Chapter 5 Lessons and Myths in Donor-Promoted Public Sector Institutional Reforms

Abstract

If donors cannot even agree about what institutions are and do not clearly understand how to promote deliberate institutional change, then what are ideas and assumptions that inform their institutional reforms? In each wave of reforms, donors’ interventions and practices have been grounded in layers of unjustified assumptions – explicit or implicit – on the nature of institutions and institutional change, rather than on robust empirical research and analysis of lessons from previous reforms. These assumptions, despite evidence from previous reforms that they are misguided, have been accumulated and passed on to newcomers in the donor community. These assumptions are referred to here as myths.

Citation

Baimyrzaeva, M. (2012), "Chapter 5 Lessons and Myths in Donor-Promoted Public Sector Institutional Reforms", Baimyrzaeva, M. (Ed.) Institutional Reforms in the Public Sector: What Did We Learn? (Research in Public Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 22), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 79-114. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0732-1317(2012)0000022007