Harvard Center for International Development

Many government policies and reforms fail in developing countries. Research at the Center for International Development’s Building State Capability program (or BSC) ties such failure to the tendency of governments to adopt external ‘solutions’ that do not fit their contexts and overwhelm their capabilities. The program believes that governments should build their capabilities by employing processes that empower their own people to find their way to solving their country’s real problems. They propose a process for doing this, called Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (or PDIA) and have been working since 2009 to explore ‘how to do’ PDIA practically, in the real world.

This is the second of a series of interviews with the Building State Capability team – the PDIA in Practice Series, or PIPs, where they describe where the PDIA tools and ideas have emerged from, and how these ideas have taken shape. The previous interview covered their experience working with officials in Mozambique’s public financial management sector in 2009, the ‘adaptation window’ idea and practice it inspired. Today’s interview will tell the story that followed that first year of work, how long it took to take the project off the ground and what were the main learnings of implementing an innovative problem-driven approach across many sectors at a national level.

// Read the PDIA in Practice note: //

https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/contributing-problem-driven-project-mozambique

Interview recorded on June 25th, 2018.

bsc.cid.harvard.edu

About Matt Andrews: Matt Andrews' research focuses on public sector reform, particularly budgeting and financial management reform, and participatory governance in developing and transitional governments. Recent articles focus on forging a theoretical understanding of the nontechnical factors influencing success in reform processes. Specific emphasis lies on the informal institutional context of reform, as well as leadership structures within government-wide networks. This research developed out of his work in the provincial government of Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa and more recently from his tenure as a Public Sector Specialist working in the Europe and Central Asia Region of the World Bank. He brings this experience to courses on public management and development. He holds a BCom (Hons) degree from the University of Natal, Durban (South Africa), an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD in Public Administration from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

Public organizations often have trouble implementing the policies and programs that will benefit the state and its constituents and the public sector in India is no exception. The perception of the state’s capacity to implement policy is often called into question so how can civil servants in India overcome the barriers they face to policy implementation?

Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Salimah Samji, Director of the Building State Capability Program at CID interviews Yamini Aiyar of the Centre for Policy Research, who provides first-hand details on culture within the public sector in India. Salimah and Yamini further examine India’s state capabilities and discuss remedies that could improve decision-making processes within the government.

Yamini Aiyar is the President and Chief Executive of CPR - the Centre for Policy Research - one of India’s leading public policy think tanks. Her research interests are in the field of social policy and development. In 2008, Yamini founded the Accountability Initiative at CPR. Under her leadership, the Accountability Initiative has produced significant research in the areas of governance, state capacity and social policy.

// www.bsc.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on June 6th, 2018.

About Yamini Aiyar: Yamini Aiyar is the President and Chief Executive of CPR. Her research interests are in the field of social policy and development. In 2008, Yamini founded the Accountability Initiative at CPR. Under her leadership, the Accountability Initiative has produced significant research in the areas of governance, state capacity and social policy. It pioneered a new approach to tracking public expenditures for social policy programs and is widely recognised for running the country’s largest expenditure-tracking survey in elementary education. Yamini’s own research on social accountability, elementary education, decentralisation and administrative reforms has received both academic and popular recognition.

Yamini Aiyar is a TED fellow and a founding member of the International Experts Panel of the Open Government Partnership. She has also been a member of the World Economic Forum’s global council on good governance. Previously, she has worked with the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program and Rural Development unit in Delhi, where she focused on action research aimed at strengthening mechanisms for citizen engagement in local government. Additionally, she was a member of the decentralisation team at the World Bank that provided policy support to strengthen Panchayati Raj (local governance) in India.

Aiyar is an Alumnus of the London School of Economics, St. Edmund's college Cambridge University, and St Stephen’s College, Delhi University.

CID Student Ambassador Abeela Latif interviews Susan Scribner, Director of the Preparedness and Response Project at DAI. She discusses the risks that contribute to a pandemic, interventions to mitigate these risks, and how different government and non-government actors can contribute to pandemic preparedness and response.

// www.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on April 20th, 2018.

About Susan Scribner: Susan Scribner leads the Preparedness and Response project (P&R). P&R works in 16 countries in East Africa, West Africa, and Southeast Asia to support multisectoral collaboration through National One Health Platforms. These platforms strengthen countries’ abilities to prevent, detect and respond to pandemic threats. P&R facilitates countries in developing and maintaining National Preparedness and Response Plans to respond to public health events at the regional, national, and subnational levels.

Prior to joining DAI, Susan worked for 17 years for Abt Associates. From 2007 to 2009, she was Chief of Party for a project in Vietnam and Laos that built capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to Avian Influenza. She also led a health systems strengthening project in Uganda from 2004 to 2005. Susan has supported a wide range of projects from the home office and provided technical support and leadership in health policy, financing and governance, infectious diseases, and private sector health.

Susan is also helping to grow DAI Global Health’s work in health system solutions. She has extensive experience in strategy and business development and led the integration of Abt Associates’ Australian subsidiary, Abt JTA.

Building State capability program Director, Salimah Samji, interviews Matt Andrews, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School on the first report of the PDIA in Practice Series. The Series will cover a few of the research engagements done by the Building State Capability program in the past 8 years, and detail what results emerged, what we learned, and what were the next steps for each of these engagements. The first report covers the team’s experience working with officials in Mozambique’s public financial management sector, between September and December 2009.

Interview recorded on June 6th, 2018.

// More about the PDIA in Practice Series: // https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/pdia-inform-budget-reform-mozambique

About Matt Andrews: Matt Andrews is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy. His research focuses on public sector reform, particularly budgeting and financial management reform, and participatory governance in developing and transitional governments. Recent articles focus on forging a theoretical understanding of the nontechnical factors influencing success in reform processes. Specific emphasis lies on the informal institutional context of reform, as well as leadership structures within government-wide networks. This research developed out of his work in the provincial government of Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa and more recently from his tenure as a Public Sector Specialist working in the Europe and Central Asia Region of the World Bank. He brings this experience to courses on public management and development. He holds a BCom (Hons) degree from the University of Natal, Durban (South Africa), an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD in Public Administration from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

CID Student Ambassador Alexandra Gonzalez interviews Ricardo Hausmann, Director of CID and Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the Harvard Kennedy School. Ricardo discusses how he became CID’s director, our current work throughout the world, and what you can expect from future research.

// www.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on April 23rd, 2018.

About Ricardo Hausmann: Ricardo Hausmann is Director of the Center for International Development and Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at Harvard University.

Previously, he served as the first Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (1994-2000), where he created the Research Department. He has served as Minister of Planning of Venezuela (1992-1993) and as a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela. He also served as Chair of the IMF-World Bank Development Committee.

Hausmann was Professor of Economics at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administracion (IESA) (1985-1991) in Caracas, where he founded the Center for Public Policy. His research interests include issues of growth, macroeconomic stability, international finance, and the social dimensions of development. He holds a PhD in economics from Cornell University.

For contact and course information, visit Professor Hausmann's HKS faculty directory page. For publications, teaching, media, visit Professor Hausmann's personal website

CID Research Assistant Sehar Noor interviews Ljubica Nedelkoska, Research Fellow at CID, who discusses the Growth Lab project in Sri Lanka and more specifically her research findings titled “Does Sri Lanka Need More University Graduates?”

// www.srilanka.growthlab.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on May 11th, 2018.

About Ljubica Nedelkoska: Ljubica Nedelkoska joined the Center for International Development's Growth Lab as a Visiting Scholar in 2012 and as a Research Fellow in 2013.

Before joining the CID, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher and a coordinator of the Economics of Innovation Research Group in Jena, and as a research fellow at the Zeppelin University, both in Germany.

Her research area is empirical labor economics, with focus on human capital, human mobility, migration and diasporas, and skill-technology relations. By studying these topics, she aims to understand how economies change their skill portfolios through the processes of on-the-job learning, interacting with technologies, and formal education and training; and how these changes transform the countries’ levels of productivity and development. She is also interested in economic policy and has participated in several economic policy projects in Albania, Sri Lanka, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

She holds a PhD in Economics of Innovation from the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany and a Master's Degree in Public Administration from the Appalachian State University, North Carolina.

CID Student Ambassador Patrick Hannahan interviews Carlos Fernández Valdovinos, Governor of the Central Bank of Paraguay, he discusses the challenges faced by Latin American countries in the new global context, what lessons they learned from the last financial crisis and the best policies to prepare for the next crisis.

// www.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on April 23rd, 2018.

About Carlos Fernández Valdovinos: Carlos Fernández Valdovinos was designated Governor of the Central Bank of Paraguay (BCP) in October 2013 for a five-year period. He graduated from the Universidad Federal de Paraná (Federal University of Paraná – Curitiba, Brazil, 1990) and went on to study in the USA, obtaining a Master’s degree in Economics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1994. In 1999 he got his PhD degree from the University of Chicago.

He has had a vast pedagogical experience and has taught at both national and international universities: Universidad Nacional de Asunción (National University of Asunción), Universidad Católica “Nuestra Señora de la Asunción” – both Paraguayan; Universidad de San Andrés (Argentina), Georgetown University and the University of Chicago. He has worked on various research projects and has published a number of papers.

Professionally within the Central Bank he has acted as Monetary Programming Chief (1991-1992), Advisor to the Economic Studies Manager (1999-2001) and Economic Studies Manager (2001-2004).

He later moved to the USA to work for the World Bank as Senior Economist (2004-2006). From 2006 until his designation as President of the BCP he worked for the IMF as Senior Economist in the Africa, Europe and Western Hemisphere departments, and from 2011 onwards he was Resident Representative of the IMF for Brazil and Bolivia.

In 2015, 2016 and 2017, Global Finance awarded him Best Central Bank Governor of the Year. In 2017, The Banker (from the Financial Times Group) named him Central Banker of the Year -the Americas. In the same year, 2017, Mr. Fernandez has been awarded as the Central Bank Governor of the Year, being the first Latin American Governor prizewinner by Central Banking.

This week, CID Student Ambassador Emily Ausubel interviews Roberto Patiño, Founder & CEO of Caracas Mi Convive, and Thomas Abt, Senior Research Fellow at CID, they discuss the role of community-based organizations in preventing violence in Latin America, and on how scientific evidence can help to guide the process.

// www.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on April 27th, 2018.

About Roberto Patiño: Roberto Patiño is 29 years old, he is from Caracas, Production Engineer from Simón Bolívar University, a Master in Public Policy from Harvard University and a member of Primero Justicia. During his college studies, he actively participated in the student movement, being co-founder and coordinator of initiatives such as Votojoven and the Jota Movement. He was president of the Federation of USB Centers and coordinated La Fuerza Joven, youth movement of the presidential campaign of Henrique Capriles Radonsky in 2012. During his studies abroad he specialized in citizen security and undertook a research and consulting project coordinated by professors from Harvard University on successful initiatives to reduce violence in other cities around the world.

He is currently coordinating the Caracas Mi Convive movement, a movement he founded in 2011 together with Leandro Buzón, with the aim of working to prevent violence in the city of Caracas through coexistence and close work with community leaders and vulnerable populations. He is also the creator and coordinator of the Alimenta la Solidaridad (Feed Solidarity) program, which offers lunches to 1030 children at risk of malnutrition in popular sectors of Caracas in collaboration with more than 700 volunteers.

About Thomas Abt: Thomas Abt is a Senior Research Fellow with the Center for International Development, where he leads CID’s Security and Development Seminar Series.

Both in the United States and globally, he teaches, studies, and writes on the use of evidence-informed approaches to reducing gun, gang, and youth violence, among other topics. Abt is a member of the Campbell Collaboration Criminal Justice Steering Committee and the Advisory Board of the Police Executive Programme at the University of Cambridge. He also serves as a Senior Fellow to the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School and the Igarapé Institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Before joining Harvard, Abt served as Deputy Secretary for Public Safety to Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York, where he oversaw all criminal justice and homeland security agencies, including the Divisions of Corrections and Community Supervision, Criminal Justice Services, Homeland Security and Emergency Services, and the State Police. During his tenure, Abt led the development of New York’s GIVE (Gun-Involved Violence Elimination) Initiative, which employs evidence-informed, data-driven approaches to reduce violence. He also established the Research Roundtable on Criminal Justice, a statewide criminal justice community connecting research with policy.

Before his work in New York, Abt served as Chief of Staff to the Office of Justice Programs at the US Department of Justice, where he worked with the nation’s principal criminal justice grant-making and research agencies to integrate evidence, policy, and practice. He played a lead role in establishing the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention, a network of federal agencies and local communities working together to reduce youth and gang violence. Abt was also founding member of the Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative, a place-based development effort that was recognized by HKS as one of the Top 25 Innovations in Government for 2013.

Abt received a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan and a law degree with honors from the Georgetown University Law Center.

This week, CID Senior Research Fellow Thomas Abt interviews Daniel Mejia, Secretary of Security of Bogota, and Chris Blattman, Professor at University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. Daniel and Chris discuss how they used and generated evidence for policymaking with regard to security interventions in the city of Bogota.

// www.cid.harvard.edu //

Interview recorded on April 6th, 2018.

About Daniel Mejia: Daniel is Secretary of Security of Bogota, Colombia, where he is in charge of leading security and justice policies in the city of Bogota. Before becoming the first Secretary of Security of Bogota, Daniel was Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and Director of the Research Center on Drugs and Security (CESED) at Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Colombia, where he taught since 2006. He received a BA and MA in Economics from Universidad de los Andes and a MA and PhD in economics from Brown University. Prior to joining Universidad de los Andes he worked as a researcher at the Central Bank of Colombia and Fedesarrollo. Daniel he has been actively involved in a research agenda whose main objective is to provide independent economic evaluations of security and anti-drug policies implemented in Colombia. In 2008 he was awarded Fedesarrollos´s German Botero de los Ríosprize for economic research. Daniel has designed and evaluated different interventions aimed at reducing crime in cities such as Medellin, Bogota and Cali. Among these, Daniel designed (together with the National Police and the Ministry of Defense) a hotspots policing intervention in Medellin and carried out an independent evaluation of this intervention. Also, he has evaluated the effects of the installation of CCTV cameras on crime in Medellin and the effects of the restriction of alcohol sales on crime in Bogota. Daniel, together with Alejandro Gaviria, published in 2013 the book “Políticas antidroga en Colombia: éxitos, fracasos y extravíos” (Anti-drug policies in Colombia: successes, failures and lost opportunities) at Universidad de los Andes, in Bogota. Between 2011 and 2012, Daniel was a member of the Advisory Commission on Criminal Policy and more recently he was the President of the Colombian Government´s Drug Policy Advisory Commission. In March 2015 Daniel was awarded the Juan Luis Londoño prize, awarded every other year to the best Colombian economist under 40.

About Chris Blattman: Chris Blattman is the Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at The University of Chicago’s Pearson Institute and Harris Public Policy. He is an economist and political scientist who studies poverty, violence and crime in developing countries. He has designed and evaluated strategies for tackling poverty, including cash transfers to the poorest. Much of his work is with the victims and perpetrators of crime and violence, testing the link between poverty and violence. His recent work looks at other sources of and solutions to violence. These solutions range from behavioral therapy to social norm change and local-level state building. He has worked mainly in Colombia, Liberia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Chicago’s South Side. Dr. Blattman was previously faculty at Columbia and Yale Universities, and holds a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley and a Master’s in Public Administration and International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School. He chairs the Peace & Recovery sector at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the Crime, Violence and Conflict initiative at MIT’s Poverty Action Lab (JPAL).

CID Communications Manager, Chuck McKenney talks to CID Research Fellows Sebastian Bustons and Tim Cheston about the recently released 2026 Global Growth Projections. These projections of annualized growth rates of 2026 are based on the latest 2016 trade data and CID’s measure of Economic Complexity, which captures the diversity and sophistication of productive capabilities in a country’s exports.

Get CID's 2026 Global Growth Projections: http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/rankings/growth-projections/

Interview recorded on May 2nd, 2018.