# **Education Decentralization and Accountability Relationships in Latin America**

## **Introduction**

This paper aims at analyzing decentralization reforms in the education sector in Latin America (their status, impact and on-going challenges), by making use of the accountability framework recently developed by the 2004 World Development Report (WDR). This framework focuses on accountability mechanisms between policy-makers, providers and citizens/clients to explain why service delivery works or fails. In the first section, the paper provides a characterization of alternative decentralization reforms. It then reviews the impact of these reforms and explores determinants of this impact, very much related to the implementation and use of the accountability mechanisms, extracting lessons which should be useful to the design of future reforms.

It is generally assumed that services will be provided more efficiently by sub-national units because they have a better knowledge of local conditions, characteristics and preferences than the central actor (asymmetric information argument<sup>1</sup> ). Adopting a principal and agent terminology, it is clear, however, that decentralizing decision making autonomy will not by itself be enough to ensure better provision if the new agent is not given the incentive to use its superior information to provide a better service. This is where the accountability dimension comes in. A decentralized framework of service delivery will work only if the agent is made accountable for its actions to the central actor, which decided to decentralize (and which we could see as principal number one) and to the community, which is the ultimate beneficiary of the services (and can be seen as principal number two or client)<sup>2</sup> .

Following the WDR, we detect four main types of accountability relationships:

- (a) the “compact” relationship, defined as the broad, long-term relationship of accountability connecting policymakers to organizational providers;

- (b) the “voice” relationship, defined as the complex accountability relationship which connects citizens and politicians;

- (c) the “client power” relationship defined as the relationship of accountability connecting clients to the frontline service providers, usually at the point of service delivery;

- (d) and the “management” relationship, defined as the relationship connecting organizational providers and frontline professionals.

> 1 This argument is, for instance, highlighted in Ugaz (1997) who considers “the improvement in the flow of information” to be the first channel through which decentralization can improve the quality of the services. It is also developed by Wossmann (2000) and Klugman (1994, 1997).

> 2 The opportunity  that decentralization provides to enhance this second accountability relationship is often seen as another major argument for decentralization. As Wolman (1988) mentions:  “Decentralization fosters greater responsiveness of the decision-makers to the will and needs of the citizens because they are more knowledgeable about and attuned to the needs of their area than are centralized decision makers and because decentralization permits these decision-makers to be held directly accountable to the local citizens (through local elections or other means)”.

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