Beyond Governance: Bringing Power into Policy Analysis

Abstract

This article discusses how power may be fruitfully brought into policy analysis in order to make efforts to support development and poverty alleviation in developing countries. It begins by asking why power has been left out of development policy analysis for such a long time and proceeds by discussing what a power analysis entails. The third section provides a framework for how power can be brought into policy analysis as an independent and dependent variable. It concludes by demonstrating the usefulness of this approach and discussing the implications it has for the kind of data needed for development analysis and the kind of approach to adopt. This approach is shown to transcend the limitations of conventional diplomatic reporting on politics and regular macro-economic analysis, which is based largely on questionable national statistical information.

Keywords: