MattAndrews

What is Governance?

There is a really interesting discussion going on in response to Frank Fukuyama's article, 'What is Governance?' Governance discussionA number of commentators including Paolo de Renzio, Bo Rothstein and Chris Pollitt have responded to Frank's ideas and the discussion and debate is really interesting. My comment is below but be sure to check the link to read the others.

Andrews on “What is governance?”

Matt Andrews of Harvard Kennedy School responds to Francis Fukuyama’s “What is governance?”:

Frank Fukuyama’s article reminds us that we have a long way to go before we fully understand what governance is, let alone how it should be measured. The comments that other scholars have made in response to Fukuyama’s piece reinforce this message and reveal many strong and varied opinions and perspectives on this topic.  This rich discussion stands in contrast to the routine and overly-confident manner in which development organizations and many academics have used governance indicators and treated the concept of governance in recent years. I hope this confidence is tempered in future and that Fukuyama’s central question — What is Governance? — gets the attention it demands.I also like the way Fukuyama attempts to sidestep the normative dimension of the governance discussion and focuses on the way governments function. I know some disagree with this approach but I feel that it is the best way of thinking about the concept in a highly varied world.

I do take issue with the way this article presents critical concepts like capacity and autonomy, however. In my reading the approach here suggests a Weberian state in which the separation of politics and bureaucracy is both possible and positive. It seems to me that governments across the world are simply more complex than this and exist in collaborative relationships where capacity is at least partly a function of the interdependent relationships agencies and organizations foster with other governmental entities, civil society and the local and global private sectors. Politics is central to many of these relationships, which makes autonomy a complex concept and one that is not necessarily positive nor possible for modern governments.

I would love to see continued research into the fundamental questions about governance that Fukuyama is raising; using his basic approach, but taking the complexities of modern government-collaborative and interdependent as such is-into account.

Matt Andrews is an associate professor at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.  His book The Limits of Institutional Reform was published in 2012.

"Getting Stuff Done" Sina Odugbemi from the World Bank on the new book

The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development - Changing Rules for Realistic Solutions: Getting Stuff Done

Submitted by Sina Odugbemi on Thu, 02/21/2013 - 15:30

 

There is a silent struggle going regarding how you do governance reforms in development. It is between the prevailing tendency and a small but growing band of practitioners saying things need to be done differently. The prevailing tendency is the packaging of experts-devised best practice packages that we take from country to country…model anti-corruption laws, model designs for the civil service, procurement systems, and financial management systems and so on. Our highly trained experts are invested in their solutions, and the modern global system has a growing array of policy networks on every issue under the sun, and they amass and disseminate norms of ideal practice. So, donors and their experts move from one country to another, offering money, loans, and these packages.  So, how are things working out? Not very well is the answer. To use an Americanism; we are not getting stuff done that much when it comes to governance reforms, whatever the sector. Isn’t it high time we changed our ways?

If you are in any doubt about any of this and if you want to learn about how we might get more stuff done, you need to read as carefully and as avidly as you can an important new book on the subject: The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development – Changing Rules for Realistic Solutions. The author is Matt Andrews. He is an Associate Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. This is the kind of book that might turn out to be seminal if enough practitioners pay attention to it. For what he does is to review evidence from interventions from around the world in order to show beyond reasonable doubt that reforms exhibiting best practice bias have a dismal record, and many developing country governments have figured out how to manipulate international aid agencies. There are some truly hilarious stories about how they do this in the book. And donors keep falling for the tricks because of the nature of their own incentive structures. The book is filled with case studies from around the world. When you read the book please look for my favorite story: the two budgets trick (p. 119).

Andrews’ thesis, in my opinion, is summed up in the title of Chapter 4 of the book: Reforms are overspecified, solutions are oversimplified. That says it all. Reforms are overspecified because for every area of reform we have our prepackaged solutions…in detail. Solutions are oversimplified because donor agencies are not really keen on taking on the complexities of the specific context: the rules of the game, the disposition of interest groups, the state of local politics and so on. Too difficult; takes too long. We look for a local ‘champion’, launch the reform and hope for the best. When the desired change is not achieved or sustained we blame the natives, blame the realities on the ground in our evaluation reports, shrug our shoulders and move on. What Andrews does is analyze these widespread failures frankly and elegantly. I say elegantly because the diagrams in this book are brilliant; you will find your own favorites when you read the book.

But The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development does not encourage despair; rather the opposite. Andrews discusses in detail the minority of cases where reforms happened on the ground and were sustained; in other words, cases in which stuff got done. But before we sum up what unites these instances,  let’s discuss three aspects of the book that I like the most.

The first is the astute deployment of insights from the new institutionalists of political science and related social sciences. The book contains a rich discussion of complex institutional structures in different societies and how they shape the behavior of actors/agents. It also shows – not through mere theory but field research – how institutions change and under what conditions new ones take root. Andrews demonstrates that many of the reforms we seek in developing countries can only succeed when the rules of the game change but we are often too impatient or indifferent to really focus on this vital process.

The second aspect of the book that I really like is the push for a problem-driven rather than a solution-driven approach to reforms.  This is something communication specialists know and have been saying. You go to a country as a donor and you say there is a problem to be fixed. Well, as I like to ask, who says there is a problem? If those whose country it is do not see a problem, or they do not define the problem the way you do, well, we have a problem, don’t we? For, problem recognition and problem definition form the basis of mobilizing action and building support for a shared solution. These are crucial communicative processes.

Which brings me to the third aspect of the book that I really appreciate: Andrews’ insistence, backed by his case studies, that what fosters change is multi-agent or broad leadership…not the lone champion. As the reform process unfolds, these multiple agents provide multiple functions: there are conveners, there are connectors, and there are motivators and so on. There are elegant charts in Chapter 9 breaking all this down from real cases.  There is a lot of trade craft to be gleaned from these pages.

To sum up, what do successful reforms have in common as Andrews tells it? They have the following in common:

1. They  respond to context, especially the underlying rules of the game;
2. They focus on the problem be solved, a sense of which those whose country it is share;
3. They have multiagent leadership, not merely lone champions; and
4. They experiment and adapt, and are often incremental in their approach.

Andrews is a scholar-technocrat, so he has his own jargon for all this: problem-driven iterative adaption (PDIA). Professors seem to need these things.

Great book and a massive contribution. I urge you to get to know it and its riches.

Picture Credit: Cambridge University Press

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Cookie Cutters and Context: Alan Hudson from ONE on the new book

This is a blog posting by Alan Hudson, rom ONE, on my nw book.

Cookie cutters and context: The limits of institutional reform in development

Billions of dollars have been invested to improve the quality of government in developing countries. The evidence shows that the chances of those investments being effective are about the same as that of calling heads or tails correctly. While the quality of government matters, the development community is still somewhat confused about what “good governance” is and struggles to identify ways in which outsiders can help to make governance more effective. Afghanistan is perhaps the most striking demonstration of this: hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives have been spent on rebuilding state capability, yet the likely outcome is a state less capable than it was in the 1970s.

In his new book – “The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development” – Matt Andrews examines the effectiveness of efforts to promote institutional reform (a.k.a. the “good governance” agenda) and sets out an alternative approach. His argument begins with the observation that development organizations such as the World Bank, USAID and the UK’s Department for International Development have tended to promote a standard set of reforms that might look good on paper but which rarely work in practice. According to Andrews, and to other commentators who have made similar points over the last 5 to 10 years, these reforms fail because they pay insufficient attention to the context in which they are applied.

For example, many countries have implemented reforms in their Public Financial Management systems that introduce new accounting practices or procurement mechanisms. In practice, these reforms might help a country receive a higher score on a World Bank rating, but do little to change the underlying processes and power dynamics that determine how resources are actually allocated. Furthermore, such reforms can close off space for the emergence of locally-appropriate ways forward.

After demonstrating the limits to the standard approach to institutional reform – a “best practice” cookie-cutter approach – Andrews sets out a more promising approach which is about fostering the emergence of solutions that fit the local context. In this way, he moves beyond the standard critique of one-size-fits-all development blueprints, offering a way out of the “good governance” impasse and outlining a path for avoiding what Dani Rodrik refers to as “the tyranny of political economy”. The way forward is – wait for it – the Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation. Not the snappiest of titles, but an extremely promising and practical approach.

Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation is about “purposive muddling” – local people and organisations focused on specific challenges and working, innovating, experimenting and learning together to come up with solutions that are viable and relevant, and therefore have a chance of working, in the local context. This approach is consistent with the idea – popularised by Owen Barder, amongst others – that development is, and always has been, about adaptation, context and complexity.

One example of this approach is seen in Burundi’s HIV/AIDS Control and Orphans Project. In that project there was a clear focus on the problem, but also flexibility about how best to address it. For instance, anti-retroviral treatment had not been part of the initial project plan, but when such treatment became affordable the plan was revised to take account of this change of context. Not rocket science, but the sort of flexibility that has often been lacking. Another example, on a different scale, comes from Rwanda’s Decentralization Reforms. This initiative was successful, Andrews argues, because it embraced flexibility and incorporated existing practices and norms – around voluntary work, collective action for community development and prioritizing support for the needy – rather than seeking to follow a standard recipe for reform.

Matt Andrews is now hard at work, applying this approach – focus, flexibility and learning – to specific problems, in specific contexts, working with others to craft solutions that work. At ONE, we’re keen to learn more and to think through how ONE’s agenda on transparency and accountability can empower people with the information that they need to craft locally-appropriate solutions to the specific challenges they face.

For more information about Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation see this paper – co-authored by Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock, from the Center for Global Development.

Photo credit: larsenamanda.wordpress.com