The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development

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11/25/2012

The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development

I have a new book coming out in January 2013. It is called The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development. I intend to use this blog site to discuss topics related to the book. I hope you find it an interesting place to visit, and am asking for any readers to comment on their experience with reform in development--especially where that reform has been focused on changing institutions ('the rules of the game') in governments.

Here is the first paragraph from the preface to my book, which should give you an idea of its content:

This book emerged in response to mounting evidence that institutional reforms in development often do not work. Case studies and multi-country analyses show that many governments in developing nations are not becoming more functional, even after decades and hundreds of millions of dollars of externally sponsored reforms. These studies increasingly suggest that disappointing results cannot be explained by routine excuses either. One cannot simply blame governments in these countries for not doing reforms, for instance, because many governments remain deeply dysfunctional even after many satisfactorily completed projects introducing best practices advocated by international organizations. The work on institutional reform in development has seldom explored reasons for failure beyond such excuses, however. This has created a gap in the literature, which is important from both an academic and practical perspective. The academic challenge is to see if theory and evidence can help promote a better understanding of why many reforms do not lead to better governments. The practical imperative is more fundamental: Can a better understanding of past experience help improve the likelihood of more institutional reform success in more developing countries in the future?

Posted at 03:30 PM in Broad engagement, broader (and deeper) change, Change rules, change governments, and develop?, Deconstructing the puzzling evidence of reform, Finding and fitting solutions that work, Limited engagement, limited change, Overlooking the change context, Problem-driven learning sparks (real) institutional change, Reforming rules of the development game itself, Reforms as overspecified and oversimplified solutions, What you see is not what you get (expecting change) | Permalink

Tags: cid, development, dfid, governance, harvard, imf, institutional change, institutions, kennedy school, limits of institutional reform in development, Matt Andrews, pdia, poverty reduction, reform, world bank

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My course at Harvard: See the series of lecture materials here

Post 2015 governance indicators...past blog posts reflecting a variety of thoughts on this topic

'is a landmark analysis that will change the way we both understand and design institutional reform.' Ha-Joon Chang, University of Cambridge, and author of 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Where you can order the book

Make It Stick: Challenging, informative book on learning. Really got me thinking about how I teach, learn, impart, etc.

CHECK OUT THE MOZAMBIQUE EXPERIENCE ON THE BUILDING STATE CAPABILITY WEBSITE

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The World Bank doing a version of PDIA in Sierra Leone

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Innovation-vs-disciplined-execution-at-scale-r3-dynamic-linking1

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Iterative and Incremental Development: A Brief History... Iteration is not new...but really important... a good read

I like this article on uncertainty and project management; note the discussion on learning..." In our simple model of projects, learning comes from signals that are incompatible with the project team’s predictions. As project teams monitor their projects, they must recognize that observed signals are incompatible with their model of the world and be willing to change their representation of the world either by updating the partition or the transition mapping." So learning is only possible if we know what our theory of change is (our expectations) and we have information about what is going on to see if reality departs from these expectations, and we actually adjust what we do as a result.

Diagnosing Deep Roots of Development: Johannes W. Fedderke, Robert E. Klitgaard, James P. MacMurray, Valerio Napolioni

"It is argued that in complex settings, performance management may benefit from new ways of carrying out performance management. It is suggested that performance management needs to be more agile, more decentralised and more political."

Imran Rasul and Daniel Rogger looking at infrastructure projects in Nigeria: A really interesting paper...36% of announced projects never start...

MY RECENT PAPER ON GOVERNANCE AS ENDS AND MEANS

This paper synthesizes the approach I take to looking at governance in nations states. The approach emphasizes ends as the starting point for any view of governance. (Asking about what governments do rather than how they do them). I also emphasize means; but in thinking about what it takes to produce ends, not as stand-alone factors.

MY PAST WORLD BANK MONOGRAPH ON LEADERSHIP IN DEVELOPMENT

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The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development

11/25/2012