Unanswered questions in service provision for modernizing states

✍ Scribed by Navin Girishankar

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 66 KB
• Volume: 18
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0271-2075
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-162x(199812)18:5<495::aid-pad38>3.0.co;2-t

✦ Synopsis

In Innovations in the provision of public goods and services' . Public Administration and Development, 18(4): 387±397), Pinto contributes to the ongoing policy debate on service provision in two important ways. First, he points out that service provision reform is a complex, evolutionary process that is at once political and economic. Second, he argues that public management and administration, rather than becoming obsolete, will have to become more naunced and re®ned as governments increasingly allow private sector and citizen participation in the delivery of services. Both these propositions could be further developed by acknowledging the ongoing rede®nition of what makes services public'. Governments in developing countries will successfully rede®ne the `public' character of services only when they resolve the enduring trade-os between ecient delivery and distributive justice, between the roles of citizen and consumer.