Building State Capability

Guest blog by Nouf Albadi, IPP ’26

When I started the Implementing Public Policy program, I came with a challenge that sounded simple: How can we improve access to healthy food in Abu Dhabi workplaces?

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Written by Matt Andrews
The third in a series of blog posts by Matt Andrews on U.S. federal debt and the capabilities needed for fiscal governance.

Note: all images were generated using ChatGPT.

In the previous post, I asked why the federal debt struggles to become a problem we act on together as a nation. I focuse...

Guest blog by Prarthna Dayal

A gold ring to encourage women to deliver in public hospitals.

Yes. The Government of Tamil Nadu, a state in India has announced exactly that. The states’ new Thaimaman Thanga Mothiram Thittam scheme will provide a one-gram gold ring to babies born in government hospitals, aiming to encourage families ...

Written by Matt Andrews

This is the second in a series of posts examining the United States federal debt through the lens of problem-solving governance and state capability. 

In the first post in this series, I introduced a puzzle. The United States has extraordinary fiscal capacity. It has sophisticated institutions, extensive d...

written by Matt Andrews

This is the first in a series of posts examining the United States federal debt through the lenses of governance and state capability.

The United States has a fiscal governance problem that it seems unable to address.

In fiscal year 2025, the federal government collected approximately $5.2 trillio...