Pro-Poor Policy Processes and Institutions: a Political Economic Discussion

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND GLOBALIZATION: ENHANCING PUBLIC-PRIVATE COLLABORATION IN PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY New Delhi, India 7 October 2003 In cooperation with the Eastern Regional Organization for Public Administration United Nations Division for Public Administration and Development Management Department of Economic and Social Affairs Public Administration and Globalization: Enhancing Public-Private Collaboration in Public Service Delivery New Delhi, India 7 October 2003 In cooperation with the Eastern Regional Organization for Public Administration United Nations New York The opinions expressed herein are the responsibilities of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations nor the Eastern Regional Organization for Public Administration All rights reserved. Table of Contents Foreword Pro-Poor Policy Processes and Institutions: A Political Economic Discussion . 1 M. ADIL KHAN The Dilemma of Governance in Latin America . 16 JOSE GPE. VARGAS HERNANDEZ Institutional Mechanisms for Monitoring International Commitments to Social Development: The Philippine Experience . 26 MA. CONCEPCION P. ALFILER Globalization and Social Development: Capacity Building for Public-Private Collaboration for Public Service Delivery . 55 AMARA PONGSAPICH Trade Liberalization and the Poor: A Framework for Poverty Reduction Policies with Special Reference to Some Asian Countries including India . 76 SOMESH K. MATHUR Government and Basic Sector Engagement in Poverty Alleviation: Highlights of a Survey . 118 VICTORIA A. BAUTISTA Private Sector Participation in Education Services . 132 MALATHI SOMAIAH Enhancing Public-Private Sector Collaboration in Public Service Delivery: The Malaysian Perspective . 142 VASANTHA DAISY RUTH CHARLES Public-Private Collaboration in Public Service Delivery: Hong Kong’s Experience . 149 JERMAIN T.M. LAM Gender Policies and Responses Towards Greater Women Empowerment in the Philippines . 163 PROSERPINA DOMINGO TAPALES Modalities and Limiting Factors in Public-Private Collaboration In the Delivery of Social Services: A Case in Philippine Public Education . 177 JOEL T. SAN LUIS Public Private Partnership in Policy Innovation and Implementation: Reflections on the Self-Assessment Scheme for Property Tax of The Bangalore Municipal Corporation . 196 S. RAGHUNATH AND CHIRANJIB SEN FOREWORD artnership of the public sector with the private sector and civil society continue to be P a critical vehicle in the attainment of growth and sustainable human development. The call for enhanced partnerships by the United Nations system and its development partners remained an essential component at all international conferences and global summits in the 1990s, including those on education, gender, the environment, children, social development and human settlements. This culminated in the adoption of the Millennium Declaration in 2000 and the promotion of the Millennium Development Goals. Since then, partnership initiatives have been reinvigorated and strengthened at all major international forums. In an effort to improve the management of the public sector, public administration has recognized the value and virtue of partnerships among the various sectors, cooperating with different actors in the private and civil society sectors at the local, national, regional and global levels to galvanize experience, knowledge, skills and to utilize resources to effectively respond to public needs. Thus, partnerships constitute a major element in the process of giving new life to public administration. While the role of public sector in the delivery of public service remains indispensable, it is now recognized that both the State and the private and civil sectors have their distinct and mutually respective spheres of interest and activities and that even in market economies. Each sector alone cannot be relied upon to deliver all developmental needs, especially the Millennium Development Goals, nor can it guarantee cost-effectiveness in the delivery of social services. Establishing a strategic framework and finding the right role within which the partnership is dedicated to the common goals of growth, quality, cost-effectiveness and equity are equally critical. In this context, the United Nations Programme of Public Administration supported the Eastern Regional Organization for Public Administration (EROPA) in its 19th General Assembly and Conference on “Public Administration and Globalization: Challenges, Opportunities and Options,” with a specific focus on enhancing public-private collaboration in public service delivery. This publication seeks to highlight the experiences of various states and institutions in bringing together state and market mechanisms to introduce new forms of producing and delivering public services which were traditionally delivered through purely state mechanisms. It is my hope that this publication will contributed to the debate on and to the sharing of best practices in public-private collaboration for enhancing public service delivery. The United Nations system is committed to support national Governments in empowering public administration to play a vital role in strengthening and forging these partnerships to better respond to public needs and for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. GUIDO BERTUCCI Director Division for Public Administration and Development Management Department of Economic and Social Affairs Pro-Poor Policy Processes and Institutions: A Political Economic Discussion * M. ADIL KHAN Introduction The paper argues that poverty reduction in any country is affected by the way public policies are formulated and, more importantly, by the processes that contribute to these policies, by the key actors of the process and indeed, by the world view and the vested interests these actors represent. It is against this backdrop that the paper further argues that the public policy process concerning poverty begins with the way poverty is perceived, defined and prioritized in a society. The paper also suggests that it is the Western schools of thoughts on and approaches to “development” that mostly influence the strategies of poverty reduction. Furthermore, the geo-politics of the day also influence how “development” in general, and the strategy for poverty in particular, gets conceptualized, defined and implemented. In addition, poverty at its conceptual level seems to get defined more by the symptoms rather than the causal relationships that contribute to the process. Viewing poverty from their causal relationships highlights issues that are often systemic in nature and are politically insightful. A radical priest in a Latin American country once made this comment in the mid-seventies: “when I give food to poor people, they say I am an angel. But when I ask why poor people do not have food, they say I am a communist.” Let us begin with the politics of defining poverty. Poverty is defined in a variety of ways, but the traditional definition of poverty is based on income – those who live on less than $1.00 a day are poor. Others have defined poverty in terms of non-income attributes as well. The definition of poverty and its perceived notion, especially at the policy level, is important for determining the size, the depth, the causes of, and, indeed, the solutions to poverty. In 1988 in Philippines, the World Bank, using the income definition, estimated the incidence of poverty at 35 per cent. For the same year, the Social Weather Station, a non-government research institute that used the “self-perception evaluation * Chief, Socio-economic Governance and Management Branch, Division for Public Administration and Development Management, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), New York, USA ([email protected]). The paper represents the views of the author and not the United Nations. Further, the paper is a modified version of a presentation made by the author at the EROPA Meeting held during the 5-11 October 2003 in New Delhi, India. The author is grateful to Mr. Jay De Vera of UNDESA for his comments on the draft. methodology” or the poor’s perception of poverty that combine both income and non- income indicators, estimated the incidence at 48 per cent, even though the poverty line estimated by the poor themselves was less than that of the World Bank’s in this survey. The survey revealed that while the poor regard income as important, they regarded non- income factors to be equally, if not more, important. In this survey, the poor put much higher weight on factors such as land tenure rights, access to employment, access to market, health, education, and protection from physical violence. The differences in definition of poverty imply very different approaches to poverty reduction; most governments tend to target the symptoms and not the root causes of poverty. The latter strategy entails significant institutional reform and political empowerment of the poor. Thus, the tendency is to avoid the reform strategy of poverty reduction. It is now on record that most poverty alleviation initiatives of the eighties in Philippines that were implemented through unhelpful institutional arrangements failed badly, culminating into mass frustration, and, accompanied by other sources of resentments such as inequality, rampant corruption, etc., lead to the overthrow of the Marcos regime. The non-income definition of poverty often relates to issues that are political economic in nature and exposes institutional arrangements that tend to expose elements of gross inequity. For

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