Quantifying the coherence of development policy priorities

Motivation Over the last 30 years, the concept of policy coherence for development has attracted the attention of academics, practitioners and international organizations. However, its quantification and measurement remain elusive. Research questions To address this challenge, we develop a quantitative counterfactual‐based framework to measure the coherence of policy priorities for development. Approach of methods Our framework takes account of the country‐specific constraints facing governments in trying to reach development goals. We present a new definition of policy coherence that employs resource allocations as the baseline to construct a coherence index. Results We validate this coherence index by producing country‐specific estimates that are consistent with well‐known cases of development strategies, both successful and failed. Conclusions Our results highlight the limitations of assessing coherence in terms of benchmark comparisons using development‐indicator data. Our framework sheds new light in a promising direction to develop bespoke analytic tools to meet the 2030 Agenda.