The Cloudburst Group’s DRG LER II Quarterly Report #3: APR-JUNE 2019

The report describes the status of all tasking requests received under the contract. Active tasks in this quarter include dissemination, Armenia assessments, Zimbabwe Political Party Assessment, Global Labor Collective Action Evidence Review, Election Assessment and Programmatic Framework Development, Sustainable Landscapes, and Global Labor Future of Work Evidence Review. Key activities conducted this quarter include conducting fieldwork in Armenia for both the Civil Society and Media (CSM) and Integrity Systems/Rule of Law (IS/ROL) assessments, creating a teaser video for "The DRG Show," a video series based on primers that will relay key information on democracy, human rights, and governance to USAID staff, and submitting the final Evidence Review on Global Labor Collective Action. The Cloudburst Group continued work on the three separate sub-sector assessments for USAID/Armenia related to governance, civil society and media (CSM), and integrity systems/rule of law (IS/ROL). Each assessment is rooted in an evidence review, with an emphasis on analysis-based, actionable, operational recommendations that can assist with strategic and programmatic decisions. The CSM analysis and IS/ROL assessments include field assessments, with fieldwork occurring in both field assessments this quarter (April-May). The assessments involved three weeks of qualitative fieldwork in Armenia, including visits outside the capital, to gain a broader perspective of sub-sector challenges and opportunities. The Zimbabwe Political Party Assessment involves a Political Party Assessment in Zimbabwe that will answer questions about the current state of Zimbabwe's political party system and potential avenues for USAID support. The assessment methodology includes a desk review, three weeks of fieldwork in Harare and the surrounding areas, and development of a report, to take place in the third quarter of 2019. The assessment will aim to inform USAID's strategic development and programming, and the timeline is condensed to allow for these findings to influence programming for the upcoming year. The Global Labor Collective Action Evidence Review explores the effects of transnational campaigns to support freedom of association in the context of global labor collective action. This evidence review analyzes core literature on community unionism, grassroots transnational activism, and other strands of research that shed light on the factors contributing to successful and unsuccessful outcomes in these types of transnational campaigns to investigate the conditions under which campaigns featuring cooperation between workers and other actors in broader civil society are effective in opening democratic space and supporting labor rights in developing countries. The Election Assessment and Programmatic Framework Development tasking aims to further develop and finalize an Electoral Assessment Framework that will serve DRG officers in assessing the electoral and political environment in a host country and identifying key needs. During this quarter, the consultant, senior advisor, and the Election and Political Transition co-authors had frequent phone calls and collaborated on multiple drafts of a document outlining the framework. The Cloudburst Group also prepared a two-page "Menu of Research Services" for the DRG Center to distribute internally. The document explains and compares various research methods across dimensions such as confidence in results, cost, and time to complete. Additionally, the team began drafting the script for the first full video, based on the "What is Democracy?" teaser, and coordinated the team of research assistants, recruited FGD participants, and scheduled key informant interviews for the Zimbabwe Political Party Assessment.