made, took place in August 2016 – i.e., before the states had begun implementation – also generated controversy. Stakeholders disagree as to whether it was reasonable to expect that states could have initiated some activities even without these funds, but all agree that the level of delay was unanticipated and that funds were expected to have been in the states much earlier.

Regarding Bank monitoring of the TA, the SOML supervision budget covered two weeks of staff time supervising the TA, though no _in‐country_ staff had a direct monitoring responsibility.<sup>25</sup> Initially, the firm was encouraged to carry out a mini household survey to check progress mid‐way through the assignment, but this did not take place.<sup>26</sup> The Bank TTL for the TA (from the Governance practice and based out of country), who acted as the contact point for ADG, evaluated their deliverables (sharing them with health sector colleagues) and managed their payments, confirms that monitoring was made additionally difficult by the fact that adaptive assistance, by its nature, is tough to report on or assess. In the absence of a reliable means of viewing progress on indicators or a reporting system that captured evidence of problems solved or capabilities enhanced, Bank staff began to question what was actually happening on the ground – but had no means of verification other than the word of the firm itself and their fairly convoluted, opaque reports.<sup>27</sup> Missions to the states (and especially rural areas) are logistically difficult<sup>28</sup> and the TA firm’s communication style has also been challenging.<sup>29</sup> As a result of growing concerns, Bank staff began to push the firm to implement solutions, specifically some solutions that it felt were technically appropriate. These solutions were dutifully implemented across the range of contexts in which ADG was operating, and as a result (as noted above) the TA began to resemble a more orthodox approach. Although there was certainly an incentive for states to try and track how their chosen interventions impacted the six indicators, the focus on those state‐level aggregate measures meant that examples of local level or discrete problems being addressed tended to be ignored, or at most viewed as a means towards an end and not as an end in and of themselves. In a determined and arguably well‐intended effort to “get out of the kitchen”, Bank and federal staff may have inadvertently neglected the chance to observe and learn from successful, local level performance improvements.

The political currency of adaptive development is such that authorization and engagement for such an approach is often more passive than active, and in this particular case the loss of key Bank staff during implementation of the adaptive TA had a negative effect on internal authorization. While the commitments outlined in the Governance Approach note (World Bank 2017) are certainly ‘adaptive’, it is our view that they reflect the commitment of a core governance team, rather than the Country Office more broadly. And although passive authorization may be sufficient for programs that already achieve wide organizational buy‐in, that passivity is often insufficient in large aid facilities, where “the context, the inheritance, strongly favours doing development pretty much as it was done previously” (Teskey and Tyrell, 2017). Even where staff are in principle remarkably open to adaptive programming, they will likely struggle to resist the incentives aligned against it – e.g. pressure to pre‐ program, to demonstrate linear results and to deliver best practice solutions. In the absence of felt they had expended particular effort on this indicator were particularly frustrated with the results. The outcry was such that it was eventually agreed to advance _all_ states 25% of the possible performance payment, regardless of actual results.

25 Attempts were made to address this – by inviting locally‐based staff to join supervision trips – but they were unsuccessful.

26 The main reason seems to be the cost associated with such a survey.

27 The firm for its part, appears to have been reporting to the best of its ability but genuinely struggled with how to report on the vast scope of problems that they were engaged in tackling with a wide range of stakeholders. 28 Testament to this point, the logistics required for the state visits conducted during this review took many weeks to organize, required lengthy visa processes, security clearances, armed police escorts and, needless to say, significant cost.

29 The key ADG point person has a loquacious, somewhat confounding communication style, which, given that he has been the key point of contact, meant factual details were sometimes hard to come by.

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