Governance Reform: The New Analytics of Next Steps, Commentary in Governance:

In this recent commentary Merilee Grindle highlights the recent shift away from prescriptive, 'one size fits all', best practice modes of development intervention towards more context specific and situationally determined responses to specific problems. In this new thinking the emphasis on next steps, good enough governance, bottlenecks, contextualized diagnosis, and binding constraints. New analytic approaches and frameworks have been developed focusing on arriving at localised and informed solutions to specific constraints and needs. The question raised by Grindle is whether these approaches in fact lead to effective knowledge of how to resolve real problems. Do they provide effective guidance on what is likely to work and what is not likely to result in policy or institutional reform? Do they distinguish between aspects of a context that can be changed and those that are resistant to change? Where they have been applied, have they led to good results?