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Education and the PMP
draft
Juan Carlos NavarroJuan Carlos Navarro
What political economy says
In the education sector, providers are aware and organized, beneficiaries are dispersed and for the most part receive information with a lot of ¨noise¨
True policy impacts are only visible over the long run
Contracting problems (agency issues) are severe and pervasive: actions by schools and teachers are hard to monitor, size and complexity make coordination very costly, difficulty in aligning interests of agents, near impossibility to measure individual contributions to the product.
No overall organizing principle (¨Christmas tree” composition)
Implementation requires collaboration by many agents and presents extensive opportunities for shaping policy outcomes
Implications for education policy
Inefficient equilibria solidify after a “contracting moment”. The system is stable at a low level of performance due to a combination of:
Considerable risk of Capture by providers, since they are in position to claim property rights over teaching positions and several aspects of decision-making in the education system.
Rigid rules (low adaptability to economic shocks) produced by inability to commit on the side of the executive. This rigidity affects “core” policies:
Public-private market share
Free public education
Job stability and entry, promotion and retirement rules
Preservation of the bargaining power of the union
Precarious policy stability (high policy volatility due to political shocks) regarding “non-core” policies (all the rest)
Under-investment in capacity
Little transparency in decision-making
The actorsMain actors (veto power)
The national executive
The unions
The reluctant participants: Sub-national power players (if federal structure is in place)
Supporting roles
International organizations
Congress
Church
The Media
Actors with veto power
CASE Executive Unions Subnational
Argentina x x x
Bolivia x x
Brazil x x
Chile x x
Colombia x x x
Ecuador x x
Mexico x x x
Nicaragua x x
Uruguay x x
Venezuela x x x
Actor`s preferences
Executive: improvement of education as a part of larger modernization and development agendas, maintaining overall political stability, political patronage,votes, keeping budgets under control. Short-term horizon. Often, highly ideological
Unions: job security, more jobs, control over appointments, sustained nation-wide bargaining power, better salaries. Long-term horizon. Often, highly ideological
Sub-national power players: creation and/or expansion of opportunities for patronage, votes, avoidance of unfunded mandates and constraints on discretionary spending, improvement of local economy
Two kinds of education politics
The politics of expansion: Everybody wins. No significant conflict arises. Cooperation appears naturally given alignment of preferences among actors with veto power and frontier-expansion policies.
The politics of quality/efficiency: Direct conflict of interest. Organized interests clash. Cooperation only through painstaking bargaining and coalition building. Most likely result: highly inefficient equilibrium.
The politics of expansion
It is particularly important -albeit not exclusive- if:
Resource constraints are not extreme.
There is expanding demand for publicly provided education
It produces impatience among political, business and technocratic elites, since it only results in quality or efficiency improvements in the very long run, leading to policies in which cooperation is harder to get
Implications
Policy-making will be disproportionately biased in favor of policies focused on expansion and access rather than on quality and efficiency (to the point that there are cases in which contentious policies get “disguised” as expansion policies)
But there is still usually some pressure built in so that an “enlightened” executive and/or technocratic elites will tackle efficiency and quality oriented reforms
Policy-making will tend to be rigid regarding core policies and volatile in the case of all the rest
Implementation will matter a lot
The essential process of reform politics
Difficulty of executives and unions to cooperate, stemming from:
Inter-temporal deals are very difficult to reach
Preferences are at odds
Compliance with the terms of deals is very difficult to monitor
Only exceptionally other actors get involved (no countervailing forces)
Ideologies clash
Policy-making arenas
Direct negotiations between unions and the executive (“smoke-filled room”)
It often degenerates into open conflict in the form of strikes and disruption of civil and political order (“the street”)
In decentralized settings, whichever is the primary arena for intergovernmental coordination becomes important (“the family reunion”)
The service delivery agency /the school/ will be also a distinctive arena where a difference can be made ( “the street corner”)
Occasionally -and occasionally only- negotiations pass through congress, particularly if the allocation of resources and responsibilities to lower levels of government is involved
Occasionally, policy debate in public spaces and the media plays a role
How does the PMP interact with these
characteristics?
By affecting the main arena in which the conflicts play out
By affecting the likelihood of success of reform attempts (movement from undesirable outer characteristics of policy-making to desirable ones)
Eventually, by providing avenues for education policy-making to impact the PMP at large
No institutional pattern
The literatures has failed to find patterns in the relationships between institutional characteristics and the occurrence or likelihood of success of education policy reforms. Such a finding suggests that sector-specific features have a strong influence in the characteristics of policies, regardless of the institutional framework at hand:
“Episodes of reform were not systematically associated with particular economic conditions or with particular characteristics of party systems, governing coalitions or electoral cycles. Rather, the emergence of reform initiatives is almost universally traced to the interest and actions of political executives or those clearly associated with them: their concern to improve education was generally part of broader political and policy agendas they espoused and was significantly influenced by international dialogues about social policy and development” (Grindle, 2003)
Empirical approach
The case of decentralization reforms
The case of the introduction of incentives and evaluation for teachers
Cases
Colombia Mexico Brazil Argentina
Decentralization reforms
x
x
Teacher incentives and evaluation
x
x
Colombia (90`s): Decentralization
Relatively strong Congress
Legislators strongly inclined to policies that provide specific regional benefits (patronage, control over federal tax receips)
Arena: Congress+smoke-filled room
Failure to introduce strong municipalization of education
Failure to introduce capitation financing
Intergovernmental transfers for education deeply distorted
Union highly influential in Congress and the streetRegional power players highly influential
Union highly influential in Congress and the streetRegional power players highly influential
OutcomeOutcomeRules of PM GameRules of PM Game
Brazil: FUNDEF
Strong presidency with ability to pass its agenda through Congress
“Easy” constitutional reforms
Arena: partially, “family reunion”
Successful top down reform of fiscal federalism in education (improved equity and quality outcomes)
Successful top down reform of distribution of responsibilities among levels of government (improved policy coordination)
No strong national unionGovernors did not have time to organize in opposition
No strong national unionGovernors did not have time to organize in opposition
OutcomeOutcomeRules of PM GameRules of PM Game
Argentina: FONID
Considerable strength of governors
Legislators strongly inclined to policies that provide specific regional benefits (patronage, control over federal tax receips)
Arena: the street+smoke filled room+family reunion
Incentive pay for teachers t becomes a salary premium entitlement
Prolonged and destabilizing political conflict in the street
Education policy ends up spilling over fiscal policy, the worst possible way
Union highly influential in Congress and the streetRegional power players highly influential
Union highly influential in Congress and the streetRegional power players highly influential
OutcomeOutcomeRules of PM GameRules of PM Game
Mexico: Carrera Mag.
Strength of governors on the rise (period of divided government)
Political party (PRI) able to bridge differences between unions and executive
Arena: Smoke-filled room+street corner
Incentive pay for teachers is approved within the larger framework of decentralization
Unions gain control of the implementation of the incentive system, and trivialize the reform
Union remains unified in spite of decentralization
Union highly influential in Congress and the “smoke-filled roomUnion highly involved in management of the system (capture)
Union highly influential in Congress and the “smoke-filled roomUnion highly involved in management of the system (capture)
OutcomeOutcomeRules of PM GameRules of PM Game