National and Subnational Bureaucracies’ Capacity for Service Provision: A Human-Resource Approach to Decentralized Governance
Along with mechanisms such as monitoring and transfers, national bureaucracies can affect subnational policy outputs through their direct work on the field. In decentralized contexts, the national government might still operate in policy areas closely related to those that are responsibility of subnational governments, thus exerting a substantial yet indirect influence in local policy outputs. However, this type of interaction between national and subnational bureaucracies has received scarce scholarly attention. This study tests the moderating effect of national bureaucracy’s capacity on the relationship between subnational capacity and service delivery. The empirical analysis uses the case of Colombia’s national child protection agency (ICBF) and education provision by locally managed schools. ICBF provides services that target school enrollment and attendance through their more than 190 field units spread over the country. A panel dataset was built at the field-unit level for the period 2007-2012. Enrollment and dropout rates aggregated at the field-unit level serve as indicators of education provision. Organizational capacity for both ICBF and schools is assessed as both a resource stock (number of employees per capita) and human capital quality (share of public servants with bachelor’s degrees). This research aims to expand the scope of studies in intergovernmental relations and government performance by addressing the oft-neglected administrative dimension of decentralization in the setting of a developing country with a unitary but decentralized governance system.
Bello-Gomez, R.A. National and Subnational Bureaucracies’ Capacity for Service Provision: A Human-Resource Approach to Decentralized Governance.