Guidance

Understanding a quick political economy analysis approach

Published 24 September 2025

Alan Whaites, FCDO Centre of Expertise, Politics and Governance. 2025

1. What is involved?

A quick PEA is delivered usually by a single person over a few days of conversations and reading.

2. What will quick PEA try to address?

It will normally offer insights on:

• what lies underneath the immediate issue, opportunity or problem?
• why does this situation persist?
• how can change come about?

3. Principles for a quick PEA

It is important for a quick PEA to have a clear “exam question” to frame the analysis. What is the issue you are exploring? And what do we need to understand to enable action?

An exam question could be “why does the fertiliser market operate this way?” or “why are reform plans never implemented?” And it should always include a forward element, such as “what is a realistic scenario for change?”

Answering the exam question involves working through layers of information, this is where the model below can help, to explore “actors”, “bargaining processes”, and “context”. This is an adapted and simplified version of “structure-agency” thinking.

Some quick PEA approaches are entirely internal (for example, in-house workshops to draw on collective insights). However, where possible, a PEA should be outward facing and seek views from a diversity of sources. Similar questions should be asked to interlocutors (this helps with triangulation – testing things across different viewpoints).  In these interviews we ask “why”, “what” and “how”, questions, digging into experience and perspectives. Questions are generally open ended, making no assumptions. 

As you engage with counterparts, try to discover how things look from the inside of the issues, how do the actors see the challenges and pressures. Bear in mind that everyone is trying to influence the analysis. Think also about strategic implications, try to find out what has been tried before and why it didn’t work, and look for potential pathways for change (see below). Finally, consider how to navigate political realities as a constructive challenge, using thinking and working politically ideas. That might seem a lot, but things will fall into place as the conversations take place. 

It is important to consider risks, ethics, and information sharing, whether a PEA may already exist (done by others), and if time/resources allow for a more substantive PEA approach. There is a wealth of helpful guidance on PEA^{[footnote 1]} online, including from FCDO, and these explain the wide range of analytical tools available.     

1. The Quick PEA Model

One option is the Quick PEA model. This draws on an approach used for over 2 decades, with its roots in “drivers of change” ideas.  A quick PEA will involve clarifying the role of the actors involved and their incentives and interests in securing change or maintaining the status quo. How does their agency^{[footnote 2]}, preferences etc add to the background story, and impact the direction of travel?  

Actors work within a framework of formal and informal bargaining processes that shape how things get done.  Understanding these processes is more than just knowing the rules of the game, it includes how the game is played, recognising that tactical systems often determine the winners and losers. Finally, the issue fits within a context of structures, resources and organisations setting parameters for those involved.  Table 1 is an analogy for these factors, table 2 offers examples of how to unpack these.

Table 1: Understanding PEA through football

“Start with talking with each other and asking questions on and off the pitch.” Sarina Wiegman[footnote 3]

Actors/stakeholders(the people element)	The impact of skill, vision, teamwork, commitment, fear, ambition. How do the players impact the game? Who are the most effective players, and how are they influenced by the crowd and officials.
Bargaining processes (how stuff gets done)	Rules that create the framework for play, and the tactics used to try to win. What tricks are used to gain advantage through the rules?
Structures and context (the hard realities)	What resources are available to the teams, what budgets are available to pay the players, how good are the pitches, ball and kits?

How do these 3 sets of realities interact to shape power, options and actions? For example, a team with more resources can afford players with greater creativity and skills, better able to exploit a tactical system to achieve trophies.  How could feasible changes shift the dynamic? A new way to find talent may be needed, or a new owner or a radical tactical change.

5. What kind of issues and questions are involved?

Each PEA is different depending on the specific topic and exam question. Those conducting the PEA will develop a set of questions that help to dig into the issues, and these can be shaped by background reading and discussions with colleagues. Interviews should be conducted with stakeholders who are involved in the issue (e.g. decision makers, staff, user groups). Below are some examples of the kinds of issues that might be explored through questions (which would not worded as shown here). The creativity of the interviewer comes in finding the right way to frame a question.

Table 2 – Example areas to explore through PEA conversations

Factors	Issues to consider when designing questions: Most interviews will include only 1 or 2 questions to explore each factor (actors, bargaining processes and structures).
Actors and stakeholders – those who have influence on this issue or are impacted by it.	Who are the main actors? What are their roles, influence, and genuine level of power? How do they relate to each other (do they get on well/badly)? Are they capable? Are they trusted? What are the incentives, preferences and aims of the actors?  Do they have a vision or are they safeguarding their interests? Who gains when things work badly? And who are the champions for change? What are the expectations of their constituencies or support networks? How is loyalty cultivated? How do people hold on to their position or power? Which powerful organisations and people must be respected? And what do they insist must be delivered? , How do women experience these issues? For example, where are they disadvantaged, or where is their influence greatest? Who is excluded? Who is most disadvantaged by the way things are? And who simply don’t agree with it? What are the traditional dividing lines among actors?
Bargaining processes – How actors get things done, either according to the rules/norms, or by working around them.	How do things get done by those involved in this issue? Is there capability to deliver change? how challenging is it to align all the actors needed for change to happen? What confers influence? What is the currency of bargaining, (how influence happens e.g. networks, patronage, rents)? How do most people solve problems – who do they go to for help? (e.g. old school friends, networks, relatives). Are actions driven by past practice (last year’s budget) or by new plans and thinking?  Is there an awareness of different ways of doing things and what change entails? What trade-offs are considered when solving a problem? what priorities prevail when there are multiple objectives? What role do formal and informal rules play? Are there strong norms that govern how things are done? Who are the arbiters of the rules, and what tactics are used to exploit or evade them (gaming the rules/norms)? How do engagement and access to bargaining processes differ by gender? -How and why has change happened in the past?
Structural and contextual – the more fixed parameters shaping options	What are the unavoidable realities shaping this situation (finances, technology, access, numbers of people)? Do the people involved actually have the money, staff etc needed to deliver change? Are there social, demographic or economic trends that create new challenges or opportunities for the actors and organisations involved? - How are resources allocated and why? Where do resources come from? How reliable are these? Are they contested? Are they formally or informally managed? What works well in this environment? Why do the things that work well perform better than those that don’t? How are international actors viewed, what is the track record of reform partnerships? Who provides advice from outside, and what do they advocate?

6. Seeing through the fog

Making sense of views generated by PEA is challenging. Triangulation helps (looking for related feedback across different actors) but does not deliver the whole picture. Some information will also stand out as important (e.g. that structural constraints make certain actions impossible, or that strongly held beliefs constrain options).  We can be disciplined in bringing all the insights together by mapping or drawing how the issues connect across the 3 areas. Asking ourselves how the actors connect to the processes through which they must work, and the realities that shape their world.

Visual representation can help our thought process in bringing the analysis together. We can try to illustrate the dynamic through flow diagrams or charts. Drawings might be used to illustrate how the incentives of actors, are shaped by bargaining processes, and impacted by basic constraints (such as finance).  Diagrams are therefore a potentially powerful way to quickly explain the role of multiple factors within a collective dynamic. 

This approach can help to offset a traditional pitfall of “structure-agency” analysis, failure  to adequately consider all 3 lenses as distinct elements that shape underlying political-economy (many PEAs lurch towards one of the elements). This failure can make it more difficult to then consider their dynamic interaction. Thinking through the information gathered might be helped by applying the insights to past attempts at change. Do they help to illuminate why some initiatives failed or others succeeded?  Testing our insights against known events also helps us to consider what actions might circumvent previous barriers, create critical momentum or build on an area that is already making ground.  

7. Pathways for change

One traditional way to think about pathways for change is leveraging greater demand for action (e.g. through civil society pressure), or to resource capacity for delivery (supply). While both ideas have some value the simple dichotomy loses sight of the complex and unwieldy processes involved in reform.  Change is difficult to do, risky, more complex for those on the inside than those on the outside, and usually fraught with daunting unknowns.

Recognising stakeholder challenges helps us to consider the steps that might be needed over time for change to happen (our theory of change). For this reason, PEA is now linked to the idea of adopting Thinking and Working Politically^{[footnote 4]} approaches that combine different levers for impact (e.g. programmes, policy engagement, coalitions) with theories of how change might occur that stress realistic plans and assumptions. PEA can also point to examples that point to approaches/directions, these are sometimes called instances of “positive deviance”, the things that did work and could be adapted. 

Our PEA should therefore help us to understand entry-points for engagement, those issues where relationships and coalitions can be built that have influence.  It might also point to areas where actions can be taken that change the equation of blockages, or that shift thinking on trade-offs in order to prioritise reform.  Pathways for change should point to the space where stakeholders should focus.

8. My PEA was so good I wrote a 500 page report

A consistent critique of PEA tools over the years has been that written reports can be lengthy, impenetrable, jargon filled and lacking in action points. Quick PEA provides an opportunity to keep things simple, focus on our core analysis and profile our pathways for change. This is usually best done either through a short and sharp report centred on what the reader needs to know (rather than backstory) and/or a visual presentation. Just as diagrams can help us to get issues into perspective when we are assessing our sources they can also easily convey ideas to colleagues. 

PEA is always intended to be a useful tool that makes the work, decisions and actions of its users easier and more effective, as such it’s important that the completion of a quick PEA is the beginning of the use of the insights in practice.  This therefore represents the final role of the team involved – to communicate accessibly to those who need to know.  

1. A wide range of PEA tools are available and the FCDO guide offers advice on how to get the best results from the particular tool chosen.  Some alternative agile/quick tools require relatively little additional resources and time and may be better suited to the task than this model, a range of tools should therefore be considered.  For background on these ideas see ESIDS guide to scaling PEA here. ↩

2. The ability of individuals to affect the world around them. ↩

3. https://learn.englandfootball.com/articles-and-resources/coaching/resources/2023/Sarina-Wiegman-the-importance-of-communication ↩

4. For examples and ideas see: https://twpcommunity.org/ ↩