Lessons from the Capacitating Change programme
This report was commissioned by Cordaid, The Hague, The Netherlands. It is the result of a study carried out to help tackle the simultaneous challenges of linking advocacy efforts at different levels, while at the same time advancing localization. I want to thank Koen Faber for supporting the study throughout, and Martín Secaira for initiating it. Many thanks also to the many other Cordaid Global Office, Country Office and partner organization staff members who have taken the time to share their experiences, reflections and viewpoints. 

Reetika Syal, Margit van Wessel, Sarbeswar Sahoo

Existing research on civil society organizations (CSOs) facing restricted civic space largely focuses on the crackdown on freedoms and CSOs’ strategies to handle these restrictions, often emphasizing impact on their more confrontational public roles. However, many CSOs shape their roles through collaborative relations with government. Drawing on interviews with state agencies and CSOs, this article analyes state–CSO collaboration in the restricted civic space context of disaster risk reduction in India. Findings are that the shaping of CSOs’ roles through collaboration under conditions of restricted civic space is only partly defined by the across-the-board restrictive policies that have been the focus of much existing research on restricted civic space and its implications for CSOs.

 Suparana Katyaini, Margit van Wessel, and Sarbeswar Sahoo

 This article focuses on development organizations’ construction of representative roles in their work at the environment–development interface and on implications of these constructions for inclusiveness. While much of the past literature on repre-sentation has dealt with electoral representation, this article highlights the impor-tance of nonelectoral representation. It follows a constructivist approach and is based on 36 in-depth interviews with the staff of different types of India-based development organizations working on disaster risk management. The article shows how development organizations in India contribute to inclusive development by representing groups that are vulnerable to disaster risk in diverse ways.