Day 3: Suresh Babu, IFPRI: “Measurement of Policy Process—What Role for Indicators and Indices?” Workshop on Approaches and Methods for Policy Process Research, co-sponsored by the CGIAR Research Programs on Policies, Institutions and Markets (PIM) and Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) at IFPRI-Washington DC, November 18-20, 2013.

1. Food Policy Process Index:
Measuring the Effectiveness
of the Food Policy Process
in Developing Countries
Suresh Babu
Workshop on Approaches and Methods
for Policy Process Research
November 20, 2013

2. Introduction

Index: Combination of measures of various elements of
a system to gauge the performance of the system

Purpose of an index

Descriptive (What’s going on? Is there a problem? Crosssection or longitudinal comparisons)

Prescriptive (Wherein lies the problem/constraining/
bottlenecked element?)

Viewpoint of capacity strengthening: Indexes facilitate
the identification of problem areas or weak spots ->
helps in prioritization of capacity strengthening needs

Context: Food policymaking—FP research can have
maximum impact if the policy process has first been
measured and its capacity strengthened to absorb
research evidence

3. Indicators
Three elements of Capacity
System
Capacity
Organization
Capacity
Individual
Capacity
•Formal and informal institutions
•Enabling environment
•Governance, transparency, accountability,
cooperation, coordination, participation,
corruption, rule of law
•Leadership, management, resource allocation
•Financial management and budget
•Goal orientation and level of success
•HR, incentives, salaries
•Hierarchy structures
•Local issue specific knowledge
•Technical capabilities and skills
•Communication skills (writing, speaking,
networking, lobbying, collaborating)
•Attitude and personal motivation

4. Examples of Indicators

System-level (enabling environment): Worldwide
Governance Indicators (World Bank); Ease of Doing
Business; Corruption Perceptions Index (Transparency
International); Democracy Index (Economist Intelligence
Unit)

Organization-level: Budget; Rate of turnover of
employees; Output/input rate; Internet access;
electricity stability; number of positions filled per
allocated

Individual-level: Educational attainment (general and
subject/level specific); Job satisfaction tests; Outputs
(eg. Publications:FPRCI)

5. Food Policy Process Index
(FPPI)

Challenges


Identifying all relevant elements (and stages) of policy
process; understanding substitutability and
complementarity of elements


Obtaining data on qualitative measures (eg. informal
institutions, measuring organizational effectiveness,
attitude/personal drive
Formation that reflect multi-dimensional relationships of
elements
First Steps

Collecting data for FPRCI (published in GFPR)

Identifying existing, relevant measures (indicators and
indexes)

6. Value of FPPI

CAADP implementation: How can policy process
strengthened to reach goals?

ReSAKSS: How can ReSAKSS support policy process
development?

IFPRI: How and where can IFPRI strengthen capacity in
order to increase uptake of its research?

Donors: Where can donors invest to yield system-wide
improvements in food policy processes and hence
outcomes?

7. Moving Forward

Policy Process Discussion: Necessary and sufficient
elements of a food policy process

Relationship between said elements

Construction that is theoretically justified, simply
constructed, empirically meaningful, and practically
useful