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1. Public policy actors view success differently, and it matters

Author:
Matt Andrews
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Literature tells us there are many dimensions of public policy success, and different actors in the policy process will likely focus on different dimensions. This paper asks how different actors in the policy process view policy success, and how much their views differ. It finds evidence that actors devising policy plans— designers—view success narrowly, as achieving near-term, programmed goals; whereas other actors involved in advocating for, authorizing, and implementing policies have a broader success perspective, paying more attention to non-program criteria like long-term impact, distributional and endurance success, and intertemporal gains that manifest in the way policies grow capability, political support, stakeholder satisfaction, and process legitimacy. Such finding raises a question about how policy objectives are determined when actors disagree, given that literature also tells us that policies are more likely to succeed when actors agree on what success is and how to achieve it.
Topic:
Government, Governance, and Public Policy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. This is How to Think About and Achieve Public Policy Success

Author:
Matt Andrews
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Officials working on public policies must answer questions like ‘What does policy success mean?’ and ‘How should I pursue policy work in order to achieve success?’ These are difficult questions, but there are ways to respond. One way draws on what I call the program logic of policy success, which suggests that: (i) Success requires efficiently meeting goals that stakeholders view as relevant, (ii) by doing work focused on impacting high-level objectives through programs that deliver promised time-sensitive outputs and outcomes according to a clear, logical plan. I believe this logic dominates the global public policy community, as ‘the way’ officials and organizations should think about and do policy work. This paper tests such belief, showing that officials do think in this way and that this thinking is influenced by common budgeting and evaluation mechanisms. I conclude by asking if this way of thinking poses any concerns, especially if it biases policy organizations to produce some kinds of policy success and not others.
Topic:
Government, Public Policy, and Policymaking
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Getting Real about Unknowns in Complex Policy Work

Author:
Matt Andrews
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
As with all public policy work, education policies are demanding. Policy workers need to ‘know’ a lot—about the problems they are addressing, the people who need to be engaged, the promises they can make in response, the context they are working in, and the processes they will follow to implement. Most policy workers answer questions about such issues within the structures of plan and control processes used to devise budgets and projects. These structures limit their knowledge gathering, organization and sense-making activities to up-front planning activities, and even though sophisticated tools like Theories of Change suggest planners ‘know’ all that is needed for policy success, they often do not. Policies are often fraught with ‘unknowns’ that cannot be captured in passive planning processes and thus repeatedly undermine even the best laid plans. Through a novel strategy that asks how much one knows about the answers to 25 essential policy questions, and an application to recent education policy interventions in Mozambique, this paper shows that it is possible to get real about unknowns in policy work. Just recognizing these unknowns exist—and understanding why they do and what kind of challenge they pose to policy workers—can help promote a more modest and realistic approach to doing complex policy work.
Topic:
Education, Government, and Public Policy
Political Geography:
Africa and Mozambique

4. Successful Failure in Public Policy Work

Author:
Matt Andrews
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
It matters if public policies succeed in solving societal problems, but a dominant narrative holds that policies fail ‘often’. A large-sample study discussed in this paper suggests that this is not accurate, however. The most common policy result in this study is more ambiguous—what I call ‘successful failure’. Such result is achieved when a policy delivers enough low-level, short-term product to promise success, but ultimately (and repeatedly) fails to contribute to sustained highlevel, long-term impact (addressing the problems citizens care about). Such ‘successful failure’ is endemic to public policy work, and a more pernicious result than outright failure: It allows policy design and implementation actors to associate with incomplete near-run success but insulate themselves from future failure (which they blame on factors and actors beyond their control) and simultaneously enjoy repeated demand for work (because problems are never really solved.
Topic:
Government, Public Policy, and Problem Solving
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. 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

6. Opening Adaptation Windows onto Public Financial Management Reform Gaps in Mozambique

Author:
Matt Andrews, Tim McNaught, and Salimah Samji
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Governments across the world regularly pursue reforms that achieve less than was originally expected or is needed to make the state function better. The limits to reform success are often obvious in even the early days of reform, where gaps and weaknesses manifest. Many governments have no mechanisms built into their reform processes to see these gaps and weaknesses, however, and persist with predefined reform plans instead of adapting designs to close the gaps and address weaknesses. One antidote to this challenge is to create reflection points where reformers scrutinize their progress to identify weaknesses, reflect on these weaknesses, and adapt their next steps to address the weaknesses. In the spirit of John Kingdon’s work on ‘policy windows’, we call these reflection points ‘adaptation windows’—moments where reformers acknowledge problems in their reforms, adapt reforms to address such, and mobilize support for this adaptation. This paper discusses an effort to open an adaptation window for reformers to ‘see’ and then respond to public financial management (PFM) reform gaps and weaknesses in Mozambique. The paper details why and how this work was pursued, and also reflects on results of the government’s reflection at the adaptation window.
Topic:
Government, Reform, International Development, and State
Political Geography:
Africa and Mozambique

7. Scaling PDIA through Broad Agency, and Your Role

Author:
Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett, and Michael Woolcock
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Many development challenges are complex, involving a lot of different agents and with unknown dimensions. Solutions to these challenges are often unknown, and contextually dependent. At the same time, there are political imperatives at play in many contexts which create pressure to 'find the solution now…and then scale it up.' Such pressure raises a question: how does a policy entrepreneur or reformer find a new solution and scale it up when dealing with complexity? This is the subject we address in the current paper, which is the fifth in a series on 'how to' do problem driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) (Andrews et al. 2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c). The paper focuses on building broad agency solutions in the process of identifying problems and finding and fitting contextually appropriate solutions. The broad agency is, in our opinion, a most effective mechanism to ensure scaling and dynamic sustainability in the change process. As with other working papers on this topic, the contents here do not offer all answers to those asking questions about how to do development effectively. It closes by reflecting on the importance of 'you' (the reader, and ostensibly part of a policy change or reform team somewhere) using this and the other ideas as heuristics to rethink and reorient how you work—but with your own signature on each idea.
Topic:
Development, Government, International Development, and Scaling
Political Geography:
Malaysia and Burkina Faso

8. Managing Your Authorizing Environment in a PDIA Process

Author:
Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett, and Michael Woolcock
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Development and state building processes are about change. Change is, however, elusive in many contexts. In prior work, we have offered problem driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) as an approach to tackle wicked hard change challenges. This is our fourth practical working paper on ‘how’ to do PDIA. The working paper addresses questions about authority, given that authority is needed to make change happen—especially in hierarchical government settings. This authority is often difficult to attain, however. It is seldom located in one office of person, and is often harder to lock-in with complex challenges, given that they commonly involve significant risk and uncertainty and require engagement by many agents responding to different kinds of authority. Every effort must be taken to address such challenges, and efforts should include an explicit strategy to establish an appropriate authorizing environment. This working paper suggests ideas to adopt in this strategy, with practical exercises and examples to help the reader apply such ideas in her or his own work.
Topic:
Development, Government, International Development, and State
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America

9. Can one retell a Mozambican reform story through Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation?

Author:
Matt Andrews
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Many public sector reforms in developing countries fail to make governments more functional. This is typically because reforms introduce new solutions that do not fit the contexts in which they are being placed. This situation reflects what has recently been called the 'capability trap' in development—which results in many interventions producing new forms that are not functional in states across the globe. The work on capability traps suggests that reforms can yield more functional influence in even the most complex states, however; if reformers adopt non-traditional approaches to doing reform. In particular, the work suggests that reforms will tend to be more contextually fitted if: (i) They are driven by problems that agents in the context care about; and (ii) They are introduced iteratively—through a stepwise process where ideas are tried and lessons are learned and used to adapt (or fit) ideas to context. The capability traps work embeds these ideas into an approach to doing reform called Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA). This approach has deep roots in various literatures but many observers still ask how PDIA-type reforms could work to foster successful reform in complex hierarchical developing country governments and whether these approaches really help foster reforms that better fit such complex contexts. This paper responds to such question by describing an action research study where PDIA is being used to retell a story of reform that has to date been limited. The action research study is in Mozambique’s judicial sector and will examine whether and how a problem driven iterative approach can (i) flush out the contextual factors that often limit reform success, (ii) provide a viable route to find and fit reforms that actually foster greater functionality, and (iii) promote the authority needed to ensure change is implemented and institutionalized.
Topic:
Government, Developing World, Reform, and Public Sector
Political Geography:
Africa and Mozambique