During the 1990s, countries in Latin America undertook important reforms in service delivery, ranging from privatization and regulation of public utilities to changes in the incentives of service providers such as teachers or health care workers. The results of these efforts have been very uneven, however, ranging from major disappointments to unqualified successes. To some extent, the outcome of these reform processes can be linked to the technical merits of the policies put in place. However, we believe political economy considerations have been at least as important as determinants of success or failure.
In this workshop, we place our focus on the political economy of service delivery. We will look at the way political institutions contribute to shape the way the delivery of public services is organized; at the way in which political competition affects the quality of public services; and at the interests and forms of interaction of major stakeholders in the service delivery "game," including politicians, service providers, and clients. We have two objectives in mind. The first one is to improve our understanding of the political economy behind the quality of service delivery. The second one is to increase the awareness of our institutions regarding the importance of these issues. We hope that such awareness and understanding will lead to improvements in policy design and implementation, which will thus better serve the development objectives of our member countries.
