Salimah Samji, CID's Building State Capability Program Director, interviews Matt Andrews, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Lant Pritchett, Professor of the Practice of International Development at Harvard Kennedy School on their recently launched book "Building State Capability - Evidence, Analysis, Action". Michael Woolcock, Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School is also a co-author. Recorded on the book launch event on February 13th, 2017. The book uses data to identify failures in efforts to build state capability in development, employs theory to explain why these failures are common and likely to persist-keeping countries in capability traps--and builds on applied experience to offer a new approach to build state capability more effectively. ‘Building State Capability provides anyone interested in promoting development with practical advice on how to proceed—not by copying imported theoretical models, but through an iterative learning process that takes into account the messy reality of the society in question. The authors draw on their collective years of realworld experience as well as abundant data and get to what is truly the essence of the development problem.’ Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University;