Beyond Institutions: Rethinking the Role of Leaders, Elites and Coalitions in the Institutional Formation of Developmental States and Strategies

Development practitioners and policymakers have tended to rely heavily on structuralist approaches with an emphasis on institutions and institution building. They have failed to take account of ‘agential factors in the design, formation and maintenance of institutions, and for important success stories that run against general patterns of institutional failure or corruption’ (p.93). Policymakers need to have a better understanding of the role of human agency in developmental processes and the role of leaders, elites and coalitions.
Analysis should focus on ‘how and why leaders and elites do or do not work to form growth or developmental coalitions and how – more generally – coalitions are or are not formed to deal with the pervasive collective action problems which define the challenges of development and most socioeconomic and political problems’ (p.101).
Political agency does not explain everything. It is also important to consider the structural circumstances that both frame the context and yet may also propel elites to forge political settlements and institutional arrangements appropriate to their own histories.
The process of development involves solving a series of nested collective action problems amongst diverse interests and organizations (formal or informal). Resolving these collective action problems necessarily and unavoidably involves political processes amongst the relevant elites and leaderships of distinct interests, each bringing different forms and degrees of power to influence and shape the outcomes.
Coalitions are the political solutions to collective action problems. Coalitions are the formal or informal groups which come together to achieve goals they could not achieve on their own.
‘Stable and effective states are the product of de facto coalitions which have negotiated the principal elements of political settlements and designed indigenously appropriate and legitimate political institutions which they are committed to support’ (p.106). Successful growth and development stories are the stories of successful coalitions that have established the principal elements of their economic settlements.

Summary