Written after the 2010 earthquake, this report begins from the observation that Haiti had been improving before the disaster — several years of growth and slowly better governance — and that recovery therefore turns on policy rather than luck.

Its method is appraisal rather than invention. Plans already produced by the Haitian government and its donors are examined function by function: public administration, justice, policing, economic and fiscal policy, infrastructure, education, health care, and finally the coordination of donors themselves. Police reform, the authors note, has produced real gains in crime and public trust, while courts and prisons have not; private and religious providers carry most of the burden in schooling and medicine.

Recommendations are held to stated tests. They must be affordable, within the government's actual administrative capacity, achievable within three to five years, mutually consistent, and aimed at making the Haitian state effective rather than deepening its reliance on outsiders.