A student's notes and fishbone diagram along with a copy of the PDIA toolkit and the BSC book

Publications

BSC faculty, fellows, and affiliates regularly publish research in a wide range of academic and policy venues. These include books, book chapters, working papers, articles, cases, and reports. In addition, we have hundreds of blog posts that you can read.

  • Featured

    Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action

    Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock

    This book provides evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, identifies capability traps that hold many governments back, and describes a process that can be used to escape these traps called PDIA (Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation).

Featured Publications

  • Tackling Learning Poverty in Sierra Leone’s Education System through the Lens of the PDIA

    Tackling Learning Poverty in Sierra Leone’s Education System through the Lens of the PDIA

    Guest blog by Irina Bilyalova, Orlando Carvajal, Vaiba Flomo, and Sonali Verma We were four students brought together by a shared interest in solving real-world problems. Three from the Harvard Kennedy School and one from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. One of us was from the United States; three of us were…

  • Case: Using PDIA to Transform Waste Management in Amman

    Case: Using PDIA to Transform Waste Management in Amman

    In early 2022, the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) faced a growing waste crisis. Given its population of 4.5 million people generating approximately 3,000 tons of solid municipal waste daily, half of Jordan’s total, the city’s rapid growth had significantly outpaced its waste management infrastructure. In response to this challenge, a remarkable two-year transformation using Problem-Driven…

  • Can Outsiders Help Build State Capability? Lessons from Ted Lasso

    Can Outsiders Help Build State Capability? Lessons from Ted Lasso

    Gaps between potential and performance are common in states across the globe. This paper argues that these gaps represent differences in state capability, and compares Ted Lasso to how outside actors can impact that capability.

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