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About State Capability

Internal and external development actors may be pursuing strategies for building state capability that have no impact, or worse, are counter-productive. This can happen via the common emphasis on transplanting successful forms of capability and adopting ambitious "best practice" modes of governance and public administration. Such an emphasis on form-what organizations look like-over function-what they actually do-provides financing and legitimacy that allows continued dysfunction while potentially crowding out space for local initiatives. Hence even well meaning attempts to "build capacity" may serve as techniques of persistent failure that perpetuate capability traps.

Led by an inter-disciplinary team of HKS development faculty Lant Pritchett (economics), Matt Andrews (public administration) and Michael Woolcock (sociology), this new research program explores pragmatic new ways of building state capability. One such approach we call Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA).

Researchers:

Lant Pritchett
Professor of Practice, Harvard Kennedy School and Faculty Affiliate at the Center for International Development

 

 

Matt Andrews
Associate Professor, Harvard Kennedy School and Faculty Affiliate at the Center for International Development

 

 

Steven Kosack
Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and Faculty Affiliate at the Center for International Development and Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation

 

 

Salimah Samji
Research Fellow, Center for International Development, Harvard University

 

 

 

Michael Walton
Lecturer in International Development, Harvard Kennedy School

 

 

 

Frauke de Weijer
Research Fellow, Center for International Development, Harvard University

 

 

 

Eric Werker
Associate Professor in the Business, Government and International Economy Unit, Martin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School and Faculty Affiliate at the Center for International Development

 

 

Michael Woolcock
Development Research Group, the World Bank
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