Barriers to Political Analysis in Aid Bureaucracies: From Principle to Practice in DFID and the World Bank – Hulme and Yanguas (2015)

Politics has become a central concern in development discourse, and yet the use of political analysis as a means for greater aid effectiveness remains limited and contested within development agencies. This article uses qualitative data from two governance “leaders” – the United Kingdom Department for International Development and the World Bank – to analyse the administrative hurdles facing the institutionalization of political analysis in aid bureaucracies. Hulme and Yanguas find that programming, management, and training practices across headquarters and country offices remain largely untouched by a political analysis agenda which suffers from its identification with a small cross-national network of governance professionals.