“Frameworkers” and “Circlers”–Exploring Assumptions in Impact Assessment

This chapter was borne out of a need to bring together two contending constituencies and their arguments about why and how to identify impact in peacebuilding initiatives in practice. The two constituencies, which I call “frameworkers” and “circlers”, involve sets of people who blend across the lines of development and conflict transformation work and possess very different arguments about how to conceptualise and operationalise issues of impact and change in programme design, monitoring and evaluation. The differences matter in a practical sense for workers in international and national non-governmental organisations (NGOs) because their views often clash during programme design, monitoring and evaluation processes, and leave both sides dissatisfied. The groups also matter for conceptual reasons because they capture unspoken differences that hinder people’s ability to talk clearly about impact and change, what matters, how people “know what they know” about impact and change and, therefore, how they do their peacebuilding work. Unmasking the conceptual debates can improve our ability to speak about and achieve effectiveness and impact.