Countries around the globe are seekingto diversify their economies and make them competitive. Forthis to happen, resources need to flow to firms that canmake the best use of them. This is not the case in manycountries. A good example is the MENA region where, in manycountries, the policy regime has evolved in a manner suchthat a small number of firms end up getting adisproportionate share of resources - public land,procurement contracts, energy, finance and investmentincentives, to name a few - not because they are moreefficient but because they are politically connected. Thisskewed distribution of productive resources is a major causeof the high unemployment rates in the region, especially foryoung graduates - ranging between 15 and 25 percent. Inbrief, the ones with resources do not create many jobs. Theones that could have created jobs do not get the resourcesto do so. Although ubiquitous in MENA, this problem afflictsmany other countries. The prosperity and social cohesion ofthe MENA region still rests on its ability to transform itspublic administration to better deliver services to theprivate sector to absorb a young and increasinglywell-educated labor force. This will particularly be thecase in post conflict countries were social issues andstability concerns are more acute. Making policy areasresistant to privilege is important for this agenda. Thecomplex political economy underlying policy capture andprivilege-seeking may make this a seemingly intractableproblem. However, the new study is inspired by recentliterature on dynamics of policy change point to windows ofopportunity within a complex political economy setting thatallow incremental improvements with substantial cumulativeeffect over time.It breaks new ground by applying, to theprivate sector governance space, the motto “What getsmeasured gets done”
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