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Influencing policy through partnerships

Many partnerships focus on getting services to where they are needed, leaving policymaking to public sector decision makers.  Yet partnerships can serve policymakers too, linking policy with actual practice and helping to drive change.   

 

Policymakers themselves have crucial influence over local-level partnerships, with their decisions affecting who can partner, how they are funded and what approaches are permissible.  Changes in policy can drastically affect existing partnerships. 

 

BPD has looked at three distinct aspects of the relationship:

 

  • Policy level: How collaboration works and what this means (especially for decentralised service delivery)
  • Local level: Understanding how implementation partnerships function
  • Interim level: In particular, how policy is actually linked to practice

 

The following BPD learning, from across three continents, starts to untangle this complex web.  Advice is relevant to both policymakers and practitioners.

        

Key BPD case studies and documents

Luanda Urban Poverty Programme

The Angolan water and sanitation sector is experimenting with different approaches to reducing urban poverty.  Find out how two NGOs came to water projects from very different angles and how this is changing policy.

 

Sector collaboration in South Africa (summary) | full report

South Africa has been particularly bold in decentralising services to the local level, ensuring that collaboration at various levels both supports and learns from delivery.  This report reviews how collaboration has been put in place, with useful lessons for other organisations going through decentralisation.

 

GATS paper

This note reviews the inter-relationships between GATS (the General Agreement on Trade in Services) and water and sanitation service delivery, particularly in the context of public-private partnerships.