IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/harjfk/rwp10-024.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social Policy in Development: Coherence and Cooperation in the Real World

Author

Listed:
  • Grindle, Merilee

    (Harvard University)

Abstract

Ideas about social policy and its role in development have shifted over time, signaling the difficulty of finding clarity in approaches to social investment, poverty alleviation, and equity. In consequence, research and practice related to social policy and poverty alleviation have left a legacy of a very broad agenda of "things that need to be done," along with important unanswered questions about how to integrate social and economic development. While these legacies contribute to the difficulty of developing overarching solutions to problems of social development and poverty alleviation, they also suggest the fruitfulness of focusing more on the distinctions among countries in terms of their capacities, generating ideas about priorities and sequences, and working to reduce what is often an overwhelming social policy agenda. The development community needs to get much better at matching ideas to realities, at considering how policy priorities could be assessed in terms of contextually specific feasibility, and at generating contextually grounded processes for taking the next step. While these are less ambitious questions than are often asked, they hold some promise of bringing ideas into better touch with the real world.

Suggested Citation

  • Grindle, Merilee, 2010. "Social Policy in Development: Coherence and Cooperation in the Real World," Working Paper Series rwp10-024, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
  • Handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp10-024
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=7340&type=WPN
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Riddell, Abby & Niño-Zarazúa, Miguel, 2016. "The effectiveness of foreign aid to education," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 23-36.
    2. Lant Pritchett & Michael Woolcock & Matt Andrews, 2013. "Looking Like a State: Techniques of Persistent Failure in State Capability for Implementation," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(1), pages 1-18, January.
    3. Riddell, Abby Rubin, 2012. "The Effectiveness of Foreign Aid to Education: What Can Be Learned?," WIDER Working Paper Series 075, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Lant Pritchett & Michael Woolcock & Matt Andrews, 2013. "Looking Like a State: Techniques of Persistent Failure in State Capability for Implementation," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(1), pages 1-18, January.
    5. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-63 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Abby Rubin Riddell, 2012. "The Effectiveness of Foreign Aid to Education: What Can Be Learned?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-075, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-75 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp10-024. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ksharus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.