People

Dr Pablo Yanguas

Role

Pablo Yanguas is Research Fellow at the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) research centre, where he leads research on public sector reform and political-economy analysis. He is also currently working as PEA and Research Adviser to FCDO’s Strengthening Action Against Corruption (STAAC) Programme in Ghana. In February 2018 he published an exciting new book ‘Why We Lie About Aid’.

Research

Pablo’s research centres on aid effectiveness and the political economy of public sector reform, with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa. He works with David Hulme on ESID’s project studying the use of political economy analysis (PEA) by DFID and the World Bank, and he also leads ESID’s project on comparative public sector reform in Ghana, Malawi, Rwanda and Uganda. Pablo has also worked with Kunal Sen and Matthias vom Hau on ESID’s approach to state capacity.

ESID publications

Yanguas, P. (2017) Public sector reform in Africa. Understanding the paths and politics of change ESID Briefing Paper No 28. Manchester 
Yanguas, P. (2017). ‘Varieties of state-building in Africa: Elites, ideas and the politics of public sector reform‘. ESID Working Paper No. 89. Manchester.

Yanguas, P. (2017). ‘The role and responsibility of foreign aid in recipient political settlements‘. Journal of International Development.

Yanguas, P. (2016). ‘The role and responsibility of foreign aid in recipient political settlements‘. ESID Working Paper No. 56. Manchester.
Yanguas, P. & Bukenya, B. (2016). ‘”New” Approaches Confront “Old” Challenges in African Public Sector Reform’. Third World Quarterly 37.
Yanguas, P. & Hulme, D. (2015). ‘Barriers to Political Analysis in Aid Bureaucracies: From Principle to Practice in DFID and the World Bank‘. World Development 74.
Briefing Paper No. 12: Making political analysis useful: Adjusting and scaling.
Briefing Paper No. 5, co-authored with David Hulme: Mainstreaming political economy analysis (PEA) in donor agencies.
Yanguas, P. & Hulme, D. (2014). ‘Can aid bureaucracies think politically? The administrative challenges of political economy analysis (PEA) in DFID and the World Bank‘. ESID Working Paper No. 33. Manchester.
Briefing Paper No. 4, co-authored with Kunal Sen and Matthias vom Hau: Why state capacity matters for the post-2015 development agenda and how we should measure it.
Yanguas, P. & Bukenya, B. (2013). ‘Building state capacity for inclusive development: The politics of public sector reform‘. ESID Working Paper No. 25. Manchester.
Effective States and Inclusive Development: An introduction.

Other publications

Yanguas, Pablo. (2018). Why We Lie About Aid: Development and the Messy Politics of Change. Zed Books, UK.
Yanguas, Pablo. (2014). ‘Leader, Protester, Enabler, Spoiler: Aid Strategies and Donor Politics in Institutional Assistance‘. Development Policy Review 32(3): 299-312.

Further information

Find Pablo on Academia.edu. He writes on matters serious and not so serious on his personal blog, and you can follow him on Twitter.