Attachments
Executive Summary
This Evidence Gap Map (EGM) report presents the findings of a systematic search to identify and map the evidence base of interventions focusing on governance effectiveness in low- and middle-income countries (L&MICs). The principle of good governance has emerged as a priority and a driver of success in international development. Through good governance, better political decisions and quality of public services may bring impact to a majority of citizens and not to an elite minority (FCDO, 2019a). The theory of good governance is nonetheless challenged by the reality of public decision-making, policymaking, service delivery and resource management. Decreasing levels of freedom, as well as corruption, non-optimal management of public resources and services, and low levels of accountability and transparency are some of the challenges to the principles of good governance in L&MICs. Moreover, the concept of good governance itself lacks consensus around its definition, implementation, and measures of impact.
Though previous synthesis efforts have considered public administration as it relates to citizens’ input, they have not differentiated interventions across transparency, accountability, and oversight mechanisms; or have covered other aspects of good governance, such as public financial or administrative management. This EGM focuses on interventions related to government institutions and included interventions from, through and/or directed towards those institutions. This allows the EGM to primarily focus on government effectiveness, changes to the way governments work, and the architecture of public service delivery.
The EGM builds on existing theories of change as we consider interventions that support good governance through governance effectiveness to achieve longer-term impacts on public and social wellbeing and growth. Interventions targeting transparency and monitoring, the creation of participation opportunities, capacity building and administrative management, and institutional reforms shape the framework of this EGM.
Methods
We implemented a comprehensive search for quantitative impact evaluations, specific qualitative evaluations (IEs), and systematic reviews (SRs) covering four academic databases and 46 grey literature sources to identify relevant studies. We complemented this search by conducting forward and backward citation tracking of included studies and the solicitation of relevant papers from stakeholders and the public.
We used EPPI-Reviewer to manage the EGM process, including mass-deduplication of the search results, independent double screening of studies at title and abstract, full text retrieval, and independent double screening of records at full text. To improve the efficiency of the screening process, we also used machine learning at the title and abstract stage.
Using 3ie’s EGM platform, we created an online interactive map according to the interventions evaluated and outcomes reported in included studies. The platform incorporates filters to explore the evidence by regions, populations, democracy levels, among other criteria. The map can be viewed at https://developmentevidence.3ieimpact.org/egm/good-governance-through-governmenteffectiveness-evidence-gap-map.
Main findings
The search for evidence conducted in December 2021 and January 2022 yielded a total of 98,625 potentially relevant studies. After the removal of duplicates and screening of records, we included 504 unique studies covered by 643 papers: 465 quantitative evaluations, 19 qualitative evaluations, one study that used both quantitative and qualitative designs, and 19 systematic reviews. The EGM studies were published between 1999 and 2022, with an increase in the volume of evidence published, particularly in the last decade.
Most evaluations were conducted in East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa, which respectively covered 34%, 29% and 25% of the evidence. At the country level, included studies were mainly conducted in China, Brazil and India. Included interventions did not generally target specific population groups or settings, and 46 percent of the studies evaluated interventions implemented in electoral democracies. Ten percent of the studies evaluated interventions implemented in countries under fragile and conflict-affected situations.
Interventions within the institutional reform efforts and architecture of public service delivery group were the most common, due to the high number of studies evaluating tax policy and administrative reforms and decentralization, administrative devolution, or reorganization interventions. Other frequently evaluated intervention categories were management innovations and civil service reforms and citizen observers, monitoring of front-line service providers, and reporting mechanisms. Thirty-nine percent of included studies measured outcomes related to human and social development and economic growth and business performance. Fewer studies reported direct governance outcomes, of which the most common were access to public services, tax compliance and contributions, and public service effectiveness measures. However, there is little evidence on outcomes measuring internal governance processes and accountability and quality of policymaking.
Out of the 19 included SRs, three are ongoing, and nine were assessed as having medium or high confidence. The high and medium SRs showed that citizen engagement interventions can improve access and quality of public services and community participation in service provision governance. Moreover, institutional and community monitoring interventions can also help reduce corruption in the public sector. While the SRs present relevant findings across the four intervention groups on the map, in many cases, the evidence of the effectiveness of these interventions is modest.
Conclusion and implications
The Governance EGM provides a vast body of evidence to inform decision-making on policy and programming, particularly around tax policy, decentralization, management innovation, and citizen observers interventions. Practitioners can also draw from this evidence, particularly if interested in programs with theories of change that consider impacts on outcomes around human and social development and economic growth.
While public financial management is a critical component of good governance (USAID, 2018), this EGM is less able to provide policy and programming implications on this topic as we identified limited evidence on public budget planning, budget transparency and tracking, public procurement, and public private partnership interventions. The governance sector should prioritize the strategic allocation of funding to build up this evidence.
The SRs included in the map cover the four intervention groups; however, the lack of SRs on tax policy interventions is the map’s main gap, considering that this category has more than 100 primary studies. The synthesis gaps identified, the number of SRs assessed as low confidence, and the overall limited and weak evidence presented in the high and medium SRs highlight a need of high confidence and up-to-date synthesis in the governance sector.
Policymakers and researchers can contribute to commissioning and conducting evaluations to fill out the primary evidence and synthesis gaps identified in the map. This can be achieved by expanding the availability and accessibility of government data and by incorporating the analysis of a broader range of outcomes, including direct internal governance measures, to understand better the effectiveness of governance interventions on government structures and processes.