Public policy in developing countries seems to be more readily associated with the notion of failure than success. How do we define policy success or policy failure? Can understanding the policy process and the various capacity constraints involved in developing countries inspire more successful policies? Compiled for the Institute for Development Policy and Management, this paper analyses the theory and practice of development policy and the lessons to be learned in a bid to transform past failures into future successes.
Sobering accounts of failures in development policy and sometimes failures of development receive considerably more attention than policy success. Whilst focusing on failure has sometimes identified factors that might increase the likelihood of success, understanding how development policies come into being and occasionally prosper is important.
What we call success will depend on what we call the typically undefined term ‘development’. We are interested in development as aimed at enhancing human capabilities, in particular for those who have the greatest capability deficits. Development in this sense is a normative term, hence we are not obliged to confine our definition of policy success in terms of original stated goals, but may also include indirect and unintentional benefits. Policy success requires the following crucial factors:
- Policies need the good luck of being spared from exogenous shocks, for instance the effect of oil prices on a substantial portion of the World Bank’s interventions during the 1980s
- Success depends on the capacity of government institutions and staff in implementing agencies to be able to carry out their policy mandate and strengthening this capacity where it is lacking
- The conceptually difficult element of political commitment can offer a partial account of policy success or failure
- However innovative a policy may be, one explanation for its success must be that the technical specification was appropriate
- Where public policy is effected without public agencies, NGOs and donors must be careful to avoid distorting indigenous priorities.
Policy formation is mostly indigenous, arising in a local political and social process in which power is exercised, alliances are formed and supporters are enrolled. There are various circumstances in which successful policies are initiated:
- Once formed, policies endure when they have a broad domestic alliance as their base and when many people benefit from them
- Policies endure through coercion or through the tyranny of the majority if it is believed to be an acceptable price to pay for the benefits
- Policies that generate weak resistance, for instance in the areas of health or primary education, stand a better chance of success as they do not threaten any elite group
- Policies are more likely to succeed when the organisations responsible for public policy are more responsive to the people they serve with particular emphasis on accountability, equality and the free flow of information
- Policy learning can occur across frontiers as well as within organisations provided policy transfer is related to policy success and involves an element of adaptation to differing political, institutional and cultural circumstances.
