GEOFORMATIONS · Geographies of dynamic governance assemblages in development cooperation civil society spaces

Interacting socio-political, economic, and environmental crises are destabilizing efforts to attain the global vision entailed in UN Agenda 2030. The need for adaptive and inclusive development cooperation governance has never been stronger. As complex needs accelerate due to the coronavirus pandemic, rapidly changing climates, and increasing levels of conflict and human insecurity, trust and legitimacy in traditional institutions and actors is weak and declining. In efforts to achieve greater development effectiveness, the international development cooperation sector is shifting towards new ways of working, including increased localization, decolonization, greater coherence across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, and adapting development practice to support deeper engagement with civil society actors. However, how these changes affect governance structures and processes within non-profit non-governmental and civil society organizations (CSOs) is not well understood. With an estimated 37,000 autonomous entities, understanding how, why, and in what ways CSOs assemble governance structures and interact to ensure effective and appropriate governance of development programs is critically important to trust and legitimacy in this sector. To date, no research has systematically examined the relational and spatial dynamics of CSO governance chains. Nor have comprehensive evaluation frameworks for such assemblages yet been developed. Using core geographical concepts of place, space, and scale, drawing upon ground-breaking methodologies of assemblage thinking and critical realist evaluation, combined with innovations in organizational theory through issue framing, GEOFORMATIONS will provide radical new insights into the governance geographies of place-based development cooperation practices which can be used to radically redesign international development cooperation governance theory, policy, and practice.