The Changing Role of Government: The Reform of Public Services in Developing Countries (The Role of Government in Adjusting Econ)

Batley and Larbi examine how governments of developing countries are organized to deliver public services. The book is based on comparative international studies of four service sectors: Health care, urban water, business promotion and agricultural marketing. Governments everywhere are being driven to adopt an 'indirect' approach - managing, contracting and regulating public agencies or private partners, rather than providing services directly. It questions how governments are responding and whether this approach is appropriate to the capacities of developing countries Résumé : This is the concluding volume of a series on the reform of service delivery in developing countries. Each of the four previous volumes has examined a particular area of government activity : health care, urban water supply, business development, and services to support agricultural trade. A broad pattern of reform has affected these different sectors : liberalization, the introduction of private sector management approaches, charging for services and new forms of working with the private sector. The leading question running across the five volumes is whether these approaches are appropriate to the context and capacities of developing countries. This final volume draws together the strands, comparing the experience between these sectors in selected developing countries of Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Latin America. It argues that reform approaches need to be sensitive to the institutional conditions of particular countries Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 List of Tables......Page 9 List of Figure and Boxes......Page 10 List of Acronyms and Abbreviations......Page 11 Preface......Page 12 About the Authors......Page 14 1 Changing Views of the Role of the Government......Page 16 2 Changing Approaches to Public Sector Management......Page 46 3 The Politics of Service Reform......Page 69 4 Decentralizing Organizational Arrangements for Service Delivery......Page 96 5 The Experience of Charging for Public Services......Page 121 6 Working with Private Partners......Page 140 7 The Experience of Contracting......Page 159 8 Regulating and Enabling the Private Sector......Page 195 9 Conclusion......Page 234 Notes......Page 253 Bibliography......Page 255 Index......Page 268 Richard Batley And George Larbi. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 240-252) And Index.