Private provision of public services in developing countries

Urban Studies, 1996

This article compares the arguments for private-sector involvement in service provision with practice in certain countries of Latin America, Africa and Asia. Developing countries are experiencing a push for privatisation from several sources, partly from their own experience of the® scal dif® culty of sustaining services but also under pressure of donor in uence, particularly through structural adjustment programmes, and of the example of those advanced countries which have gone down this path. Where privatisation or ...

The International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 1998

ISBN: I85649 496 9, 318 pages. Price £39.95 hb; £12.95 pb.

Political theory sets out a strong case for the state to play a major role in public service provision.Yet services are often provided by a range of state and non-state actors as well as by collaborative partnerships.This paper surveys the literature, seeking to map arrangements in developing countries and to understand the politics of different types of service provision. It finds strong evidence for the view that some level of state capacity and rule of law is important for effective service provision. Even when outsourcing services, it is preferable for government to retain some capability, if only to effectively oversee partners’ activities. Another key finding is that the perceived legitimacy of non-state service providers partially determines their success. The paper also highlights gaps in the evidence, for future research. Many of these gaps relate to the need to better understand the politics of partnerships from the point of view of both partners. Much of the literature on service provision considers the provision separately from the provider, or considers one actor as having primary agency while another responds.

Public Management Review

Politics and governance have become central to explanations of the widespread under-provision of public services in developing countries. Political analysis offers an understanding of what otherwise appear to be exclusively managerial or capacity problems. The articles in this special issue of PMR contribute to three main aspects of this new literature on the political economy of service provision.

The public sector is, collectively, the world's largest service provider.

Health Services Delivery in Developing Countries, 2014

This paper is based on empirical assessment and reviews of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) literatures and evidence in health services delivery in developing countries. The review includes theory, models and evidences published in different articles from developing countries. Objective of this paper is to discuss the role played by the PPP in provision of the health services and factors that determine their efficacy and relevancy. Factors that pose challenges to the propelling of PPP in health services will also be pointed out. Although different papers published in journals have documented real cases of PPP models in health services delivery, there appears to be a lack of systematic summary of what they have already provided. Consequently, significance of this paper is the review of PPP studies published particularly on health services delivery. Through this analysis the paper will give insights or directing further PPP research particularly in developing countries. Additionally, little have been discussed about PPP in health services delivery in developing countries, henceforth the paper will contribute to the literatures on PPP in health services delivery in developing countries.

2017

The results of the earlier chapters validated the argument that coproduction can improve healthcare and access to water in Ghana and Nigeria. Huge differences were found in the practice and outcomes of coproduction in the two countries studied, with many more people in rural areas coproducing in Ghana than in Nigeria. Chapter 6 examines the differences in the coproduction practices in the two countries from the perspective of choosing and implementing policy instruments to assess how the practice can be enhanced, particularly in Nigeria, where coproduction is nearly absent. The findings show that it is a specific combination of procedural policy instruments embedded in governing resources relating to information, authority, treasury and organization, that make for effective and sustainable coproduction. The findings are based on document analysis and the opinions of public managers in rural water agencies and primary health centers (PHCs) in both countries. This dissertation concludes in chapter 7 by presenting all the answers to the research questions posed in chapter 1. Theoretical, methodological and practical contributions also formed part of chapter 7. Various literature and methods were used in this dissertation that cumulates into the theoretical, methodological and practical contributions explained in chapter 7. The chapter ends with general concluding remarks on the entire PhD project. In conclusion, the title of this dissertation summarizes the content of the dissertation, which addresses the discovery of coproduction as an alternative solution to health care delivery and water problems in Nigeria and Ghana. It has become obvious from this study that coproduction is effective in improving basic service delivery such as health care delivery and clean water provision. Public professionals in developing countries can adopt this concept to answer the question on how improvement in service delivery can be achieved in their countries. Whereas the how question may differ for different countries and regions, policy makers can do a lot to enhance the practice of coproduction in their countries. Chapter 1 General introduction chapter 1 mentioned that feedback is difficult to process. With a service-dominant logic approach, however, service consumers and producers are assumed to be active and engaging and feedbacks are processed internally (Brandsen and Honingh, 2015; Coats and Passmore, 2008). Radnor et al (2013) argued for a shift from the product-dominant logic to a public service delivery dominant-logic. The difference between the two approaches is that the former is seen as the task of policy-makers and service producers to produce public goods that will be consumed by the services users, while the latter involves the collaboration of various stakeholders in service delivery which is distinguished by the experience and evaluation of service users. Away from the traditional public administration way of delivering services, NPM emerged from three important pressures; (i) fiscal pressures arising from budgetary crises especially with western government giving rise to concerns about public expenditures, the need to control the level of government spending; (ii) organizational pressures which criticizes bureaucracy in terms of delay, waste and unresponsiveness in a classic public sector sphere; and (iii) ideological pressures which borrows from the increasing belief in the value and benefits derived from the superiority of the private sector perspective (De Vries and Nemec, 2013) NPM assumes that traditional public administration (i.e. bureaucracy) is inefficient, process-driven and does not have the incentives for innovation and improvement. Part of the assumption is that public agencies are burdened by regulations and very importantly, that the citizens who are the recipients of public services deserve to be treated more like consumers (Coats and Passmore, 2008). A new paradigm was created as a result of the pressures and assumptions mentioned above. This shift was from public administration to public management (see table 1.1). The shift also brought with it distinct reform initiatives focusing on the improvement, efficiency and effectiveness of public service delivery (Coats and Passmore, 2008). table 1.1 Classic thoughts on service delivery Adapted from Benington (2011) pp.34 Traditional public administration New Public Management Networked community governance Context Stable Competitive Continuously changing Population Homogeneous Atomized Diverse Needs/Problems Straight forward; defined by professionals Wants expressed through the market Complex, volatile and prone to risk Strategy State and producer centered Market and customer centered Shaped by citizens and interest group Governance through: Hierarchies Markets Networks and partnerships

Public Administration and Development, 2006

2006

Public Administration and Development, 1998

In`Innovations in the provision of public goods and services' . Public Administration and Development, 18(4): 387±397), Pinto contributes to the ongoing policy debate on service provision in two important ways. First, he points out that service provision reform is a complex, evolutionary process that is at once political and economic. Second, he argues that public management and administration, rather than becoming obsolete, will have to become more naunced and re®ned as governments increasingly allow private sector and citizen participation in the delivery of services. Both these propositions could be further developed by acknowledging the ongoing rede®nition of what makes services`public'. Governments in developing countries will successfully rede®ne the`public' character of services only when they resolve the enduring trade-os between ecient delivery and distributive justice, between the roles of citizen and consumer.