New Policy Brief - Thinking and Working Politically at USAID
This paper shares an insider's perspective on the spread of Thinking and Working Politically (TWP) across the US Agency for International Development (USAID), highlighting lessons learned along the way that are relevant even beyond the dissolution of the Agency in 2025.
USAID’s experience illustrates both the opportunities and constraints of embedding political economy approaches within a large donor agency. It offers lessons for the wider development community about how to mainstream political insight, how to avoid diluting it into compliance, and how to link it to reform agendas such as localisation and systems thinking.
The main success factors that facilitated uptake of political economy analysis and TWP within USAID include:
1. Integration with existing frameworks
2. A bottom-up, peer-driven approach
3. Resonating with local knowledge
4. Connection to other reform areas
To overcome challenges in the continued adoption of PEA/TWP, the author proposes three main avenues for future work by TWP champions and allies:
1. Embrace complexity.
2. Move from a tactical to a strategic use of TWP.
3. Rethink accountability through partnership and probability.
You can find the USAID documents mentioned in this paper, and many more, in a USAID page of TPP's Online Library.
Podcast: Subsidies and Social Protection - Reforms for a Sustainable Transition
Why are subsidies so difficult to reform, even when more effective alternatives exist? In this podcast by Socialprotection.org, TPP Director Neil McCulloch examines the political, institutional and economic challenges that have made subsidy reform one of the most complex issues in social policy.
Governing climate action? Governance, political economy and systems change in country platforms
Climate Country Platforms promise to bring finance and policy together around national climate goals. But in this paper, Brendan Halloran argues they'll only deliver if they confront the political economy, power and governance barriers that keep holding climate action back — and he sets out how, with practical steps for governments, banks and funders.
TPP supports innovative apiculture initiative in the Republic of Congo
(Photo shared by @AfricanBee)
The Policy Practice is supporting an apiculture initiative in the Republic of Congo with Palladium under the Partnerships for Forests. Led by Theodore Trefon, it aims to scale beekeeping into a market-based model, combining political economy analysis, digital tools and participatory revenue systems.