Political Economy: From Analysis to Action

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dr. Rosa Muraguri-Mwololo on October 23, 2009 at 9:51pm

Dear Sina,
We are glad and priviledged to have you as a guest to the AfCoP. This sounds like an interesting discussion and a unconventional way of getting to results especially for 'sticky' sectors. Am already thinking of the Kenyan judiciary system as the intractable 'thorn in the Kenyan flesh' - with its reforms that never seem to leave the ground, and a political elite that will do anything to keep the status quo- and i hope to understand how such difficult problems can be analysed and ultimately solved based on your case studies.


Meanwhile, i will read the Dakar transport case.

Rosa

Permalink Reply by Pindai M Sithole on October 24, 2009 at 2:40am

I can relate to this - our Zimbbwe situation. You know sometimes our leaders go into this reform paralysis or analysis paralysis for ages without any practical actions being taken. It is sad. I hope one day someone will develop a vaccine to remove self-centredness leadership syndrome particularly in Africa and generally in the world - because in my view this is one of the major development aspects that keeps regressing real development.

Permalink Reply by Tsegaye Anduanbessa on October 25, 2009 at 6:41am

Dear Sina Odugbemi and Tony Lambino,

I think it is a great privilege to have you two in this discussion. I really appreciate for your time and contribution. I hope we will grasp many ideas and knowledge from your rich experience and wisdom.

The issue of good governance is a burning issue for me to deal with currently, especially tailored with good governance in private commercial banks. That is why I insisted.
I, however, would love first get some idea from you on what we mean by good governance so that I (we) can speak the same language. I wish I get your reflection on how good governance is defined, manifested and how we measure it (if it is measurable). How do we relate good governance with corporate governance? Where and when should the culture of good governance start to be built? In the government offices, in the leading party office, private companies or down at the family level?

After addressing these issues, I hope our next discussion will be easy for me.

Thanks a lot for having you out there to share us your experience,

Permalink Reply by Ledule Bosch on October 27, 2009 at 1:19pm

Dear Sina,

The dialogue around this topic is complex but interesting indeed. From South Africa I would like to engage you on a case within the Transport sector, the systematic challenges that persisted to plague this sector and current reforms currently undertaken to adddress the public transport system. But firstly, I would like to start with the background of reforms and continue to engage on why political economy considerations came into play, and request your expertise and knowledge to clarify why certain things happen they way they do, obviously within the context of MFDR, and comparing this to your case study bus sector operations in Dhaka going forward. The case study I would like to present is the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) System in South Africa. Here it goes. I am also attaching additional reading material to facilitate further engagement.

Background to the Bus Rapid Transit ( BRT) System
The City of Johannesburg (COJ) has adopted an urban development policy which
strongly focuses on the need to create compact cities and limit urban sprawl in order to utilise urban infrastructure and land more efficiently and effectively. The primary measure to support this policy was the Rea Vaya - Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system.

The principal project objective is to upgrade the quality and performance level of the public transport system. BRT refers to a high quality bus based transit system that delivers fast, comfortable, and cost-effective urban mobility through the provision of segregated right-of-way infrastructure, rapid and frequent operations, and excellence in marketing and customer service.

The principal characteristics of BRT are as follows:• Segregated busways or bus-only roadways
• Location of the busways in the median of the roadway rather than in the kerb lane
• Existence of an integrated "network" of routes and corridors
• Separate stations that are convenient, comfortable, secure, and weather protected
• Stations provide level access between the platform and the vehicle floor
• Special stations and terminals to facilitate physical integration between trunk routes, feeder services, and other public transport systems
• Pre-boarding fare collection and fare verification
• Fare and physical integration between routes, corridors, and feeder services
• Entry to the system is restricted to prescribed operators under a reformed business and administrative structure
• Distinctive marketing identity for the system
• Low-emission vehicle technologies
• System management through a centralised control centre, utilising ITS applications such as automatic vehicle location
• Special physical provisions to ease access for people with disabilities, such as children, the elderly, and the disabled
• Clear route maps, signage, and / or real-time information displays that are visibly placed within stations and / or vehicles.

What is Rea Vaya?Rea Vaya is the name which has been chosen for the Johannesburg BRT system. Rea Vaya which means “We are Going” is a major contribution towards Johannesburg’s transformation into a World Class African City. This integrated transport system is one of the first of its kind in Africa.

Rea Vaya will have a profound effect on the movement of people within the city and its growth patterns. This exciting initiative will change the face of Johannesburg and go a long way in helping to integrate and transform the city. Rea Vaya – We are Going!

Why BRT?
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) combines the best features of rail with the flexibility and cost advantages of road – based public transport. It is also much easier to implement then light rail systems if facing time constraints. BRT has been successfully implemented in many developing countries with similar transport problems to South Africa.

How does Rea Vaya work?
Rea Vaya offers three inter-connected levels of service. The largest buses with a capacity of up to 90 passengers will be articulated and are referred to as the Trunk buses. These buses will only travel on the designated median lane trunk routes.

Complementary buses which will be able to pick up passengers at Rea Vaya stations on the trunk routes and will also be able to operate on the kerbside, will have a capacity of 60 passengers.

Finally the Feeder buses, which have a capacity of 32 passengers, will bring people from the outer areas which don’t have direct access to the trunk routes. This will extend Rea Vaya’s network to areas far beyond the main trunk routes. When complete, Rea Vaya will cover more than 300km’s of trunk routes across the city.

In the Phase 1 network, buses will run in exclusive, dedicated lanes in the centre of existing roads and will operate from about 150 stations, positioned half a kilometer apart. They will run every three minutes in peak times and every 10 minutes in off-peak times and it will be possible to catch a bus from 5am to midnight.

One of the most important aspect of this new system is that it will be fully integrated with other transport networks. Rea Vaya will not be competing with other transport systems such as the SARCC or the Gautrain. This is an urban transport network that will feed into and complement existing networks to ensure the most effective movement of people across the city.

Thank you for engaging on this important topic.

Ledule

Attachments:

• Public transport in SA.pdf, 131 KB

Permalink Reply by Antonio Lambino on October 28, 2009 at 7:14pm

Hi, Rosa, Pindai, Tsegaye, Ledule, and other members of the community!

We very much appreciate your comments and generosity in sharing your own experiences.

Political Economy Analysis to Action, indeed, promises to help reformers move their change efforts forward, even in extremely difficult endeavors such as judicial sector reform, corporate governance reform of private commercial banks, and the transport sector.

Rosa (we quoted you on the CommGAP blog a while back, right?), looking forward to hearing more about judicial sector reform in Kenya.

We completely agree with Pindai's point. Leadership does play a crucial role in the political economy appraoch and actually making governance reform happen on the ground. We need political will, which can be practically defined as "enough leadership support to make change happen." We have also learned from various reform experiences that garnering support from mid-level managers, especially but not limited to those in government agencies, and from the public at large are equally important.

To Tsegaye's point on defining "good governance": as we all know, there are many ways of defining the term. One way we go about doing it in CommGAP is by referring to the good governance formulations of colleagues and partners in development. The U.K.'s Department for International Development's (DfID) formulation, for instance, defines good governance as state capability to get certain things done, responsiveness to the needs of citizens, and ability of citizens to hold their governments to account. We think this definition makes sense and have often used it (full disclosure: CommGAP is a trust funded program at the World Bank primarily supported by DfID). In case you haven't had the chance, please see DfID's White Paper entitled "Making Governance Work for the Poor". To all: it would be great if you could share definitions of "good governance" you have found to be most useful in your own work.

On measurement, we of course all know of various ways given the nature of this community. For CommGAP, we focus on the (potential) contributions of communication approaches and techniques to governance reform. Please see the evaluation framework we put together with colleagues from Johns Hopkins University, who are experts on behavior change communication. With regard to the relationship between public sector governance and corporate governance, CommGAP believes that both play a role in bringing about a more robust public sphere. Sina explains it in chapter 2 of this book, which you can download for free. 

We would like to ask the community to weigh in on the question regarding cultivating a culture of good governance. Tsegaye asks where this should start. We think the answer depends on the contextual peculiarities and, yes, the political economy aspects of particular reform efforts. What do you think?

Ledule, thank you for sharing information on the BRT/Rea Vaya. It seems like an impressive project! With your help, we hope to draw out good comparisons as our discussion moves along.

Thank you all, and we look forward to continuing this discussion with you!

Reagrds,

Sina and Tony

Permalink Reply by Antonio Lambino on October 30, 2009 at 11:33am

Hi, everyone. Hope your week's been going well.

Let's try applying the political economy analysis to action framework (what, why, and how) described in the post above to a concrete example: the urban bus operations in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Let's begin by answering the first two questions of the framework -- and we invite you to do the same by sharing an example of your own:
1. What are the systematic problems that continue to plague the sector?
2. Why have these ailments persisted?

Here's how Sameer Akbar and his team working on the project characterize the sector: “Unsafe, polluting buses are allowed to operate on Dhaka’s already choked roads. Yet past efforts to regulate and reform bus operations have been thwarted by the efforts of business syndicates, politicians, police and trade unions. A strategic transport plan has been prepared, but effective implementation will take actions on many fronts…”

If the difficulties described in the quote above sound familiar, then political economy analysis to action can probably help you in your work. The development results in this example include improving bus service quality and road conditions in Dhaka. And while the desired results may be clear and evident, how we might realize them is not. To address this need, the World Bank operations team in Dhaka used a political economy analysis to action approach.

THE WHAT?

They started with an effort to understand the “systematic problems that continue to plague the sector” and identified the following three categories:

- Low standards and poor service quality, evidenced by such things as overloaded buses, faulty brakes, and lack of adherence to time schedules due to traffic.
- Industry fragmentation in terms of bus types and ownership structures, poor regulation of fare schedules, and lack of a system for franchising of routes.
- Governance and institutional issues that include bus drivers using fake licenses and violating traffic rules with impunity, reduced passenger loads due to traffic, bribe requests by police officers, relevant agencies, and even political organizations.

THE WHY?

The team then delved deeper into the issues. They found that the persistence and pervasiveness of these problems are due in large part to “rent-seeking practices affecting all aspects of bus operations and regulation,” which they categorized under the following:

- Political patronage: most evident by key ruling party leaders dominating bus owners associations and the need for bus companies to “compensate a leadership team selected based on ability to maintain good relations with key persons in authority, rather than on deep knowledge of the transport sector.”
- Co-opting industry associations: “bus owners associations and trade unions tend to change leadership automatically with changes in regime… leaders voluntarily cede power, or switch their loyalty, to the new ruling party… (but) opposition party actors reportedly get roughly a quarter of rents… (which) helps maintain stability…”
- Institutions of Accountability: “... the capacity of regulatory institutions is kept weak.” Manpower is lacking, coordination among relevant agencies is weak, and traffic police are inappropriately equipped.
- Allocation of bus routes and permits: Franchises are “not based on proper estimates of demand of commuters, nor on the infrastructure needed for effective operation, but rather on the narrow business interests of bus owners and their political supporters.”

This analysis gives us a sense of why results might not be achieved if reformers fail to take real-world conditions into account. Simply put, reform environments are very complex! The next post will describe an action agenda the team crafted to address these problems and how they put it together. In the meantime, would like to hear your thoughts on this analysis and invite you to post analyses of your own projects. Do these problems echo some of the ones you encounter while implementing your projects and programs? We look forward to hearing from you!

Photo credit: Flickr user Ahron de Leeuw

Permalink Reply by Tsegaye Anduanbessa on November 2, 2009 at 12:33pm

Dear Antonio Lambino and all,

Thank you for your feedbacks and all resources. I found them very relevant for me. I also like the definitions, the resources too, you gave us on good governance and they are workable for me too.
But I wish somebody in this community suggest on my case. There are few private banks (S.Cs.) in my country. (I also work in one of them.) We observe cases where most of the main shareholders influence the management and the overall operation of the banks in favor of their interest, which ultimately leads the banks to losses. Of course, the central bank takes some corrective measures but it is reactive, not proactive. Most of the root causes of the problem are lack of good corporate governance. The issue looks very complicated for us, especially for the lower level experts. We, even the interfering major shareholders for that matter, observe the impending danger on the banking industry and the fiancé sector in general. But we remained helpless to react on the situations. Then, how can one, a staff like me, contribute in bringing about a capable, responsive, and accountable management system in such a firm? I wish I have your reflections?
Best regards,


Antonio Lambino said:

Hi, Rosa, Pindai, Tsegaye, Ledule, and other members of the community!

We very much appreciate your comments and generosity in sharing your own experiences.

Political Economy Analysis to Action, indeed, promises to help reformers move their change efforts forward, even in extremely difficult endeavors such as judicial sector reform, corporate governance reform of private commercial banks, and the transport sector.

Rosa (we quoted you on the CommGAP blog a while back, right?), looking forward to hearing more about judicial sector reform in Kenya.

We completely agree with Pindai's point. Leadership does play a crucial role in the political economy appraoch and actually making governance reform happen on the ground. We need political will, which can be practically defined as "enough leadership support to make change happen." We have also learned from various reform experiences that garnering support from mid-level managers, especially but not limited to those in government agencies, and from the public at large are equally important.

To Tsegaye's point on defining "good governance": as we all know, there are many ways of defining the term. One way we go about doing it in CommGAP is by referring to the good governance formulations of colleagues and partners in development. The U.K.'s Department for International Development's (DfID) formulation, for instance, defines good governance as state capability to get certain things done, responsiveness to the needs of citizens, and ability of citizens to hold their governments to account. We think this definition makes sense and have often used it (full disclosure: CommGAP is a trust funded program at the World Bank primarily supported by DfID). In case you haven't had the chance, please see DfID's White Paper entitled "Making Governance Work for the Poor". To all: it would be great if you could share definitions of "good governance" you have found to be most useful in your own work.

On measurement, we of course all know of various ways given the nature of this community. For CommGAP, we focus on the (potential) contributions of communication approaches and techniques to governance reform. Please see the evaluation framework we put together with colleagues from Johns Hopkins University, who are experts on behavior change communication. With regard to the relationship between public sector governance and corporate governance, CommGAP believes that both play a role in bringing about a more robust public sphere. Sina explains it in chapter 2 of this book, which you can download for free. 

We would like to ask the community to weigh in on the question regarding cultivating a culture of good governance. Tsegaye asks where this should start. We think the answer depends on the contextual peculiarities and, yes, the political economy aspects of particular reform efforts. What do you think?

Ledule, thank you for sharing information on the BRT/Rea Vaya. It seems like an impressive project! With your help, we hope to draw out good comparisons as our discussion moves along.

Thank you all, and we look forward to continuing this discussion with you!

Reagrds,

Sina and Tony

Permalink Reply by Bimerew Alemu on November 4, 2009 at 3:41am

Dear Friends


Let me raise some points on the challenges of city transport in my homeland.The major modes of public transportation in our capital city are buses and taxis. The existing public transportation is of a low quality because of the limited number of buses and taxis.Despite these prevailing problems, efforts to make an empirical study of the city’s urban transportation are insignificant. The problem worsens from time to time. Among the variables that we daily encounter human factor is the most disgusting. Those who are supposed to deliver service (for instance taxi service) do not really seem to understand what they are doing. In my opinion the poorly managed transport sector in African urban centers would be one of the factors to aggravate the increasing poverty level in big cities. Workers can't reach on time to their job sites and the consequence is very clear that they loose their daily income.
To improve the situation immediate policy intervention is necessary. After the deregulation it seemed that there is no control at all. Those that are not giving service no body looks after them. I conclude my comment by recapitulating the concept that transport is considered as a blood vessel (an artery). So it needs to be given due attention.

Best regards
Bimerew Alemu

Permalink Reply by Minyahel Desta on November 5, 2009 at 8:51am

Hello All,
I would like to appreciate sina Odugbem and his colleague for this wonderful and great discussion topic and I would also like to thank the whole participant contributing to the discussion because it is there very interesting participation motivated me to say some on my part.
Well good governance and accountability is a very sensitive, vulnerable kind of issues very difficult to monitor and if monitored well the fruit out of it is very sweet; that is development. What is lacking behind as of me is absence of clear and easy to implement monitoring and evaluation scheme in the sector. Even if the monitoring and evaluation is done, after the evaluation the feedbacks from the evaluation are not taking in to account and if done they were very biased and unprofessional. This happen because of different reason like lack of technical personnel in the field i.e. capacity problem is clearly hindering the growth in the governance of Africa. Lack of commitment in the political leaders is the other reason pausing the progress. Lacks of ethical Civil Servant on the ground and less effort to improve the existing civil service system are the challenges that are prevailing in the sector

Thank you very much

WITH REGARD

MINYAHEL DESTA
MINISTRY OF FINANCE AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT-ETHIOPIA
DEVELOPMENT PLANNING AND RESEARCH DEPARTMENT
DEVELOPMENT PLANNING AND RESEARCH EXPERT
TEL mobile:- +251-911-567892
Office: 251-11-1226637
P.O.BOX 30710
ADDIS ABABA
ETHIOPIA

Permalink Reply by Minyahel Desta on November 11, 2009 at 3:38am

Hello all,
Let me say some on the urban transportation in my home country Ethiopia. The transportation system in Ethiopia is not different from other Sub-Saharan Countries it is becoming sever these days though. This problem vary from place to place and there types also vary the problems arise from the transportation system it self and ethical business conduct of the private owners. Government on it s part did not seat and watch the problems affect the wellbeing of the public; some measures have been taken even though the problem still prevails. Some of the measures are purchasing midbus and then selling at affordable price to private business, district based dissemination of minibuses which is planned to solve some of the private taxi owner’s problems regarding business ethics and inefficient service being provided. In the medium and long period urban rail way transportation is taken as a likely solution to solve the current problem in a sustained manner. And there are some initiatives to start private city bus services in the near feature.
Beside this the other thing we should give emphasis is the technologies we use must be very les carbon emitting if we have to thing about sustainable development. So the technologies we introduce in the transportation system should be very environmentally friendly. And the existing very polluting cars in the metropolis in African urban areas must be discarded for better environment

WITH REGARD


MINYAHEL DESTA
MINISTRY OF FINANCE AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT-ETHIOPIA
DEVELOPMENT PLANNING AND RESEARCH DEPARTMENT
DEVELOPMENT PLANNING AND RESEARCH EXPERT
TEL mobile:- +251-911-567892
Office: 251-11-1226637
P.O.BOX 30710
ADDIS ABABA
ETHIOPIA

Permalink Reply by Antonio Lambino on November 11, 2009 at 7:56pm

Hi, everyone. Thank you very much to those who have shared experiences and posted comments. It’s a pleasure to join your community in continuing this discussion!

Hi again, Tsegaye. As regards your questions on governance in the banking industry, we should probably leave it to the experts on corporate governance reform to comment and provide technical advice. Since our group focuses on the communication dimensions of governance and accountability, please allow us to restate the general approach being advocated in this discussion: should you wish to craft a communication strategy for a banking industry reform in the future, then it might be helpful to start with some form of political economy analysis of the sector, draw out the pathologies (which you’ve started doing as seen in your post), find out why these pathologies persist, and determine which issues might be amenable to communication-based interventions.

Hi, Bimerew and Minyahel. Thank you for sharing experiences from efforts to improve the transportation system in Ethiopia. It’s very timely that you discuss the roles and incentives of some of the major stakeholders in your country’s transport sector. For example, you mention the following: transportation service providers, such as taxi owners; people who need and use these services to get to work; civil servants; and political leaders. You will find that this type of analysis was also done to inform efforts to reform bus operations in Dhaka. After the team analyzed what the problems are and why they persist, they moved into defining how these issues might best be tackled.

The team used what they had learned from the political economy analysis to craft an action agenda. They realized that the pathologies in the sector can be addressed by promoting “the collective action capability of stakeholders… and to link them up in a pro-reform coalition…” The most important stakeholders identified were large bus company owners who “would welcome the increased revenue coming from reforms leading to less congestion, and would benefit from fair route allocations, while feeling confident that they could survive and prosper in a post-reform situation.” The team also thought that “reform-oriented owners and workers may in turn urge their associations/trade unions to promote integrity, non-partisanship in association activities, and more transparency in their functions and accountability to general members”.
Other stakeholders whose interests could be aligned with those of the bus company owners included the media, civil society, and bus commuters. They needed to be well organized and willing to fight the powerful vested interests of various government agencies, bus owners’ associations, and corrupt politicians who were benefitting from the dysfunctional system.

The matrix* below depicts key stakeholders and their likely positions as regards reform. It is divided into four quadrants, each quadrant a combination of two things: a stakeholder's high vs. low interest in the reform itself (horizontal axis) and high vs. low influence in reform processes (vertical axis). This matrix goes beyond a mere listing of stakeholders and their incentives by providing a clear picture of which stakeholders are likely members of pro- and anti-reform coalitions.

The following communication and advocacy efforts were also identified as critical to moving as many players to the high influence/high interest quadrant, thereby strengthening the pro-reform coalition:
- Lobbying to delink bus organizations from political parties.
- Pilot initiatives supported by information-education-communication activities.
- Countering false rumors with credible information.
- Urging investigative journalists to master basic technical knowledge of transport issues so they can keep
citizens better informed.

In terms of the general approach in this example, what do you think about doing political economy analysis to action in this way? Is it an operationally useful methodology? Is it respectful of local realities? Do any of the recommendations surprise you? Does it lend itself to setting out outputs and outcomes that are amenable to robust Monitoring & Evaluation efforts?

If you like, please start sketching out an action plan based on the sector you identified and analyzed, and share it with us and the AfCoP community. We look forward to reading it as well as your comments and suggestions!

*Taken from Operationalizing Political Economy: Urban Bus Operations in Dhaka, South Asia Political Economy and Governance Issues Note No. 1

Permalink Reply by Bimerew Alemu on November 13, 2009 at 9:57am

Dear Antonio Lambino

My greetings from Addis Ababa

Thank for your intervention. The study and lessons you reflected are very relevant for our context.The matrix you have shown (influence-interest matrix ) and the findings imply that moving to high influence/high interest quadrant is necessary. It is paradoxical why Bus Owner's Association have had low interest in the reform. May be they were owned by shareholders who have the different tricks to influence policy makers. Now the finding shows that the Civil Society, Large Bus Companies etc will be influenced to invest and contribute in the improvement of the urban transport system.
In our case this type of intervention is very critical. To do so in the first place preparation and strengthening of an urban transport strategy is important. During implementation; improving the capacity of investors to construct and maintain transport infrastructure, and strengthening the performance of public institutions responsible for monitoring and evaluation needs to be given attention.Once again thank you Antonio Lambino for your educative intervention.


Best regards

Bimerew Alemu

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