Most
development agencies, analysts and practitioners recognize that institutions
shape the course of development and that, in turn, institutional change
involves power and politics. An important corollary is that practical
development organizations need to be capable of acting with intelligence in the
political environment of partner countries, so they help promote, or at least
do not stand in the way of, progressive developmental reform. Yet this poses
significant challenges for organizations and professionals that were formed to
deliver technical inputs and financial resources to development processes on
the assumption that others will take care of the politics.
Various communities of
practice have been established recently to advance the general idea of thinking
and working politically in development agencies. One of the obstacles they face
is a lack of well documented examples of the gains from working in more
politically informed ways with aid. Another is an apparent shortage of
operational models that provide a coherent, evidence-based alternative to
standard donor practices. This paper addresses this particular gap by
describing the practice of what has been called development entrepreneurship
and explaining some of the ideas from outside the field of development that
have inspired it.