Education and the PMP draft Juan Carlos Navarro. What political economy says In the education sector, providers are aware and organized, beneficiaries

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


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


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




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)


Documents

Education and the PMP draft Juan Carlos Navarro. What political economy says In the education sector, providers are aware and organized, beneficiaries