1. 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:

2. 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)

3. …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…

4. 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’)

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

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

7. 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 (
Innovations for Successful Societies (

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

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

10. 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
0.5782
0.6472
0.9773
0.6361
0.5529
0.6649
0.9995
0.6491
DISTRICT
0.017
0.1645
0.0513
0.3887
0.8618
0.1163
0.9309
0.8829
0.0554
0.2939
0.8828
0.9427
0.9013
Source: Brixi, Lust and
Woolcock (2015)

11. 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)

12. 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

13. 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

14. Adaptive approaches in action
Building State Capability Program, Harvard Kennedy School
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
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)
DDD4 in Jakarta, 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…

15. 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