Importance of teams in reforms

I was reading this short note from Growth Commission on importane of leadership team in reforms. The note says:

What do Botswana, Cape Verde, Malaysia, Mauritius, and Taiwan (China) have in common? They belong to an exclusive group of economies that grew out of poverty in less than 30 years. They also initially relied on a small, dedicated team of experts to get the job done. These teams brought to bear world-class skills along with direct access to the top level of government and a large development budget. That combination of skills, access, and resources gave them the clout to steer an ambitious reform agenda through vested interests and layers of government.

The 6 functions of these teams were:

• Designing development strategies
• Leading the dialogue with the private sector
• Grooming political leaders
• Leading critical policy negotiations
• Mobilizing and allocating resources
• Compelling the administration to act

 

 

 

 

Fairly interesting stuff. The reform teams are pretty critical in emerging economies and now even in developed economies. Romer, Summers et al have a huge task at hand to revamp and reform US economy and financial systems.

Anyways what I think is missing in this note or deserves special mention is the indifference of these reform teams to interest groups. In any reform strategy, there are all kinds of people looking to seeks rents from a certain policy. This includes the policymakers themselves. Most of the time policies are made to suit their families and kins. It will be very interesting to read any stuff by Growth Commission on this aspect. How did these teams do away with these special rent seeking interests? As the rent seekers are usually very powerful people and could be major stumbling blocks to any reform, keeping them away is the key. As Jaimini Bhagwati points, it is one of the key challenges for India as well.

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