Citizens, Politicians, and Providers : The Latin American Experience with Service Delivery Reform
Children regularly receiving health visits and education, the sick receiving proper and timely health care, safe water flowing out of the tap, electricity reliably reaching homes and businesses-these apparently simple events are taken for granted i...
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| Format: | Publication |
| Language: | English en_US |
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Washington, DC: World Bank
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2005/01/6433471/citizens-politicians-providers-latin-american-experience-service-delivery-reform http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7371 |
| Summary: | Children regularly receiving health
visits and education, the sick receiving proper and timely
health care, safe water flowing out of the tap, electricity
reliably reaching homes and businesses-these apparently
simple events are taken for granted in developed countries.
In Latin America, despite two decades of social and
infrastructure improvements, the poor and many of the middle
class make do with low-quality services. Far too many of the
poor receive no services. Improving service delivery to the
poor is both a widespread political demand, and central to
the realization of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
This book interprets service delivery successes, and
failures in Latin America and provides guidance to
policymakers, and development practitioners on shaping
public action to provide better-quality services for all.
Its analysis builds on the accountability framework
developed in the Bank's World Development Report 2004:
Making Services Work for Poor People, which emphasizes the
behavior of people-from teachers to administrators,
politicians, and rich and poor citizens-within the chain of
interactions, from demand to actual service delivery. The
report seeks to answer an essential question: If
accountability relationships among citizens, policymakers,
and service providers are key to effective service delivery,
and there have been both systemic reforms (expanding
national and local democracy), and an array of specific
experiments (privatization, increased choice), why is
service delivery in Latin America still so inequitable, and
often of low quality? |
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