Agenda Setting and its Positioning Strategies: a study of asymmetries, tensions, frames and organising choices shaping development interventions in Cali, Colombia.

Modernising the global south is not a new project. Yet, the persistent redefinition of
existing and new development challenges – from inequalities to climate-change crises –
shapes the agreement on the causes of problems, their solutions, and the organisation of
concerted action to ensure successful interventions. Simply put, if the definitions of
conditions change, some kind of response to that change might be required or demanded.
That could happen by pushing for adjustments to the agenda for development – its
problems and goals – and also by pressing for reconsidering how those supposed to
implement the agenda, such as not-for-profit organisations (NPOs), do so. So, to shed
light on this matter, this investigation studied two interconnected phenomena: agenda-
setting and organising development interventions in Colombia.

This investigation establishes how partner NPOs, in two long-lasting programmes, make
sense of the global agenda for development and its re-framing. And how that sense-
making interacts with the institutional logics and discourses within the field, leading to
choices, compromises and the formulation of tactics, all of which impacted how these
partner organisations agreed to tackle social problems in Cali, Colombia. The study of
this complex causal relationship – between agenda-setting mechanisms, logics and
discourses, and the micro-level organising of interventions – was found to lead to several
outcomes, such as a municipal hybrid agenda for modernisation and two micro-level
tactics (i.e., flexible problematisation and contribution goals); all these underpinning the
rise of two paradoxes (i.e., dislocation and disneyfication). These findings resulted from
the analysis of three case studies and 35 interviews with academics and professionals with
expertise in designing and implementing interventions, municipal planning and public
policy formulation. The analysis of the information gathered was contrasted against
4 development goals and other expectations found in documents generated by UN agencies,
Colombian governmental authorities, and accounts presented to international and national
funding organisations.

The main contributions of this investigation, relevant to the fields of development and
public relations, are as follows: a) the identification of the routes through which macro
and meso-level agendas reach the micro-level of development intervention, b)
establishing the tensions and asymmetries, which are exploited by funding organisations
to ensure institutional agendas are adopted regardless of how those agendas relate to local
conditions and hence the problems faced by communities in Colombia, c) establishing
the marginalisation of local NPOs and, by extension, the communities these organisations
represent and d) revealing the agenda-positioning strategies implemented by NPOs
operating in the country.