Political research is good for you (...in the end)
A twitter thread, stalled by Covid, put out in May 2020 when Covid emergency responses made the need for 'political research' even starker (and me grumpy). Revisited & updated here for 2024.
Prologue: When I had a serious job but no blog outlet, twitter threads were the main vehicle for ‘voice’. This was constraining and liberating - boiled down essays with no space for fluff or neat formatting. But plenty of room for pictures.
I think this 2020 thread on political (economy) research is fairly evergreen. I often refer people to it and elaborate the same arguments, so in preparation for Twexit (the end of it, or me and it), I’m resharing and archiving here, with some updates and a new ‘chapter’ at the end.
Four years later I am still making the same broad argument (see also here on Duncan Green’s Oxfam blog in 2022), though with increasing acceptance of the premise (Yes! political research is good for you), and edging closer to concerted action. But experience (my wrinkles and grey hair) teaches me that progressive, disruptive change is usually an endurance event, not a sprint.
Political research is good for you! (…in the end)
I’ve been commissioning ‘applied’ political analysis and research in big mainstream development sectors since the early 2000s. By ‘applied’ I mean practical, actionable, and in plain language.
The label can vary - political research, political science, political economy, political economy analysis (PEA), political economy research (PER), political analysis. I’m no purist. ‘Research to understand and tackle political constraints to reform, development, and growth’ is probably most accurate.
A further complication is that ‘analysis’, ‘research’, and ‘study’ can be used interchangeably when they may mean very different things. Personally, I say ‘Big R Research’ (in a foreboding Hollywood trailer voice) when I mean ‘by universities and research organisations, peer reviewed and quality assured, and a commitment to publish’ (yes, a journal article may be esoteric and take years to emerge, but I have expectations of a working paper in public and in good time).
I often preach about the benefits of political research to the already converted, but this thread was really for ‘Big Sector’ friends in the health, growth, education, livelihoods, climate mainstream.
Way back when….
The first proper political study I commissioned examined a proposed investment to mitigate arsenic contamination in water supplies. This was a draft business case with a well argued technical case.
But the political study that I commissioned concluded that the accompanying institutional reforms were unrealistic. They expected traditionally dominant (big spending) forces in government to become subservient to a small new unit. My study delivered an unpopular message as it undermined months of work. And I annoyed people by commissioning it. I knew what I was doing, and it was a bit sneaky - the study formalised concerns that were already whispered but were being ignored.
This is not at all to diminish the scale of the problem and the need for action - 20 years later arsenic is still in the news as a serious threat to health. But the proposed strategy did not look politically realistic and so risked being far less effective than promised.
Basic rules
This study and other early work was by ‘political economy’ consultants – examining knotty institutional and political constraints in big spending sectors. My ground rules for commissioning such studies were simple:
Have an analytical framework and method clear up front (i.e. the work should not be a ‘freestyle’ political description). There were a few frameworks to choose from. There are more now - and they are not hard to find.
The team should include a bona fide political expert with previous experience of doing such work (not just sector experts moonlighting as political experts1)
(In 2024 I still encounter new ‘political economy’ studies that break both of these rules. These studies don’t tend to be very good).
When we selected a consultant or political researcher, our sector experts often complained ‘(s)he doesn’t know anything about this (our!) sector!’. They might suggest a well known sector name instead - often a retired bureaucrat from the same department.
But our governance gut feeling was that fresh eyes and strong political analytical skills were more important than deep sector expertise, and the political experts would anyway draw on sector specialists. You could even combine both in a small team.
Political weather versus political climate
It was also important to go deeper and more structural than the political ‘weather’ of that week or month in a country, sector, or Ministry (which may focus on personalities and ‘noise’ and be the major content of corridor chat). This meant getting into the long term political economy ‘climate’ - the underlying distribution of power and interests.
Such studies ruffled feathers (if they didn’t, they were probably pointless), but could have positive effects on plans, such as when they advised that expected technical or institutional reforms were politically unfeasible (e.g. required turkeys to be pretty chilled about the Christmas menu). Intervening to arrest failure and stop money being wasted is a good thing. Intervening to make strategies more likely to succeed, and investment more effecive, is better.
A secret service….
But the outputs - studies, policy advice - were rarely made public. This meant that they helped some players (those that commissioned them) feel and perhaps act smarter, but were private, uncontested, and did not spur open debate. To me this felt odd, a wasted opportunity. A short term private gain but not addressing a long term collective pain if other partners plough on regardless.
I’m a ‘public policy open debate’ person, and think this should be enabled by open data, published research, and public opinion, at all levels - by civil society, researchers and governments talking about and contesting domestic policy in their own country, as well as between international agencies and their government partners.
Big R Research - love it, hate it, debate it
In time I moved to commissioning 'Big R Research' (by universities and think tanks), including practical ‘political economy’ research on growth, health, education, urban, and sub-sectors in between. Big R Research is by nature published, so everyone can love it, hate it, but at least they can debate it.
Research is typically commissioned through competition (so less tendency to only work with your long term favoured experts2) and quality assured using peer review throughout the research process (which should drive up rigor and quality, though it is important that the peer reviewers also value policy relevance). This feels better to me.
But not if the only people who read the work are other political researchers. It can be a slightly inward facing expert niche, partly because of the nature of the incentives in academia - favouring the novel over the useful.
Of course, not all political research is good. Political researchers may struggle to communicate in ways that sector players (health, education, growth, skills, climate) can understand, or act on (that is why I say ‘applied’). But the best research can have big, real world impact. And it does not cost much, particularly when compared with the sector budgets at stake– regardless of whether they are funded through taxation, borrowing, aid, or philanthropy. As an example, see this new compilation of OECD aid data (up to 2022) graphed by those good people at the @ONECampaign .
Look at the budget at stake in health!
2024 me reflects: My experience is that the cost of commissioning such practical political research is a tiny fraction of the sector programme investments on which it typically focuses. In theory if you can identify binding political constraints, and work out how to overcome them - fully, or partially - you should be able to unlock greater effectiveness in that sector. This could be measured.
However, potential customers/funders rightly ask for some credible estimates of input/output or Return on Investment (RoI), and these are hard to come by, partly because such practical political economy research may be peripheral - few/no big sectors say ‘come and help fix us - and measure by how much’.
And also because the expectations of rigor in causal claims in development are high and getting ever higher, and it is (for example) extremely hard to offer counterfactuals for activity undertaken without ‘practical political economy’ research and action, to accompany and compare with those that have it. (I asked a professor of political economy for advice on how to start looking for evidence of effectiveness and estimates of RoI and they said ‘Now that is a really good question!’. It is hard!).
There is a worked narrative example below (from 2020), but I also like to make the point that few (no?) sector ‘technocrats’ (using technical only approaches, either politically blind or politically naïve) actively measure and advertise the degree to which they fail and are wasting money. They may instead bemoan ‘a lack of political will’ which can be like a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card in Monopoly. And repeated technocratic failures rarely attract criticism or sanction. Instead we tend to double down on the same strategy.
Also, the shortage of clear RoIs and proof of effectiveness for ‘practical political economy’ approaches may also lead us to the conclusion that these things need funding and testing, rather than scouring the evidence base for examples that may not yet exist (juvenile me says ‘other punts and fads in development get funded and then tested - why not this?’)
An example (in 2022): a £130,000 political economy research project identified serious political and corruption constraints in a sector with over $1Bn multilateral investment - private sector skills training for garment sector factories.
The sector investment strategy included performance-related payments for private sector training organisations, which would get paid a final one third of their fee when a trainee graduated and secured new employment in a factory.
Breaking it: Unfortunately the political economy research found that the system was being gamed with fake verification of new employment. This undermined the effort to actually develop better skills as the training organisations would get paid regardless. The research estimated that between 10 and 30% of the investment may be wasted in this way. Research exposes a failure - so ‘breaks it’.
Making it: The research also suggested a better strategy for ensuring that real skills were gained, focussing on hiring companies that had operations sophisticated enough to use greater numbers of more skilled workers to expand their business and profit - and so have an incentive to care about the quality of trainees. Research identifies an alternative strategy - so ‘makes it’!
The research cost (£130,000) was equivalent to less than 0.02% of the total external sector investment. So even if it increased overall effectiveness by a small percentage - such as 1%, or even just reduced losses by 1% - the returns and/or savings could be significant.
Q: does this research look worth it? I think yes (but sadly the £130,000 came from ‘my’ small governance research budget, rather than the multi laterals’ sector budgets).
I guess I should also ask: if the research had not happened, would anyone have noticed or publicised the problems?
Low demand, low supply
But there is still too little ‘practical political research’ about (in 2024 as in 2020), with areas of policy and development spending untroubled by it. The supply of good research is constrained... and demand (from sectors) is still low, though growing. Both need attention.
Opening up to political (economy) research: the 5 stages of grief
Political research can often seem to be an awkward optional extra, pushed by peripheral governance people. Looking back, trying to commission new political research in big sectors can follow a pattern with echoes of the Kübler-Ross ‘5 stages of grief’.
1. Denial; 2. Anger; 3. Bargaining; 4. Depression; 5. Acceptance.
Here is a typical case which often starts with a bright idea. We annoying political types suggest commissioning political research in key sector ‘X’ because years of investment do not seem to deliver change at the pace or scale intended (or get a whiff of something more sinister going on).
The sector experts (who control resources and investment decisions) may refer to our old friend ‘Lack of Political Will’. As Heather Marquette has often said, it may be more useful to think of active political won't.
And so begin the five stages of grief.
1. Denial
Sector technocrats may tell us "Political research? No time for that / we don't need it.
We are experts - it is REALLY technically complicated. I am sure that someone is doing this already. No, I can’t name a particular study. Or any researchers”.
(This may seem artificial but I had this conversation when proposing new research on the politics of massive tree planting schemes).
So we commission political research by people who may not have deep knowledge of <that> sector, but are experienced, practical political researchers. They ask some awkward questions about areas/processes/relationships that are critical, but stuck. They ask about power and ‘small p politics’.
(In the tree planting example - why do politicians keep announcing big new schemes, while the media also reports the largescale failure of existing schemes because of a lack of investment or attention to choosing the right species to suit the context, to nurturing and watering etc?)
2. Anger
There may be annoyance that the political research exposes some over-simplistic technical approaches that are directly contradicted by real political incentives, and have been unsuccessful in the past – as well as expensive to try and implement (plant trees - again!).
However, there may also be anger - or at least criticism - that political research is better at ‘breaking’ (pointing out all of the problems) than ‘making’ (offering a menu of politically viable options to work around, overcome, or reduce, the constraints). This is often justified - some political research can be glibly destructive, rather than practical and action oriented towards doing better.
3. Bargaining
But political problems have broken cover - the research creates debate. Sector experts may say 'we knew about this, but couldn't mention it, or did not have the mechanisms through which to raise it'.
There is acceptance that <some> political constraints are real, though there can also be rejection of others that make things look too broken.
4. Depression
New insights about how politically stuck the sector really is make previous plans look a bit simplistic. This is depressing. Sector experts may have also been riding high on their privileged access to key players in the sector, but these same people may now be described as part of the fundamental obstacle to change, not positive movers and shakers (I write this with empathy and sadness - I have been there!).
5. Acceptance (the dream)
The political research is mentioned in the next sector plan. If it has been published, made public, it may even be mentioned in other organisations’ sector plans, and discussed in policy debate - both private and public. This is the dream! Political constraints are now on the table (not just whispered about in corridors).
It is recognised that political constraints reduce the effectiveness of sector investments, and therefore there is a strong logic for moving beyond ‘technocratic’ approaches.
A year on (more of the dream…)
The bruised but healing sector experts say “can you design and fund some more political research for us?”. Political research has broken through (yay!). Further research builds on the earlier work (Yay!). Political researchers (and those commissioning it), get invited to more meetings.
Of course, the kind of people who fund political research typically have pretty limited and niche budgets. The ideal budget to dip into is the big sector budget for which political constraints are a drag on effectiveness. We try to persuade them that they should spend their own money as a means of ‘de-risking’ their investment, including noting that international business spend heavily on ‘political risk’ analysis. Why not the public/development/aid/philanthropic sector?
Fast Forward to 2024: So, is political research really good for you?
In 2020 I said: If your <big sector> in <your context> does not have applied political research - time to get some? I had some very positive messages from some senior people in aid, but no cheque in the post.
In 2024 I say: here’s an idea which is gathering momentum… the Practical Politics Platform. The (cheeky) elevator pitch is ‘Our World in Data for political economy research’.
The idea is fleshed out in a concept note for an open, public good platform and services to search, host, and summarise ‘practical’ political economy research to inform mainstream policy and practice, and normalise its use in growth and development. The aim is to address both supply and demand constraints (and retire the ‘five stages of political research grief’).
And demonstrate that ‘political research is good for you (…in the end)’. Below is a sketch of the platform’s ‘wire frame’ with global layers by key sector, and then country layers, also by sector.
The reference to Sierra Leone and Malawi as country layers (below) is ‘indicative’ - reflecting long term personal interest, and because people have asked ‘is there really enough practical research to find, summarise, and so make the platform approach useful - eg in Sierra Leone?’. I’ve been reading my way in, particularly looking for research by experts from- and in- Malawi and Sierra Leone.
I think the answer is ‘yes - at least enough to start off, but also to highlight key gaps in the research base’. I also hope that the platform approach could persuade more funders and experts delivering Political Economy Analysis (PEA) to commit to a public summary of all new work, and also be a means of explicitly directing more resources to researchers working on and in their own countries.
I’m also digging into research on the political economy of the behaviour of international organisations, and how this can undermine development effectiveness. This includes some bad behaviour ‘in country’ but also (based on questions from those I have consulted) at the global level in the strategy and governance of major sector funds.
Finally, I am also dredging for political economy research on big sectors in my own country…. imagine a platform layer on the UK and health3, written by researchers from the UK, Sierra Leone, and Malawi….
what next?
Interested in hearing more? If yes, please get in touch.
I was just reminded of this by a UNODC advert for a consultant to write a report on corruption in the fisheries sector. Required experience includes ‘At least 10 years of work experience in the fisheries sector, including preferably issues related to corruption, transparency, accountability and/or good governance in the fisheries sector’. To me, that is imaging a single ‘unicorn’ consultant. A pair of experts - one on fishing, one on corruption and political economy - would almost certainly do a better job. More expensive? Possibly, but isn’t this about saving the big bucks by investing in decent analysis and reducing risks?
Someone complained to me today about the tendency to rely on the same political expert over time, because that person knows the country, sector, and has great networks. They may also become a development agency’s institutional memory as staff come and go… but they may also get it wrong, or fail to see their own effect as political players. Diversity and objectivity can bring benefits….
This takes me full circle. The political economy of UK health services is what first piqued my interest - discovering the work of Julian Tudor Hart and the inverse care law when I was an undergraduate.
