Achieving sustainable and just development outcomes requires more than identifying what works and what doesn’t. While evidence-based insights are vital, they offer only part of the picture. In today’s interconnected world, development is shaped by complex, multi-level policy environments involving a wide array of actors and interests.
A fragmented and interconnected policy arena
Contemporary development processes unfold across multiple governance levels—from local communities to national governments and international institutions. These spaces are populated by:
A diversity of actors: including state and non-state entities, private sector actors, civil society organisations, informal networks, and even criminal groups;
Competing interests and values: where definitions of justice and sustainability are often contested;
Intersecting scales of influence: where local decisions have global consequences, and vice versa.
This complexity makes the development arena inherently political and dynamic, requiring continual negotiation and reinterpretation of goals, responsibilities, and strategies.
Beyond global imposition: mutual transformation
Rather than seeing globalisation as a unidirectional force shaping local realities, this perspective highlights the interactive nature of local-global dynamics. Local actors do not merely respond to global trends—they also shape them. As anthropologist Gillian Hart (2006) argues, these "local-global encounters" hold the potential to transform both the local and the global.
This insight challenges simplistic models that separate global influence from local agency, and instead emphasises co-constitution—a process in which local and global structures evolve together through continuous engagement.
The necessity of multi-level governance
In such a fragmented and pluralistic context, multi-level governance is not simply a policy option—it is a structural necessity. The coexistence of divergent perspectives on what constitutes justice, how sustainability should be pursued, and what mechanisms can deliver change, demands governance arrangements that:
Accommodate diversity and disagreement;
Coordinate across institutional and spatial boundaries;
Enable learning, adaptation, and dialogue across levels and sectors.
Understanding development as a multi-level, multi-actor process thus calls for a more nuanced and politically informed approach—one that moves beyond technical solutions to engage with the deeper power dynamics, normative debates, and institutional complexities that shape development outcomes.