IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/devpol/v32y2014i4p399-425.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Confronting the Informal in Good Governance: The Case of Decentralised Education-System Reform in Guinea

Author

Listed:
  • Jennifer Swift-Morgan

Abstract

type="main"> For twenty years, technocratic planning and management approaches have dominated good-governance reforms in developing countries. This is true even for newer ‘participatory’ and ‘citizen-driven’ reforms that still struggle to engage with powerful informal forces affecting public service delivery. This article presents evidence from a case study of decentralised education-system reform in Guinea, revealing a wide range of influential dynamics outside the technical realm. These corroborate the argument for ‘good-fit’ alternatives to traditional governance approaches and concrete measures to better capture the constructive and disable the destructive effects of informality on development.

Suggested Citation

  • Jennifer Swift-Morgan, 2014. "Confronting the Informal in Good Governance: The Case of Decentralised Education-System Reform in Guinea," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 32(4), pages 399-425, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:devpol:v:32:y:2014:i:4:p:399-425
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/dpr.12061
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ghazala Mansuri & Vijayendra Rao, 2013. "Localizing Development : Does Participation Work?," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 11859, December.
    2. Tim Kelsall, 2011. "Going with the Grain in African Development?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 29, pages 223-251, January.
    3. Ochieng, Cosmas Milton Obote, 2007. "Development through Positive Deviance and its Implications for Economic Policy Making and Public Administration in Africa: The Case of Kenyan Agricultural Development, 1930-2005," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 454-479, March.
    4. Sue Unsworth, 2009. "What's politics got to do with it?: Why donors find it so hard to come to terms with politics, and why this matters," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(6), pages 883-894.
    5. Merilee S. Grindle, 2007. "Good Enough Governance Revisited," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 25(5), pages 533-574, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James Copestake & Richard Williams, 2014. "Political-Economy Analysis, Aid Effectiveness and the Art of Development Management," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 32(1), pages 133-153, January.
    2. Simon O'Meally, 2014. "The Contradictions of Pro-poor Participation and Empowerment: The World Bank in East Africa," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 45(6), pages 1248-1283, November.
    3. Laura Routley & David Hulme, 2013. "Donors, development agencies and the use of political economic analysis: getting to grips with the politics of development?," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-019-13, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    4. Whaley, Luke & Cleaver, Frances & Mwathunga, Evance, 2021. "Flesh and bones: Working with the grain to improve community management of water," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    5. Kelly Gerard, 2023. "Doing aid chains differently: Evaluating the potential of Multi‐Stakeholder Partnerships," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 41(1), January.
    6. Katherine Casey & Rachel Glennerster & Edward Miguel & Maarten Voors, 2023. "Skill Versus Voice in Local Development," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(2), pages 311-326, March.
    7. Konstantinos Matakos & Dimitrios Minos & Ari Perdana & Elizabeth Radin, 2022. "“Dragon boating” alone? Community ties and systemic income shocks," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(1), pages 55-81, January.
    8. Niheer Dasandi & Ed Laws & Heather Marquette & Mark Robinson, 2019. "What Does the Evidence Tell Us about ‘Thinking and Working Politically’ in Development Assistance?," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(2), pages 155-168.
    9. Fazekas,Mihály & Blum,Jurgen Rene, 2021. "Improving Public Procurement Outcomes : Review of Tools and the State of the Evidence Base," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9690, The World Bank.
    10. Bet Caeyers, 2014. "Peer effects in development programme awareness of vulnerable groups in rural Tanzania," CSAE Working Paper Series 2014-11, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    11. Martin, Will, 2021. "Tools for measuring the full impacts of agricultural interventions," IFPRI-MCC technical papers 2, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    12. Mayka, Lindsay & Abbott, Jared, 2023. "Varieties of participatory institutions and interest intermediation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    13. Burger Ronelle & Owens Trudy & Prakash Aseem, 2018. "Global Non-Profit Chains and the Challenges of Development Aid Contracting," Nonprofit Policy Forum, De Gruyter, vol. 9(4), pages 1-12, December.
    14. Rana, Pushpendra & Chhatre, Ashwini, 2017. "Beyond committees: Hybrid forest governance for equity and sustainability," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 40-50.
    15. Martin Ravallion, 2013. "Knowledgeable bankers? The demand for research in World Bank operations," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(1), pages 1-29, March.
    16. Gani Aldashev & Esteban Jaimovich & Thierry Verdier, 2018. "Small is Beautiful: Motivational Allocation in the Nonprofit Sector," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 730-780.
    17. Federica VIGANO & Andrea SALUSTRI, 2015. "Matching profit and Non-profit Needs: How NPOs and Cooperative Contribute to Growth in Time of Crisis. A Quantitative Approach," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 86(1), pages 157-178, March.
    18. Joaquin Morales Belpaire, 2012. "Decentralized Aid and Democracy," Working Papers 1212, University of Namur, Department of Economics.
    19. Arthur Alik-Lagrange & Martin Ravallion, 2016. "Social Frictions to Knowledge Diffusion: Evidence from an Information Intervention," NBER Working Papers 21877, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Pablo Bandeira, 2009. "Instituciones y desarrollo económico. Un marco conceptual," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 11(20), pages 355-373, January-J.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:devpol:v:32:y:2014:i:4:p:399-425. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/odioruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.