This book explores social and political change, drawing on many first-hand examples from the global experience of Oxfam, one of the world's largest social justice NGOs, as well as the author's 40 years of studying and working on international development.

This paper examines successful initiatives from The Asia Foundation in Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Timor-Leste which have used coalition-building as an implementation modality. It sheds light on this coalition-building modality, sharing insights about how externally supported coalitions emerge and function and contributing ideas about how such support can be adapted to other contexts.

This paper, based on the Kullana Liltanmia Contextual Analysis course in Sudan, explores how Political Economy Analysis (PEA) training influenced participants, particularly young people. It helped them navigate uncertainty and complexity, and fostered resilience and informed decision-making.

This Briefing Paper analyses South Sudan's predatory political economy, which enables capital accumulation by an elite class in Juba. 

This paper summarises the experience of providing ‘Political Economy support’ to the EU delegation in Tunis - both at the stages of context analysis and in designing programmes, with implications for the full life cycle of the interventions. 

This paper provides a definition of a political settlement and explains how different political settlement dimensions can affect the prospects for inclusive development, providing pointers for how external actors might engage under different political settlement ‘types’. It provides an overview of Tanzanian history viewed through this lens.

This paper explores rice production in Tanzania, which has quadrupled since 2000, but has not seen a reversal on related rent-seeking, which is usually prominent when rice is scarce. The paper explores the different factors that have led from a shift from rent-seeking in the domestic market towards rent seeking in Tanzania's nearby export markets. 

This article illustrates the recurring pattern of patronage politics in the Kenyan agriculture sector during the governments of President Kibacki. It is drawn from ongoing monitoring of, and participation in, the Kenyan agricultural and political scenes by the authors during 2005 -12, combined with key informant interviews. It explores how the perceived opportunity for agricultural reform didn't come to fruition with democratisation, as the ethno-regional basis of politics survived, watering down the opportunity for agricultural reform by dividing the power in number of poorer smallholder households.

This paper shows that domestic political economy dynamics have played a more central role in Kenya’s horticultural success than has hitherto been recognised, in particular by shaping the inclination and ability of the state to perform various roles within the sector. The paper argues that political settlement analysis offers a useful lens for understanding how shifts in power relations along the state-business interface have shaped the ability and inclination of the state to govern the sector, yielding a fuller and more nuanced account of the domestic and transnational drivers of growth in Kenyan horticulture. 

This article argues that the distribution of power in Medellín and the evolving elite interests have shaped governance structures in ways which not only provide the economic elite access to sources of power that help in sustaining power balances, but also contribute to low productivity development outcomes.

This quantitative study shows how political elites and their families derive private business benefits from public office through ownership of firms looking over dat afrom more than four decades in Mozambique.

This study presents a political economy analysis of the East African Community, focusing on what drives and constrains this regional organisation in promoting economic integration. In particular it looks at transport infrastructure, and at trade policy monitoring, particularly the system for monitoring regional integration implementation. 

This paper introduces a new political economy framework in the form of five lenses to gain a deeper understanding of the political economy features of particular reforms and integration processes.

This study explores how it has been possible to establish Électricité de Zahlé's (EDZ) functional, but problematic, service provision within the complex sectarian political context of Lebanon. We draw existing development and political economy literature to understand the rents and types of corruption in the sector and how the changes implemented by EDZ have been consistent with the nature of Lebanon’s political settlement.

This paper examines the political economy of electricity generation planning in Ethiopia during the EPRDF era (1991–2019), highlighting the importance of power relations between politicians and the bureaucracy, the political interests of the ruling party and the dominant ideas shaping politics and the electricity sector. It draws on more than 100 key informant interviews with politicians, government officials, consultants and donors involved in the sector. 

This brief summarises how the Abt Associates Governance and Development Practice has applied Political Economy Approaches to education and health sector programming in 13 countries in Asia, the Pacific and Africa; and the key findings from these undertakings.

This paper compares the experience of Rwanda, Bangladesh, Uganda and Ghana in reducing maternal mortality, relating policy uptake and, in particular, implementation to the underlying balance of power and institutions, or political settlement, on which these countries’ politics is based. 

This paper aims to understand why and how countries provide health coverage, particularly to left-behind groups. The paper quantifies the relative importance of different enablers, strategies and constraints that 49 countries faced on their move towards universal health coverage.

This note summarises the main points arising from a discussion in the Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice on health systems resilience, particularly in Cameroon, Nepal, and South Africa, and highlights important policy issues and recommendations. 

This paper contrasts the ways in which an adaptive component of a major health care project was implemented in three program and three matched comparison states in Nigeria. It argues that adaptive programmes need to be grounded in a fit-for-purpose theory of change and evaluation strategy.

This paper offers a case study of how political economy factors explain why health financing policies in Uganda failed to support progress towards universal health coverage after 20 years. 

This is a commentary on the analysis of financing of universal health coverage in Uganda by Nannini et al (2022). It explains the political economy concepts used it that analysis, and how to "think and work politically" in health reforms. 

This paper is based on a problem-driven political economy analysis in Kenya, Malawi and Uganda which explores local decision-making environments and how they affect management and governance practices for primary healthcare provision. 

This brief summarises how the Abt Associates Governance and Development Practice has applied Political Economy Approaches to education and health sector programming in 13 countries in Asia, the Pacific and Africa; and the key findings from these undertakings.

This paper examines micro-level political economy factors of education in Afghanistan to demonstrate that education is caught in a complex interplay between security, political, economic and social dynamics. 

While the political economy of food in Somalia has been examined for the 1990s, there has been less focus on the famines of the 2000s. This study examines how it has changed in the past 10 to 15 years, with shifts in governance and in aid.

Synthesizing findings and recommendation from six country case studies, this study considers the constraints on data collection and analysis in extreme food security emergencies in countries with a high risk of famine and aims to suggest methods to ensure independent and objective analysis of humanitarian emergencies. 

This report examines reform efforts related to three central aspects of humanitarian assistance: cash transfers, accountability to affected populations and protection. For each area, the paper develops a thought experiment to explore how the humanitarian system would change if the reform proposals were fully implemented.

This Briefing Paper analyses South Sudan's predatory political economy, which enables capital accumulation by an elite class in Juba. 

This guide offers an assessment methodology to understand how structural factors, rules and norms, stakeholders and interests, and ideas and narratives influence the political economy of climate action in a given country.

This USAID funded research identifies how development practitioners have developed strategies and approaches for navigating local political, social, and institutional realities to make progress on land tenure, with case studies from Colombia and Madagascar. 

This paper examines two cases of progressive institutional changes by using a cultural political economy approach: (1) constitutional change in Nepal, which broadened political rights, and (2) the outlawing of metal mining in El Salvador, which redistributed resources. 

The report examines corruption in Nigeria from the perspective of the social norms that serve as embedded markers of how people behave as members of a society and have a strong influence on how they choose to act in different situations. This report aims to diagnose what drives corrupt behaviour in Nigeria, and the types of beliefs that support practices understood to be corrupt.

Instead of conventional anti-corruption strategies, which may be less effective in a developing context, this working paper suggest an alternative approach: to identify anti-corruption strategies that have a high impact and that are feasible to implement within contexts. 

This How-To guide sets out the logic of the SOAS Anti-Corruption Evidence consortium approach to understanding and addressing policy-distorting corruption. It describes how to put it into practice, and provides two case studies of its application, in Bangladesh and Nigeria. 

This paper looks at adaptive management in UK-funded Institutions for Inclusive Development programme in Tanzania. It looks at the dynamic interaction between three elements: delivery, programming, and governance.  

This paper looks at adaptive management in the UK-funded State Accountability and Voice (SAVI) programme in Nigeria. It discusses how to find a ‘good fit’ with country context, and employ a ‘politically smart’, problem-driven, adaptive, locally led approach.

The Learning Review of three human rights projects in Colombia, Somalia and Tanzania explores (i) how applied political economy analyses (APEAs) have been used to inform program decisions and their implementation; (ii) how insights from APEAs have influenced program achievements; and (iii) what factors have enabled and constrained the uptake of APEA and its impacts in terms of improved programming.

This paper examines two cases of progressive institutional changes by using a cultural political economy approach: (1) constitutional change in Nepal, which broadened political rights, and (2) the outlawing of metal mining in El Salvador, which redistributed resources. 

This research identifies the contextual factors and causal mechanisms that explain how UK governance interventions contributed to improving governance, health and education outcomes by influencing the ‘service delivery chain’ that connects the Nigerian federal, state and local governments to frontline service providers (e.g. primary schools, local health facilities) and to users of health and education services.

This paper explores the State Partnership, Accountability, Responsiveness and Capability programme in Nigeria, which aimed to work adaptively at the state level to support policy and strategy, public financial management, and public service management.

This paper seeks to promote a shift in approach to institutional reform, offering some practical recommendations for reform-minded managers, project teams, and political leaders in which the focus is placed on crafting solutions to problems that Malawians themselves nominate, prioritize, and enact.

This study analyses the political economy factors affecting migration policies in Morocco, and their implications for the country’s development policies and outcomes.

This policy brief, commissioned by the United Nations, explains why Thinking and Working Politically and Political Economy Analysis are important for security sector reform programming. 

This report uses a political economy approach to analyze the structures, interests, relationships, and power dynamics that shape Women, Peace and Security (WPS) implementation in ASEAN, Cambodia, Lao PDR, and the Philippines.