Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

How do institutional reforms shape local governance systems in less developed countries? Public sector governance reforms have been a common response to the underproduction and poor quality of public services within developing countries over the last three decades. Decentralization is especially popular in the health sector where leaders of almost every country in the world express at least some commitment to this type of reform in their national health plans. Yet, relatively little is known about the ways in which such reforms influence and shape the overall structure of relationships among governmental actors and between state entities and non-state organizations. In this paper I describe a new survey strategy for collecting whole network data in less developed countries, present an original network data set of health systems in a matched sample of 65 municipalities across Honduras, and use exponential random graph modeling to assess how decentralization reform influences the structure of these local governance systems. I expect that transferring administrative powers to a decentralized managing organization will increase the overall connectedness of the local governance system and that this effect will be greatest in municipalities with high levels of political competition reflecting strong electoral institutions. In weakly democratic settings I expect the opposite dynamic: decentralization should lead to greater fragmentation of the local governance system due to conflict among entrenched interests over patronage. This work will help shed light on the conditions under which institutional reforms may engender collaboration versus conflict in the co-production of local public services.