Public‐Service Provision in Clientelist Political Settlements: Lessons from Ghana's Urban Water Sector |
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Authors: | Marja Hirvi Lindsay Whitfield |
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Affiliation: | 1. Respectively, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy / Social and Public Policy, University of Jyväskylä, PL 35, 40014 University of Jyväskylä, Finland;2. and Associate Professor, Department of Society and Globalisation, Roskilde University, Denmark. |
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Abstract: | The politics of public‐service delivery continues to be neglected under the supposedly more context‐sensitive post‐Washington Consensus. Using interviews and documentary evidence from Ghana, this article provides an account of the networks of political interference and informal practices in Ghana's public water utility. It argues that, in order to understand why private‐sector participation succeeds or fails and why similar arrangements have different outcomes across developing countries, we need to examine the effects of the informal institutional context, particularly the country‐specific political settlement in which public‐service provision operates. |
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Keywords: | Public services private‐sector participation urban water supply clientelism political settlement theory Ghana |
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