Publication: 'What gets measured gets done': Addressing Policy Capture and Privilege-Seeking in the MENA Region and Beyond
Date
2018-03
ISSN
Published
2018-03
Author(s)
Akhtar, Mahmood Syed
Ait Ali Slimane, Meriem
Abstract
Countries around the globe are seeking
to diversify their economies and make them competitive. For
this to happen, resources need to flow to firms that can
make the best use of them. This is not the case in many
countries. A good example is the MENA region where, in many
countries, the policy regime has evolved in a manner such
that a small number of firms end up getting a
disproportionate share of resources - public land,
procurement contracts, energy, finance and investment
incentives, to name a few - not because they are more
efficient but because they are politically connected. This
skewed distribution of productive resources is a major cause
of the high unemployment rates in the region, especially for
young graduates - ranging between 15 and 25 percent. In
brief, the ones with resources do not create many jobs. The
ones that could have created jobs do not get the resources
to do so. Although ubiquitous in MENA, this problem afflicts
many other countries. The prosperity and social cohesion of
the MENA region still rests on its ability to transform its
public administration to better deliver services to the
private sector to absorb a young and increasingly
well-educated labor force. This will particularly be the
case in post conflict countries were social issues and
stability concerns are more acute. Making policy areas
resistant to privilege is important for this agenda. The
complex political economy underlying policy capture and
privilege-seeking may make this a seemingly intractable
problem. However, the new study is inspired by recent
literature on dynamics of policy change point to windows of
opportunity within a complex political economy setting that
allow incremental improvements with substantial cumulative
effect over time. It breaks new ground by applying, to the
private sector governance space, the motto “What gets
measured gets done”
Citation
“Akhtar, Mahmood Syed; Ait Ali Slimane, Meriem. 2018. 'What gets measured gets done': Addressing Policy Capture and Privilege-Seeking in the MENA Region and Beyond. MENA Knowledge and Learning Quick Notes;No. 165. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29516 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”