CJL Announces a New Collaboration with CARE Netherlands: Exploring the Role of Social Norms Among Public Authorities

The Corruption, Justice and Legitimacy Program is thrilled to announce the launch of a new collaboration with CARE Netherlands, The Hague Academy, and CARE country offices in Burundi, Rwanda, and Sudan as part of our Social Norms and Corruption Project (SNAC). Co-designed over several months, this collaboration will explore both practical know-how and theoretical perspectives of social norms change on issues related to transparency and accountability – specifically among public authorities.

This collaboration is guided by a few core questions: How do social norms intersect with or impact official duty-bearers? Do they differ from broader societal norms or simply mirror them? How would practitioners or policymakers identify and change negative norms associated with transparency and accountability in public authorities?

CARE Netherland’s Every Voice Counts program, through programming and research, has identified social norms as a key component to building effective and inclusive governance efforts in fragile and post-conflict settings, primarily targeting increased engagement and inclusion of women and youth. Lending our expertise in social norms change theory, CJL will be guiding CARE through a reflective learning process to explore their existing know-how in order to better inform EVC programming. In turn, this collaboration will offer SNAC the opportunity to not only learn from the breadth of experience across CARE, but also grow and refine the theory and tools laid out in our Social Norms Reference Guide for Policy and Practice.  

Practitioner collaborations such as this are integral to the SNAC Project, as we strive to shift social norms from a peripheral component of anti-corruption work, to a central point. As such, we are proud to join with CARE to create learning opportunities and engage researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers in this space.

Subscribe to the Corruption in Fragile States Blog, where we will post regular updates on our events, learnings, and research throughout this collaboration.