The Changing Role of Government: The Reform of Public Services in Developing Countries (Role of Government in Adjusting Economies)

This is the concluding volume of a series on the reform of service delivery in developing countries. Each of the four previous volumes has examined a particular area of government activity: health care, urban water supply, business development, and services to support agricultural trade. A broad pattern of reform has affected these different sectors: liberalization, the introduction of private sector management approaches, charging for services and new forms of working with the private sector. The leading question running across the five volumes is whether these approaches are appropriate to the context and capacities of developing countries. This final volume draws together the strands, comparing the experience between these sectors in selected developing countries of Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Latin America. It argues that reform approaches need to be sensitive to the institutional conditions of particular countries.