Now for the Hard Part: Building State Capability for Implementation Michael Woolcock World Bank & Harvard University Trinity college Dublin May 18, 2017 Free download available at: http://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/building-state-capability-evidence-analysis-action

1. Importance of ‘implementation’ and ‘institutions’ widely recognized… ‘Now for the hard part’ SDG 4: From enrollment to learning in education SDG 16: Peace, inclusion, justice, accountability ‘Good policy design’ clearly still matters, a lot But increasing recognition that context and effective implementation does too SDG 17: “Strengthen the means of implementation…” Long-standing, bipartisan recognition that “institutions matter” Adam Smith, Karl Marx…. to Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Robert Zoellick, George Soros… Especially ‘the rule of law’ “No other single political ideal has ever achieved global endorsement” (Brian Tamanaha, The Economist, 2008)

…but capability to deliver is mostly declining. Why does this matter? Since the 1930s, a steady drumbeat of critiques; institution building efforts… “… often fit so ill with our own style or is so far removed from it that we can use it at best as a decoration and not as material to build with” (Ki Hajar Dewantara, 1935) ‘law and development’ a field in “crisis”, perpetuated by scholars “in self-estrangement” (1974) have yielded, at best, a “fragile path of progress” (2008) Thomas Carothers: we need a “completely different approach” (2006) Yet little refinement in approach, no cumulative body of actual ‘expertise’. Why? Demographic pressures alone will double demands on service delivery over next 20 years e.g., Cameroon Rising expectations, declining experience: an ever-widening (but ‘unsustainable’) gap Tocqueville to Huntington (1968) to Middle East (and beyond) today If anything, institutions getting worse almost everywhere, while funding continues apace…

2. Mapping, explaining, sharing Only the 13 ‘historically developing countries’ (in green) are on a plausible path to strong capability by the end of the 21st C   Rapid negative (g<-.05) Slow Rapid positive (g>.05) Negative (-.05<g<0) Positive (0<g<05) Strong (SC>6.5) BHR, BHS, BRN CHL(0), SGP(0), KOR(0), QAT(0) ARE(0) 8 3 4 1 Middle (4<SC<6.5) MDA, GUY, IRN, PHL, LKA, MNG, ZAF, MAR, THA, NAM, TTO, ARG, CRI PER, EGY, CHN, MEX, LBN, VNM, BRA, IND, JAM, SUR, PAN, CUB, TUN, JOR, OMN, MYS, KWT, ISR KAZ(10820), GHA(4632), UKR(1216), ARM(1062), RUS(231), BWA(102), IDN(68), COL(56), TUR(55), DZA(55), ALB(42), SAU(28), URY(10), HRV(1) 45 13 18 14 Weak (2.5<SC<4) GIN, VEN, MDG, LBY, PNG, KEN, NIC, GTM, SYR, DOM, PRY, SEN, GMB, BLR MLI, CMR, MOZ, BFA, HND, ECU, BOL, PAK, MWI, GAB, AZE, SLV UGA(6001), AGO(2738), TZA(371), BGD(244), ETH(103), ZMB(96) 32 12 6 Very weak (SC<2.5) YEM, ZWE, CIV SOM, HTI, PRK, NGA, COG, TGO, MMR SDN(7270), SLE(333), ZAR(230), IRQ(92) NER(66), GNB(61), LBR(33) 17 7 102 30 40 28 Source: Authors’ calculations of state capability from Quality of Government, Failed State Index, and World Governance indicators Number in brackets is years to the level of the lowest OECD country (‘Portugal’)

Glacial progress on governance e. g Glacial progress on governance e.g., Guatemala’s distance to “Portugal”

Education in India, Indonesia: Successive cohorts doing worse… Poor service, even for ‘elites’

3. Some Pragmatic Responses What to do? Building state capability by expanding local successes Especially for engaging with ‘thick’, ‘adaptive’ problems Which are legion, looming, lasting (i.e., never ‘solved’) New focus on ‘adaptive implementation’ E.g., Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) Organizations, like individuals, acquire capability through practice Cf. languages, musical instruments, sports “You can’t juggle without the struggle” Document, explore, explain, share sub-national variation Wide variance in outcomes a ubiquitous feature of complex problems Integrate broad surveys with detailed case studies Global Delivery Initiative (http://www.worldbank.org/reference/GDI/) Innovations for Successful Societies (https://successfulsocieties.princeton.edu/)

Wide variation between countries Wide variation between countries. Why is poor Vietnam better than rich Norway? Source: OECD (2016)

Wide variation within countries. e.g., health clinic performance. Why?

No singular solutions: “…the mechanisms for managing staff may be very different than those for providing equipment and amenities” Correlation of Measures at Governorate and District Levels in Yemen GOVERNORATE Absenteeism # of Beds Electricity Heat Water Phone 1   -0.2468 -0.1921 -0.1604 -0.0158 0.5782 0.6472 -0.3928 -0.0641 0.9773 0.6361 -0.0019 0.5529 0.6649 0.9995 0.6491 DISTRICT 0.017 -0.0136 0.1645 0.0513 0.3887 0.8618 -0.0032 0.1163 0.9309 0.8829 0.0554 0.2939 0.8828 0.9427 0.9013 Source: Brixi, Lust and Woolcock (2015)

4. Different kinds of implementation problems require different kinds of solutions; thus need different kinds of evidence and strategies Thus a key role for evidence in improving implementation quality entails mapping variation in the terrain a team proposes to navigate explaining where, how, why and for whom identical policies yield such variation sharing insights from local teams that have managed to navigate this tough terrain better than others, all done as part of a more focused strategy that  begins and ends with helping local professionals, elected leaders and citizens respond to problems that they themselves have jointly nominated and prioritized i.e., understanding not just the “effects of causes” but the “causes of effects” Need ‘ecologies of evidence’ to do all this well Historically and today, capability for implementation ‘learned by doing’ Case example (from Palestine)

How does PDIA differ? “Big D” (e.g. WB, agencies) “small d” (e.g. NGOs) PDIA What drives action? Pre-determined solutions (“institutional mono-cropping”, “best practice”), more inputs Niche, parallel solutions (via variety of antidotes – e.g. “participation” “community driven”) Planning for action? Lots of advance planning (implementation of secondary importance) Boutique; starting very small with no plans for scale Feedback loops? Monitoring (short, on financing, compliance, inputs) and Evaluation (long feedback loop on outputs, maybe outcomes) Casual; geared to advocacy, not systemic learning Scale? Top-down: the head learns, implementation is just muscle (“political will”) Small is beautiful… Or, just not logistically possible

How does PDIA differ? “Big D” (e.g. WB, agencies) “small d” (e.g. NGOs) PDIA What drives action? Pre-determined solutions (“institutional mono-cropping”, “best practice”), more inputs Niche, parallel solutions (via variety of antidotes – e.g. “participation” “community driven”) Problem-Driven: looking to solve particular problems, locally nominated and prioritized Planning for action? Lots of advance planning (implementation of secondary importance) Boutique; starting very small with no plans for scale Assuring authorizing environment promoting positive deviation, purposive crawl of the design space Feedback loops? Monitoring (short, on financing, compliance, inputs) and Evaluation (long feedback loop on outputs, maybe outcomes) Casual; geared to advocacy, not systemic learning MeE: integration of rigorous “experiential” learning into tight feedback loops Scale? Top-down: the head learns, implementation is just muscle (“political will”) Small is beautiful… Or, just not logistically possible Diffusion of feasible practice across organizations and communities of practitioners

Adaptive approaches in action Building State Capability Program, Harvard Kennedy School http://buildingstatecapability.com MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), free to anyone (1000+ so far) Incorporation into major reports, donor programs, activities World Development Reports Conflict & Security (2012), Behavioral Economics (2015), Governance & Law (2017), Education (2018) Police Reform in Afghanistan (DFID, funding) Global Delivery Initiative http://www.worldbank.org/reference/GDI/ Focus on understanding implementation dynamics in specific contexts Analytic case studies for diagnostics, learning, sharing Forging a global community of practice See ‘Doing Development Differently Manifesto’ (November 2014) http://buildingstatecapability.com/the-ddd-manifesto/ DDD4 in Jakarta, 15-16 March 2017 Incorporation into World Bank country programs Indonesia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Tajikistan, (Malawi) Others Global Health, IRC, Mercy Corps, Results for Development, Feedback Labs, USAID…

A self-critique (or, enacting “a propensity for self-subversion”) Water pistol in a gun fight? What if prevailing politics too nasty, overwhelming? Adequate administrative ‘plumbing’? Procurement, accounting, etc Securing robust authorizing environment? When political winds shift, staff turnover is high… Discerning ‘good failure’ from design failure, implementation failure When to hold, fold, walk away, run? PDIA-ing PDIA: a perpetual “second word” on implementation