Institutionalised Co-production: Unorthodox Public Service Delivery in Challenging Environments

Abstract

In developing countries in particular, services are often delivered through unorthodox organisational arrangements that cannot simply be dismissed as relics of ‘traditional’ institutions, or as incomplete modern organisations. Some have emerged recently, and represent institutional adaptations to specific political and logistical circumstances. We need to expand the range of organisational categories that are considered worthy of study and develop a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of unorthodox arrangements. The concept of institutionalised co-production provides a useful point of entry. Institutionalised co-production is defined as: the provision of public services (broadly defined, to include regulation) through a regular long-term relationship between state agencies and organised groups of citizens, where both make substantial resource contributions. We explain some varieties of institutionalised co-production arrangements; explore why they appear to be relatively so widespread in poor countries; and relate the concept to broader ideas about public organisation.

Notes

Dr Anuradha Joshi and Professor Mick Moore are both Research Fellows at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RE. For helpful comments on an earlier draft, the authors are grateful to John Harriss, Sarah Lister, Judith Tendler and to two anonymous JDS referees; and to participants at seminars at the IDS and Eynsham Hall.

See, in particular, Batley [ 1999 ]; McCourt and Minogue [ 2001 ]; and Minogue et al. [ 1998 ].

See also Bloom and Standing [ 2001 ] for an analysis of health services in poorer countries. Most public sector reform programmes now embody a similar eclecticism about organisational forms. They typically comprise a mix of elements from diverse historical traditions: some attempts to re-establish the classic Weberian ideal of a specialist, meritocratic career public service under the direct and effective control of political executives; efforts to provide more immediate performance incentives for individual public servants and for individual units within the public service; a push for more specific and transparent accounting of the costs of different public sector activities; a recognition that the contracting out of the delivery of some services often makes sense; and a sympathetic stance toward the diffuse but powerful notion of ‘partnership’, especially between public and private agencies.

Robinson and White [ 1998 ] provide a useful discussion of ‘partnership’ arrangements between state agencies and civic organisations in service provision in poor countries.

The World Bank's [ 2003 ] classification is a little different from the one presented here in that it put ‘partnership’ in a distinct category, but is in essence the same.

To give but one example, many communities in Tanzania turn to putatively ‘traditional’ sungusungu local security organisations for their defence against crime [ Mwaikuse, 1995 ].

The contractual arrangements through which payment is made may however be diverse and sophisticated [ Leonard, 2000 ].

Salamon's [ 2002 ] concept of the ‘tools of government’ is especially productive in categorising the range of mechanisms through which governments can impact on the behaviour of other service providers.

For details of this case, see Masud [ 2002 ].

These are termed Neighbourhood Watch schemes in the United Kingdom.

For example, the two most senior members oversee the Central Reporting Cell, located in the office of the Provincial Governor, which has 18 employees and is open continuously. Other members supervise the five District Reporting Cells that are open for 16 hours a day within the offices of each district Superintendent of Police in the city.

For details of this case, see Joshi and Ayee [ 2002 ].

Similar arrangements exist on a small scale in some other sectors in Ghana, including roadside eateries, hairdressing and auto-repair shops.

Co-production organisations that evolve in response to declines in the capacity of governments to perform core activities perhaps are more likely to accumulate a range of functions than those that are oriented more to solving logistical problems in state–society interactions in the provision of particular services, like irrigation.

For the literature on co-production, see, for example, Alford [ 1998 ], Ahlbrandt and Sumka [ 1983 ], Ben-ari [ 1990 ], Brudney and England [ 1983 ], Brudney [ 1985 ], Isham and Kahkonen [ 1998 ], Levine [ 1984 ], Pammer [ 1992 ], Parks et al. [ 1981 ], Percy [ 1984 ], Reddy [ 1998 ], Rich [ 1981 ], Sharp [ 1980 ], Sundeen [ 1985 ], Sundeen [ 1988 ], and Warren et al. [ 1984 ].

For example, Pammer [ 1992 ] defines co-production as ‘those actions by citizens which are intended to augment or contribute to the actions of public agencies and invoke conjoint behaviour’.

See also Ostrom [ 1992 ].

Ostrom [ 1996 : 1079] acknowledges an intellectual debt to Michael Lipsky's path-breaking work on ‘street-level bureaucrats’ [ 1980 ], and especially on his observation that these people – police, teachers and the like – do not and cannot simply deliver services to (passive) clients, but often are able to operate effectively only to the extent that they are able to obtain, through negotiation, the active engagement of clients in the service delivery process. Teachers can only impart education if parents are willing to send children to school and children are willing to learn. Police officers are much better at preventing and detecting crime if potential victims provide them with information. Doctors and nurses are much more effective if patients cooperate in treatment.

For example, temporary co-production is a widespread mode of coping with the challenges posed by strikes, political demonstrations and similar phenomena. Emotions often run high. Both police and organisers of demonstrations may stand to lose if the situation gets out of control. This risk can be reduced by co-production arrangements: prior agreement on routes, timings, numbers and forms of demonstration; and the use of authorised stewards, provided by the organisations doing the demonstrating, to police these agreements, eject ‘troublemakers’, etc.

The story of how we discovered the CPLC case is illustrative. We had been discussing the concept of co-production (and hybrid arrangements) in our graduate teaching when a student identified the interesting case of the CPLC for us.

See especially Lam [ 1996 ], Moore [ 1989 ], Ostrom [ 1992 ] and Wade [ 1988 a and 1988 b].

For logistical reasons, co-production is less widespread in the irrigation sector in rich than in poor countries. Farms are larger in rich countries, reducing transactions costs; and higher levels of capital investment make it easier to capture, deliver and monitor water in a reliable way.

The potential benefits of co-production may be greater than some readers will infer from the rather mechanical mode of argument we have employed here to explore its logic. As we have suggested above, the interaction of state employees and clients in actual service provision can generate valuable information, increase mutual understanding of the situation and constraints faced by the other side, enhance trust, and thereby increase organisational effectiveness. Evans [ 1995 ], in his explanation for the differential performance of India, Korea and Brazil in the high technology sector, terms this sort of regular generalised interaction as ‘embedded autonomy’.

This appears to be one reason why empirically-minded public administration specialists are motivated to stretch the notion of ‘accountability’ to apply to relations of ‘mutual regard’ that do not in reality conform to any strict concept of accountability. For example, Considine, working on horizontal relationships within public agencies, has recently defined accountability in operational terms as ‘responsiveness, obligation, and willingness to communicate with others’ [ 2002 : 21].

Cerny [ 1990 ] terms this the shift from the ‘commodifying state’ to the ‘competition state’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anuradha Joshi

Dr Anuradha Joshi and Professor Mick Moore are both Research Fellows at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RE. For helpful comments on an earlier draft, the authors are grateful to John Harriss, Sarah Lister, Judith Tendler and to two anonymous JDS referees; and to participants at seminars at the IDS and Eynsham Hall.