Network governance and new philanthropy in Latin America and the Caribbean: reconfiguration of the State

Abstract

This paper draws on the literature on network governance and new philanthropy to characterize and explain the increased involvement of non-State actors in education policymaking in the Dominican Republic. The study reveals, first, how network governance has intensified since 2010 through hybrid public-private spaces of agenda setting, second, how these hybrid spaces have given way to the emergence of new philanthropy, which engages directly with the State as part of its efforts to influence policymaking, and, third, that new philanthropy is evolving to include, as well, the generation of profits, both within and beyond the Dominican Republic, through the creation of an affiliated profit-seeking consulting entity. The paper concludes by arguing that future studies should bring the concepts of network governance and new philanthropy into conversation with theoretical approaches that emphasize the underlying political-economic structures within which non-State actors operate.

Keywords:

• Governance
• philanthropy
• education policy
• Dominican Republic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by Education International.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 As noted in the ‘Setting the Stage’ section of this essay, the Ministry of Education has decided to use the increased funding to education to finance a series of reforms that reflect its priorities. We are thus not suggesting that non-State actors have replaced the government, nor that the government lacks all technical capacity. The focus of this essay has been to highlight the increasing involvement of non-State actors and the reconfiguration of State decision-making processes that is implied by it. This is important to emphasize, for the forms of engagement that have been underscored in this study have tended to relate to processes of policy formation, rather than the execution of other bureaucratic functions or large-scale policy implementation.

2 For examples of this type of research, see the contributions to Edwards and Means (2019).