Why do some public policies succeed while others falter? New research from the Asia Competitiveness Institute (ACI) reveals a critical factor: context-awareness. The study finds that policies designed with a deep understanding of local contexts achieve significant positive results, whereas “one-size-fits-all” approaches often underperform. It further provides a practical framework to help policymakers systematically embed context-awareness into policy design.

What is context-awareness

Context-awareness stems from computer science and application design, where some components of context are crucial to better design. In a policy design scenario, the context can be background or underlying characteristics of the target beneficiaries or stakeholders. Accordingly, context-awareness in public policy is related to leveraging diverse data sources to adapt and deliver services based on the user’s needs, location, or interactions with their environment.

How context-awareness affects policy outcomes

The policy of Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) offers a clear illustration of the importance of context-awareness. CCTs is a type of behavioral public policy aimed to reduce poverty by making cash transfers conditional upon the receivers’ actions. When designing a CCT promoting school attendance, policy makers make choices along multiple aspects, such as:

• School attendance threshold: a target threshold as the qualification for cash transfer.
• Payment recipient: who will receive the transfer.
• Payment frequency: what is the interval at which transfers are to be delivered.
• Payment amount: the amount of transfer.

Those design choices in CCTs are context sensitive. Failing to take account the local context diminishes policy efficiency.

However, in practice CCTs are often replicated from one country to another without adequate adaptation. For example, the Philippines’ Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) was modeled closely on Latin American CCTs. The 4Ps program targets poor households, focusing on the health, nutrition, and education of children aged 0-18. The program set an 85 percent school attendance threshold for children aged 3–18—mirroring Mexico’s Progresa rather than local evidence. In the end, the policy impact was limited at the primary education level since the pre-program enrolment rates in Philippines were already high.

In contrast, the example of Pakistan’s Foundation-Assisted Schools (FAS) Program demonstrates the power of getting the context right. Initiated in 2005, the FAS program aimed to promote school enrolment in low-cost private schools. The private school in the program receives a monthly per-student cash subsidy of 300 rupees up to a maximum of 750 students, while the mean school size is only 215 students. Based on formative research showing that local private school fees are typically between 50 to 400 rupees per month, the subsidy amount of 300 rupees is carefully chosen to be attractive to the target schools without being excessive. This context-aware design led to large positive impacts on school enrolment: it expanded schools student size by 59% on average.

Incorporate context-awareness in policy design

Given the importance of context-awareness in designing public policy, the study proposes a framework with a four-step iterative loop to help policymakers better embed context-awareness into policy design:

1. Knowing the context: gather relevant data or evidence on the target population and environment.
2. Using the context appropriately: drawing justification for design choices using contextual data.
3. Evaluating the context: understand whether context has been sufficiently and appropriately considered.
4. Learning for the future: continue iteratively collecting data on the context-sensitive elements of policy, and adapt to changing social, economic, and institutional factors that may come into play.

By treating context as a core design input, policymakers can improve the relevance and efficiency of public policies.

By SONG, Yunlong

Researchers: BALAJI, Akshaya, TAGAT, Anirudh