Service Delivery and Governance at the Sub-National Level
Report Summary:
July 18, 2007 - One of the key constraints to strengthening the sub-national system in Afghanistan is the absence of a clear policy framework regarding its desired institutional structure, and a strategy to guide actions and activities to realize it.
Findings: - Highly centralized ministries are responsible for delivery of most key services in the country. - Ministries tend to be over-centralized, with their offices in Kabul retaining functions which could be performed much more efficiently at the lower levels of government. - The current sub-national system co-exists with the Provincial Governor structure which allows the Governors to intervene in the affairs of the Ministries through a number of channels. -Security-driven projects sometimes conflict with government institutions and processes.
Over the past year, and particularly in recent months, the question of sub-national administration has escalated tangibly in importance. It has become the focus of much attention in Government documents, subject of a number of substantial analytic efforts, and donors have begun to direct expanding amounts at initiatives targeted at the sub-national level. One of the key constraints to strengthening the sub-national system in Afghanistan is the absence of a clear policy framework regarding its desired institutional structure, and a strategy to guide actions and activities to realize it.
This report comprises an initial effort to address this question. It builds on the considerable analytical work that has already been done on sub-national administration and governance and seeks to add value in four areas: first, to provide additional information and analytic insight into the nature of sub-national service delivery and governance in Afghanistan; second, to develop a simple and coherent substantive framework regarding the sub-national system for discussion and dialogue within government and the donor community; third, to propose a number of concrete initiatives that could be undertaken in order to strengthen the sub-national framework as proposed; and fourth, to suggest some procedural recommendations in order to move things forward.
Three important points should be stressed at the outset, all of which go to issues of some sensitivity in the Afghan context.
First, the authors of this report are acutely aware that a great deal of government and donor activity is currently focused on the sub-national question and that, in certain areas, much progress has been made.
Second, the normative perspective adopted in this report is an institution-building one. This assumes that both government and donor efforts should be directed primarily at the goal of building institutional systems and capacities which will improve governance and effective service delivery over the medium and long term.
Third, the fact that this report suggests that it is imperative that greater and more disciplined effort be placed on sorting the sub-national system out does not suggest that Afghanistan should go down the road of greater political devolution.
Chapter 2: The Sub-National Institutional Structure: Main Elements, Key Issues
Territorially, Afghanistan is divided into 34 provinces, 2 of which were created by the Karzai administration immediately before the Presidential election of May 2004. There is disagreement about the number of districts, with different ministries and government agencies disputing both overall numbers and boundaries. As of April 2007, the Central Statistics Office considered that there were 364 rural districts, and 34 provincial urban centers, some of which are subdivided into nahia or urban districts. The Ministry of Interior and Afghanistan Geodesy and Cartography Head Office (AGCHO) recognize different boundaries and numbers. There is also disagreement about the number of municipalities. However, a commonly agreed figure is that there are a total of 217 provincial and rural municipalities with a population of more than 5000 people.
Chapter 3: The Sub-National Institutional Structure: Key Features
The chapter provides some analysis on key features of sub-national institutions and the environment for reform. The overall structure is characterized by significant systemic contradiction. On the one hand, direct formal functional and budget authority for the delivery of most key services in the provinces - such as education, health, water and roads - is held by highly centralized Line Ministries which work in vertically integrated silos with relatively weak, “externalized” linkages between them. Thus, in an organizational sense, provincial and district “administrations” - defined as horizontally integrated entities in which different agencies responsible for specific sectors fall under a unified point of budget and executive authority - do not actually exist in Afghanistan.
The environment within which efforts to address the above problems unfolds generates both imperatives and parameters for action.
- The first is a constitutional dispensation and political climate which precludes any significant reform to the underlying intergovernmental structure in the short or medium term. - Second, there is weak oversight of the SN system at the central level. - Third, although substantial progress has recently been made in trying to get greater alignment between donor activities which impact the SN level, donor initiatives remain weakly coordinated.
It is important to stress that, given the reform environment discussed in Chapter 3, the basic thrust, or intent, of any Sub-National strategy must be to improve the functioning of the current system rather than to restructure it. True, this structure has intrinsic weaknesses from both service-delivery and governance perspectives. A strongly de jure centralized state in a large, poorly linked country with a relatively thinly spread population - mainly rural, but rapidly urbanizing - inevitably confronts problems with regard both to organizational efficiency and accountability. It also imposes strong constraints on co-ordination and integration between different agencies. However, notwithstanding these difficulties, the emerging structure allows for improved performance in respect both of accountability and effectiveness/efficiency with appropriately focused reforms.
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