Certainly true. There are many devils in many details, and the distinctions are often not clear... the transition from relief to reconstruction and development is particularly challenging and particularly complex.
I do think, though, that from the point of view of an amateur development practitioner, such as a military officer with CERP funds at hand, the distinctions form a framework for beginning to understand the challenges.
One thing that often creates problems, particularly with action-oriented foreigners with little time in an area and a problem-solving mentality, is the tendency to arrive at quick diagnoses and quick prescriptions. This can have exceedingly disruptive and sometimes disastrous consequences. I can't count the number of times I've seen a basically competent (and usually Western) outsider walk into a new environment, look around in a full circle, and declare that it makes no sense for everyone to be doing something this way when it could be done that way, which is so much better. I also can't count the number of times I've reminded people that if the way things are working doesn't make any sense to you it doesn't mean the people involved are stupid or irrational... it means there's probably something in the picture you don't know about.
Of course nobody listens, but I repeat it anyway, at every opportunity...
Also true... but fixing something that was there before and was destroyed has less inherent disruptive potential than trying to introduce something new. It can of course be argued (and has been) that disruption is at times desirable... but that road can lead to a lot of places, some of them very complicated indeed.
Very true... and very often folks in the development community end up taking directions their judgment tells them to avoid. That happens for a lot of reasons, not least the reality that agendas in the aid industry are often set by donors and funders, not by practitioners or intended beneficiaries.
A very good sense of the stakeholder dynamics is very useful... but that can be many years in coming and a practitioner forced by circumstance to work in an unfamiliar environment often has to do without it. Coming from the perspective of the guy who went native, I think sometimes the rank novice to an area has an advantage over the guy with a mere 2-3 years in. At least the rank novice knows he's ignorant. The guy with only 2-3 years is still ignorant but thinks he's not... that's when it gets really dangerous!
Genuine local buy-in is also good, but it's often hard to know when it's genuine, and it is wise to remember this (again assuming the pose of the old man on the mountaintop, preaching to the sky):
When the local buy-in comes quick and easy and seems ever so genuine, and when the locals buying in tell you exactly what you most want to hear... beware, for you are probably being worked.
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