The [not so] Secret Ingredients to Tech-Enabled Programs
The Golden Triangle
I've written a related post on this topic before, but my recent talk at Stanford's Liberation Technology seminar provided an opportunity to "flesh out" our thinking on this topic a little further.
To be most effective in bringing about political reform, technology tools should be used to support well-organized political activities by strong organizations – such as civic groups or political parties. These should include long-term plans for peaceful change that involves a gradual opening of political space.
The NDI approach to tech-enabled programs is to marry appropriate technologies and approaches to specific organizing methods. This is designed to increase the impact of a well-organized political organization’s activities.
Our experience suggests that three factors need to be in place to succeed:
- good technologies,
- strong organizations, and
- well-established and or well-executed political activities.
The introduction of these tools in the absence of good civic or political organization will not result in the desired outcomes. The right tools placed in the hands of well-organized partners can help seize these moments of opportunity.
An example from a recent NDI program helps illustrates how a moment of opportunity can be seized using the combination of those three components:
You may recall the 2008 Zimbabwe presidential and parliamentary election. After a first round of voting and 5 weeks of stalling, the ruling ZANU-PF regime announced that Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party, had won the most votes, but not a majority.
They then declared that a run-off election would be held. The ruling regime then proceeded to terrorize MDC party members across the country, causing Tsvangirai to pull out of the election. This resulted in President Mugabe being sworn in to another presidential term shortly thereafter.
However, negotiations mediated by Thabo Mbeki of South Africa helped created of a Government of National Unity with representatives from both parties. Tsvangirai is now Prime Minister and the MDC holds several cabinet ministries.
Here is the backstory on how that unfolded.