Governments of developing countries, often under pressure from donors as well as from internal forces for change, are re-thinking their service provision roles. The new conventional view is that, where possible, government should enable and regulate the private and community sectors or arms-length public agencies rather than directly provide services. This sort of shift is supposed to have advantages in terms of promoting eciency, reducing the burden on government and giving more choice to citizens. Our four year research programme on the `changing roles of government in adjusting economies', sponsored by the research wing of the British Government's Department for International Development explored these issues in selected countries of Africa, Asia and South America. Ghana, Zimbabwe, India and Sri Lanka were chosen for special attention, but six other countries were also studied. In those countries we focused on four sectors selected because they represent dierent theoretical (market failure) cases for government involvement in their provision ร health care, urban water supply, agricultural marketing and business development services.
Our research asked whether such new approaches to service delivery were being applied, whether they were being applied appropriately to the circumstances and context of the countries studied, what internal and external pressures were generating reform, how well they were performing, and whether governments and public agencies have the capacity to implement them. The following policy-relevant conclusions have emerged and can be examined in more detail in the sector-speciยฎc papers which follow. There is not room in this brief paper to do more than indicate the key policy pointers which are highlighted in italics below.