ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the limitations of using projects as the sole means of institution-building are illustrated by examples from Sierra Leone, Brazil, and Panama. It suggests that institutional innovations at the project level and sectoral levels, like agriculture or education, need to be designed with knowledge about the national institutional environment. A number of useful lessons emerge from the work in Zambia and Papua New Guinea: one is that in order to affect and change a national institutional process, it is important to concentrate on changing what is routine. Reform of national institutional processes is illustrated by a case on budgeting from Zambia and a case on personnel management from Papua New Guinea. Government administration reform programs have often tried to do too much because the aim was to secure better functioning of all Government institutions at once.
