The crowding in effect: how technical assistance expands advisory systems and builds policy capacity

This article examines how the expansion of policy advisory systems (PAS) affects governments’ analytical policy capacity in developing countries. More specifically, it explores whether European Union (EU)-funded technical assistance “hollows out” or “crowds in” analytical capacity in Turkey, a country that experienced rapid PAS expansion through the EU’s Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA). This question is significant because the evidence on PAS externalization effects remains concentrated in Western democracies, leaving the consequences for developing and middle-income countries underexplored. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with civil servants, international organization experts, and consultants, alongside legislative and programming documents, the article demonstrates that EU-IPA technical assistance produced a crowding-in effect across individual, organizational, and systemic levels of analytical capacity in combating child labor in seasonal agriculture. Individual-level gains were the most pronounced. Civil servants evolved from having weak domain-specific knowledge to possessing autonomous analytical competence, while organizational information systems and a broader knowledge ecosystem expanded substantially. Risks stem from the external origin of demand for rigorous analysis, over-corporatization of training, and declining meritocratic recruitment standards. We recommend domestic policymakers to prioritize institutionalizing capacity gains within organizational structures and international organizations to calibrate programming by taking risks into account.