Civic organisations have been playing a growing role in the provision of social services. Their activity is often considered to be more effective, more easily accessible and of higher quality than that of state or private organisations. However, is there any hard evidence that the provisioning systems of civic organisations are superior?
This paper assesses the distinctive capacity and role of the civic sector in service provisioning in light of actual experience. It examines two types of civic organisations: formal, such as non- governmental, non-profit organisations (NGOs), churches, labour unions, farmers’ organisations, philanthropic business and professional associations and informal, such as user groups. The article analyses the forms of provisioning that characterise the health and education sectors, and regional variations in provisioning, with a particular focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, but also including South Asia and Latin America. It highlights the advantages and disadvantages of non-state provisioning and identifies the conditions underlying success and failure.
The article makes it clear that not all attributes of civic organisation provisioning are captured by quality, equity and efficiency criteria. Often civic organisations have the same shortcomings as their state and private counterparts.
Other conclusions from the article are that:
- Civic organisations play an important role in provisioning when state provision is limited and the private sector caters to the rich.
- Unlike state organisations, which aspire to universal provision, civic organisations concentrate resources on the most needy groups.
- An important positive attribute of civic organisations is their capacity for innovation and dissemination of good practice, either to other civic organisations or to the state sector.
- Civic organisations are ineffective when their resources are inadequate to ensure comprehensive coverage.
- Too large a number of civic organisations engaged in welfare provision causes the fragmentation of their efforts and decreased effectiveness of their activity.
- Despite their concentration on the needy, civic organisations often tend to focus on core areas and more accessible and vocal groups.
The contribution of civic organisations to solving limited provisioning should not be overstated. Policy pointers to ensure that civic organisation services are of high quality and delivered efficiently include the need for:
- The state to establish partnership between state and non-state organisations.
- State to ensure a coherent policy framework and the bulk of financing for civic organisations.
- State to avoid tough bureaucratic control over civic organisations.
- Civic organisations to foster innovation and community initiative, while avoiding a wholesale transfer of responsibilities for the financing and provisioning of services to them.
