Rethinking Governance Capacity As Organizational and Systemic Resources
This paper proposes to integrate disparate notions of governance capacity by adopting a resource based view of capacity. Governance capacity can be defined as the set of organizational and systemic resources necessary to make sound policy choices and implement them effectively. Adopting this definition allows for a more nuanced conceptualization of capacity as comprised of three essential dimensions analytical, operational and political. In order to operationalize this resource based definition, we identified a fundamental set of resources that are institutionalized, mission critical and promotive of dynamic learning since not all resources can form part of capacity. This set of resources can easily be evaluated using secondary data at the policy sub system level but no equivalent tool exists to analyze organizational capacities. To address this gap, we developed a survey instrument to measure the multi dimensional nature of organizational policy capacity.