| Sumario: | "How to" books of this kind are usually based on course materials produced by colleagues from the same institution who have all been teaching together for several years. We did things differently by asking leading lights in the field from different institutions across the world to work together to develop the materials from scratch. This was partly to avoid parochialism: we wanted the book to be useful for analysts and decision makers working in a wide variety of different organisations in high-, middle- and low-income countries. It was also because we wanted to use the collaborative writing process as a way of moving the field on, refining our thinking, and developing a degree of international consensus on concepts and terminology. We did not simply let our authors do their own thing, as we were determined to produce a coherent teaching resource with chapters that hang together and build on each other in a cumulative sequence. We therefore adopted a decidedly heavy-handed editorial approach involving intensive consultation, thorough peer review, and incessant editorial commenting on successive drafts. As any experienced professional knows, complete consensus on terminology is impossible - but at least we now have a reasonably consistent terminology across the handbook and a better idea of what we disagree about! How far we have succeeded in our other aims we leave the reader to judge"
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