constituencies within a particular public sector organization, assisting in designing change management tools that will mobilize and promote the influence of the most likely advocates for change and assisting in understanding the motivation for ambivalence or outright resistance. Change managers can then adopt a bespoke package of techniques that will make forces for change generally, and for specific types of change in particular, more effective.

In order to demonstrate this process, we have disaggregated change management tools into five areas, each of which is acknowledged in the change management literature as essential for promoting effective change. These are leadership; project governance; engagement and communication of stakeholders; workforce enablement; and organizational realignment. Each of these categories describe a particular aspect of the envisioning, directing and embedding of change. Although traditional CM approaches focus on individual “readiness” for change, measured in terms of technical competence, each of these dimensions draws our attention to a particular aspect of the relationship between power and change in specific political economy contexts, and in relation to the political strategies and institutional cultures emerging from these. Consequently, political economy analysis offers insights into the design of change management tools in each of these categories.

# Leadership

Change management approaches have long regarded leadership as essential to successful change. Leaders articulate a change vision, and even in relatively small change processes, their commitment to that vision is important in convincing lower level actors that change is not only beneficial but inevitable, thus increasing the likelihood of compliance. In more fundamental or transformational change processes, where institutional structures, relationships and values are likely to be affected, leadership is even more important. “Leadership of successful change requires vision, strategy, the development of a culture of sustainable shared values that support the vision and strategy for change and empowering, motivating and inspiring those who are involved and affected” Gill (2003, p. 307) .

However, formal statements of support for a change program are inadequate of themselves. Leaders must make the change intelligible in terms of normative frames of reference shared between themselves and their subordinates – the “how we do things around here” of a particular public service organization (Higgs et al 2006) - and this may include shifting such frames of reference in important ways. This pertains to the concept of “political will”, which can be understood as encompassing not just the incentives motivating a particular reform at a particular time but also as a way of explaining how the normative collective project of a public service organization is being adjusted to accommodate a reform. Political economy analysis allows the unpacking of both these layers of political will. It suggests the need to employ a conception of power that goes beyond incentivization although our case studies below suggest that material incentives like salary supplements and hiring and firing power are likely to be significant also.

# Project governance

Project governance that reflects the local political economy context can help to ease the implementation of the change program. Given the account of leadership offered above, it is clear that decision-making in a change program needs to be located at a level where power is sufficiently concentrated to mandate action. The nature of political economy in fragile contexts often reflects highly hierarchical/centralized decision making and a low level of coordination 8