ID21 - Insights Issue 27

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		Issue #27
		Time for welfare pluralism? New approaches to social provision

		Best of both worlds? New patterns of social provision in low-income countries

		Mixed experiences. Assessing public-private approaches to social service provision in Latin America

		To purchase or provide. Should governments contract out hospital care?

		Wasted opportunities? People, livelihoods and garbage in South Asia

September 1998 Insights Issue #27

Back to "Time for Welfare Pluralism?"

States with citizens? Civic organisations and social service provision

It is now accepted that government and non-governmental providers of social services have their own strengths and weaknesses, and that working together can be productive or 'synergistic'. The ways in which this relationship might work and the preconditions for success are still relatively unknown. A review of the literature by researchers at the Institute of Development Studies suggests that while governments are likely to remain the most important providers of social services, they can help civic efforts by creating a more enabling political and institutional environment. Non-governmental interventions are more likely to produce synergy in service provision where norms of trust and reciprocity exist in the form of social capital.

Three areas in which governments have successfully combined with civic organisations (such as NGOs, churches, community groups, and trade unions) are:

co-determination, in which both determine what service is to be produced and how, through systematic consultation and participation in policy dialogue

co-financing, as when community groups raise extra funds for state-funded schools or health clinics

co-production, in which state and civic organisations supply resources and labour time to provide services to vulnerable groups like children or the elderly.

Cases of state and non-state providers working together show that successful partnerships rely on certain preconditions, some of which can be actively constructed:

an enabling state policy environment in which civic agencies can work more effectively, involving a balance of non-intervention, political support and regulation

new institutional arrangements such as consultation with community groups, setting up partnerships for funding or supplying services, training and new systems of work incentives to change officials' attitudes

organisational change to enable non-state providers to be responsive to both higher levels of government and local people, to control corruption, and to involve people in designing and providing services.

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