1. Introduction. - 2.Pockets of effectiveness: review and analytical framework. - 3.Pockets of effectiveness: lesson from the long twentieth century in China and Taiwan. - 4.An enduring pocket of effectiveness: the case of the national development bank of brazil (BNDE). - 5.Turing Nigeria's drug sector around: the national agency for food and drug administration and control (NAFDAC). - 6.Taming the menace of human trafficking: Nigeria's national agency for the prohibition of traffic in persons and other related matters (NAPTIP). -7.'Confidence in our own abilities': suriname's state oil company as a pocket of effectiveness. - 8.Defying the resource curse: explaining sucessful state-owned enterprises in rentier states. - 9.Comparative analysis: deciphering pockets of effectiveness.