Institutionalising Policy Impact Assessment: Lessons from Development Co-operation

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December 1, 2010

Institutionalising Policy Impact Assessment:Lessons from International Development

Co-operation.

Mat Cashmore ([email protected]).

School of Environmental Sciences,University of East Anglia.



December 1, 2010

Environmental policy integration:Putting policy into action.

The implementation problem.

World Bank Group : ³the Bank Group continues to give low de facto

priority to the goal of enhancing the environmental sustainability of

development ́ (Independent Evaluation Group 2008).

UK Department for International Development: ³saddens and

alarms us´, ³reprehensible´ and ³entirely unacceptable´ (UK House

of Commons Environmental Audit Committee 2006).



December 1, 2010

Research context:Urban planning policy in Dhaka.

Add in more pics



December 1, 2010

The mediation of integration: Analytical typology.

Cognitive variables.

Nature of the policy issue.

Institutional variables.



December 1, 2010

The mediation of policy integration:Results.

Cognitive variables Nature of the policy issue Institutional variables

y Data on social and environmental variables

limited and often of questionable reliability.

y Scale and breadth of the issues inherent in

urban planning in generate limits to

understandability.

y Cognitive skills and understanding for key

tasks were insufficiently developed (e.g. for

conducting the institutional analysis in the

SEA or in relation to the goals of the SEA).

y Key actors (World Bank and RAJUK) had

different understandings of the goals of the

SEA.

y Scope for learning amongst national actors

constrained, by limited involvement and lack

of follow-up, including failure to disseminate

the final report.

y Theory and methodology of SEA

inadequately articulated, particularly in

relation to goal of fostering learning.

y Failure to learn from previous studies aboutthe design of evaluation programmes.

y Willingness of the World Bank to

experiment with, and learn about, EPI.

y Multi-sectoral and interlinked nature of

urban planning issues produces a µwicked¶

problem.

y Poverty elimination/reduction and slum

development as seemingly intractable

problems.

y Scale of slum populations and urban

population growth.

y Global economic paradigm: international

demand for cheap goods and economic

reliance on export income.

y Uncontrolled growth in private vehicles.

y Lack of basic infrastructure as a starting

point for development.

y Cultural reification of patron-client

relationships contributes to strongly

embedded culture of power relations.

y Poor fit between SEA objectives and context:

inappropriate to link attempts at institutional

reform to a detailed spatial planning

initiative.

y Urban issues not highly prioritized in

development co-operation.

y Lack of political leadership constrains EPI

due to the hierarchical nature of government

in .

y Frequent reallocation of bureaucrats limits,

in the short term, opportunities for l earning

and follow-through.

y Income generation within RAJUK from land

development, and the relative autonomy this

creates for them, provides a strong

disincentive to change.

y Financial dependency on multi-lateral

organizations leads to token buy-in by the

Bangladeshi administration.

y World Bank¶s reluctance to relinquish

control to national actors restricts national

ownership of SEA and its outcomes.

y Project management rules in World Bank

limit learning and policy co-ordination

through their influence on project framing

and time horizons.y Inability of regional World Bank officer to

convince staff at the headquarters of the

importance of timely follow-up.

y World Bank institutional framing as a

knowledge bank incentivizes knowledge

generation activities, at the expense of

outcomes on the ground.



December 1, 2010

Conclusions (1).

Policy implementation.

³[W]hether or not policy systems faithfully put it

[environmental policy integration] into practice is a matter of

enormous importance´ (Jordan and Lenschow, 2010).

³improving the use of IA tools in policy making« The

centerpiece « will be a shared IA toolbox ³ (LIAISE website)

Illustrates how deeply and widely commitments to policy

integration are mediated and represent a challenge tostatus quo.

Reformed understanding of theory-practice nexus?



December 1, 2010

Conclusions (2).

Power, politics and IA.

Development of new approach to policy impact assessment

as a mechanism for recreating authority on development

issues.

Pilot programme allows the WB to draw on the cultural

legitimacy of science in relation to knowledge claims.

Problematising actor involvement with PIA: How, why and

with what effect are IA tools being used/promoted?

What do actors like the EU seek to gain from funding

research on IA?

Institutionalising Policy Impact Assessment: Lessons from Development Co-operation

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