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.
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Featured BookBuilding State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action
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
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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…
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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…
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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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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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Development as Capability Building
This paper distinguishes between ordinary capability and adaptive capability. It argues that development depends on strengthening the foundations of adaptive capability, from which new institutions, routines, and established capabilities emerge.
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Making Problem-Driven Governance Possible: The Foundations of Problem-Driven Capability
Authors highlight the key foundational aspects of governance that uphold problem-driven capability.
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Beyond Solutions: Capability, Development Frontiers, and the Process of Good Change
This work underlines the value of building capability and empowering communities by using India’s reduction in maternal mortality as a comparison point.
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What is public policy success, especially in development?
Success is an abstract concept that carries a variety of meanings with it. In this piece, potential criteria for success is probed in order to allow practitioners to use a broader approach when they define success.
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This is How to Think About and Achieve Public Policy Success
Policy success is a multidimensional goal, one that requires stakeholder approval and long-term thinking.
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National Development Delivers: And How! And How?
National development has proven to improve wellbeing across the board. This paper proves that underestimating the importance of economic development in the scheme of national wellbeing is not wise.
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Let’s Take the Con Out of Randomized Control Trials in Development: The Puzzles and Paradoxes of External Validity, Empirically Illustrated
Using student learning data from countries across the globe, this paper proves that policy decisions are more successful when they draw on all available research, not just the small set of rigorous studies.
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Overcoming the Global Despondency Trap: Strengthening Corporate Accountability in Supply Chains
This paper synthesizes 140 interviews with European leaders to investigate how global action problems persist and how activists can get stuck in despondency traps.
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When Do Development Projects Enhance Community Well-Being?
Average treatment effects, even from rigorous assessments of community-driven interventions, translate poorly when scaled differently. In this piece, guidance for anticipating these development conundrums is provided.