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Afghanistan 2021: A quickly made long tragedy
The tragedy for the Afghan people of the Taliban re-taking control of the country in August 2021 is the denouement of a process 20 years in the making...
As a sub-component of the Research and Communication on Foreign Aid (ReCom) programme, the PDIA project feeds into the themes: governance and fragility & social sectors. An integral part of development is the expansion of capability of the state to carry out its responsibilities and effectively both impose obligations (e.g. collect taxes, enforce the law) and provide services (education, infrastructure, health). A great deal of the development debate is about what should be done rather than how the state will do it. And the state contracting with NGOs or private providers also requires capability.
However, it is clear that many states, such as the 'failed' Somali and 'fragile' Afghani, Haitian and South Sudanese states have not acquired the state capability to provide the most basic needs to its citizens. Many more states are 'flailing' (Pritchett 2009) as they have designed attractive policies but their ability to implement them is very weak. The development assistance dedicated to building 'capability' has a mixed track record and overall, there has been little progress in the development of appropriate indicators of state capability.
This project aims to research practical alternative modes of building capability for domestic and external stakeholders. The deliverables include eight papers, which at the conclusion of the project, are the core of a book on development.
31 articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Book
Building State CapabilityThis is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Governments play a major role in the...
Working Paper
Engaging with Fragile and Conflict-Affected StatesThe coherence and effectiveness of engagement with the world’s ‘fragile and conflict-affected states’—beyond ethical imperatives and geo-strategic considerations—turns on answers to two vexing questions. First, on what defensible basis is any given...
Working Paper
Can One Retell a Mozambican Reform Story Through Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation?Many public sector reforms in developing countries fail to make governments more functional. This is typically because reforms introduce new solutions that do not fit the contexts in which they are being placed. This situation reflects what has...
Research Brief
How Effectively Were the Paris Principles Applied to State-Building in South Sudan?The five Paris principles of effective aid were only nominally successfully implemented in the state-building process of South Sudan. While the importance of the first principle, ownership, was highlighted in development plans in Southern Sudan...
Working Paper
Cambodia’s Land Management and Administration ProjectThis paper presents the case of World Bank support to the mass titling component of the Cambodia Land Management and Administration Project. This was a project for which there was clear national demand, as evidenced by the fact that the Cambodian...
Working Paper
The Risks to Education Systems from Design Mismatch and Global IsomorphismThe incredibly low levels of learning and the generally dysfunctional public sector schooling systems in many (though not all) developing countries are the result of a capability trap (Pritchett et al. 2010). Two phenomena reinforce persistent...
Working Paper
Does Successful Governance Require Heroes? The Case of Sergio Fajardo and the City of MedellínThe city of Medellín, Colombia was a cauldron of violence with 185 homicides per 100,000 people in 2002. By 2006, this rate had declined to 32.5. Such successful transformation was termed the ‘Medellín miracle’ and credited to policies of the city’s...
Working Paper
South SudanDuring Sudan’s ‘interim period’ from the end of civil war in January 2005 until South Sudan’s independence in July 2011, foreign development agencies provided extensive support and billions of dollars in aid—for which institutional development and...
Journal Article
Escaping Capability Traps Through Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)Many development initiatives fail to improve performance because they promote isomorphic mimicry—governments change what they look like, not what they do. This article proposes a new approach to doing development, Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation...
Working Paper
South Sudan’s Capability TrapThe prevailing aid orthodoxy works well enough in stable environments, but is ill-equipped to navigate contexts of volatility and fragility. The orthodox approach is adept at solving straightforward technical or logistical problems (paving roads...
Displaying 16 of 31 results
Context
Main subject
This project is part of Governance and fragility and ReCom - research and communication on foreign aid
Theme: Past, 2012-13