Why the system isn’t working for poor people
The next step is to find out why key supporting functions and rules are under-performed, i.e the root causes of system-level constraints. It is these constraints that your interventions will seek to address.
Key Questions at this stage are;
- Why are key functions and rules under-performed?
- Why have more inclusive, pro-poor solutions or alternatives not emerged autonomously within the system?
To answer these questions, you need to investigate how market players’ incentives and capacities cause critical supporting functions or rules to be under-performed. Understanding this will explain why these functions and rules are inadequate, mismatched, or absent.
Tracing problems in the principal market system (ie the one within which the target group exists) back to their roots, often leads you to the capacities and incentives of players in another, ‘supporting’, market system.
