Summarized highlights from From Insights to Implementation: Applying Political Economy Analysis (PEA) for Real World Impact | Pallavi Roy

“Context – to be useful, context analysis needs to identify which aspects of context matter in terms of shaping behaviour, and how, in a specific policy domain.”

“Distribution of power and benefits – winners and losers – is what matters. This is what drives opposition or support to a policy proposal. Political economy analysis needs to shed light on distributional issues and how they shape behaviour.”

PEA should have “predictive [explanatory?] power” regarding behavior, which can inform policy design and implementation.

“Political economy analysis of the SOAS-ACE sort is about finding a (sub)context where the dynamics are promising in terms of allowing/encouraging change.”

“Breaking things down – disaggregating – to find potential (sites of) change. [The political economy of positive deviance/pockets of effectiveness/islands of integrity.]”

“PEA can/should be about identifying opportunities for effective agency and action.”

“Ideas, incentives and material interests. Not a dichotomy; ideas are not separate. People implement/follow ideas when that makes sense for them.”

“Incentives are not just about self-interest and greed. They can also be about people doing things that make them feel good, even if they are not profitable in a financial sense.”

“Narratives follow behaviour, which follow interests, including material interests.”

“Capabilities – ability to add value – are key too in terms of explaining behaviour. That is often neglected.”

“Collaboration between international and domestic partners can be useful for triangulating perspectives [But ‘expertise’ should not be parachuted in in ways that crowd out local perspectives.]”

“Respective roles of internals and externals. Things are changing [which is very good], but for now, international partners provide frameworks and an outsider perspective, with domestic organizations guiding their application in particular contexts [on the basis of their rich contextual knowledge and lived expertise]”