This analysis of service characteristics was carried out through an Overseas Development Institute (ODI) programme on the ‘politics of service delivery’, which explores how a range of political and governance factors affect the delivery of public goods and services, including incentives, behaviour and institutional features.
The programme has looked at these dynamics through two lenses: analysis of common constraints and incentives in the broader governance environment and assessment of those specific problems and opportunities that the intrinsic nature or characteristics of individual services may present. Together, these serve to highlight that the politico-institutional context affects all services but may do so differently, and that services may generate specific political issues.
These are complementary perspectives; each is incomplete without the other. Thus, the service characteristics approach is a lens for perceiving the issues of governance and politics that are attributable to the intrinsic nature of the service, but needs to be matched by broader political economy analysis in particular contexts.
While recognising the importance of context, this synthesis paper focuses on the contribution that can be made by recognising the service-specific elements of political analysis. It synthesises not only what we have gleaned from the literature but also what we have learnt from consultations with sector and governance specialists about this approach.
Key findings:
- The service characteristics approach, described here, was developed as a tool to explain the political dynamics of particular services. It has been tested and elaborated in discussion with specialists in health, education, water and sanitation, focusing on current debates in each sector.
- Service characteristics may reinforce each others’ effects on the likelihood of competitive provision, on access to and exclusion from services, on monitorability by policymakers and managers, on users’ capacity to organise demands and, ultimately, on the political salience or significance of services.
- Specific clusters of characteristics may influence the incentives and accountability of the actors (elected politicians, policymakers, providers, potential and actual users) in service provision.
- Additional characteristics proposed by sector specialists include the feasibility of co-production, ‘lootability’ (opportunities for rent seeking) and the duration and durability of chronic conditions and services.
- The approach identifies not only differences but also similarities between services, indicating the possibility of sharing experience and practices between them. Such analysis can generate change both by making actors more aware of structural problems and by identifying specific organisational reforms and policies.
- This approach can add value to collaboration between specialists in different sectors and between governance and sector specialists, including in the context of country programming.
