Vishal Narain (MDI, Management Development Institute)

Vishal Narain is Professor, Public Policy and Governance at MDI, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India.    He holds a PhD from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. His academic interests are in the inter-disciplinary analyses of public policy processes and institutions particularly in the global south; pedagogy and andragogy for public policy education; rural-urban transitions and the peri-urban interface; vulnerability and adaptation to the effects of climate change and issues of gender and intersectionality in water governance and higher education for sustainability. His research on these subjects has been published in consistently highly ranked journals such as Land use policy, Policy Design and Practice, Geoforum, Climate Policy, Cities, Water Alternatives, WIRES Water, and Urban Studies.

Course: Policy-making and implementation: perspectives from the Global South

This course introduces participants to key concepts, models and conceptual frameworks to examine the processes of policy-making and implementation with a specific focus on the political and institutional context of the global south. The course encourages participants to ask: what is unique about the context of policy-making and implementation in the global south? What implications does this have for how we articulate and theorize about policy processes there?

The course starts with basic conceptual groundwork for the analysis of public policy and institutions. The role of local institutions – norms, values,  codes of conduct and belief systems - is vital in shaping the dynamics of policy processes. Participants are exposed to the distinction between policy outputs and outcomes; through appropriate  examples rooted in the context of the global south they are familiarized with the institutional causes and constraints that prevent the translation of policy outputs into  policy outcomes. Participants are exposed to models of the policy process that provide a framework for articulating the nature of the policy process; though there is no one size fits all model of the policy process for the global south. The Good Governance agenda and the globalization of governance are two important aspects of the global context of policy-making that have influenced policy choices in the global south. Epistemic communities, change agents and policy networks influence policy choices through dominant narratives and discourses that establish the supremacy of specific ways of dealing with policy issues.

Why is therea gap between intended and actual policy outcomes ? Participants are introduced to the concept of street level bureaucracies as an entry point to understand this discrepancy. State law and public policy often get diluted through their interface with non-statutory institutions that take precedence over statutory institutions, establishing the value of a lens of legal pluralism in policy implementation. Actor-oriented frameworks challenge linear models of policy-making and implementation, drawing attention to the “messiness” of the policy context of the global south. The approach is interactive with space for peer interaction and cross-learning using reading material, examples and cases from the global south.