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Publications (9)
Book Chapter
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Doing Too Much Too Soon
From the book:
Building State Capability
Book Chapter
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
From the book:
Building State Capability
Research Brief
pdf
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, capacity limitations restricted the role of the local...
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 (PDIA), which contrasts with standard approaches...
Research Brief
pdf
Afghanistan has received vast amounts of development aid, but results may not be sufficiently robust. There is a limited menu of acceptable options for institutional arrangements, leading to a high dependence on external resources, technical expertise, and institutional models. There is not a...
Research Brief
pdf
Development practice continues to operate on the assumptions of an outdated theory of modernization. Developing countries often sustain legitimacy by imitating other successful modern institutions without actually developing the functionality of the institutions they are copying. Aid...
Research Brief
pdf
Current development practice focuses too much on the form institutions take, at the expense of worrying about function. A focus on strict rules that aim to curb corruption and inefficiency can diminish the amount of experimentation and adaptation that is possible. The desire to have a way of visibly...
Rising standards for accurately inferring the impact of development projects has not been matched by equivalently rigorous procedures for guiding decisions about whether and how similar results might be expected elsewhere. These ‘external validity’ concerns are especially pressing for ‘complex’...
– Techniques of Persistent Failure in State Capability for Implementation
In many nations today the state has little capability to carry out even basic functions like security, policing, regulation or core service delivery. Enhancing this capability, especially in fragile states, is a long-term task: countries like Haiti or Liberia will take many decades to reach even a...
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