Power and Impact Assessment:

Towards a research agenda?

Matthew Cashmore (m.cashmore@uea.ac.uk).

School of Environmental Sciences,
University of East Anglia.
Seminar structure.

Background.
Power and impact assessment.
The policy of IA.
The design of IA.
Discussion.

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Background 1.

IA as an analytical focus.
“A family of ex ante techniques and procedures … that seek to
inform decision makers by predicting and evaluating the
consequences of various activities” (Owens et al., 2004).

Important feature of contemporary governance.

(Still) Overwhelmingly portrayed as neutral instruments.
Paucity of research on all aspects of the politics of IA (types 3 & 4).

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Background 2.

The politics of impact assessment.

Two day workshop on the politics of ‘policy appraisal’ held in Cambridge
in 2007.
One day workshop in Uppsala in 2008 on the effectiveness of impact
assessment.

Policy and politics of policy appraisal: Emerging trends and new directions.
Turnpenny et al. 2009.
Effectiveness of IA: Theorising their political constitution. Cashmore, Richardson
et al. 2010.

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Analysing power.
Form of power
1. Power created by social order
2. Power created by system bias
3. Power created by systems of thought
4. Power created by tacit knowledge
5. Power created by reification
6. Power created by discipline
7. Coercion
Adapted from Haugaard, 2003
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Explanation
Possibilities for the exercise of power arise from the production and
acceptance of societal rules which makes peoples’ actions predictable.
Social order precludes, or at least views as illegitimate, actions which do
not conform to the ‘rules of the game’. Possibilities for empowerment and
disempowerment are created through such ‘system biases’.
Possibilities for power creation derived from the way a system of thought
(i.e. an actor’s interpretive horizon or frame) makes certain actions or
thoughts incommensurable with the way in which they make sense of the
world.
Empowerment by making actors aware of how tacit knowledge structures
social order, and thereby raising this tacit knowledge to discursive
consciousness.
Power created through the reification of system biases by actors believing
that they are more than arbitrary social constructs (e.g. for reasons of
tradition, religious beliefs, or scientific frames).
Power created through the internalisation of routines that prevent tacit
knowledge from being raised to discursive consciousness, leading to
predictable behaviour through the maintenance of system biases.
Coercion through actual, or threats of, violence. Occurs when the exercise
of power within the social system (1-6) fails.
Goals of initial forays.

Raising to ‘discursive consciousness’.

Challenging the self-evident/ accepted wisdom.
Effectiveness as a contested, power imbued concept.
IA as value neutral, benign, etc.
Opening a dialogue on research themes and directions.

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The policy and use of impact
assessment:
IA as a tool of governmentality.
Political dimensions of IA.

Based on the premise of engendering change in values underlying

policy formulation.
Governance norms draw boundaries around how policy issues
are framed, analysed and debated: e.g. meta analysis.
Concern distributional justice (e.g. allocation of resources) and
liberties.

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IA in use.

Use of IA in developing a “new cognitive mapping of Lao nature and

society” (Goldman, 2001).
Reform predicated on an environmental ethic: biodiversity
conservation.
International goals: served to open up Lao to Western business
interests.
National goals: dispossessed the non-Lao minority communities of
natural resources and livelihood.

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The design of impact assessment:
‘Institutional SEA’ and power creation in the
World Bank.
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The World Bank SEA model:
Innovations.

A central role for institutional analysis.

Policy and social learning as key mechanisms for sustainable
development.
Empowering stakeholders through governance reforms (e.g.
more participatory processes).
Greater involvement of vulnerable actors will promote equality.

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The outcomes of SEA in Bangladesh.

SEA goal Contribution in practice

1. Environmental and social policy Negligible.

integration in urban development.
2. Strengthen environmental Negligible.
constituencies.
3. Improve social accountability. Negligible.

4. Promote social/policy learning. Negligible/Some.

Elementary and fundamental design flaws in pilot programme.

Paradox of poor pilot programme design but high level of motivation for learning
lessons about ‘SEA’.

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Knowledge as a locus for the
expression of power.

Primary goal of pilot programme was to legitimise knowledge

claims on environmental policy.
Piloting allows WB to draw on cultural legitimacy of science.
‘Knowledge Bank’: access to special knowledge key currency
for generating and perpetuating social manifestations of power.

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Ethics and power research.

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Building a research agenda and
community?
Research themes from Turnpenny
et al.

What are the motivations for using IA? Why has it emerged and
taken root?
How has the IA research agenda been constructed?
What forms of power are produced through IA and how?
Under what conditions may the use of IA challenge frames?
When is this legitimate?
Microcontext of power in IA: e.g. how do institutional rules affect
the allocation of benefits and losses?

November 4, 2021