 Social analysis in PSIA focuses on institutional, political and social dimensions of policy reform. It addresses how social dimensions may influence reform implementation and outcomes. It involves the analysis of formal and informal institutions, stakeholders, political economy risks, power relations and social dynamics within which the reform takes place.
The Social Development Department together with other partners (DFID, GTZ) has developed an analytical framework for assessment of policy reforms from a social development perspective. This analytical framework has been published as a sourcebook entitled Tools for Institutional, Political and Social Analysis of policy reform (TIPS). The TIPS sourcebook links social analysis at the “macro” level of policy making with the “micro” level of policy impact. By weaving the policy, the institutional, the community and household level stronger together, it provides development practitioners with the tools and guidance for conducting inclusive, pro-poor and evidence based policy making to more effectively serve poor and vulnerable groups in society. The TIPS sourcebook provides guidance on tools and techniques to conduct distributional impact analysis of policy reforms and to complement existing, largely economic, guidance and good practice material, in particular the Toolkit for Evaluating the Poverty and Distributional Impact of Economic Policies and the two-volume guide entitled Analyzing the Distributional Impact of Reforms. Reflecting the prominence that is increasingly given to power relations in policy reform, this sourcebook introduces a new ‘transmission channel’ for reform impacts dealing with issues of authority and power. Greater emphasis has also been placed on the process of conducting policy analysis. Attention is placed on a more consultative form of policy making that includes the voices of people who may not always be considered, such as smallholder farmers, women, or communities in remote areas. |
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