Politics and Policy Processes Discussion Workshop for the 2008 World Development Report on ‘Agriculture for Development’

Hosted by the Future Agricultures Consortium,
22-23 January 2007 at the Institute of Development Studies, UK

SUMMARY OF PROCEEDINGS

There have been many good policy recommendations about how to get agriculture moving over the years and the current draft of the 2008 World Development Report (WDR) contains plenty of these. But too often these have foundered, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. In large part this is because of a narrow focus on the ‘technical’ dimensions of policy, with too little attention paid to the complex politics of policymaking in particular contexts. This workshop was aimed at examining what issues need highlighting in the forthcoming WDR to ensure that past mistakes are not repeated.

The workshop was hosted by the Future Agricultures Consortium. A central focus of the consortium’s work is to highlight policy process issues as vital to any long-term solution. Through analytical work and action research in Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi on a number of themes, the consortium aims to foster critical debate on how to make agricultural policies work in favour of pro-poor agriculture-led growth.

The workshop was held at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex, and involved participants from the consortium’s partner organisations in Africa and the UK, as well as a select number of other resource persons, including representatives from DFID’s Renewable Natural Resources and Agriculture team and key members of the WDR writing team. The workshop focused on the African setting (and so on agriculture-based economies), in particular drawing from experiences in East and Southern Africa where consortium members are working. Informed by these cases and the wider reflections, this event sought to draw attention to critical political economy issues in the process of agricultural policy generation and implementation and implications for the preparation of the 2008 WDR.

Emerging out of a one and a half days of fruitful exchanges and debates (see the workshop programme) was the undisputed message that politics matter and are a key determinant of processes of policy generation and change. Hence, the design and implementation of agricultural policies cannot be understood (and influenced) without deciphering the elusive ‘policy game’ played by actors/networks at various levels, inside and outside the agricultural policy remit. This ‘policy game’ is often hidden and likely to be shaped by history, nature, culture and other context idiosyncrasies, as well as actors’ interests, agency and dynamic interaction with each other. A tentative framework of analysis was devised to assist the interpretation of such complex interactions which are embedded in the policy process.

But the devil is in the details and a number of challenging questions remains to be addressed, including:

How to avoid treating the ‘policy game’ technocratically and appreciate it as embedded in the way the political process works?
What are the trade-offs in the ‘policy game’ and how to anticipate and deal with the tensions between winners and losers?
How to make politics part of the solution rather than the problem?
How to make the options and motivations of different players explicit (including the World Bank’s own)?
Are decentralised agricultural policy processes better or worse for pro-poor agricultural development?
Are ministries of agriculture drivers or deterrents of pro-poor agricultural policy change?
And, crucially, how to translate understandings on the politics of policies into pragmatic and feasible recommendations which can contribute to pro-poor agricultural development (i.e. how to address the tensions between the positive and the normative side of knowledge)?

The Consortium’s work on agricultural policy processes will carry on pursuing some of these challenging questions in an effort to place politics and policy processes right at the centre of our analyses of pro-poor agricultural paths. In particular, we will be looking at concrete examples of agricultural policy change in our focus countries and try to identify the determinants of change and understand the extent to which (why and how) ministries of agriculture are catalysts, deterrents or absentees in those change processes.

These notes were compiled by Lídia Cabral, John Thompson , and Ian Scoones , January 2006. For further information on the workshop, please contact us at:

• Lídia Cabral – l.cabral@odi.org.uk

• John Thompson – j.thompson@ids.ac.uk

• Ian Scoones – i.scoones@ids.ac.uk

Key Workshop Outputs

Next steps: Building on the proceedings of the
Politics and Policy Processes Discussion Workshop for the WDR

The Politics of Decentralisation in Southern Africa

WDR Briefing papers:

Politics and the Future of Ministries of Agriculture:
Rethinking Roles and Transforming Agendas

Reclaiming Policy Space:
Lessons from Malawi’s Fertiliser Subsidy Programme

The Limits of Success:
The Case of the Dairy Sector in Kenya

Workshop Presentations

All presentations are Powerpoint files.

World Bank:

WDR 2008 Presentation (Alain de Janvry)

Political economy of agricultural policy
(Robert Townsend)

Future Agricultures:

Politics matter: politics and policy processes in African agriculture

What role for ministries of agriculture?narratives and policy space

Kenya: The politics of reform processes

Kenya: The limits of policy success:the case of the dairy sector

Ethiopia: Policy-making in a federal context - views from the regions

Malawi: Reclaiming policy space? Malawi’s 2005/2006 fertilizer subsidy programme

Future Agricultures overview

Politics and Policy Processes Discussion Workshop for the 2008 World Development Report on ‘Agriculture for Development’

Key Workshop Outputs

Workshop Presentations

Related links