Objectives

The Program's mission is: ‘to support a participatory country-based process led by domestic stakeholders in improving their governance capacity through rigorous and action-oriented learning programs’.

Such programs are based on frontier know-how and R&D in the governance field. In-house operational research and empirical and diagnostic surveys are a key input to the learning programs, as is operationally relevant research in DEC and outside of the Bank. Special efforts go into the translation of applied research findings into their implications for policy and institution-building. Such R&D therefore is one of the ‘glues’ that ties the various learning components together.

Since the empirical evidence we have gathered clearly attests to the enormous variance in the type of governance vulnerabilities across countries, as well as in the quality of governance across different dimensions and institutions within each country, localizing know-how working closely with experts and policy-makers within the country is key in our diagnostic work, learning programs, and advisory services.

This process of joint in-depth diagnostic at the country level with partners and experts within the country (already there has been such in-depth diagnostic work or work is ongoing in over 15 countries), coupled with the explicit upfront objective of localizing knowledge and priorities in each particular setting, not only supports institutional development with the partners we work with, but as importantly provides for a concrete process of bi-directional learning: the Bank learns much from the country stakeholders and domestic experts themselves.

Ultimately it is the client who formulates the action programs, with WBI learning activities being an input to a participatory process.

back to top