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Publications (11)
Working Paper
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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 recently been called the ‘capability trap’ in...
Working Paper
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– A Reform Case for Instruction
The 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 mayor, Sergio Fajardo. Fajardo came to office in...
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– Building a State with Disruptive Innovation
The 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, building schools, immunizing children), but often...
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Public sector reforms are commonplace in developing countries. Much of the literature about these reforms reflects on their failures. This paper asks about the successes and investigates which of two competing theories best explain why some reforms exhibit such positive deviance. These theories are...
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This paper begins by noting that Uganda has been a public sector reform leader in Africa. It has pursued reforms actively and consistently for three decades now, and has produced many laws, processes and structures that are ‘best in class’ in Africa (and beyond). The problem is that many of the...
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‘Leadership’ is not a common topic for research in international development. In recent years, however, prominent studies like the 2008 Growth Commission Report noted the importance of leadership in development. This and other studies focused on individual leaders—or heroes—when examining ‘who leads...
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– Ten Cases, Two Competing Explanations, One Large Research Agenda
Governments can play great roles in their countries, regions, and cities; facilitating or leading the resolution of festering problems and opening new pathways for progress. Examples are more numerous than one might imagine and raise an important question: ‘how do governments become great?’. This...
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– a Building Without a Foundation?
This paper argues that attempts at state-building in Afghanistan have led to institutions that are not robust. The state institutions and organizations continue to be highly dependent on external resources and technical expertise, and lack of critical mass of people able and willing to maintain them...
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– Using Structured Experiential Learning (‘e’) to Crawl the Design Space
There is an inherent tension between implementing organizations—which have specific objectives and narrow missions and mandates—and executive organizations—which provide resources to multiple implementing organizations. Ministries of finance/planning/budgeting allocate across ministries and projects...
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Many reform initiatives in developing countries fail to achieve sustained improvements in performance because they are merely isomorphic mimicry—that is, governments and organizations pretend to reform by changing what policies or organizations look like rather than what they actually do. The flow...
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– 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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