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This book is an exploratory attempt to develop a better understanding of mechanisms that impede access to government and public services and programs and innovative solutions that have improved it. In the introductory chapter we defined access as a “match between the societal commitment and institutional capacity to deliver rights and services and people’s capacity to benefit from those rights and services.” This definition describes an ideal situation—“a perfect match”—that may actually never occur. After all, both society and its institutions are continuously changing. Getting the access match “right” would require a ceteris paribus condition that cannot be realistically expected. Therefore, 100 percent access may be understood as one extreme of a continuum whose other extreme is a complete lack of access. Access analysis focuses on situations in between, in which access is problematic to a larger or lesser degree. The studies in this volume show that obstructions to access come in all shapes and sizes. Each chapter examines the gap between the promise and practice of inclusive democratic governance. Chapters on holding governments accountable for basic services (chapters 9 and 10) discuss similar problem areas but present different analyses or solutions. Some chapters deal with the access issues in very different domains or countries, but reach strikingly similar analyses or solutions (for example, the discussions of service delivery systems in chapters 5 and 8 and the discussions of access to justice and legal empowerment in chapters 11 and 12). In this chapter we try to draw some general crosscutting lessons, using the Bureaucrat-Agency-System-Context 275 13 The Dynamics of Access: Understanding “the Mismatch” jorrit de jong and gowher rizvi 13-7501-1 CH 13 10/28/08 5:29 PM Page 275 (BASC) framework we introduced in chapter 1. Clearly, a single volume cannot come close to covering the vast range of issues that are relevant to access research and analysis; the design and methods of these studies are also far too heterogeneous to allow us to draw conclusions for systematic comparative analysis. But such comprehensiveness was not our purpose. Our goal was to understand better the nature of “the mismatch.” The materials presented here are just a few examples of how that mismatch manifests itself. The analyses in the chapters are examples of ways to research and interpret problems of access, as well as to develop practical remedies to improve it. Our conceptualization of access emphasizes that although political ideology and the exercise of power almost always play their roles, the fundamental variables in access analysis are institutional capacity (supported by society) on the one hand and people’s capacity on the other hand. Institutional Capacity and Societal Commitment Concerning the delivery of basic services in developing countries (chapter 10), the administration of legal assistance in the United States (chapter 11), and licensing practices for small businesses in the Netherlands (chapter 4), we see that the institutional capacity of the state is inadequate. Underperforming providers of public services cannot be held accountable by the people, funding and oversight of pro bono litigation falls short, and regulatory systems impose huge administrative burdens on small businesses. For a variety of reasons, institutional arrangements, public organizations, officials, and professionals fail to perform. Either they are not doing the right thing, or they are not doing it right. The net effect is the exclusion of certain social groups—usually the least advantaged, weakest groups in society. We also see that overall societal commitment to the work of the state has a more or less direct influence on the degree of match or mismatch. In chapter 6 it is argued that a general decline of commitment to the social compact and a separation between the discourse on programs and the discourse on revenues have led public managers to balance their books strategically by limiting access to public benefits. Societal commitment and institutional capacity are intimately linked in many ways. Failing institutions are more than a mere institutional, managerial, or technical problem. It is important to note that government dysfunction does not occur in a social, political, or ideological vacuum. For example, the poor representation of women in community forestry groups in South Asia has translated into inequitable decisions over the use of natural resources, with significant losses in efficiency and effectiveness (see chapter 2). These dynamics of exclusion and marginalization may be neglected or even fueled by the functioning of institutions. Institutions, however, are expressions, to at least some extent, of political will and societal commitment to social...

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