Abstract

During the 1990s the international economic development agencies realized that institutions matter, namely for intervening in extremely weak countries. Since, capacity building has become a direct objective of development policies, absorbing, in according with OECD, 25% of the financial resources dedicated. Nowadays capacity building plays a crucial role in favouring economic growth, but also social cohesion or environmental sustainability, in very different contexts (from Low-Income Countries Under Stress - Licus to some European Union regions), following different strategies (pushing or pulling; sustaining demand or supply of good institutions), trying to develop, case by case, the capacity of individuals, organizations or the whole global society. The capacity building object has been so enlarged that the concept has become, on the operative ground and in a normative perspective, intrinsically ambiguous. This article proposes a more specific concept of capacity building, as a part of an analytical framework, distinguishing it from institutional change processes in which the pressure of external actors is less relevant.