INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL-RESEARCH - ISSUES FOR IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Institutions are essential for agricultural development, yet confusion is widespread about what institutions are and how to evaluate them. N ational agricultural research systems embody the lack of clarity. Inst itutions are stable and valued behaviours to solve collective problems , and can be manifested as both rules and organizations. Institutional development schemes usually concentrate on organizations. Evaluation methods for institutions focus on resource acquisition, internal proce sses, output and outcomes and the linkages among these activities. All the methods are handicapped by difficult definitional, attribution an d temporal problems. To evaluate institutional development requires st arting with clear definitions, which admit that institutional developm ent is hard to measure and prove.