Ride the Wind but Know the Tide
by Gopa Thampi and Nicola Nixon, TWP Community of Practice, University of Birmingham & Asia Foundation, April 2025
TWP-CoP-TAF-Story-of-change.pdf
1. Introduction
This case study provides an example of Thinking and Working Politically (TWP) in practice, by unpacking The Asia Foundation’s efforts to support reform of Sri Lanka’s subnational governance sector from 2005 to 2020. This work built upon several decades of support to strengthen democracy, resolve conflict, and encourage greater citizen participation in policymaking since The Asia Foundation (TAF) first established its office in Sri Lanka in 1954. The study seeks to show how the TAF subnational governance programme – comprising a sequence of projects over that time – ‘worked politically’ by focusing on and successfully navigating the political dynamics of devolution, prioritising locally owned and driven solutions, encouraging experimentation and iteration, and working with coalitions of reform-minded actors. In doing so, it contributed to addressing key developmental challenges the country faced at the time: poor access to basic services, limited government accountability and citizens’ mistrust of formal institutions, in both urban and rural areas.
Importantly, TAF recognised the integral role of informal norms, relationships, and incentives in shaping formal policies and institutions. While these underlying dynamics are considerably more challenging to alter, sustainable changes to formal governance structures and processes can be achieved only by strategically introducing and reinforcing alternative incentive frameworks that influence both formal and informal institutions within the system. It is therefore an example of the long-term application of TWP, in which TAF prioritised trust-based relationships, a deep understanding of what motivates key actors and agencies, and interventions that built on those to spur reform.
The paper looks at the evolution of the subnational governance programme in Sri Lanka over several key periods in the country’s recent history, including the final stages of a 26-year civil war (see Box 1), the post-war reconstruction, rapid political transitions, a constitutional crisis, terror attacks, and finally and most recently a debilitating economic crisis. We describe how the TAF team collaborated with local partners – including local authority mayors and chairpersons, chief ministers of provinces, urban and rural council commissioners, and secretaries and staff within various government institutions, as well as international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), multilateral development banks, civil society organisations (CSOs), unions, and community-based organisations (CBOs) – to deploy locally grounded TWP approaches and strategies to facilitate meaningful and sustained policy reforms.
Looking back over a 15-year timeframe, the paper details the ways in which a series of consecutive projects successfully supported key improvements in local governance including: (1) institutionalised participatory planning and budgeting processes, first in 47 local government authorities1 and later in
1Sri Lanka is divided into nine provinces, each governed by a Provincial Council, which has authority over sectors such as education, health,
agriculture, and local governance. Under the Provincial Councils there are Local Authorities, of which there are three types: Municipal
Councils (MCs) – for major cities (e.g., Colombo, Kandy, Galle); Urban Councils (UCs) – for smaller towns; and Pradeshiya Sabhas (PSs) – for
rural areas.
2
all 341 through a national framework; (2) improved the national and subnational policy and legal environment for devolved subnational governance; and (3) developed local authority capabilities to deliver improved public services and engage with the private sector to bolster local economic development. Taken together, these improvements have made local governance more resilient to changing political and economic conditions and more responsive to diverse community needs.
Box 1: The Sri Lankan Civilian War (1983–2009)
The Sri Lankan civil war was a prolonged and devastating
armed conflict between the Sri Lankan government and
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), spanning from
1983 to 2009. Rooted in long-standing ethnic tensions
between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority,
the war resulted in approximately 150,000 casualties and
widespread displacement of civilians.
The war was driven by historical grievances, including
policies perceived as discriminatory against the Tamil
population. Notably, the 1956 Sinhala-Only Act and post
independence political decisions led to reduced Tamil
representation in governance, fuelling demands for
autonomy. Over the following decades, peaceful protests
and political negotiations by Tamil parties failed to yield
meaningful reforms. In response, the LTTE, under the
leadership of Velupillai Prabhakaran, sought to establish
an independent Tamil state – Tamil Eelam, in the north
eastern regions of Sri Lanka. The war was characterised
by intense insurgency tactics, including suicide bombings,
targeted assassinations, and large-scale military
operations. Both parties to the conflict were accused of
serious human rights violations.
This case study is structured as follows:
Following this Introduction, Section 2 provides a brief history of the political economy of subnational governance in Sri Lanka, outlining the context in which these local governance improvements were pursued. Section 3 describes three overlapping pathways that TAF traversed to improve local governance in Sri Lanka over 15 years. It provides an overview of the cumulative effort across those programmes that led to sustainable reforms. Section 4 looks at what TAF learned from these programme experiences. Within this context, and with the benefit of hindsight, this last section also considers what TAF could or should have done differently in Sri Lanka. It also summarises some of the successful processes and lessons that TAF and local authorities implemented, such as participatory budgeting and planning, and improvements to tax collection and spending transparency, which have contributed to improving governance at the national level.
The paper derives largely from programme monitoring data and reports produced throughout that time, some of which are public and some of which donors have retained as internal documents.2 These were supplemented with several key informant interviews with former TAF staff and donor partners carried out in late 2024 3.
2For instance, an external evaluation undertaken by Triple N Consulting, Melbourne, in 2018.
3Interviewees included former strategic and technical advisors for the local governance programme from 2005 to 2015, a provincial
programme officer, two provincial Commissioners of Local Government, a Community Development Officer associated with a local authority,
and a former donor official.
Contents
Acronyms ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 1
1. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2
2. The Political Economy of Subnational Governance in Sri Lanka ……………………………………………………… 4
3. Economy-focused and Participatory Pathways ………………………………………………………………………………… 7
3.1 Identifying entry points ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 7
3.2 After a tsunami and during a civil war (2005–2009) ………………………………………………………………………. 9
Institutionalising more meaningful participatory local governance ………………………………………………… 9
Improved local resource allocation and distribution ……………………………………………………………………… 11
An entry point to the provincial level ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 14
3.3 Consolidation in peacetime (2009–2014) …………………………………………………………………………………….. 15
More inclusive and accountable local governance …………………………………………………………………………. 17
The uphill path to changing internal incentives ……………………………………………………………………………… 18
3.4 Political turbulence (2015–2020) …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 19
4. Lessons from TAF’s Experience of Promoting Subnational Governance Reforms over the Long
Term ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 24
References ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 28