How can donors conduct political analysis of specific sectors and policy arenas within a country so as to support pro-poor change processes more effectively? This analytical framework from the Overseas Development Institute is designed for use by DFID country offices. It suggests guidelines for political analysis in three stages: (a) an historical/foundational country overview; (b) organisations, institutions and actors; and (c) operational implications. Deep sector/policy analysis facilitates a better understanding of entry points and helps staff to design incentives for maximum impact on development outcomes.
This framework aims to enhance donor understanding of how historical legacies, processes of change and structural features influence the relations between institutions and actors and, in turn, the policymaking and implementation process. It supports DFID’s Drivers of Change approach. The framework’s three stages are not linear or discrete; staff will need to revisit, reassess and reinterpret earlier information.
The framework starts with a broad/foundational country study. This examines: historical legacies and change processes; structural features and their influence; key actors and their roles; formal and informal institutions, including the relationships between actors and institutions; the significance of ideologies, values and power relationships; and key characteristics of the policymaking process and of sectors.
Stage two focuses on understanding how institutions and actors interact and seeks to explain differences across sectors, why organisations prioritise some policies over others and why different actors support or resist certain policy recommendations. This stage of the analysis looks at:
- Defining the sector (determining sector boundaries and mapping the players): Analysis should include ‘hidden relationships’ and actors who have, traditionally, received little attention (e.g. actors at sub-national levels, less organised structures, and institutions that are less acceptable but ‘legitimate’ and/or influential in different contexts). Identifying players and relationships is a continuous process.
- Intra-sector analysis (examining roles and responsibilities, organisational structure, management and leadership, financing and spending, incentives and capacity): Contending positions and differences in attitudes within and across sectors, and between national and sub-national levels may mean, for example, that spaces for pro-poor alliances exist in one sub-department but not in another. Deep intra-sector analysis is crucial for identifying actual, and potential, blocks and entry points as well as for designing appropriate incentives.
- Relationships between players (at the supranational, national and sub-national levels): This analysis aims to reveal varying, and possibly contending, interests, the challenges of multiple obligations and expectations, power structures/relations and their consequences, and potential niches for engagement across organisations and sectors.
Political analysis should help staff to re-assess their objectives, both explicit and implicit, and to assess the donor’s own role in the sector. Analysis can also help staff to redefine how they engage – whether a ‘hands-off’ or interventionist approach is most appropriate, for example. The third stage of the framework therefore focuses on operational implications, again in three phases:
- Defining objectives and expectations: What, given donor understanding of the context, their scope for influence and the role of other donors, should be the priorities for working in the sector? What objectives are feasible in the period available?
- Determining entry points: How does an understanding of the constraints, incentives and capabilities help to define which institutions, organisations and actors would be most effective in tackling particular problems?
- Identifying mode of support: Which strategy, or which different strategies within the same sector, could maximise the donor’s leverage?
