Governance challenges in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) service delivery are common across countries, but the solutions are not. Political economy analysis (PEA) is a tool that can help sector specialists to identify appropriate responses in a given context, designing and implementing approaches that ‘best fit’ existing institutional structures and incentives, rather than imposing an external model of best practice. Informed by PEA, context-specific responses have the potential to be both more efficient and more effective in increasing access to WASH services. This project briefing provides a number of recommendations for practitioners using PEA in the WASH sector (see Box 1 for a summary), drawing on ODI research in Viet Nam and Sierra Leone.