Diagnostic Tools for Governance in Fragile States : Lessons, Trends and Suggestions
The purpose of this issues note is to review the experience in and outside the World Bank of using different diagnostic tools in fragile state situations. It will identify trends in the use of such tools, lessons learnt, and arrive at suggestions f...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/186101468160519863/Diagnostic-tools-for-governance-in-fragile-states-lessons-trends-and-suggestions http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27278 |
| Summary: | The purpose of this issues note is to
review the experience in and outside the World Bank of using
different diagnostic tools in fragile state situations. It
will identify trends in the use of such tools, lessons
learnt, and arrive at suggestions for the future. Because
governance has continued to be a major concern in the
international community, over the years this has led to a
growing diversity in the application of the concept. With
this diversification the types of assessment in use have
also increased, a process that reflects two things. First,
each agency tends to design an assessment to meet its own
program needs. Second, diagnostic tools have often fallen
short of expectations leading agencies to develop new ones,
including more recently political economy studies that go
beyond what was at least until recently mainstream types of
assessing governance. Accepting the diversity of definitions
and assessments, this note does not intend to review the
whole field. A diagnostic tool here refers to the approach
and methodology used in assessing governance. Choice of tool
has a direct bearing on how an activity is designed and
carried out. Making the right choice, therefore, is
important. A tool may become 'main stream' and the
original rationale for its use disappears. It is applied
because everyone else is using it or there is pressure to
use the same tool as others. A shift to other tools,
however, may become necessary because existing tools do not
deliver. Such a shift is occurring in the governance field
where a focus on institutions is being increasingly
complemented, if not replaced, by a studies of underlying
political economy factors. This Note tries to trace this
process by highlighting both specific and more general
experiences with tools used to assess governance. Fragile
states or situations are not typical but they give rise to
governance challenges that more than other contexts test the
limits of particular tools. This becomes an especially
important issue given that what works in countries that are
not fragile seems to fall short of the same achievement in
fragile situations. |
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