media use by international organizations that intensified during the 1970s—as best exemplified by Media Habitat, a collection of 236 documentary films commissioned by the United Nations to represent urban and rural development initiatives for the 1976 Habitat Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver. As a policy-shaping initiative, Media Habitat primarily featured films from the Global South intended not only to illustrate but also to help codify standardized audiovisual markers of “underdevelopment” that determined access to the emerging global economic order and to international aid.7Framed in relation to these international institutions and their operations, The Double Day could similarly be considered “development media”—exemplifying the type of nonfiction media produced and distributed outside of the commercial film circuits whose aspects and subcategories have been variously described in scholarship as nontheatrical, useful, sponsored, institutional, industrial, educational, or nonprofessional/amateur.8 Scholars working in this area have emphasized the institutional contexts of such media’s production and exhibition infrastructures as shaping its instrumentalized effects. From a feminist perspective, such an approach is crucial to grappling with the broader question of how “gender impacts [these works’] shape, content, and trajectories.”9 Yet we also argue that, taken in isolation, the institutional and infrastructural contexts are insufficient to account for the complex relationship between media and development, potentially not only limiting our understanding of the reach and impact of development but also distorting our interpretive conclusions. For example, to categorize The Double Day as “development media” is to overlook the film’s place within Solberg’s directorial oeuvre, as well as within the histories of both transnational women’s filmmaking and radical Latin American documentary cinema to which it simultaneously belongs. Such exclusive framing is especially limiting given that women globally were disproportionately engaged in nonfiction production throughout the twentieth century—sometimes by political choice but more often due to structural exclusions from fiction filmmaking. Even in nonfiction historiography, however, institutional media has remained particularly marginal, reinforcing hierarchies that separate such works from the aesthetic and authorial frameworks through which film history has been constructed.10 This marginalization not only tends to erase women’s contributions but also presumes a “weak” or derivative authorship, rendering these films unworthy of the interpretive attention needed to apprehend their aesthetic and political complexity.11 The same dynamic is likely to structure assumptions about “development media” as well.Categorizing The Double Day exclusively within this category would further prompt us to assume top-down institutional analyses that have been characteristic of both institutional media methodologies and the scholarship on development at large. This, in turn, would risk obscuring this film’s radical Marxist approach to women’s labor as well as its concrete contribution to activism and its attendant grassroot structures. In Mexico City, The Double Day became a catalyst for feminist solidarity in practice when one of the film’s protagonists, Bolivian activist and trade unionist Domitila Barrios de Chungara, was invited to participate in the Tribune of Non-Governmental Organizations held alongside the official UN conference.12 There, Barrios de Chungara challenged Western feminist priorities by reframing the debate around labor, class, and imperialism, helping to articulate a shared Third World feminist agenda that significantly departed from the developmentalist vision of the United Nations and USAID.13 Seen through the lens of activist media, The Double Day helped forge transnational solidarity networks by enabling information exchange across the diverse voices that shaped its making—from the women featured in the film to the activists who circulated it—revealing a considerably more dynamic interplay between institutional and grassroots or contingent media practices.Moreover, the film’s Latin American context—reflected in Solberg’s formation in Brazil as the only woman in Cinema Novo, its focus on women from across the region, and its premiere and key reception in Mexico City—requires grappling with the regional specificities of the very notion of development in its multiple iterations.14 Far from being an epistemological and political framework imposed solely by the Global North, both the practices of development and the theoretical foundations of developmentalism (understood as a broad and polysemic set of discourses) were shaped through the active participation of Latin American economists.15 Within this iteration, underdevelopment, as a constitutive notion of developmentalism, became central to a distinctly critical strand, which by the late 1960s became known as the dependency theory.16 This same approach is reflected in some of the best-known Latin American radical film manifestos of the time, arising precisely from the same milieus to which Solberg belonged.17These various considerations of the film’s history illustrate the methodological challenges confronting feminist scholars seeking to assess the impact of development on media projects, theories, and practices. To disregard the developmentalist context of such works by emphasizing their political aesthetics and affects risks reproducing a romanticized narrative of heroic resistance (albeit from a feminist perspective). Yet to engage exclusively with their institutional and material infrastructures risks naturalizing developmentalism’s political and epistemological foundations at the expense of the goals and beliefs of the many women who participated in these projects. The contradictions and ambivalences that animate such histories call for feminist frameworks capable of holding both institutional complicity and radical possibility in view.This challenge resonates with ongoing debates about the politics of the archive and what Allyson Field has termed “the practice of informed speculation.”18 As she reminds us, feminist, queer, and decolonial methodologies have long taught us to “press at the limits” of the archive to “inoculate our scholarship against our evidence’s afflictions.”19 The concern that the evidence we draw on in our analysis reproduces the very structures and blind spots of the dominant ideology and therefore shapes and delimits our interpretation becomes particularly urgent when engaging the developmentalist media corpus. Informed speculation offers an alternative by inviting the experimental, creative, and speculative rewriting of history, mobilizing the archive “in a project that runs counter to the original purpose, or the imperative to preserve, or the conditions that led to erasure.”20 Yet, as Field cautions, such speculative gestures must remain grounded in a deep and “intimate familiarity with the archive” that we are working with and against. Building on this imperative, we suggest that the developmentalist archive, in particular, demands expansion and critical reconsideration in ways that unsettle the very disciplinary frameworks through which it has been studied as well as the larger institutional contexts for such knowledge production.Our focus on The Double Day in the opening of this introduction thus foregrounds the entanglements of institutional and grassroots forces, local and international contexts, structural and interpersonal relations, and creative and economic factors that have shaped not only this film but the broader ecosystem of development media projects—and their preservation—over time. Addressing such a constellation involves transgressing methodologically entrenched divisions between political economy and aesthetics, between material infrastructures and affective regimes; reckoning with divergent periodizations across film history and world economics; and situating these within the local specificities of women’s movements and international institutional programs. It also demands attentiveness to the coexistence of multiple, and sometimes competing, understandings of development—each historically, geographically, and ideologically situated.We imagine this special issue as an opening toward a critical dialogue, not only about how such an approach might be enacted in practice but also about the far-reaching ways development paradigms have shaped both our objects of study and the contours of the field itself. The decision to center institutionally sponsored films across all the essays in this issue is deliberate and enables us to highlight institutional critique as a vital methodological imperative within our analytical framework. Created within the frameworks of international organizations, state agencies, or NGOs, these films’ histories make legible the institutional logics that underwrite their production. Yet our critique does not stop at these specific entities. Rather, we argue for a broader interrogation of the political conditions and institutional infrastructures that shape media and knowledge production more generally. This includes contemporary corporations embedded in the digital platform economy, from streaming services to the rapid expansion of AI. Equally critical is a reflexive examination of academia itself, where departments of economics, political science, and centers for development have played a formative role in producing and legitimizing developmentalist theories and policy frameworks. While the humanities and arts have at times offered critical alternatives, they have also frequently mirrored and reinforced many of the same developmentalist assumptions. A feminist analysis of the nexus between development and media must therefore unsettle not only dominant archives but also the institutional and disciplinary foundations of our own scholarly practices.As scholars, we share the complex position of navigating the same tensions between institutional complicity and emancipatory aspiration as many of the media-makers whose work we study. Mirroring our subjects is also the transnational, collective mode of this special issue’s own production as it emerges from an ongoing informal working group we have sustained over several years. While relying on institutional and disciplinary affordances—such as university funding for conferences or access to academic publishing platforms—we have been working toward creating a community that exceeds, and often resists, the prevailing logics of our academic institutions. Our aim has been to create a space for shared inquiry and mutual support that pushes back against disciplinary siloing and technocratic neoliberal assessment modes of both labor and knowledge production—and this certainly extends to our experience collaborating with the journal editors throughout the publication process. Our goal has been to examine both the persistence and variability of developmentalism, understood as what Gustavo Esteva calls a “powerful but fragile semantic constellation,” as a conceptual formation that has historically inspired, legitimized, and mobilized media projects across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.21 And gendered biopolitics, from population control to gender mainstreaming, have remained integral to development policies and media practices, recurring across formats from institutional newsreels to film festivals.We share the conviction that, far beyond the history of nonfiction institutional media, development (as both a broad ideological project and a network of material and institutional practices) and developmentalism (as a set of discourses and theoretical models associated with development) have exerted a far-reaching influence on film and media cultures at large. As such, they must be treated as a major force in shaping global film and media systems and also the many ongoing assumptions behind their critical discourses. The discipline of communication studies was founded on modernization theory governed by Cold War goals of dissemination of Western liberal democracy around the world, while “an area studies framework allowed compartmentalizing Western and non-Western outcomes of technologies that were always claimed to be universal.”22 Despite critique from postcolonial and critical race studies, many of these frameworks have remained foundational for media theory.23 In historical scholarship, as we increasingly move beyond “modernity” as a dominant conceptual anchor, engaging with practices and discourses of development opens more precise analytical pathways. These film and media’s entanglements with the logics of and economic and the associated with as well as their conceptual underdevelopment, and impact in as diverse as and of media aesthetic and paradigms in film and film and funding are developmentalist assumptions to the they to underwrite the narrative and logics of and global media from the structure of the film to the cultures of argue that a examination of the historical entanglements between film and developmentalist aesthetics, modes of as well as infrastructures and critical the and that our contemporary media is a of the historical contours of development as a field of inquiry embedded within a of some of the methodologies by the featured in this special a of this complex history, to the larger at in media, development, and gender all its development a it as an of be with practices as divergent as and in In as we work on this the of the of the USAID the ideological that have the history of international the and of this on the global its a from development as a global practice and as an institutional and which over the has as a with its own media Yet or does not erase the historical impact of these the contradictions they have reflected and over the as the of development several crucial to the economic theories of development initiatives to and through the of the development an international policy framework at from the Global to the of the Global the by the political role of and the of the International the on was challenged by dependency theory and at development as global structural the neoliberal of the the Programs by the and World imposed and as conditions for and forms of assistance became known as the major markers for international development development has moving beyond economic to such as the Human Development and the Development and from international organizations such as the United Nations to a broader network of These frameworks increasingly of and liberal of and with what in many ways to various while the of the to development’s epistemological more scholarship has toward a of its and material the field has to a of and critical by and scholars, which development as a dynamic of conceptual and political to these the studies in this special issue call for sustained analysis in place of In we draw from a of and that in of of gender and to this special issue engage that and from Mexico to contemporary specific local historical of global distinctly feminist methodologies as well as attention to studies that this issue a in the global history of development on and documentary work in Mexico how early women infrastructures as of while US films an early of state and transnational on a outside the Global as the of developmentalist both the and markers of development media, its to the and Latin central grounded in archival also women’s in transnational and the methodological of archives on study of the series to a a digital media not by but by women not as but as subjects and within circuits of neoliberal and the aesthetics and of how development’s has models of to contemporary neoliberal paradigms of and analysis how digital and gender and practices, discourses on and their of these essays the of some of the historical of developmentalist as the question of the role of the state within such on a notion of economic as a and the dominant of development that the state as the for and through infrastructural projects. This understanding of development was shared across both of the as well as in the Third The United and the increasingly mobilized international in the of the modes of international at the postcolonial of policy and ideological These programs were at the expansion of their and of while with the and decolonial of The conceptual between modernization and development that the Cold in of and hierarchies of that long and As an of postcolonial their role as of international aid concern about the of Western development projects. In alternative across the Global South that to structural between and through policies of and In many they were further the global structures. In Latin for example, this approach was through organizations such as the United Nations for Latin and the both developmentalist projects and their have taken many forms historically, and they have and they have been to a of projects, and postcolonial and development has been and in ways and with frequently political While many of these alternative frameworks the embedded in dominant Western they often technocratic and assumptions. gender and gender as for the of to be shaped by This becomes particularly in the media that of development where women frequently a crucial associated with and women were as both the subjects and of their participation in the and labor often as the index of In this study of from the 1970s how women were as of this as these about women’s urban and recurring and of a within the own of and critique that official examination of archives and enables a feminist interrogation of their mobilizing a of the in the of contribution to this issue similarly the of a dynamic within as well as across ideological the of women’s and the media of the and as active in labor and as integral to the technocratic women became of as their labor remained a of and analysis and archival with attention to the specific of and It also transnational that as a and affective a nexus of and practices through which gender, media, and developmentalism one film not as a but as part of the of alongside and work a broader concern of this special media as a of developmentalist projects. The debates the World and which international such as the United Nations and a critical historical for such primarily by postcolonial and of the for the of media and communication infrastructures in as to counter Western The a between and economic how systems of media and reinforced global hierarchies of and in an agenda that supported and alternative media infrastructures across postcolonial contexts, the framework gender as an analytical This “gender in the 1970s by of the Women in Development in relation to The Double its political critique of with its broader to center women in development policy through and This was also in of media, which was shaped by its international reach and audiovisual production and and and Yet, as WID institutional it also to the and of the women’s development programs often by in These were by a of studies, and on and the to of women’s presence and through the of their economic and In this on the filmmaker this history directly by the and of for women by the WID framework during the with and agencies the of and against Women in at the of the neoliberal turn, when institutional media often the only to access and support to projects. The an by this dynamic as of the from the Global South are to engage with the developmentalist assumptions funding models that their similarly the as a in developmentalist media history by the of and centers on the Film a between of and the attention toward the and labor by and work was foundational the of and the of audiovisual aid, as both a of development projects and a critical for their the in this issue argue for a with media, gender, and developmentalism as an field of that is and shaped by feminist and methodologies and that challenge the entanglements between academic knowledge production and and technocratic development And while methodological these dynamics at the structural the of feminist in media and cinema by this the very a