- Many countries remain trapped in situations of low productivity, low GDP per capita and widespread poverty. Economic growth is one dimension of development, while another is the expansion of the administrative capacity of the state.
- This paper describes how many countries remain in ‘state capability traps’ where the capability of the state to implement is severely limited or improving only very slowly. The paper describes how countries manage to engage in the domestic and international logics of “development” and yet fail to acquire capability.
- There are two key ‘techniques of failure’. First, ‘big development’ seeks to generate change by importing standard responses to pre-determined problems, leading to the adoption of the forms of other functional states and organisations, which camouflages a persistent lack of function. Second, inadequate theories of developmental change ‘reinforce a fundamental mismatch between expectations and the actual capacity of prevailing administrative systems to implement even the most routine administrative tasks. This leads to premature load bearing in which wishful thinking about the pace of progress and unrealistic expectations about the level and rate of improvement of capability lead to stresses and demands on systems that cause capability to weaken (if not collapse)’ (p.1).
Governance, social development, conflict and humanitarian knowledge services
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