Development debates frequently focus on making economic growth sustainable or ensuring that natural resources are used sustainably; such debates rest on longstanding scholarship and largely shared understandings...
Reform committees (also known as reform councils) are institutional mechanisms or structures tasked with holding policy discussions pertaining to (and making specific recommendations on) regulatory issues...
Development is a dynamic, transformative process that fundamentally changes how people live. People are the means and ends of development-the goal of which is to equip, link, and enable groups of people...
Responding effectively and with professional integrity to the many challenges of public administration requires recognizing that access to more and better quantitative data is necessary but insufficient...
In recent years the development policy community has turned to case studies as an analytical and diagnostic tool. Practitioners are using case studies to discern the mechanisms underpinning variations...
The experience of development, as well as understandings of and responses to it, are uniquely rendered via popular culture generally, and popular music. Music has been a medium of choice through which...
What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David...
How does adaptive implementation work in practice? Drawing on extensive interviews and observations, this paper contrasts the ways in which an adaptive component of a major health care project was implemented...
Reforming public-sector organizations, their structures, policies, processes and practices—is notoriously difficult, in rich and poor countries alike (Grindle and Thomas 1991; World Bank 2012). Even in...
Malawi can be understood as a microcosm of institutional reform approaches in developing countries more broadly. A common feature of such approaches, whether implemented by government or donors, is reform...
Good policies are necessary but insufficient for delivering high quality public services. Building organizations capable of implementing increasingly complex policies at scale is crucial. But most developing...
This paper presents the initial findings from six rounds of research conducted between 2012 and 2016 on livelihoods and social change in rural Myanmar, undertaken as part of the Qualitative Social and...
This paper combines theory with data from different domains to provide an empirical analysis of the scale and variability of social capital as wealth. The analysis is used to argue, given what has been...
This note considers the most relevant literature and contends that, even if the ‘middle income trap’ is myth, it provides impetus for policy makers to reassess their strategies once the traditional sources...
The clear development gains achieved in recent decades should not deflect attention from the scale and type of challenges that remain. The strategies largely responsible for these initial gains have been...
This report examines the role of incentives, trust, and engagement as critical determinants of service delivery performance in MENA countries. Focusing on education and health, the report illustrates how...
This report examines the role of incentives, trust, and engagement as critical determinants of service delivery performance in MENA countries. Focusing on education and health, the report illustrates how...
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a rising middle-income region, and its citizens rightly expect quality public services. Yet too often they experience disappointment; students attending local...
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a rising middle-income region, and its citizens rightly expect quality public services. Yet too often they experience disappointment; students attending local...
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a rising middle-income region, and its citizens rightly expect quality public services. Yet too often they experience disappointment; students attending local...