The Policy Practice is cross-posting some of the blogs from the ‘Ground Rules’ series, an initiative of the Land Facility Decision Support Unit that explores how ‘thinking and working politically’ can support more adaptive and effective programming in land governance and beyond. The series was curated in collaboration with the Land Portal Foundation.

Quick read — Five takeaways

• Good-enough political economy analysis (PEA) is not lighter analysis. It is more targeted — focused on decisions you actually need to make, not context you already know.
• Map the political landscape at programme level. The profile you produce — which dynamics are favourable, which are hostile — tells you what kinds of interventions can be effective.
• Scoping PEA should produce two things: a framing summary that sharpens design questions, and a mechanism to track the dynamics that the analysis surfaced.
• Design what you will monitor before you start — observable triggers linked to tactical responses. Adaptation should be planned, not improvised.
• If scoping PEA doesn't shape where you work, what you attempt, and what you leave out, it wasn't political economy. It was background reading.

The problem with most scoping PEA

Most scoping exercises produce the wrong thing.

Teams commission lengthy diagnostics that repeat foundational analyses already available — elite bargains, institutional fragmentation, patronage dynamics, customary–statutory tensions. These factors matter. But they rarely shift within a programme cycle. Describing them again wastes time and budget that could be spent on actual engagement.

Meanwhile, the decisions that shape programme success get made with thin evidence:

• Where should we work — and where should we not?
• What does the political landscape actually look like across the dynamics that matter?
• What signals will tell us when conditions are shifting?

Good-enough PEA answers these questions. It is not lighter. It is sharper — and it saves resources by stopping teams from designing programmes the political landscape will hinder.

What scoping PEA should produce

At inception, a programme typically has a broad frame — geography, thematic focus, candidate workstreams. What it lacks is political clarity on the operating environment and what to watch as implementation unfolds.

Scoping PEA should deliver two things:

1. A framing summary. 

   A short reference (3–5 pages) that distils what is already known and translates it into design questions. Not another diagnostic — a decision tool.

   It should answer: What are the foundational political dynamics? Who benefits from the status quo? What institutional frictions will the programme encounter? Where do mandates overlap and coordination break down? How will authorities respond — as partners, gatekeepers, or blockers? What are we assuming about political will — and how will we know if we're wrong?

   The framing summary makes existing PEA usable. It stops teams from commissioning research that already exists.

2. A mechanism to track what the analysis surfaced

   This is what keeps political intelligence alive through implementation. The dynamics you map at scoping are the same dynamics you track through delivery.

   For each dynamic: What is the current baseline? Is the trend improving, stable, or declining? Who are the key actors? What observable events would signal that conditions are shifting — and what will the team do if that happens?

   Whatever way you structure this — a dashboard, a quarterly review, regular sensing with partners — the discipline is the same: know what you're watching and why.

Mapping the political landscape

The core of scoping PEA is not testing interventions one by one. It is mapping the political landscape in which the programme will operate.

This means assessing — at programme level — the dynamics that will shape what's possible. In land governance, these typically include elite alignment, institutional readiness, community ownership, gender responsiveness, customary politics, coordination gaps, timing, champion potential, resistance to reform, and trust between stakeholders. Your context will surface its own priorities and economic dynamics.

The result is a political profile: some dimensions are favourable, others are hostile, most are somewhere in between.

For example, one programme mapped its landscape and found several contested or unfavourable dimensions — weak elite commitment, fragmented institutional mandates, timing pressures, and low trust between government and communities. That profile ruled out system-wide reform. But it also revealed pockets of strength: genuine community ownership in specific areas, and a credible champion in a partner ministry. The team designed accordingly — targeted pilots where conditions were workable, not a national rollout the landscape couldn't support.

This is how the landscape shapes design. You don't test interventions against a checklist. You read the landscape and design into it.

Designing what to track — and what to do when it shifts

The most neglected part of scoping is designing the signals you will monitor.

Don't track vague concepts. Track observable events:
• Not "declining political will" but "key champion redeployed within six months of launch."
• Not "institutional resistance" but "ministry fails to issue coordination memo after three requests."
• Not "community disengagement" but "complaints of exclusion surface in first pilot site."

For each trigger, define the tactical response in advance. If the champion is redeployed, who is the fallback? If coordination stalls, what alternative pathway exists? If community complaints emerge, which safeguard is activated?

One programme built this discipline at inception. When a reform champion was suddenly transferred, the team flagged it immediately. Because they had already identified a secondary ally in a partner ministry, they adjusted engagement within weeks rather than losing six months of momentum.

This is what good-enough PEA enables: not prediction, but preparation.

Localisation is how, not what

PEA is not a report. It is a means of enabling thinking and working politically.

Too often, political economy analysis is treated as a deliverable — something commissioned, produced, and handed over. That framing misses the point. A report that sits in a shared drive has not changed anything. The test is not whether the analysis was produced, or who produced it, or who owns the document. The test is whether programme staff can use it to facilitate reform, and whether reformers are better equipped to navigate the politics they encounter.

Externals can lead the technical work. Consultants can bring method and rigour. What matters is whether the analysis lives inside the programme — shaping decisions, informing tactics, surfacing when conditions shift. If it does, that's localisation. If the PEA exists to satisfy a tender requirement or a logframe milestone, it isn't. The framing summary and tracking mechanism described earlier are not deliverables to hand over. They are tools that keep political intelligence alive inside the programme.

When political sensing is embedded in how a programme team works, staff learn to read signals, track shifts, and adapt. They hold the relationships that make intelligence possible. They stay when the programme ends.

This is not about who holds the contract. It is about whether the analysis enables reform — or just documents it.

The discipline that protects every design workshop

Before any design session, the team should answer:
• What do we already know — and where is it written?
• What is our political profile — which dynamics are favourable, which are hostile?
• Given that profile, what kinds of interventions make sense here — and what should we avoid?
• What triggers will we track, and what will we do if they fire?

If you cannot answer these, you are not ready to design. You have context, but not political intelligence.

Good-enough PEA closes that gap — not with more research, but with sharper questions, programme-level landscape mapping, and a system for learning as conditions change. It saves budget by stopping research that won't change decisions, and it protects political capital by ensuring teams don't commit to reforms the landscape won't support.

Everything else is paperwork.

References
Whaites, A. (2025). Understanding a quick political economy analysis (PEA) approach (FCDO Practical Guidance Note). Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

This material has been funded by UK International Development from the UK government; however, the authors’ opinions in the ‘Ground Rules’ blog series do not necessarily represent the UK government’s official policies, nor the Land Facility programme’s view on political economy. Rather, these blogs are part of the Decision Support Unit’s mandate to facilitate global learning and knowledge exchange that can inform best practices across the land and development world.

This blog has been cross-posted by The Policy Practice to ensure the Land Facility Decision Support Unit outputs remain accessible once the project closed in 2026. The full blog series can be found here.