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Capacity development is widely accepted as critical to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and other development outcomes, but the results from capacity development initiatives have often been disappointing. This challenge signifies the urgent need to advance capacity development knowledge and practice. As a contribution to addressing this challenge, the World Bank Institute (WBI) has developed a strategic, country-led and approach to results focused capacity development, which involves collective action across society and an emphasis throughout on achieving results. The conceptual framework and processes for WBI's approach are captured in the Capacity Development and Results Framework (CDRF) (Otoo, Agapitova and Behrens 2009). The focus of this paper is on the strength of stakeholder ownership. Drawing on a review of recent studies, literature and relevant examples, this paper seeks to deepen understanding of the importance of stakeholder ownership and its contributing institutional characteristics to achieving development goals. The paper identifies future collaborative research that would shed light on which change strategies are likely to be most effective in strengthening stakeholder ownership in different contexts.

This book brings together public financial management and public sector reform experiences from eight countries in East Asia. It examines how reforms have been implemented in those countries and explores key lessons that can help reformers to further advance their endeavors

Reforming public-sector organizations--their structures, policies, processes and practices--is notoriously difficult, in rich and poor countries alike. Even in the most favorable of circumstances, the scale and complexity of the tasks to be undertaken are enormous, requiring levels of coordination and collaboration that may be without precedent for those involved. Entirely new skills may need to be acquired by tens of thousands of people. Compounding these logistical challenges is the pervasive reality that circumstances often are not favorable to large-scale reform. Whether a country is rich or poor, the choice is not whether, but how, to reform the public sector--how optimal design characteristics, robust political support, and enhanced organizational capability to implement and adapt will be forged over time. This edited volume helps address the "how" question. It brings together reform experiences in public financial management and the public sector more broadly from eight country cases in East Asia: Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, and Vietnam. These countries are at different stages of reform; most of the reform efforts would qualify as successes, while some had mixed outcomes, and others could be considered failures. The focus of each chapter is less on formally demonstrating success (or not) of specific reform, but on documenting how reformers maneuvered within different country contexts to achieve specific outcomes. Despite the great difficulty in reforming the public sector, decision-makers can draw renewed energy and inspiration, learning from those countries, sectors, and subnational spaces where substantive (not merely cosmetic) change has been achieved, and they can identify what pitfalls to avoid.