Background
The nature of governance and the quality of state agencies are unacceptable in much of the developing world. There is wide consensus that economic development and improvement in the welfare of the poor are significantly dependent on good governance. States that are unresponsive to their citizens, corrupt, and incompetent are often predatory and certainly are, at least, likely to have difficulty mobilizing resources and delivering services to the poor. Good governance does not automatically translate into advances for the poor – one can easily imagine a state that is brutally competent at repression. But a state that is very weak on most of the dimensions of good governance is unlikely to be able to do much for its poor either. Hence considerable donor resources have been spent on civil service reform, technical assistance, and other remedies, but generally too little effect. Nevertheless, scattered throughout poor governance countries are state agencies that work reasonably effectively and are dedicated to an aspect of the collective good. Such agencies, operating in dismal surroundings, have come to be called ‘pockets of productivity.' Given the difficult contexts in which they exist, how did public organizations come to achieve successful outcomes?
Objectives
The research question addressed by this project is:
'What political and institutional factors explain the acquisition of state capacities that give rise to successful service delivery outcomes?'
We are investigating this question by identifying a series of ‘pockets of productivity' in public organisations and the political and institutional variables that enable them to develop new capacities for delivering better public services. This question has considerable practical consequences, for if we have a good understanding of what makes ‘pockets of productivity' feasible, donor and host country efforts can be directed toward making them happen.
This research project proposes to move our understanding of this vital question beyond the qualitative case studies which currently populate the literature to a more systematic, quantitative and hence scientific level.
Methodology
This project will require comparative research based on the systematic testing of hypotheses on the political variables that affect organisational performance across a range of comparable sectors of state activity, based largely on fieldwork conducted by MA-level graduate students. The initial phase of research will develop a rigorous methodology for the research. Some of the details of this methodology will be:
• Medium ‘n': 23 states will be randomly selected from a list, weighted by population, of poor countries with low scores on quality of governance. If necessary African cases will be over-weighted when drawing the sample to assure a reasonable representation of countries from that continent.
• Ten agencies in each country, derived from stratified random samples – five of ‘productive' agencies; five of agencies not judged to be ‘pockets of productivity'.
• Units of analysis – distinct agencies that report directly to a politically appointed senior official of the government.
• Units of analysis – functional. The project will focus on the following types of organizations: health care (curative, preventive and pharmaceutical regulation); livestock production (preventive and curative veterinary services, and production services such as extension); crop production services (marketing, research and extension); and tax collection (royalties, import and export, value added, corporate, individual and land). These choices involve three quite different aspects of state activity – welfare, production, and sustenance of a core part of ‘stateness'.
• For the purposes of establishing the two ‘populations' of ‘productive' and less productive agencies from which the case study samples will be drawn in each country, ‘a pocket of productivity' will be defined as an agency which has enjoyed for at least the most recent ten years a consistent reputation for high effectiveness among well-informed local and donor officials. Cross-country indicators of ‘productivity' will be developed for the quantitative analysis to avoid the problem of inconsistent definitions of ‘productivity' between countries.
Researchers
Dr David Leonard - IDS Sussex UK
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