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Table 2 Analytical framework (adapted to analyse the global discourse on PBF)

From: How is the discourse of performance-based financing shaped at the global level? A poststructural analysis

1. Describing the discourse on PBF as a policy solution

Describing PBF policy representations, by comparing PBF definitions across four generic manuals [24,25,26,27] and one institutional position paper [23] developed by organisational diffusion entrepreneurs, and definitions provided by diffusion entrepreneurs in interviews.

2. Describe WHAT is promoted, i.e. PBF problem representations

DEs’ theoretical framework dimensions

Bacchi’s WPR questions

DEs’ representation systems and how they are reflected in PBF problem representations

WPR Q. #1: What is the problem represented to be in the PBF policy?

• Causality: selectively identifying the causal patterns leading to the problem, including culpabilising those considered responsible

• Severity: “how serious a problem and its consequences are taken to be” [15]

• Proximity: characterising the issue in a way that appeals to personal experience/emotions or concerns a matter that feels close to home

• Problem populations: characterising groups and individuals affected by the problem

WPR Q. #2: What deep-seated presuppositions or assumptions underlie this representation of the problem?

Describing how DEs’ representation systems, i.e. DEs’ personal, collective, and institutional cultures that are reflected in their assumptions about the world, shape these problem representations.

DEs’ motivations to deal with the problem; resources at hand (i.e., knowledge, financial, social, political and temporal resources), and capacity to demonstrate authority at the global level. Four types of authority are distinguished [1]:

• Financial authority supposes a recognised status in the global arena mostly stemming from the large amounts of financial resources fuelled into international development cooperation

• Expert authority may be achieved when entrepreneurs pursue an internationally-recognised status of expertise, mainly through mobilising knowledge, social, and temporal resources

• Scientific authority involves both building international renown and putting forward the validity or utility of the claimant’s “definition, description or explanation of reality” [69] which secures a legitimate normative power

• Moral authority stems from the status of the claimant vis-à-vis those whose behaviour they seek to shape, and from the validity of the categories that the claimant uses to express the needed political changes [70]

WPR Q. #3: How has this representation of the problem come about?

Attempting to answer this question using empirical data on DEs’ motivations to fuel their problem representations, DEs’ resources at hand, and DEs’ types of authority.

N/A

WPR Q. #4: What is left unproblematic in this problem representation?

Attempting to answer this question using empirical data: critically reflecting on DEs’ representations of what PBF is supposed to solve, and looking into the criticism expressed by several key informants towards DEs’ discourse

N/A

WPR Q. #5: What effects (discursive, subjectification, lived) are produced by this representation of the problem?

Attempting to answer this question using empirical data, looking at DE’s representation of what PBF is supposed to solve, identifying the perceived discursive effects, and the “subjectification” (i.e. the making and unmaking “subjects” [68]) that is operated by DEs

NB. We do not consider the “lived effects”, since the policy considered here can hardly bear an impact on life or death – at least not in the sense Bacchi conceives this analytical subcategory.

3. Analyse HOW PBF policy and problem representations are promoted by diffusion entrepreneurs

How do DEs link PBF to common popular frames (policy framing), which in turn creates the conditions of successful pilot programmes (policy experimentation), appeals to a sense of community (policy emulation); and gets fuelled through multiple forms of knowledge (policy learning)?

WPR Q. #6: How and where has this representation of the « problem » been produced, disseminated and defended?

Investigating how problem representations are defended by DEs