Our new Policy and Practice Brief, by TPP Directors Gareth Williams and Neil McCulloch, tackles a common challenge: development programmes often jump from analysing a problem straight to proposing solutions, without asking how change is actually likely to happen.

The brief sets out the Pathways of Change framework, which we use in our applied political economy work. The idea is simple. First, work out how an outcome could realistically come about, driven by domestic actors and politics (the "pathways of change"). Only then decide how donors, diplomats or investors might help ("interventions" to support the pathways).

Gareth and Neil illustrate the approach with two examples: the growth of solar power in Ghana and the European Union’s role in reforming Thai fisheries. They also explain how to test whether a pathway holds up before committing resources to it.