written by Michael Woolcock Half-way through my HKS course on ‘Social Institutions and Economic Development’ I host a class, usually timed to be given on the eve of spring break, on what it means to be a “development expert”, especially as it pertains to engaging with social institutions. For better or worse, I now have…Continue Reading On being and becoming a “development expert”
written by Matt Andrews Governments are most important in times of public crisis. This is where individuals—no matter how talented or self-reliant—look to their governments for help; to empower or use or deploy the powers and potentialities of the collective on behalf of that collective. But many people tasked with leading public organizations in times…Continue Reading Public Leadership Through Crisis 1: Can public leaders navigate high winds and big waves in little boats?
written by Lant Pritchett In the book Building State Capability one of the explanations of the very slow progress shown in acquiring effective and capability administration in developing countries was that the adoption of “best practice” from countries with different and higher capability administration actually made it more difficult to build capability. The attempts to…Continue Reading The Big Stuck in State Capability and Premature Load Bearing, Some New Evidence
written by Matt Andrews Polls suggest that governments across the world face high levels of citizen dissatisfaction, and low levels of citizen trust. The 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer found, for instance, that only 43% of those surveyed trust Canada’s government. Only 15% of those surveyed trust government in South Africa, and levels are low in…Continue Reading Implementing Public Policy: Is it possible to escape the ‘Public Policy Futility’ trap?
written by Tim O’Brien Leader of farming cooperative in central Sri Lanka that diversified into ginger production as drought increasingly hurt rice cultivation. If you live in a developed country, odds are that you think about climate change as something that will harm future generations — your children or your grandchildren perhaps. But if you…Continue Reading We recently ran a PDIA course on climate change adaptation. Why?
written by Anisha Poobalan The PDIA team has been working in Sri Lanka for the past six months with five talented and motivated government teams. This work is challenging and demands hard work by government officials and yet through short, repeated iterations, real progress is achieved. The teams update a facilitator every two weeks while…Continue Reading Building capability: the true success of PDIA
As you may have noticed, our website was antiquated, to say the least. The task of giving it a makeover has been on the back burner for a while now. We are proud to finally announce that our new website is live! The site provides an overview of PDIA, links to our blog and lists…Continue Reading BSC website gets a makeover
written by Matt Andrews Yesterday I blogged about Hirschman’s Hiding Hand. As I interpret it, a central part of his idea is that many development projects: focus on solving complex problems, and only once they have started does a ‘hiding hand’ lift to show how hard the problem is to solve, but because policy-makers and…Continue Reading Why many development initiatives have achievement gaps…and what to do about this
written by Matt Andrews I referred to Albert Hirschman’s work on the “Principle of the Hiding Hand” in my class today. It is a great principle, and has real application when thinking about PDIA and problem driven change. In his essay, “The Principle of the Hiding Hand” Hirschman argues that creative solutions most frequently come from adapting…Continue Reading Hirschman’s Hiding Hand and Problem Driven Change
Yesterday was the last day of Doing Development Differently (#differentdev). A group of about 40 development professionals from around the world met to discuss positive cases where development initiatives (call them projects, interventions, activities or whatever) have led to real results and impact. It was another full day with two DDD Exchange Sessions, a PDIA…Continue Reading Doing Development Differently: Day 2 Summary
