What Is State Capacity?
Reform leaders who want to pursue technically sound policies are confronted with the problem of getting myriad government agencies, staffed by thousands of bureaucrats and state personnel, to deliver. This paper provides a framework for thinking ab...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/336421549909150048/What-Is-State-Capacity http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31266 |
| Summary: | Reform leaders who want to pursue
technically sound policies are confronted with the problem
of getting myriad government agencies, staffed by thousands
of bureaucrats and state personnel, to deliver. This paper
provides a framework for thinking about the problem as a
series of interdependent principal-agent relationships in
complex organizations, where one type of actor, the agent,
takes actions on behalf of another, the principal. Using
this framework to review and forge connections across a
large literature, the paper shows how the crux of state
capacity is the culture of bureaucracies -- the incentives,
beliefs and expectations, or norms, shared among state
personnel about how others are behaving. Although this
characterization might apply generally to any complex
organization, what distinguishes agencies of the state is
the fundamental role of politics -- the processes by which
the leaders who exercise power over bureaucracies, starting
from the lowest village levels, are selected and sanctioned.
Politics shapes not only the incentives of state personnel,
but perhaps more importantly, it coordinates their beliefs
and expectations, and thereby the performance of government
agencies. Recognizing these roles of politics, the paper
offers insights for what reform leaders can do to strengthen
state capacity for public goods. |
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