Does Decentralisation Improve Equity and Efficiency in Public Service Delivery Provision?

Improving Access to Maternal Health Care through Devolution in Western Kenya

“…Article 174 of the 2010 Kenya Constitution 1 stipulates the role of devolution as enhancement of self-governance, economic development and equitable sharing of local and national resources. Yet, according to Robinson (2007), the history of decentralisation reforms in Africa is full of bad examples, mostly due to the absence of meaningful local political process, over-centralisation of resources, weak local revenue base, lack of local planning capacity, and limited changes in legislation and regulations. Since the 1990s, there has been a shift in the aims of decentralisation -to enhance democratisation and reduce the role of central governments -as well as in its form, from deconcentration to devolution (Conyers 2007).…”

Governance Structures and Mechanisms in Public Service Organizations Theories, Evidence and Future Directions

“…Large multi-functional bureaucracies were broken-up into a network of specialised agencies contracting for services with a variety of public, private and voluntary providers. However, in the public sector, the introduction of competition proved to be a problematic exercise for many reasons (Ranade and Hudson, 2003;Robinson, 2007) and always co-existed with strong hierarchical controls downwards from the central government, notably in setting and 3 However, it seems important to underline that since the end of the 1970s, alternatives to internal government production of public services have assumed increasing prominence. The most important of these has been contracting out, but a less travelled road has been co-production: the involvement of citizens, volunteers and clients in producing public services as well as consuming them (Alford, 1998).…”

Introduction - Localising Governance: An Outlook on Research and Policy

“…One strand, rooted in neoliberal perspectives, is concerned with the promotion of political pluralism and questions the relevance of the central state in the development process. In this view, decentralisation and the delegation of authority from the central to the local levels are essentially viewed as key vehicles for the more effective and (market)-efficient provision of basic public services and goods (Shah and Thompson 2004;Batley 2004;Ahmad and Devarajan 2005;Robinson 2007b;Faguet 2014). The other strand is inspired by concerns over what are perceived to be significant shortcomings of liberalrepresentative democracy, particularly with respect to citizen representation and participation in the political process.…”