Cross-Cutting Patterns of Capability Constraints and Adaptive Governance

This chapter synthesizes findings from Kosovo, Albania, and North Macedonia to identify cross-cutting governance patterns that shape capability development under constraint. Despite different trajectories, all three countries face similar challenges: fragmented institutions, weak coordination, and limited learning systems. Using the Developmental Network State (DNS) framework, the chapter explores how governance functions of learning, coordination, and embeddedness operate in practice through adaptive, often informal arrangements. It highlights the role of institutional bricolage, where actors improvise with available resources to solve problems, as well as the political and structural roots of coordination failures that hinder systemic learning. The analysis shows that progress emerges through hybrid forms of governance that link municipalities, firms, donors, and diaspora networks in experimental coalitions. Trust and embedded relationships are critical enablers of cooperation, while project-based reforms and donor silos often reinforce fragmentation. The chapter argues that transformation in latecomer economies depends less on ideal institutional design and more on meta-capabilities of coordination, iterative learning, and relational embeddedness. By turning imperfection into a space for adaptive governance, the DNS framework provides a practical model for building resilient and learning-oriented development systems across transitional economies.