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41. Public Policy Failure: ‘How Often?’ and ‘What is Failure, Anyway’?

Author:
Matt Andrews
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Observers claim that public policies fail ‘often’. This paper asks, ‘how often’? It is an important question, because public policies absorb resources to address major social issues. We should know if policies are proving bad social investments; routinely failing to solve focal problems at high costs. Unfortunately, it is not easy to assess this. Many public policy organizations—governments in particular—do not provide accessible views onto overall success or failure. The World Bank does, however, provide such view—and it supports policy interventions one finds in governments across the world. The paper thus examines World Bank failure rates. It finds that there are different answers to the ‘how often’ question, depending on responses to a second question, ‘what is failure anyway?’ In studying both questions, the paper identifies a bias in the World Bank—and probably all organizations adopting rational ‘plan and control’ policy processes—to measuring ‘project and product success’ rather than a broader view of success as ‘problems are solved with development impact’. This means that policy organizations like the Bank judge success based on whether planned products are delivered through an efficient process; not whether policies solve the problems that warranted intervention in the first place, or whether the policies promoted development outcomes. Is this how citizens would want their public policy organizations to conceptualize success?
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Government, World Bank, and International Development
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America

42. Global value chains and technology transfer: new evidence from developing countries

Author:
Davide Rigo
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Trade and Economic Integration, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
This paper uses the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys as a sample of 18 developing and emerging economies to investigate the causal relationship between global value chains and the transfer of technology to manufacturing firms in developing nations. It focuses on one specific channel for technology transfer, namely the licensing of foreign technology. By using a propensity score matching difference-in-differences technique, I show that there is a positive and causal impact of being involved in complex international activities (i.e. being a two-way trader) on the licensing of technology. Importantly, domestic firms becoming two-way traders are more likely to acquire foreign-licensed technology than domestic firms starting to either export or import. These findings suggest that the complexity associated with the trading activity determines whether or not foreign technology is licensed.
Topic:
Development, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Science and Technology, World Bank, and Global Political Economy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

43. Is Poverty a binding constraint on Agricultural Growth in Rural Malawi?

Author:
Mirriam Muhome-Matita and Ephraim Wadonda Chirwa
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
African Economic Research Consortium (AERC)
Abstract:
Agriculture remains the most important sector in sub-Saharan Africa and is a dominant form of livelihood for a majority of the population that resides in the rural areas. In Malawi, agriculture accounts for 35 percent of GDP and generates more than 80 percent of foreign exchange. In addition, agriculture is the most important occupation for 71 percent of the rural population in which crop production accounts for 74 percent of all rural incomes. However, agriculture has failed to get Africa out of poverty, and most countries are experiencing low agricultural growth, rapid population growth, weak foreign exchange earnings and high transaction costs (World Bank, 2008).
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, Political Economy, Poverty, World Bank, Economic Growth, and Rural
Political Geography:
Africa and Malawi

44. CONFLICT RESEARCHERS SHOULD CARE ABOUT THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DATA PRODUCTION

Author:
Andrew Kerner and Charles Crabtree
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Political Violence @ A Glance
Abstract:
Conflict scholars, policy professionals, and non-profit organizations routinely link the outbreak of violence to economics and, particularly, to economic growth. Some scholars have linked growth conditions to the outbreak of violence while others have linked violence to subsequent growth trajectories. The relationship between violence and economics—and the related debate about whether violence is better considered a consequence of “politics” or “economics”—is central to the study of violence, and therefore central to the type of recommendations researchers provide to policymakers and the INGO community. The important questions in this area of inquiry are often empirical, and resolving them requires accurate and unbiased data. We are used to scrutinizing our measures of violence, but typically take for granted that economic data are apolitically generated. We know that these data must be measured with some degree of error but we typically assume that those errors are random, or, at least, unrelated to the conflict-related processes we use them to understand. That’s a lot to take on faith. If these data are not apolitically generated, any observed relationship between the economy and violence might in fact capture a relationship between the politics of violence and the politics of economic measurement.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Political Economy, World Bank, Conflict, and Data Production
Political Geography:
Global Focus

45. How a Community-Led Response to Sexual Exploitation in Uganda Led to Systemic World Bank Reform

Author:
Elana Berger
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Accountability Research Center (ARC), American University
Abstract:
How can demands for accountability and redress for harm suffered in a particular case contribute to new institutional measures to prevent future abuse? This note describes how the small Ugandan community of Bigodi, together with local, national, and international allies, mobilized to demand redress for harm done by a World Bank-funded infrastructure project, and in doing so, catalyzed changes at the World Bank aimed at preventing similar abuses in the future. The Bigodi community’s 2015 request to the World Bank’s Inspection Panel, bolstered by international media coverage, led Bank management to respond both to the specific harms and to the underlying policy failures that made them possible. The community called for the World Bank to address cases of sexual exploitation of teenage girls by construction workers employed by a Bank-funded project, the Uganda Transport Sector Development Project (TSDP). This case is significant not only because World Bank funding for the project was cancelled, affected community members received needed support services, and a corrupt government agency was purged, but because the institutional changes made may prevent similar harms across future World Bank projects. The World Bank promotes a discourse of accountability, and yet obtaining redress when problems result from World Bank projects is difficult. This is often because, rather than treating requests from communities to the Inspection Panel as an opportunity to learn lessons and improve development outcomes, World Bank management generally responds defensively and treats the Panel investigation as an adversarial process in which they seek to prove the requestors wrong. As this case demonstrates, however, when management responds constructively to Panel investigations, genuine reform can take place. For this to happen, pressure from outside the Bank is needed to provide reformers within the Bank with the opportunity to make needed policy changes both at the project level and Bank-wide. The factors that led the Bank to respond constructively with a comprehensive response in the TSDP case included: – a strong community–NGO partnership which pursued justice for victims of sexual exploitation and abuse – sustained advocacy from national and international civil society – high-profile media attention on a topic that caused embarrassment for the Bank – a strong report from an independent accountability mechanism within the World Bank (the Inspection Panel) – pressure from the Bank’s Board of Directors, in particular frequent engagement from the US government with all levels of Bank management – high-level individuals within the Bank, including President Kim, were committed to making policy changes that would reduce the risk of gender-based violence in the future. This case embodies the potential for specific instances of harm to provide the necessary catalyst for improved accountability structures and system-wide change.
Topic:
Civil Society, World Bank, Reform, Sexual Violence, Accountability, Exploitation, and Community Engagement
Political Geography:
Uganda and Africa

46. The Complex Ties between Poverty and Exclusion

Author:
Michelle Nicholasen and Lucie White
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
To what extent does poverty contribute to social exclusion? How can the exclusion of particular groups be reduced? These were just two of the questions scholars addressed at the Social Inclusion and Poverty Eradication Workshop on November 17–18, 2016, a two-day event co-sponsored by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Center for European Studies, and the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP). The conference was convened by Weatherhead Center Director Michèle Lamont, Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and professor of sociology and of African and African American studies at Harvard University; and Hilary Silver, professor of sociology and urban studies and professor of public policy at Brown University. Though the related challenges of poverty and exclusion have been exhaustively studied individually, their mutual interplay, in their socioeconomic and historical contexts, have rarely been mapped in a nuanced way. As Lamont and Silver emphasized in their remarks, only by subtle analysis of these interactions can responsive strategies be designed to alleviate the impacts of either factor. Lamont addressed the theme of intersection by calling for the reintroduction of the concept of “culture” into the study of poverty and social exclusion. Supporting this frame, keynote speaker Vijayendra Rao, lead economist for the World Bank’s Development Research Group, emphasized working within a local culture to help citizens arrive at their own solutions for more social engagement.
Topic:
Poverty, Culture, World Bank, Discrimination, Socioeconomics, and Exclusion
Political Geography:
Global Focus

47. Challenging the World to Build New Foundations of Human Solidarity

Author:
Jim Yong Kim
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Columbia University World Leaders Forum
Abstract:
President of the World Bank Group Dr. Jim Yong Kim delivers an address titled, "Challenging the World to Build New Foundations of Human Solidarity," an event of the Columbia University World Leaders Forum at Low Library.
Topic:
Development, World Bank, Economic Growth, and Social Justice
Political Geography:
New York, Global Focus, and United States of America

48. The problem with ‘embedded liberalism’: the World Bank and the myth of Bretton Woods

Author:
Samuel Appleton
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex
Abstract:
The Bretton Woods conference is conventionally understood as a radical break between the laissez faire order and its ‘embedded liberal’ successor, in which finance was suppressed in the interest of trade and productive growth. The new institutions, particularly the IBRD are often considered emblematic of this. In response to this, the paper argues that the Bretton Woods order required the enlistment, not repression, of private American finance. Firstly, laissez-faire era proposals for international financial institutions provided important precedents for the Bretton Woods institutions. Second, these were predicated on the uniquely deep liquidity of American financial markets following upon Progressive-era reforms, in the legacy of which the Roosevelt administration sought to locate the New Deal. Thirdly, they found new relevance in the 1940s as the IBRD turned by necessity to American financial markets for operating capital. Negotiating the imperative of commercial creditworthiness had two important consequences. First, it entailed the structural and procedural transformation of the IBRD, and allowed management to carve out a proprietary terrain in which its agency was decisive. Second, this suggests that US agendas were mediated by the Bank’s institutional imperatives – and that finance was no more ‘embedded’ during the Bretton Woods era than its predecessor.
Topic:
Development, Economics, World Bank, Global Markets, International Development, and Global Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Latin America

49. The End of the Beginning: Paris COP 2015

Author:
David Runnalls
Publication Date:
11-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
Abstract:
The Paris Conference of the Parties (COP) 2015 is designed to produce the next round of climate change action. There are reasons to believe that the chances for success at the multilateral level are better now that they were before, but even under the most optimistic scenarios, Paris will not be the end of the negotiations. The Paris summit will be crucial to maintaining the momentum that has been building in the private sector and civil society on the issue of climate change. COP 21 has generated an enormous amount of public interest. Civil society actions both before and during the Paris meeting promise to be on a grand scale. In addition, COP21 has excited action from a number of other levels of government not normally seen at these events. Leaders of the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD have all stated that climate change is the principal economic issue facing the world this century. There is a growing realization among the world's economic decision makers that the shift to a low-carbon economy is not only a necessity, but also may be less costly than we believe. The need to identify both public and private financing solutions is the greatest hurdle facing the Paris COP. CIGI's climate change research is tackling the issue of financing sustainable development, in addition to how agreements can be reached by smaller countries, how to address the problems of the delayed benefits from mitigation, ways that China can exercise leadership in this arena, and how the world's financial institutions can help mobilize climate finance from the private sector.
Topic:
Civil Society, Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Regulation, Financial Markets, and Climate Finance
Political Geography:
Global Focus

50. The Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals: a historic opportunity

Author:
Sarah Hearn and Jeffrey Strew
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on International Cooperation (CIC)
Abstract:
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were a game-changer because they channelled aid and developing countries’ revenues into a discrete package of priorities for eradicating extreme poverty. Undeniably, significant progress was made across peaceful developing countries against the eight MDGs (see box). According to the World Bank, absolute poverty has been halved (although not evenly in each country and region). In 1990, 43.1 per cent of the population in developing countries lived on less than 1.25 US dollars (USD) a day; by 2010, this rate dropped to 20.6 per cent. The world is close to attaining universal primary education too – 90 per cent of children in developing countries are completing primary education (although sub-Saharan Africa is behind at 70 %) (World Bank, 2014).
Topic:
Education, Human Welfare, Poverty, World Bank, Children, and Millennium Development Goals
Political Geography:
Global Focus