Evidence for the Tony Blair "leadership matters" theory of governance and development

Is State Capacity a Political Choice? Two recent papers from IDS colleagues suggest that the answer to this question is “yes”. The paper by Santhosh Mathew and Mick Moore (2011) examines the weak capacity of the State of Bihar in India over the 1990-2005 period, and a paper by soon to be IDS Fellow Stephen Peterson (2011) on Public Financial Management in Ethiopia over the 1996-2010 examines the drivers of successful financial reform. The authors argue, In both cases, that deliberate and calculated political choices drove weak capacity in Bihar and strong capacity in Ethiopia --- Lawrence Haddad