Many development projects encourage access: access to
justice, access to schools, access to hospitals, access to information,
etc. This access is generally provided
to the poor, who face difficulties due to a lack of financial or other
resources. On the other hand, some
projects – though perhaps relatively fewer - focus on improving the quality of
services. For example, these projects
seek to improve the capacity of judges and the efficiency of court processes; others train teachers to improve school quality. Overall, I think there needs to be a
fundamental change in some simple logic, which may transform the rationale for
focusing on access vs. quality.
In the justice field, the logic of conventional projects is the following:
Access of the Poor + Good Courts -> Justice
If we want the poor to achieve justice, then we need to fund
paralegals to help them develop court cases.
Similarly, we should improve the capacity of these courts. We should work on both to achieve justice for
the poor.
There is a simple problem with this logic, if we see this as
a conditional process where each step depends on the next:
Access of the Poor -> (Quality of the) Courts -> (Quality
of) Justice
The steps downstream in the process determine whether the end goal is achieved, which is the conditionality. If we give the poor access to relatively dysfunctional
courts, then the poor don’t get justice. Even worse is that giving the poor access to dysfunctional courts may
make those courts even more dysfunctional, as the case backlog will increase.
A similar logic may be applied to conditional cash transfers
for school attendance, i.e. paying parents to send their children to school. If the quality of education is so poor that
students don’t learn anything, then perhaps transfers are not a productive way
to increase education among the poor.
From this, we can come up with several conclusions.
First, perhaps development institutions and governments
should not spend so much money on access to badly functioning
institutions. The priority is the downstream areas that are necessary conditions for achieving the outcomes. As such, a relatively better
allocation is to focus greater attention to improving their quality, moreso than increasing access.
Second, if these badly functioning institutions are not
going to improve, then perhaps we should give the poor access to alternative
institutions. If the downstream areas are necessary conditions that will not be met in the short or medium term, an alternative path would make sense. In the justice example,
the poor may find a much greater level of justice through alternative dispute
resolution, such as community-level justice.
Third, none of these factors is absolute. No justice institutions are completely
dysfunctional, or teachers completely unable to teach students. I’m not arguing for 100% resource allocation
for quality. A calculation must be made
relative to each. What doesn’t make
sense is spending 75% of resources on access and 25% on quality. If the quality is poor, then perhaps this
should be closer to 25% and 75%.
Unfortunately, there are huge incentives for development
institutions and government to focus on access rather than the quality of
institutions. Development partners and
government can burn through huge amounts of money by providing cash transfers,
but improving the quality of education is quite difficult and does not allow
for a quick disbursement of resources. Governments
also love handling cash transfer projects for a variety of other reasons, such
as the patronage it represents and the large amounts of money that might be
diverted. As such, the internal incentives
of these institutions work against a more rational priority.
Here are some other situations to which this logic applies,
though they are endless:
Transparency with weak accountability mechanisms.
Legislation that is generally not enforced, to achieve
anything.
Road infrastructure on the outskirts of town if that traffic
is heading downtown (i.e. you’re speeding up traffic to a larger traffic jam).
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