Making Government Work in Hard Places

The course focuses on the "micro" level, not on broad principles of aid effectiveness or unified theories of political development, although it intersects both. It asks you to place yourselves in the shoes of the reformer (think Seretse Khama, Lee Kuan Yew, or Sri Mulyani Indrawati, for example). You have a limited opportunity to build a new institutional order and improve the provision of public goods. How can you get around the challenges that inevitably arise? Is there a way to lock in these changes and help new institutions endure? At the end of the course we return to "big theory" and the task of drawing broader insight.