A Practical Approach to Public Sector Reform: Following the Dollar in Reforming Road Maintenance

Paul J. Kaiser and Jeremy Streatfeild

Development Policy Review, 2016, vol. 34, issue 5, 745-757

Abstract: type="main" xml:id="dpr12171-abs-0001">

This article presents a new approach to designing public sector reform programmes, which we call a capacity map (CM). This approach focuses on the flow of public funds from the point of ‘extraction’ through to their ‘disbursement’, with specific attention to ‘leakages’ in that overall system. The CM is a modest attempt to provide development partners and their partner governments with a relatively simple, but effective, tool that complements other oft-used tools in the programme design process. To elucidate the CM approach, development partner attempts to support the establishment, or reform of, road maintenance regimes are focused on. The CM unpacks the process of road maintenance to identify leakages in the overall road maintenance system, thus enabling development partners to focus on institutional root causes beyond a singular focus on insufficient funds. It is contended that this tool enables the programme designer to develop focused interventions, whether in roads or other infrastructure projects, that move beyond ‘quick fixes’ that may avoid the difficult questions and hard choices that need to be made for sustainable institutional and policy reform.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/dpr.2016.34.issue-5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:devpol:v:34:y:2016:i:5:p:745-757

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0950-6764

Access Statistics for this article

Development Policy Review is currently edited by David Booth

More articles in Development Policy Review from Overseas Development Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().