The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development

Matt Andrews is a fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard's Kennedy School and the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC. His numerous articles have appeared in journals such as Governance, the International Public Management Journal, the Public Administration Review, Oxford Development Studies, Public Administration and Development and the Journal of Development Studies. Prior to his fellowship at Harvard, Professor Andrews was a vice president of the International Consortium on Governmental Financial Management and supported various government leaders in South Africa during the transition from apartheid. He has worked in more than twenty-five developing and transitional countries as a permanent member of the World Bank and as a Harvard University academic doing research on development and government reform. Dr Andrews received his PhD from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

• Preface; 1. Change rules, change governments, and develop?; 2. Deconstructing the puzzling evidence of reform; 3. Overlooking the change context; 4. Reforms as overspecified and oversimplified solutions; 5. Limited engagement, limited change; 6. What you see is not what you get (expecting limits); 7. Problem-driven learning sparks institutional change; 8. Finding and fitting solutions that work; 9. Broad engagement, broader (and deeper) change; 10. Reforming rules of the development game itself.

'Institutional reform can only work if it is tailored to the local context. That is why so-called best-practice reforms typically fail: they create the illusion of progress, but not the reality. This important book goes beyond this lament to formulate a positive agenda of reform, built on incrementalism, problem-driven focus, and collaboration among stakeholders. Matt Andrews has seen the future, and it is in this book.' Dani Rodrik, Harvard University, and author of One Economics, Many Recipes