The issue note discusses the rationalefor, and presents the initial results of an innovativemethod of governance support conducted through thepreparation and implementation of Poverty Reduction Strategy(PRS) in fragile states. The experiment was conducted in thecontext of an action and learning program on governance infragile and conflict affected countries. The note firstexamines the political economic framework prevailing infragile states, and particularly the neopatrimonial dynamicswhich structure political agents behavior, as they have beenstudied, notably, by Chabal and Daloz; Douglass North, JohnWallis and Bary Weingast; and Margaret Levi. The note looksat the relatively brief history of PRSs and notes that theyhave been reviewed from a classical economics perspective:whether the PRSs' proposed policies 'got itright.' It argues that an institutionalize perspective,on the other hand, will rather look at the institutionalprocesses from which the PRSP is developed, and concludesthat PRS support will be more effective if it is focused onissues of methodology and process facilitation rather thananalytics. The last chapter describes, in operational terms,the type of PRS support that has been provided through theexperiment in the Cote d'Ivoire case: methodologicalsupport and process facilitation were provided for thepreparation of the PRS policy matrices and the design of itsmonitoring and evaluation system. It concludes by proposinga set of results that can be monitored to assess the impactof this type of approach, not only for governance in themeaning of the capacity of a state to develop and implementpolicies, but also for governance in its broader, moretraditional meaning.
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