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Making Reform Work: Institutions, Dispositions, and the Improving Health of Bangladesh

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  • Faguet, Jean-Paul
  • Ali, Zulfiqar

Abstract

Summary We examine whether local governance can improve social development empirically, using good and bad cases of public health outcomes in Bangladesh. We explore the institutional underpinnings of service provision, digging down beneath the "rules of the game" to analyze the beliefs, understandings, and dispositions that drive social behavior. Changes in deep social attitudes led to improvements in social indicators. Regional variation in health outcomes is explained by the presence or absence of a dense web of relationships that enmeshed reformers in local systems of authority and legitimacy, strengthening their actions and making local society more susceptible to change.

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  • Faguet, Jean-Paul & Ali, Zulfiqar, 2009. "Making Reform Work: Institutions, Dispositions, and the Improving Health of Bangladesh," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 208-218, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:37:y:2009:i:1:p:208-218
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    2. Ciccone, Dana Karen & Vian, Taryn & Maurer, Lydia & Bradley, Elizabeth H., 2014. "Linking governance mechanisms to health outcomes: A review of the literature in low- and middle-income countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 86-95.
    3. Momin, Mahmood Ahmed, 2013. "Social and environmental NGOs’ perceptions of Corporate Social Disclosures: The Case of Bangladesh," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 150-161.
    4. Magrath, Priscilla & Nichter, Mark, 2012. "Paying for performance and the social relations of health care provision: An anthropological perspective," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(10), pages 1778-1785.
    5. Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai, 2018. "The political economy of maternal healthcare in Ghana," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-107-18, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    6. Ali, Amin Masud & Savoia, Antonio, 2023. "Decentralisation or patronage: What determines government's allocation of development spending in a unitary country? Evidence from Bangladesh," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    7. World Bank, 2014. "Improving Basic Services for the Bottom Forty Percent : Results of the Poverty and Social Impact Assessment of Decentralized Basic Service Delivery in Ethiopia," World Bank Publications - Reports 17838, The World Bank Group.
    8. Andrew McNee, 2012. "Illuminating the local: can non-formal institutions be complementary to health system development in Papua New Guinea?," Development Policy Centre Discussion Papers 1215, Development Policy Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    9. Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai, 2014. "Rethinking spatial inequalities in development: the primacy of politics and power relations," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-029-14, GDI, The University of Manchester.

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