Policy analysis is an established discipline in the industrialized world, yet its application to developing countries has been limited. The health sector in particular appears to have been neglected. This is surprising because there is a well recognized crisis in health systems, and prescriptions abound of what health policy reforms countries should introduce. However, little attention has been paid to how countries should carry out reforms, much less who is likely to favour or resist such policies. This paper argues that much health policy wrongly focuses attention on the content of reform, and neglects the actors involved in policy reform (at the international, national sub-national levels), the processes contingent on developing and implementing change and the context within which policy is developed. Focus on policy content diverts attention from understanding the processes which explain why desired policy outcomes fail to emerge. The paper is organized in 4 sections. The first sets the scene, demonstrating how the shift from consensus to conflict in health policy established the need for a greater emphasis on policy analysis. The second section explores what is meant by policy analysis. The third investigates what other disciplines have written that help to develop a framework of analysis. And the final section suggests how policy analysis can be used not only to analyze the policy process, but also to plan.

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Reforming the health sector in developing countries: the central role of policy analysis

http://www.lasociedadcivil.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/wdaccpractice1.pdf

Accountability In Practice: Mechanisms for NGOs

All fourteen major peacebuilding missions launched between 1989 and 1999 shared a common strategy for consolidating peace after internal conflicts: immediate democratization and marketization. Transforming war-shattered states into market democracies is basically sound, but pushing this process too quickly can have damaging and destabilizing effects. The process of liberalization is inherently tumultuous, and can undermine the prospects for stable peace. A more sensible approach to post-conflict peacebuilding would seek, first, to establish a system of domestic institutions that are capable of managing the destabilizing effects of democratization and marketization within peaceful bounds and only then phase in political and economic reforms slowly, as conditions warrant. Peacebuilders should establish the foundations of effective governmental institutions prior to launching wholesale liberalization programs. Avoiding the problems that marred many peacebuilding operations in the 1990s will require longer-lasting and, ultimately, more intrusive forms of intervention in the domestic affairs of these states. This book was first published in 2004.

At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict

Most work on the relationship between farm size and productivity strongly suggests that farms that rely mostly on family labor are more productive than large farms operated primarily by hired labor. This study began as an inquiry into how rental and sales markets for agricultural land in the developing world affect efficiency and equity. What emerged was the clear sense that great variations in land relations around the world and over time cannot be understood in the common paradigm of property rights and competitive markets. Under that paradigm, land scarcity leads to better definition of rights, which are then traded in sales and rental markets accessible equally to all players. The outcome should be the allocation of land to the most efficient uses and users, yet this rarely happens. Instead, land rights and ownership tend to grow out of power relationships. Landowning groups have used coercion and distortions in land, labor, credit, and commodity markets to extract economic rents from the land, from peasants and workers, and most recently from urban consumer groups or taxpayers. Such rent-seeking activities reduce the efficiency of resource use, retard growth, and increase the poverty of the rural population. The authors examine how these power relations emerged and what legal means enabled relatively few landowners to accumulate and hold on to large landholdings. The authors discuss the successes and failures of reform in market and socialist economies, and the perversions of reforms in both systems, manifested in large commercial farms and collectives. They survey the history of land relations and the legacies that history leaves. They discuss the three analytical controversies surrounding economies of scale, and the efficiency of the land sales and land rental market. They discuss the main policy issues and implications of various distortions and successful and unsuccessful reforms in the developing world, including land registration and titling, land taxation, regulations restricting land sales and rentals, fragmentation and consolidation of land, redistributive land reform, and decollectivization. In an epilogue on methodology, the authors examine how various strands of economic theory have contributed, or failed to contribute, to the explanation of variations in policies, distortions, and land relations over space and time.

Power, distortions, revolt, and reform in agricultural land relations

https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/BC4F6F3129C7772B8525775100588D7F-Full_Report.pdf

Impact of Farmer Field Schools on Agricultural Productivity and Poverty in East Africa

Preface. Data Theory in Development Research. Variables and Their Distributions. Part I Regression and Data Analysis. Simple Regression with Graphics. Curve Fitting. Multiple Regression with Graphics. Misspecification with Multiple Regression. Part II Working with Data: Cross Section and Time Series Analysis. Cross Section Analysis: the Problem of Heteroscedasticity. Working with Categorical Variables. Modelling Time Series. Autocorrelation and Misspecification. Part III Modelling Simultaneous Systems. Introduction to Simultaneous Models. Identification and Estimation. Carrying out Econometric Research.

Econometrics and data analysis for developing countries

Tom Hewitt, Marc Wuyts, and Maureen Mackintosh: Introduction Section I Theory Chapters: Maureen Mackintosh: Challenges to the Public Sphere Marc Wuyts: Deprivation and Public Need Mahmood Messkoub: Public Expenditure and Macroeconomic Constraints Section II Case Studies: Ben Crow and Barbara Harriss: The Deregulation of Staple Food Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia Tom Hewitt: Children, Abandonment, and Public Action in Brazil Gita Sen: Social Needs and Public Accountability: The Case of Kerala Joshua Doriye: Crisis and Adjustment: The Dynamics of Public Sector Efficiency and Employment in Tanzania Gordon White: State Socialist Economic Reform and Rural Development: The Chinese Experience of Decollectivization Hazel Johnson: Challenging the State: Policy Gaps and Women's Empowerment Tim Allen and Alan Thomas: National and International NGOs in Africa and South Asia Tom Hewitt, Marc Wuyts, and Maureen Mackintosh: Conclusion

Development policy and public action

Introduction - Alan Thomas PART ONE: CONCEPTUALISING POLICY-RELATED INVESTIGATION Information Needs and Policy Change - Stephen Potter and Ramya Subrahmanian Boundaries for Thinking and Action - Chris Blackmore and Ray Ison Grabbing Attention - Joseph Hanlon PART TWO: THINKING WITH PAPER How to Do a Literature Study - Stephanie Barrientos Interpreting Institutional Discourses - Bridget O'Laughlin PART THREE: THINKING WITH PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS People as Informants - Philip Woodhouse Investigation as Empowerment - Hazel Johnson and Linda Mayoux Using Participatory Methods Organizational Assessment and Institutional Footprints - Chris Roche Dilemmas of Researching Poverty - Dina Abbott Communicating Results - Joanna Chataway and Avril Joffe PART FOUR: THINKING WITH DATA Thinking with Quantitative Data - Chandan Mukherjee and Marc Wuyts Analysing Institutional Accounts - Geoff Jones Critical Issues in Using Data - Sue Mayer Challenging Cases - Alan Thomas Conclusion - Alan Thomas and Joanna Chataway Personal Effectiveness and Integrity

Finding out fast : investigative skills for policy and development

The economic policies of transition and reconstruction in Mozambique, like the policies of central planning beforehand, were based on an inappropriate model of the inherited rural economy. Under central planning, the peasantry was looked upon as a mass of subsistence producers; with the economic reforms came the vision of the peasantry as a mass of smallholder producers. Both these views ignored the extent to which peasant livelihoods depended on the complex and varied linkages between wage labour and household production.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/52819/1/333286502.pdf

The agrarian question in Mozambique's transition and reconstruction

In looking at the case of Mozambique under structural adjustment, this article argues that the particular combination of fiscal restraints imposed by financial programming, and the proliferation of decentralized project-based management, together proved to be a potent mixture which failed to reconstruct a coherent pattern of state action. The problem lies in the increasing dominance of foreign aid and in the uneasy interplay between programme aid on the one hand and project aid on the other, as competition from projects wins resources away from regular state programmes, with very little prospect of such projects becoming self-sustainable in the absence of the continued infusion of foreign aid.

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Marc Wuyts

Papers

Econometrics and data analysis for developing countries

Development policy and public action

Finding out fast : investigative skills for policy and development

The agrarian question in Mozambique's transition and reconstruction

Foreign Aid, Structural Adjustment, and Public Management: The Mozambican Experience