Political durability of development public obligations: authorization locus and the governance of long-term commitments

Abstract

Building on the Institutional Timing and Integrated Commitment Governance frameworks, the article develops a theory of political institutionalization through comparative institutional analysis of authorization regimes in Norway, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Kazakhstan. It distinguishes between explicit DPO regimes, where parliament authorizes the development obligation, and implicit DPO regimes, where obligations emerge through fragmented executive and administrative decisions. The analysis identifies four mechanisms linking authorization locus to political durability: political cost of revision, public visibility, amendment threshold, and path dependency. Parliamentary authorization is argued to strengthen the stability of long-term obligations when approval is substantive, transparent, and supported by formal amendment procedures, whereas fragmented executive authorization creates greater opportunities for incremental revision and renegotiation. The article contributes to governance theory in three ways. First, it conceptualizes Development Public Obligations as a new institutional object connecting the literatures on credible commitment, policy durability, and project governance. Second, it develops the distinction between explicit and implicit DPO regimes as an explanation of political durability. Third, it integrates obligation formation, institutionalization, and political durability into a unified framework for analyzing how governments create, authorize, and sustain long-term public commitments.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Frontiers in Political Science, 2026 · DOI ↗