A forthcoming study which I edited, ‘Policy Efficiency in South Asia’, offers insights in the form of theoretical arguments and case study evidence on how policy advice and systematic policy reviews have affected policy outcomes in South Asia.
The earlier experiences of reform in Latin America and Eastern Europe suggested that strong success factors were visionary leadership, a strong political base and a coherent economic team.
The South Asian case studies confirm the importance of visionary leadership. Where visionary leaders have been able to assemble a strong and coherent team, the reforms have tended to be better thought out and more rigorously implemented, contributing to their success and longevity. But the successful reforms in South Asia have rarely been the product of a strong political base. Politics has constrained the reform process, but not prevented it.
In South Asia, an additional success factor has been good information and analysis regarding reform options. There are also instances where governments have agreed to delegate tasks to experts and to impose rules in order to overcome commitment problems or to counter undue political opportunism. In some cases, advisors have been able to offer new assignments of policy targets and instruments, thereby allowing politicians the opportunity to delegate questions of efficiency (especially when difficult) while retaining power over redistribution.
In India, the lengthy and relatively open processes of consultation and policy debate has contributed to policy reform, in part by making information available to opposition parties and by allowing new ideas to be gradually co-opted into the existing consensus development model.
The South Asian experience shows how the political climate can condition and constrain policy efficiency. But even in difficult political circumstances, there have been institutional strategies that have helped to ensure that at least some reforms have moved off the drawing board.
Indeed, it has been through a process of policy review and analysis, involvement of stakeholders and coalition building that South Asian governments have been able to sustain reform efforts in the absence of a strong political base. Coalition governments have sometimes injected a useful amount of pragmatism, but high quality policy analysis and public debate have also played a vital role.
Yet weakness has sometimes been evident in the formulation and analysis of the policy proposals themselves. And academics and think tanks have sometimes been ‘missing in action’ in providing objective, independent reviews and helping to manage vested interests (for example, in Indian trade policy making).
The more active involvement of academics and think tanks can be a particularly useful counterweight to an overly politicised bureaucracy. The academics and think tanks do not need to appeal to or ‘educate the public’ in a populist fashion — Pakistan’s experience shows that this is not sufficient to sustain reforms. What is needed is to inform opinion makers and influential people of all political persuasions, thereby raising the level of debate.
Politicians may not always be receptive. But ideas do have influence, as some of the case studies show. With the power of ideas, reforms can be initiated and sustained even by politicians who have a weak political base. This is the powerful message that South Asia’s reform experience can offer the rest of the world.
If regional cooperation is to improve policy efficiency it should focus special attention on building the technical and strategic policy review capacity of institutions such as thinks tanks and academia.
Philippa Dee is Adjunct Associate Professor at the Crawford School of Economics and Governance, The Australian National University.