This paper argues that existing political economy approaches lack the analytical tools needed to grasp the inner politics of development. Political economy has come to be seen narrowly as the economics of politics – the way incentives shape behaviour. Much recent political economy work therefore misses what is distinctively political about politics – power, interests, agency, ideas, the subtleties of building and sustaining coalitions, and the role of contingency. This paper aims to give policy makers and practitioners more precise conceptual tools to help them interpret the inner, ‘micro’, politics of the contexts in which they work. It argues in particular for more focus on recognising and working with the different forms of power, on understanding how and where interests develop, and on the role of ideas.
As understood in this paper, politics is about the structures, institutions and operation of power and how it is used in the competition, conflict and deliberation over ideas, interests, values and preferences; where different individuals, groups, organisations and coalitions contest or cooperate over resources, rights, public rules and duties, and self-interest; where deals are struck and alliances made or broken; and where establishing, maintaining or transforming political settlements, institutions and policies is an ongoing process.
The core dynamic of political processes, and hence of developmental change, lies in the relations of structures and agents, contexts and conducts, institutions and organisations.
Political analysis does not ignore interests, incentives or institutions, but goes further and deeper. It differentiates and disaggregates interests, ideas, incentives and institutions, and also has the analysis of power (and the sources and forms of power) at its core.
This paper proposes a framework for political analysis that offers a much more detailed and granular way of getting to grips with the processes that drive and constrain development. It sees politics as the dynamic and contingent relationship and the seat of the action between power, structure, and agency.
This framework focuses on how the structures and institutions of power shape how agents behave, and how they do or can strategise, frame, generate, use, mobilise and organise power and institutions to bring about domestically owned deliberation and appropriate change in the politics of development.
