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Governance and basic social services: ensuring accountability in service delivery through deep democratic decentralization
Author(s) -
Mehrotra Santosh
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of international development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.533
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1099-1328
pISSN - 0954-1748
DOI - 10.1002/jid.1219
Subject(s) - decentralization , accountability , service delivery framework , christian ministry , public administration , corporate governance , democracy , work (physics) , service (business) , business , social work , economics , political science , economic growth , law , finance , engineering , marketing , mechanical engineering , politics
Ensuring accountability of local functionaries for effective delivery of basic social services has been a perennial problem of development. Since the poor have limited prospects of ‘exit’, ‘voice’ alone works to ensure effectiveness of service delivery. Accountability of lower‐level functionaries to superiors in a vertical line ministry is rarely effective. The paper spells out a model of deep democratic decentralization that has been demonstrated to work in a number of countries. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.