This brief, the first in a series, attempts to help bridge the gap between governance and sector specialists by examining the politics and governance of education through a technical, ‘sector characteristics’ lens. The characteristics of specific sectors have largely been considered as technicalities, but new research illustrates that they also have political implications. This study identifies an initial set of four types of technical characteristic that influence the politics of service delivery within and across sectors:
- Nature of the good being produced: Can a service be delivered by the market or does it require public intervention?
- Market failure characteristics: What is the rationale for public intervention?
- Task-related characteristics: How does the way a service is produced and delivered affect relationships of control and accountability?
- Demand characteristics: How does the nature of the service provided affect the form of user demand and provider control?
A complete analysis of the implications of sector characteristics for the full range of issues currently under debate is beyond the scope of this brief. However, drawing on the findings from a series of consultations with education specialists1 and recent illustrative literature, the study explores how such an approach could help understand and interpret some of the persistent problems undermining the achievement of Education for All.
Key findings:
- The education sector has characteristics that have political as well as technical implications. They affect the ways in which individuals and groups interact in relation to the delivery of education services. Achieving improvements in sector outcomes demands strategies that are politically feasible and effective as well as technically sufficient.
- In practice, this means that achieving education for all will require confronting and working with the political dynamics that are generated with respect to access and quality, and across levels of education.
- Using a structured approach to understanding the relationship between technical and political features can help to make sense of key sector debates (such as the role of access to information), reconcile apparent contradictions (for example, between political commitments and outcomes), and strengthen understanding of why education might either outpace or lag behind other sectors in a given context.
