An overview of PDIA and its application to fragile states

Michael Woolcock World Bank & Harvard University

Summary • What is PDIA?

– How is it distinctive? • From ‘orthodoxy’? Predecessors? Neighbors?

– Why does it matter? • Regarding fragile states, how might PDIA…

– inform theory? – contribute to general allocation decisions? – guide country-specific policy/practice?

• Solomon Islands, Sierra Leone, Timor Leste…

What is PDIA? (Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation)

• A framework for enhancing the state’s capability to implement its core tasks… – Delivering mail, immunizing babies, paving roads

(‘logistics’) to ensuring security, regulating firms, constraining itself (‘complex’)

– i.e., to actually be a state, not merely look like one

What is PDIA? (Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation) • A framework for enhancing the state’s capability to

implement its core tasks… – Delivering mail, immunizing babies, paving roads

(‘logistics’) to ensuring security, regulating firms, constraining itself (‘complex’)

– i.e., to actually be a state, not merely look like one • …given that

– empirically, performance trajectories in most countries are stagnant, even declining

– ‘next steps’ in development will be harder than the first – there is increasing recognition that BAU has at best

reached its limits; at worst is part of the problem • All on full display when BAU does FCS

Using the ‘Quality of Government’ rating there are few successes—most countries are going backwards

Classification by levels of Quality of Government in 2008

Classification by pace of change in (normed) Quality of Government, 1998-2008 Falling fast: (below -0.05 annual growth)

Stagnating (slow change, negative or positive)

Rising fast Above 0.05 annual growth Row

totals

(Falling) below 0 but above -0.05 annual growth

(Rising) at or above 0 but below 0.05 annual growth

High: (above 6.50)

Countries BRN, MLT SGP BHS, CHL, ISR, KOR

TWN

Number 2 1 4 1 8 Medium: (above 4.00 but below 6.50)

Countries ARG, BGR, BHR, BOL, CRI, GIN, GMB, GUY, HUN, IRN, JAM, LKA, MAR, MNG, MWI, NIC, PAN, PHL, POL, ROM, SUR, SYR, THA, TTO, TUN, ZAF

BGD, BRA, CUB, ECU, EGY, GHA, IND, JOR, MDG, MYS, OMN, PAK, PER, QAT, UGA, URY

AGO, ARE, BWA, CHN, CMR, DZA, ETH, KWT, LBN, MEX, SAU, VNM, ZMB

COL, IDN, TUR, TZA

Number 26 16 13 4 59 Low: (below 4.00)

Countries CIV, COG, DOM, GAB, GTM, HTI, KEN, LBY, PNG, PRK, PRY, SLE, SLV, SOM, VEN, ZWE

BFA, HND, MLI, MOZ, SEN, TGO, ZAR

ALB, IRQ, MMR, NGA, SDN

GNB, LBR, NER

Number 16 7 5 3 31 Totals 44 24 22 8 98

Or, ‘modernization’ of Administration as binding constraint on 21st C development

• ADMINISTRATION• Rational,

professional organizations

• SOCIETY• Equal social

rights, opportunities

• POLITY• Accurate

preference aggregation

• ECONOMY• Enhanced

productivity

Rules Systems

Figure 1: Development as a four-fold modernization process

One big question, four main points • How is it that countries manage to stay engaged

in development and yet fail to acquire capability?

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One big question, four main points • How is it that countries manage to stay engaged in

development and yet fail to acquire capability? 1. Conflate institutional form and function

• Change (and assess/measure) what institutions “look like”, not what they actually “do” (isomorphic mimicry)

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One big question, four main points • How is it that countries manage to stay engaged in

development and yet fail to acquire capability? 1. Conflate institutional form and function

• Change (and assess/measure) what institutions “look like”, not what they actually “do” (isomorphic mimicry)

2. Promote an inadequate theory of change • Accelerated modernization via transplanted best

practice

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One big question, four main points • How is it that countries manage to stay engaged in

development and yet fail to acquire capability? 1. Conflate institutional form and function

• Change (and assess/measure) what institutions “look like”, not what they actually “do” (isomorphic mimicry)

2. Promote an inadequate theory of change • Accelerated modernization via transplanted best

practice 3. Set (excessively) great expectations

• Time frames too short, bar too high, road not straight

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Haiti, even at huge accelerations of progress, still far from “developed” levels in 50 years

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One big question, four main points • How is it that countries manage to stay engaged in

development and yet fail to acquire capability? 1. Conflate institutional form and function

• Change (and assess/measure) what institutions “look like”, not what they actually “do” (isomorphic mimicry)

2. Promote an inadequate theory of change • Accelerated modernization via transplanted best practice

3. Set (excessively) great expectations • Time frames too short, bar too high, road not straight

4. Collude in premature load bearing • Too much asked of too little, too soon, too often • Failing in this way itself undermines progress; kills learning

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Staying seriously stuck ‘Capability traps’ become entrenched when action across three levels – agents, organizations and systems – conspires to favor Mimicry over innovation Inputs over outcomes Compliance over experimentation Self-interest over collective value creation

What to do? Elements of alternatives… • Academic literature

– “Projects as policy experiments” (Rondinelli) – “Learning organizations” (Senge) – “Good-enough governance” (Grindle) – “Just-enough governance” (Fukuyama and Levy) – “Deliberation, not blueprints” (Evans, Roe)

• 21st C developmental state – “Best fit, not best practice” (Booth) – “Second-best institutions” (Rodrik) – “Positive deviance” (Pascale et al) – “Complex adaptive systems” (Ramalingam, Barder et al)

• Operational initiatives – Results Based Management – Cash on delivery aid (CODA, GPOBA), et al

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But need specific focus on… • Addressing ‘complex’ (and ‘chaotic’) problems

– Crafting locally legitimate, context-specific responses – Incorporating appropriate M&E strategies

• Navigating design space to find ‘best fit’ solution(s) • Building state capability for implementation

– To actually perform core responsibilities • Delivering mail, collecting taxes, immunizing babies,

educating kids, administering justice, regulating firms, etc – Success builds ‘good institutions’ (not vice versa)

• Esp. in persistently low capability countries, sectors – E.g., ‘Fragile’, conflict-affected countries (Haiti,

Somalia)

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Four Principles of PDIA (Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation)

1. Local Solutions for Local Problems

2. Pushing Problem Driven Positive Deviance

3. Try, Learn, Iterate, Adapt

4. Scale Learning through Diffusion (Communities of Practice)

Based on Andrews, Pritchett and Woolcock 2013 ‘Breaking Capability Traps Through Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)’ World Development

Local Solutions for Local Problems

Good problems This isn’t current practice… o Agenda for action focused on a

locally nominated (through some process) concrete problem

o Not “solution” driven that defines the problem as the lack of a particular input (e.g. “teacher qualifications”)

o Rigorous about measurable goals in the output/outcome space (e.g. cleaner streets, numbers of new exports, growth of exports)—can we know if the problem is being solved?

• The MDGs are an external agenda that may or may not correspond to locally perceived problems.

• The “Doing Business” indicators provide a checklist approach

• The “inputs” approach is still common (e.g. the goal is to “train more teachers”)

• “Reform” agendas in which the adoption of “best practice” is the goal

In summary: how PDIA differs

World Bank, Donors

NGOs

PDIA

What drives action?

Solutions (“institutional mono-cropping”, “best practice”, AMTTBP)

Solutions (variety of antidotes – e.g. “participation” “community driven”)

Problem Driven—looking to solve particular problems

Planning for action

Lots of advance planning (implementation of secondary importance)

Boutique, starting very small with no plans for scale

Authorization of positive deviation, purposive crawl of the design space

Feedback loops

Monitoring (short, on financing and inputs) and Evaluation (long feedback loop on outputs, maybe outcomes)

Casual, geared to advocacy not learning

MeE: integration of rigorous “experiential” learning into tight feedback loops

Scale Top-down—the head learns, implementation is just muscle (“political will”)

Small is beautiful… Or, just not logistically possible

Diffusion of feasible practice across organizations and communities of practitioners

Pushing Problem-Driven Positive Deviation o Authorize some agents (not all) to move from

process to flexible and autonomous control to seek better results

o An “autonomy” for “performance accountability” swap (versus “process accountability”)

o Only works if the authorization is problem driven, measured and measurable…

Regarding FCS, how might PDIA… • Inform theory

– Explain attraction, durability but limits of BAU – Distinguish different types of problems, contexts – Articulate alternative principles

• Contribute to general allocation decisions – Beyond CPIA < 3.2 – Toward types and trajectories of ‘fragility’

• On the basis of broad data + specific country cases • As a guide to country-specific policy/practice

– Solomon Islands, Sierra Leone – South Sudan – Afghanistan

Solomon Islands • RAMSI: $millions

spent on state-of-the-art courthouse, jail, training of judges, police…

• …vs ‘Justice Delivered Locally’, a decentralized system of island courts responding to everyday justice concerns of everyday people

Key readings • Andrews, Matt (2013) The Limits of Institutional

Reform (New York: Cambridge University Press) • Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock

(2013) ‘Escaping capability traps through Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)’ World Development 51(11): 234-244

• Lant Pritchett, Michael Woolcock and Matt Andrews (2013) ‘Looking like a state: techniques of persistent failure in state capability for implementation’ Journal of Development Studies 49(3): 1-18

• Lant Pritchett, Salimah Samji and Jeffrey Hammer (2012) ‘It’s all about MeE: using structured experiential learning (‘e’) to crawl the design space’ Working Paper No. 104, WIDER (December 2012)