IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/8224.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Political economy of reform

Author

Listed:
  • Khemani,Stuti

Abstract

This paper reviews the literature relevant to understanding political constraints to economic reforms. Reform refers to changes in government policies or institutional rules because status quo policies and institutions are not working well to achieve the goals of economic well-being and development. Further, reforms refer to the alternative policies and institutions that are available that would most likely perform better than the status quo. The main question examined in the political economy of reform literature has been why reforms are not undertaken when they are needed for the good of society. The succinct answer from the first generation of research is that conflict of interest between organized socio-political groups is responsible for some groups being able to stall reforms so that they can extract greater private rents from status quo policies. The next generation of research is tackling a more fundamental question: why does conflict of interest persist; or, why do some interest groups exert influence against reforms if there are indeed large gains to be had for society? These are questions about norms and preferences in society for public goods. The next step is to examine where norms and preferences for public goods come from, and which institutional arrangements are more conducive to solve the public goods problem of pursuing reforms. After reviewing the available and future directions for research, the paper concludes with what all of this means for policy makers who are interested in understanding the factors behind successful reforms.

Suggested Citation

  • Khemani,Stuti, 2017. "Political economy of reform," Policy Research Working Paper Series 8224, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8224
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/290071508764607858/pdf/WPS8224.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Mireille Mizero & Aristide Maniriho & Bosco Bashangwa Mpozi & Antoine Karangwa & Philippe Burny & Philippe Lebailly, 2021. "Rwanda’s Land Policy Reform: Self-Employment Perspectives from a Case Study of Kimonyi Sector," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-17, January.
    2. Mounir Mahmalat & Declan Curran, 2020. "Fractionalization and reform: a framework of political collaboration with application to Lebanon," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 187-214, June.
    3. Oscar Radyan Danar & Bevaola Kusumasari & M.R. Khairul Muluk, 2020. "From Phenomena To Implementation: Lessons And Challenges Of Administrative Reforms In Indonesia," Public administration issues, Higher School of Economics, issue 6, pages 33-50.
    4. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2020. "Internet and tax reform in developing countries," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    5. Nikitas Konstantinidis & Yannis Karagiannis, 2020. "Intrinsic vs. extrinsic incentives for reform: An informational mechanism of E(M)U conditionality," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 601-632, July.
    6. Peter Moll & Lodewijk Smets, 2020. "Is It the Journey That Matters? A Fresh Look at the Impact of World Bank Policy Lending," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(7), pages 1194-1228, October.
    7. Sena Kimm Gnangnon, 2020. "Effect of Development Aid on Tax Reform in Recipient-Countries: Does Trade Openness Matter?," Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy (JICEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 11(01), pages 1-23, January.

    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:wbk:wbrwps:8224. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.