Paper short abstract:

This paper, using recent data, applies an alternative approach to doing institutional and political economy analysis with the objective of showing how these can be carried out to strengthen public sector reforms that in accordance with the emerging donor policy paradigm

Paper long abstract:

Institutions are conventionally conceived as rules independent of human agency, an assumption that has guided public sector reforms for years. Institutions are the independent variables causing changes in human behaviour.

An alternative way of studying institutions is experiental. It acknowledges that living under rules implies living through them: institutions are living mechanisms imbued with human will-power. This approach has a long intellectual pedigree dating back to John Dewey and includes also Pierre Bourdieu. Here institutional stability is not the default position. Institutions often go "off track" because people work through these structures. Restoring order takes creative action by those inside. (See Berk and Galvan, Theory and Society 38:543-80).

This approach is relevant for ongoing revisions of reform strategy that prioritise "working with the grain" (Levy 2014), i.e. starting with what is already on the ground rather than importing preconceived design packages. This emerging strategy calls for new approaches to institutional and political economy analysis as precursors to programme designs, acknowledging that politics drive reforms (Khan 2010) and success relies on understanding normative and cognitive structures in which interventions are made (Andrew 2013).

The paper draws on data from recent evaluations of donor-funded capacity development programmes and a study of Sida's support to public institutions in the 2000s. Using the approach proposed above, it will examine the data with a view to suggesting how institutional and political settlement analysis can make reforms more effective.