Here is an interesting blogging site from Abt on Political Economy Analysis and Adaptive Management – two things I strongly encourage!
My experience is that infrastructure related reforms often underperform – in part from a lack of political assessment upfront (public sector unions anyone?) which leads to policy reform activities that are the poor step-children of the large[r] infrastructure activities. Managers of these programs are under pressure to show progress, typically money spent, which leads them to be selected on the basis of their engineering knowledge rather than their reform skills; naturally they focus a lion’s share of their efforts on the physical infrastructure.
My recommendation for infrastructure related policy and reform activities:
- Recruit staff with policy and reform in mind;
- Change management over engineering
- Co-design with the beneficiaries
- Adaptive Management
Real change, systemic change, is about people and institutions; the infrastructure follows.
Be well, do good work.