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Better Government for Poverty Reduction: More Effective Partnerships for Change

Author: S Unsworth
Date: 2003
Size: 21 pages (755 KB)

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Summary

Governments are crucial to the enabling environment for poverty reduction. However, some governments – even in formal democracies where most voters are poor – lack the capacity or incentives to promote economic growth and pro-poor policies. This paper asks why, and what aid donors and other outside actors could do to encourage the emergence of better government in poor countries.

The problem goes deeper than weak technical capacity and lack of “political will”. Individuals matter, but so does the context within which they operate. History suggests that more effective and accountable government cannot be achieved just by creating new formal institutions. It is a more uncertain, incremental process which depends on each country’s historical circumstances, and involves fundamental changes in society, economic structures and political culture. It is thus closely connected with other sorts of economic and social progress.

This has some important implications for donors and other external actors in the development process:

• They should start with an analysis of each country’s particular context, not a specific list of policies. Understanding the social, political and historical context will help identify the underlying factors which could promote or inhibit pro-poor change, and the likely impact on political and social institutions of particular policy choices. Starting with specific policies risks restricting options, overloading the agenda, and narrowing the constituency for poverty reduction. Moreover it can mean missed opportunities if the focus is on trying to change the context, instead of adapting the policies.
• Donors could do more to connect economic, social, political and institutional agendas, for example by linking their existing knowledge, contacts and interventions in different sectors. Economic and social changes drive, as well as being driven by, institutional and political change. Seemingly technical issues such as tax and public expenditure management have important implications for relations between state and civil society. Being more alert to these causal relationships could enhance the impact of development interventions.
• It is important to think about change more strategically. Change and the management of change are at the heart of the development process. However, there is a tendency to become preoccupied with current problems and their immediate causes, and with short-term solutions. To counter this, donors need ways of thinking about change which help them keep longer-term, strategic objectives in view, and to identify medium-term, incremental steps to address the root causes of bad government.
• Internal incentives matter greatly in determining how societies use the resources and opportunities available to them. External actors including donors can help by: supporting a conducive enabling environment – national, regional and international - for growth and poverty reduction. They could do more to facilitate effective learning and to strengthen local institutions for research, policy analysis and information dissemination.

This approach presents challenges for donors, including how to balance the need for short-term progress in meeting poverty reduction targets against the longer-term objective of supporting local incentives and pressures for change. Making the country context the starting point for interventions implies more than just adding “political analysis” to the donor skills set: it would also require some significant changes in donor practice and culture.

There are no short cuts to better government. However, there are small but cumulatively important ways in which external actors could do more to support a long term process of social, political and institutional change which would benefit poor people. This may not involve doing alot of new things: many of the changes in donor practice already under way support a more strategic approach. But it does imply a shift of focus – from “what” countries need to do to eliminate poverty, to “how” best to support the processes of change involved.

Please note this is a consultation paper.

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Source: Unsworth S., 2003, 'Better Government For Poverty Reduction: More Effective Partnerships for Change', Consultation Document, DFID, London.
Author: Department for International Development (DFID), http://www.dfid.gov.uk