Year of publication 2007

This Sourcebook helps readers to better understand the impact of policy reform by providing a framework and tools for focusing policy analysis on political economy, power relations, and social dynamics. It is increasingly recognized that failure to anticipate political and institutional challenges is often a chief cause of unsuccessful policy reform processes, with unintended social consequences for often vulnerable and poor groups. The Sourcebook is intended to help both development practitioners in donor and national organizations who commission policy analysis, and consultants, researchers, and civil society groups who conduct such analysis and use the results. A major challenge ahead is to build capacity to conduct social analysis of policy reform, as well as to facilitate processes where results can effectively inform national policy dialogue. This Sourcebook contributes to awareness raising and capacity build- ing for applying good quality social analysis as an integral element of policy reform design. This Sourcebook deals with social analysis in policy reform, encompassing the transition from gaining a better understanding of the distributional impacts of proposed or continuing reform to influencing a more informed and locally embedded process of policy review and design. In a generic sense, the term “social analysis” encompasses institutional, political, and social analyses.