The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development

"This book explains why many institutional reforms in developing countries have limited success and suggests ways to overcome these limits"--

'Using a wealth of data and informative cases, this book convincingly shows that the export of institutional reforms to developing countries has often resulted in superficial changes that have had little or no impact. Mimicking institutional devices cannot replace profound changes in the basic operational norms of how the government in developing countries tries to solve real problems.' Bo Rothstein, August Röhss Chair in Political Science and Head of the Quality of Government Institute, University of Gothenburg

Auteur

Matt Andrews is a fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard's Kennedy School and the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC. His numerous articles have appeared in journals such as Governance, the International Public Management Journal, the Public Administration Review, Oxford Development Studies, Public Administration and Development and the Journal of Development Studies. Prior to his fellowship at Harvard, Professor Andrews was a vice president of the International Consortium on Governmental Financial Management and supported various government leaders in South Africa during the transition from apartheid. He has worked in more than twenty-five developing and transitional countries as a permanent member of the World Bank and as a Harvard University academic doing research on development and government reform. Dr Andrews received his PhD from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

Résumé
Developing countries commonly adopt reforms to improve their governments yet they usually fail to produce more functional and effective governments. This book explains such failure and proposes an approach to facilitate better reform results in developing country governments.

Contenu

Preface; 1. Change rules, change governments, and develop?; 2. Deconstructing the puzzling evidence of reform; 3. Overlooking the change context; 4. Reforms as overspecified and oversimplified solutions; 5. Limited engagement, limited change; 6. What you see is not what you get (expecting limits); 7. Problem-driven learning sparks institutional change; 8. Finding and fitting solutions that work; 9. Broad engagement, broader (and deeper) change; 10. Reforming rules of the development game itself.