Building State Capability - Evidence, Analysis, Action

Salimah Samji, CID's Building State Capability Program Director, interviews Matt Andrews, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Lant Pritchett, Professor of the Practice of International Development at Harvard Kennedy School on their recently launched book "Building State Capability - Evidence, Analysis, Action". Michael Woolcock, Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School is also a co-author. Recorded on the book launch event on February 13th, 2017. The book uses data to identify failures in efforts to build state capability in development, employs theory to explain why these failures are common and likely to persist-keeping countries in capability traps--and builds on applied experience to offer a new approach to build state capability more effectively. ‘Building State Capability provides anyone interested in promoting development with practical advice on how to proceed—not by copying imported theoretical models, but through an iterative learning process that takes into account the messy reality of the society in question. The authors draw on their collective years of realworld experience as well as abundant data and get to what is truly the essence of the development problem.’ Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University;

Om Podcasten

Incredible progress has been made throughout the world in recent years. However, globalization has failed to deliver on its promises. As problems like unequal access to education and healthcare, environmental degradation, and stretched finances persist, we must continue building on decades of transformative development work. The Center for International Development (CID) is a university-wide center based at the Harvard Kennedy School that seeks to solve these pressing development problems—and many more. At CID, we believe leveraging global talent is the key to enabling development for all. We teach to build capacity, conduct research that guides development policy, and convene talent to advance ideas for a thriving world. Addressing today’s challenges to international development also requires bridging academic expertise with practitioner experience. Through collaborative, in-country partnerships, CID’s research programs, faculty, and students deploy an analytical framework and context-dependent approaches to tackle development problems from all angles, in every region of the globe.