This brief explains why and how technical characteristics of particular sectors influence the incentives for politicians, service providers and service users, and the relationships between these groups.

While sector experts often intuitively understand specific blockages in their sector, the approach presented here structures this understanding in a way that allows for comparisons across sectors, highlighting important differences and similarities between them.

The aim is to help practitioners understand why different sectors might attract different forms of politics even in the same macro political environment, and to provide a stronger foundation for coordination between governance and sector specialists seeking to understand why certain blockages persist and how to address them.