ABSTRACT
Improving public sector performance requires understanding how governments work and how public-policy decisions are made. This chapter focuses on the gap between how academicians and practitioners study public sector performance in developing countries. It defines and classifies these differences, then asks why they arise, whether there is value in bridging them, and if so, how to go about it. The chapter identifies the key differences in the questions that practitioners and academicians ask, the methods they employ, and their relevant timelines. It then argues that the reasons for this gap lie in three key tensions between the worlds of scholarship and practice: scientific precision versus different ways of knowing; parsimony versus complexity; and specialization versus broader skillsets. To illustrate these tensions, the chapter highlights the example of two disciplines, economics and political science, as they relate to the operational work of the World Bank. In describing these tensions, the chapter makes it clear that much can be gained by alleviating them. This provides a way to think more systematically about building bridges between practice and scholarship by exploring what academic frameworks are most useful for practitioners, what practitioners can offer academicians, and what practical steps can be taken in the academic world and by development institutions to enable more systematic cross-fertilization between practice and scholarship.
