Bureaucratic politics and incentives in the management of rural development

Management problems in the implementation of rural development are analyzed from a bureaucratic political standpoint. Proposals for management improvement will fail if they do not take account of informal interests and the patterns of incentives and pressures these create. At present, these informal incentives often make it irrational for managers and field staff to implement poverty-oriented programs as planned. Tentative methods are put forward for assessing incentives in rural development bureaucracies, and various means of influencing the 'incentive environment' are explored, with the aim of making it make sense for bureaucrats to be more responsive to the needs of poor beneficiaries. The broad aim is to examine the bureaucratic-politial determinants of implementation failure and success, with particular reference to poverty-oriented development in rural areas of the Third World.