Reform in Practice: Karan Nagpal (IDinsight) on Why State Capacity Matters for Deregulation

I think less about deregulation per se, and I think a lot more about state capacity to deregulate, but then state capacity to deregulate also shows up as state capacity to do other things. There's one big reform I think that should happen is states and governments becoming much more conscious and intentional about how they think about managing the performance of their employees.

When we start to do that, I think we can start to attribute sort of changes in the economy, changes in the regulatory landscape. If people are clogging up the courts, I think that should start showing up as a poor performance of the bureaucrat. I think building these systems that actually allow the state to track how individuals are doing in their job can actually enable a lot of these incentives from within the system for deregulation.

That's one area I think about a lot is how can states build better systems to manage the performance of the bureaucracy. When you do that, you can achieve many other wonderful outcomes in the world, such as deregulation, economic growth, and pro-people policies.