Does your strategy, project or organisation foster development – or reinforce erosion?
In development · October 2026 · developed by Peter Urs Aeberhard, THAC
Status: the RSF Quality Assessment is being developed and tested. It is not yet available. This page explains what it will do.
Explore how relationships and institutional conditions shape people’s ability to act, cooperate, learn and contribute. Identify patterns that strengthen fair, reliable institutions and collective agency, as well as those that deepen exclusion, mistrust and fragmentation.
The assessment considers direction, for whom, and at which level – and identifies practical opportunities for change. It can be carried out on your own, as a self-assessment, or with THAC.
The central question: direction
Development means, in the RSF:
- people can develop their abilities, have a say and contribute;
- institutions act more reliably and fairly;
- cooperation, learning and the repair of harm are strengthened;
- shared capacity to act and opportunities for development grow.
Erosion means:
- room to act narrows;
- exclusion, arbitrariness and mistrust increase;
- the capacity to learn, to repair and to act together declines.
Both can happen at the same time – for different groups and at different levels. The assessment therefore gives no simple overall verdict. External pressure can matter, but it is neither the core nor a required category of its own.
What it looks at
The assessment follows the logic of the Relational Systems Framework (RSF):
- Conditions – predictability, reciprocity, recognition, social embeddedness: are they in place, and for whom?
- Functions – regulation, coordination, connection, adaptation, repair: are they provided for?
- Outcomes – trust, safety, legitimacy, belonging, cooperation: what can grow from their interaction?
Only the result is translated into THAC’s three dimensions: empower people, strengthen systems, build trust.
Three applications, three kinds of statement
| Application | Question | What it can say |
|---|---|---|
| Document review | Which direction do the planned measures plausibly favour? Which connections does the document consider, which remain open? | what a document provides for – not what happens in practice |
| Implementation review | Which practices and relational patterns actually occur – for whom and under which conditions? | what is observed in practice, with the sources stated |
| Impact analysis | Which changes appear over time, and what does the intervention contribute to them? | requires data over time and an independent design |
Evidence and direction are two different things
How well something is documented and which direction it points are assessed separately. A well-documented measure can still reinforce exclusion or mistrust.
The assessment does not equate:
- detailed documentation with positive development;
- a large area in a chart with high relational quality;
- a self-assessment with independently confirmed impact.
It is a reasoned assessment. It is not scientifically validated, it certifies nothing and it does not measure causal impact.
How it will be shown
Two RSF test runs on African agendas and strategies show how the RSF reads documents. Once the assessment is ready, they are to be repeated with it and published as a worked example.
RSF Review I → · RSF Review II → · Africa Initiative →
Until then
- The RSF page explains the framework and its limits. The RSF →
- An RSF Review with THAC applies the same questions to your strategy, with a written report. Work with THAC →
- For organisations, the self-assessment Trauma-Informed Organisation is already available. Trauma-Informed Organisation →
Questions or interest in testing it: peter.aeberhard@thac.ch · Contact
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