Independent Service Authorities
Collier suggests a solution to the problem of bad governance; the creation of so called “Independent Service Authorities.” “The idea is that in countries where basic public services such as primary education and health clinics are utterly failing, the government, civil society, and donors combined could try to build an alternative system for spending public money...The authority would be a wholesale organization for purchasing basic services, buy some from local governments, some from NGO's such as churches, and some from private firms. It would finance not just the building of schools but also their day-to-day operation., Once such an organization was put into place, managed jointly by governments, donors, and civil society, both donors and the government would channel money through it.” This is an extremely debatable idea, though from first inspection, a novel and wise one; I have visited the government health and education ministry buildings in some of the bottom billion societies, and the sights were terrifying, to say the least, not even to speak of efficiencies. In some of the worst nations in the world in terms of governance, this would be the only viable option-the civil services are so thoroughly disintegrated, that starting over is the only way of actually progressing, however, heartbreaking a thought this might be (simply sidestepping 50 years of post-independence “progress”).
And creating buy-in by the actual nations would be extremely difficult; the interests are intrenched, and bypassing these interests would require large political capital and guts by the top leadership. Collier compares his idea with that of one already implemented in many nations, that of the “Independent Revenue Authorities” which have been created in the last decades. “The function was taken out of the traditional civil service for precisely the reason that I want basic public services to be taken out of the traditional civil service-there was no realistic prospect of the traditional system being made to work. Why did governments go for the radical option on revenue but not on service delivery? The answer is depressingly obvious: governments benefit from revenue, whereas ordinary people benefit from basic services. Governments were not prepared to let the traditional civil service continue to sabotage tax revenues, because governments themselves were the victims. They were prepared to leave basic service delivery unreformed because the governing elite ot its services elsewhere.”
