Why do governance reforms in developing democracies so often fail, and when might they succeed? When Democracies Deliver offers a dynamic framework for assessing the effectiveness and durability of ...policy change. Drawing on detailed analyses of public sector reforms in Brazil and Argentina, this book challenges conventional wisdom to reveal that incremental changes sequenced over time prove more effective in promoting accountability, increasing transparency, and strengthening institutions than comprehensive overhauls pushed through by political will. Developing an innovative theory that integrates cognitive-psychological insights about decision making with research on institutional change, Katherine Bersch shows how political and organizational factors can shape reform strategies and information processing. Through extensive interviews and field research, Bersch traces how two competing strategies have determined the different trajectories of institutions responsible for government contracting in health care and transportation. When Democracies Deliver offers a fresh insight on the perils of powering and the benefits of gradual reform.
A blueprint for comprehensive, science-based health care system reform.Financial and political pressures on our health care system have negatively impacted individual care and the health system as a ...whole, an issue that has only become more acute because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Building a Unified American Health Care System, Gilead I Lancaster, MD, lays out a blueprint for comprehensive health care reform, proposing a unified system run by health care professionals—not politicians or commercial health insurance companies—that offers universal coverage and access.Lancaster compares the current arguments for single payer versus commercial health insurance systems with arguments in the early 1900s for a central bank versus regional commercial banks. He then introduces a novel solution: the establishment of a National Medical Board similar to the Federal Reserve System that helped fix the American banking system over a century ago. Along with other innovations, a plan co-created by Lancaster dubbed EMBRACE (Expanding Medical and Behavioral Resources with Access to Care for Everyone) would involve creating a modern, evidence-based health care system, one offering universal coverage for basic needs while allowing for commercial insurance participation. Emphasizing the importance of separating health care from governmental and commercial pressures and incentives, Lancaster explains the need for comprehensive—rather than incremental—reform of the American health care system.
In 2012, Cambodia—an epicenter of violent land grabbing—announced a bold new initiative to develop land redistribution efforts inside agribusiness concessions. Alice Beban's Unwritten Rule focuses on ...this land reform to understand the larger nature of democracy in Cambodia. Beban contends that the national land-titling program, the so-called leopard skin land reform, was first and foremost a political campaign orchestrated by the world's longest-serving prime minister, Hun Sen. The reform aimed to secure the loyalty of rural voters, produce modern farmers, and wrest control over land distribution from local officials. Through ambiguous legal directives and unwritten rules guiding the allocation of land, the government fostered uncertainty and fear within local communities. Unwritten Rule gives pause both to celebratory claims that land reform will enable land tenure security, and to critical claims that land reform will enmesh rural people more tightly in state bureaucracies and create a fiscally legible landscape. Instead, Beban argues that the extension of formal property rights strengthened the very patronage-based politics that Western development agencies hope to subvert.
The Amazon, the world's largest rain forest, is the last frontier in Brazil. The settlement of large and small farmers, squatters, miners, and loggers in this frontier during the past thirty years ...has given rise to violent conflicts over land as well as environmental duress. Titles, Conflict, and Land Use examines the institutional development involved in the process of land use and ownership in the Amazon and shows how this phenomenon affects the behavior of the economic actors. It explores the way in which the absence of well-defined property rights in the Amazon has led to both economic and social problems, including lost investment opportunities, high costs in protecting claims, and violence. The relationship between land reform and violence is given special attention. The book offers an important application of the New Institutional Economics by examining a rare instance where institutional change can be empirically observed. This allows the authors to study property rights as they emerge and evolve and to analyze the effects of Amazon development on the economy. In doing so they illustrate well the point that often the evolution of economic institutions will not lead to efficient outcomes. This book will be important not only to economists but also to Latin Americanists, political scientists, anthropologists, and scholars in disciplines concerned with the environment.
This book examines the history of reforms and major state interventions affecting Russian agriculture: the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the Stolypin reforms, the NEP, the Collectivization, ...Khrushchev reforms, and finally farm enterprise privatization in the early 1990s. It shows a pattern emerging from a political imperative in imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet regimes, and it describes how these reforms were justified in the name of the national interest during severe crises – rapid inflation, military defeat, mass strikes, rural unrest, and/or political turmoil. It looks at the consequences of adversity in the economic environment for rural behavior after reform and at long-run trends. It has chapters on property rights, rural organization, and technological change. It provides a new database for measuring agricultural productivity from 1861 to 1913 and updates these estimates to the present. This book is a study of the policies aimed at reorganizing rural production and their effectiveness in transforming institutions.
Over the last 20 years, international attempts to raise educational standards and improve opportunities for all children have accelerated and proliferated. This has generated a state of constant ...change and an unrelenting flood of initiatives, changes and reforms that need to be "implemented" by schools. In response to this, a great deal of attention has been given to evaluating "how well" policies are realised in practice--implemented! Less attention has been paid to understanding how schools actually deal with these multiple, and sometimes contradictory, policy demands; creatively working to interpret policy texts and translate these into practices, in real material conditions and varying resources--how they are enacted! Based on a long-term qualitative study of four "ordinary" secondary schools, and working on the interface of theory with data, this book explores how schools enact, rather than implement, policy. It focuses on: (1) contexts of "policy work" in schools; (2) teachers as policy subjects; (3) teachers as policy actors; (4) policy texts, artefacts and events; and (5) standards, behaviour and learning policies. This book offers an original and very grounded analysis of how schools and teachers do policy. It will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of education, education policy and social policy, as well as school leaders, in the UK and beyond.
Few interventions that succeed in improving healthcare locally end up becoming spread and sustained more widely. This indicates that we need to think differently about spreading improvements in ...practice. Drawing on a focused review of academic and grey literature, the authors outline how spread, scale-up, and sustainability have been defined and operationalised, highlighting areas of ambiguity and contention. Following an overview of relevant frameworks and models, they focus on three specific approaches and unpack their theoretical assumptions and practical implications: the Dynamic Sustainability Framework, the 3S (structure, strategy, supports) infrastructure approach for scale-up, and the NASSS (non-adoption, abandonment, and challenges to scale-up, spread, and sustainability) framework. Key points are illustrated through empirical case narratives and the Element concludes with actionable learning for those engaged in improvement activities and for researchers. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Health Reform Development, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
2011, 2011-11-10
eBook
When the OECD was founded in 1961, health systems were gearing themselves up to deliver acute care interventions. Sick people were to be cured in hospitals, then sent on their way again. Medical ...training was focused on hospitals; innovation was to develop new interventions; payment systems were centred around single episodes of care. Health systems have delivered big improvements in health since then, but they can be slow to adapt to new challenges. In particular, these days, the overwhelming burden of disease is chronic, for which cure is out of our reach. Health policies have changed to some extent in response, though perhaps not enough. But the challenge of the future is that the typical recipient of health care will be aged and will have multiple morbidities. This book examines how payment systems, innovation policies and human resource policies need to be modernised so that OECD health systems will continue to generate improved health outcomes in the future at a sustainable cost.
