“The report has assembled a jigsaw puzzle from dispersed pieces of research to see what picture emerges and what the missing areas look like to understand and fix government failures. The co-evolution of transparency and political engagement in developing countries have implications for the design of
appropriate public institutions in these environments that are likely to be distinct from the designs adopted by the rich world in its different develop ment trajectory.29 There are large areas of future work, building upon the findings of this report, that are highlighted as the contours of the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in the following chapters. The understanding of the political behavior of citizens, frontline public officials, and leaders that is offered in this report can be used to address government failures and build
public sector institutions that are capable of tackling public goods problems. Perhaps more important than offering ideas for specific policy action (which may indeed not work in the face of insurmountable political problems), the report aims to influence how development practitioners think about politics. Practitioners may then be able to make greater contributions to incremental change by more effectively using the levers available to them to overcome political impediments. This approach includes not just getting governments to adopt good policies, but designing implementation arrangements that are more likely to succeed, based on a better understanding of political incentives and behavioral norms in the public sector. The hope in preparing this report is that it will invite future debate and policy experiments by applying the lessons here to make politics work for development rather than against it.”