Partnerships, power & privilege: a critical investigation of development partnerships between UK & Nepal civil society organisations

In recent decades, partnerships in international development (ID) have been heralded as a key dimension towards enabling sustainable and equal collaborations with the aim of increasing the efficiency and success of development interventions. Development partnerships (DPs) are expected to facilitate ‘good’ relations and practices between Northern and Southern civil society organisations (CSOs) working to alleviate the effects of poverty. While academic and practice-based research focuses mainly on the benefits of DPs for their expected results and benefits in ID, few examine the influence of organisational, institutional or sectoral environments and how these produce power imbalances in DPs between CSOs. Moreover, little empirical evidence contemplates the differentiated impacts of power asymmetries on Southern CSOs, or the strategies developed to resist these. Using a Critical Participatory Action Research approach, this study investigates power asymmetries within a DP involving a UK charity and a Nepali non-governmental organisation. Working with both CSOs during a year-long immersive fieldwork in 2018-2019, the thesis examines the specificities and opportunities of this particular DP and the ways that power asymmetries are produced, navigated and resisted. Drawing on postcolonial, feminist, critical and Foucauldian theories, the research explores three key issues: the production, mobilisation, circulation and effects of partnerial narratives and conceptualisations; the multidimensional production of power asymmetries in DPs; and finally, how power asymmetries are mitigated by development stakeholders in DPs. The findings point to the propensity of power asymmetries throughout all DPs relations, communications, practices and inter-individual interactions. The pressures exerted by external development stakeholders, of which Northern CSOs, donors and institutional agencies, curtail the margins of manoeuvre for Southern CSOs. However, this thesis concludes that resistances are produced concomitantly to power asymmetries, allowing Southern CSOs to reclaim agency in DP enactment, and suggests that Northern CSOs have critical roles to play as ‘allies’ to support their partners