BACKGROUND Assessments over the last two decades have showed an overall low level of performance of the health system in Indonesia with wide variation between districts. The reasons advanced for these low levels of performance include the low level of public funding for health and the lack of discretion for health system managers at the district level. When, in 2001, Indonesia implemented a rad...

Professor Naoki Ikegami’s “Fee-for-service payment – an evil practice that must be stamped out” summarizes many of the failings of alternatives to fee-for-service (FFS) payment systems. His article also offers several suggestions for improving FFS systems. However, even powerful arguments against many of the alternatives to FFS, does not make a convincing argument for FFS systems. In addition, ...

The global drive towards decentralization has been increasingly justified on the basis that greater transfers of resources to subnational governments are expected to deliver greater efficiency in the provision of public goods and services and greater economic growth. This paper examines whether this is the case, by analysing the relationship between decentralization and economic growth in 21 OE...

D ecentralization is a major feature of current institutional innovation throughout the world. In Latin America, most countries have recently implemented decentralization policies following a long tradition of centralized government. Argentina has not been the exception. The decentralization of educational services from the federal to provincial governments was an important component of the str...

Decision-makers and aid agency professionals in a number of transitional and developing countries are increasingly turning to “administrative decentralization” as a strategy for addressing a number of critical governmental needs. Foremost among these are improved governance, increased transparency and accountability, and more effective and efficient production and delivery of public goods and s...

This study examines the role of politics on decentralization and service delivery in South Africa, with a specific focus on Johannesburg and Cape Town. The research delineates how national decentralization has affected service delivery responsibilities and resources, determines whether service delivery is affected by whether or not a city is governed by an opposition party, and considers what t...

Article history: Received 18 August 2009 Received in revised form 9 February 2011 Accepted 19 March 2011 Available online 13 April 2011 No consensus has yet emerged on whether fiscal decentralization facilitates or impedes the growth of the public sector. One explanation for this ambiguity in the literature is that the effect of fiscal decentralization on public sector size depends on the gover...

BACKGROUND During the 1990s, the government of Tanzania introduced the decentralization by devolution (D by D) approach involving the transfer of functions, power and authority from the centre to the local government authorities (LGAs) to improve the delivery of public goods and services, including health services. OBJECTIVE This article examines and documents the experiences facing the imple...