Позитивные изменения. Том 2, № 3 (2022). Positive changes. Volume 2, Issue 3 (2022) - Редакция журнала «Позитивные изменения»

Developed as a standalone methodology in the 1990s, theory of change has now become mainstream in the field of international development projects. Its key value is a paradigm shift with respect to social change projects. Up until the late 1990s, projects used to operate following the “black box” principle: resources and activities are fed into the system as inputs, and social results are achieved at the output in an unknown manner. The theory of change “unpacks” the black box and looks at causal mechanisms in achieving social outcomes through chosen actions. This makes the project more substantiated and more explicit in its content, and therefore more understandable to investors and implementers.

RELATED CONCEPTS: WHAT SIMILAR TOOLS EXIST

Along with the theory of change, there are a number of other tools that are occasionally presented as theory of change.

• A theory of change is a narrative description, usually accompanied by a graphic or visual breakdown of how and why a goal or result is expected to be achieved in a particular context. It establishes causal relationships between the elements of the project: what specific results can be expected if the activities are performed and the assumptions are correct.

• A logic model is a graphical or visual representation of a theory of change that illustrates the relationship between what a project will do and what it hopes to achieve.

• Logical framework (LogFrame) is a type of logic model presented in a table format that provides a simplified description of how the project should function, following the format of a linear chain of causes and effects.

It is worth noting that the theory of change is not just a table or a flowchart, but a narrative text describing not only causal relationships from activities to results, but also indicating the prerequisites that need to be met in order to meet the assumptions about these or those relationships. The theory of change is characterized by a non-linear structure and the recognition that the success of a project depends not only on its implementers, but is also determined by other factors that need to be considered as well as the activities within the project.

RUSSIAN EXPERIENCE IN THE USE OF THEORY OF CHANGE

An overview of the Russian experience related to the use of theory of change should begin with a story about the expert note “Application of the Theory of Change for Strategic Audit and Strategic Planning in Russia” by the Center for Advanced Management Solutions and the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation. An article by Maria Shklyaruk, General Director of the Center, published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, describes the specifics of the first steps towards the use of theory of change at the federal level — this tool is being introduced as a way to link strategic goals and a list of activities needed to achieve those goals, with a separate focus on the socio-economic effect being achieved. The work cites, among others, an academic article by Carol Weiss, who is considered the author of the term “theory of change”, with a thesis that achieving social and economic effects requires a reasonable assumption about the implementation mechanisms (Shklyaruk, 2020).

By now the expert note of this collective of authors (Kim, Kopytok, 2020) seems to be the most reasonable and structured adaptation of the theory of change for the Russian context — at least for use in planning state programs. It is accompanied by practical examples of public administration, for example, the problem tree of a social contract project aimed at assisting job seekers. The tree “branches” go from a high-level problem, such as a high level of poverty, down to the specific causes of the problem — say, ineffectiveness of the traditional social support measures for a number of social groups. A very important observation is made in the paragraph on measuring performance in the absence of the necessary data: here the authors spell out the strongest advantage of the theory of change approach to assessing change, which is that having a reasonable assumption about cause-and-effect relationships fills evidentiary gaps.

The theory of change is characterized by a non-linear structure and the recognition that the success of a project depends not only on its implementers, but is also determined by other factors.

An example of the use of theory of change in Russia outside the public sector, which received wide coverage due to its mention in the first Russian-language manual on the topic, is the theory of change developed in 2010–2011 by the Victoria Children Foundation (Kuzmin, Kosheleva, 2014). The case is often referred to in a variety of workshops on developing a theory of change, such as webinars by Evolution and Philanthropy, Skolkovo Moscow School of Management: they emphasize the structure of the theory of change, pointing out the importance of formulating assumptions/ conditions and mapping results in reverse order. It is worth noting that in the Russian experience the theory of change is not substituted with a logical framework. Also, various Russian interpretations of this concept, which quote the Victoria Children Foundation as reference, contain the same set of elements of the theory of change: inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, impact.

The principles of theory of change are also used in the Standard for Evidence-Based Social Practices in Childhood, developed with support from the Timchenko Foundation, the Center for Evidence-Based Social Design at Moscow State University of Psychology and Pedagogy, and the Presidential Grants Fund. The importance of these principles is that they show the indispensability of the theory of change for assessing social impact. In order to evaluate a project, it is necessary to have a prescribed theory of change in order to formulate the subject of measurement. A sociological article on subjective well-being change points out that the theory of change, which specifies activities and a chain of social outcomes (Archakova & Garifulina, 2020), is used to define “well-being.” It was noted earlier that the concept of well-being is