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Kaufman, Robert R. and Nelson, Joan M. (Eds.) (2004). Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives. Social Sector Reform, Democratization, and Globalization in Latin America. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press. Co-published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.

560 pp.
ISBN 0-8018-8049-1   $55.00 (Hardcover)
ISBN 0-8018-8082-3   $24.95 (Paperback)

Reviewed by Christopher Chambers-Ju
The Inter-American Dialogue (PREAL), Washington, D.C.

July 8, 2005

Contributing authors to this volume include Marta Arretche, Josefina Bruni Celli, Mary A. Clark, Javier Corrales, Sonia M. Draibe, Christina Ewig, Alec Ian Gershberg, Alejandra Gonzalez Rossetti, Merilee S. Grindle, Peter Lloyd-Sherlock, Pamela S. Lowden, and Patricia Ramirez.

Most scholars agree that the low quality of public education and health care perpetuate poverty and inequality in Latin American. While throughout the 1990s Latin America made strides in improving access to education, the quality of public schools remained sorely wanting (PREAL, 2001). Health care systems distributed resources irrationally and asymmetrically, creating gross inefficiencies and gaps in coverage. The poor quality of social services generated a two tiered system that reinforced structural inequalities, of social class and race, which have persisted for centuries (De Deferranti et al., 2004).

The region’s reprehensible social services stemmed from overly centralized and bureaucratic administration. Devolving responsibilities and resources to local governments—or even to local school and hospital councils—could solve problems related to unresponsive, centralized service provision. Decentralization could simultaneously improve the quality of social services, deepen democracy, and empower local communities. Yet this “silent revolution” engendered fierce political conflicts, as the entrenched beneficiaries of the old system resisted change. Robert Kaufman and Joan Nelson’s Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives examine the political dilemmas facing these reforms. They aims to answer a fundamental question: what political variables influence successful social sector reform?

The book examines the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela. These cases were selected on the basis of variation in reform experience and availability of specialists (p. 15). Kaufman and Nelson delineate the successes and failures of reformers in twelve different cases; six chapters cover education and six cover health sector reform. Each chapter is authored by a distinguished scholar from the U.S. or Latin America. The book resembles an instructional manual for policy practitioners that lists important “dos and don’ts.”

The book provides a theoretical introduction to the fluid processes of social sector reform. Given institutional variation, disparate national political contexts, and the complexity of social sector reform the editors suggest that their theoretical assertions are conditional and tentative (p. 15). The book’s nonrandom and incomplete sample limits extrapolation from the editor’s conclusions. Hence, the book is more descriptive than explanatory—it aims to capture “a range of reform experiences in a variety of political settings” (p. 15). The variation of these findings offers an initial “foundation for propositions that can be explored in other cases” (p. 16).

To systematically consider the diverse set of cases contained in this book, the editors separately examine the political actors, reform types, and factors that precipitate reform. The main actors involved in reforms are divided into three categories: reformers, opponents and fence-sitters. Reformers are often newly appointed technocratic ministers and their advisors. Opponents, reform “obstacles,” may include the bureaucracies of the various ministries, legislatures, opposition parties, and public sector unions. Many teachers and health workers fear that decentralization will create multiple regional employers, thus weakening collective action and national influence (p. 263). Meanwhile fence-sitters—civic groups such as students and patients who would benefit from reform—are fragmented and difficult to mobilize. Due to these reforms’ technical complexity, the time lapse between reform and results, as well as the lack of public ownership, civil society rarely supports these policies with fervor (p. 268).

Kaufman and Nelson lay out the spectrum of reforms according to their difficulty. “Easy” reforms increase access to social services through infrastructure projects or add-on programs. Easy policies, however, rarely improve the quality of social services. “Difficult” re-organizational policies such as decentralization, school autonomy, or ministerial restructuring may improve social service quality yet often ignite opposition from unions and bureaucrats (p. 481). The editors note variation within this schema—easy reforms may “make important contributions to improve services” while re-organizational reforms may generate little impact (p. 479).

This book distinguishes between causal and triggering factors that affect reform outcome. The authors begin by examining the most distant macro processes of market liberalization and democratization. The book suggests that economic liberalization may galvanize a “race to the top” in which governments aggressively invest in human capital to attract foreign investment (p. 486). Democratization may also force politicians to respond to public opinion, which considered education a primary concern during the 1990s (p. 253). After these macro processes, national political agendas determine whether reform will even be considered. Reforms are the residual effects of broader policy goals and ideological penchants. If reforms fail to fit into these broader platforms they lose priority on the political agenda (p. 489).

Borrowing from Merilee Grindle (2004), Kaufman and Nelson highlight the micro-politics, which involve agency, choice, and contingency, that “trigger” reform. To accentuate distinct actions by reformers this book, like Grindle’s, divides reform processes into phases. Reformer’s political strategy changes as reform enters the design, legal authorization, implementation, and consolidation phases. This temporal framework facilitates analysis of reform politics by clearly presenting reformers’ strategic actions to negotiate striking teacher unions, stalling legislatures, and foot dragging bureaucracies.

Sonia M. Draibe’s analysis of education reform politics in Brazil illustrates how this theoretical framework can be operationalized (p. 388). The Brazilian education system of the 1990s inherited the military regime’s legacy of rampant patronage and unequal resource distribution. In 1995 Minister of Education Paulo Renato de Souza and his technocratic allies attempted to combat clientelism and inequality through decentralization. Reformers counted few political allies, due to the fragmentation of civil society, and employed a top down approach to reform. The minister, through decrees, channeled resources to school councils for infrastructure projects and directly financed municipal school lunch programs (p. 393). While these reforms sparked little opposition, Renato de Souza embarked on an ambitious move to redistribute resources towards primary schools and poorer states. Secretariats of education in wealthier states, who stood to lose money, threatened this policy with formidable opposition. Hence, the minister acted quickly to pass this bill through the national legislature before reform losers could organize (p. 399). Kaufman and Nelson’s framework identify the key actors involved, technocratic reformers and state secretariats of education; the reform type, decentralization to state, municipal, and school-level governing bodies; and the micro-politics of reformers, hurrying this law through the legislature.

The editors conclude that “piecemeal” and “incremental” policy changes, rather than “big-bang” sector wide reforms, are most likely to succeed. Even modest reforms demand monumental effort and create political conflicts. When aggregated, these small changes may significantly improve social services (p. 5). Nevertheless, the region must improve the continuity of small scale reforms and the diffusion of successful pilot programs. Overall this book provides a nuanced picture of the politics of social sector reform. The editors avoid overstating the power of any single variable, instead suggesting reform impetus and success hinge upon a multitude of intertwined factors. The detailed cases studies and careful analysis make criticism, even by the most punctilious reader, difficult.

That said, one possible weakness of this study may lie in its use of “stories” (p. 4). When examining case studies the social sciences often relate stories to convey causality (Tilly, 2003). While the use of stories does not suggest fictionalizing empirical reality, stories are constructed by a narrator who privileges a particular account over an alternative. Narratives necessarily involve piecing together a history and omitting “superfluous” information. Following from this concern with stories, the editors’ generalizations may be interpreted as reformer-centric. While the book offers three-dimensional, dynamic portraits of reformers, unions are consistently pegged as inert reform obstacles blindly defending the status quo. The editor’s “informed induction,” perhaps unintentionally, elides three important insights about reform politics (p. 15).

First, the editors suggest that service provider unions are “adversaries” who “generally wield substantial power in defense of their interests” (p. 263). While some unions may fit this mold of self-interest mongers, union actions also benefit the public good. Aside from lobbying for higher wages, teacher unions also lobby for better school facilities, supplemental school supplies, and other resources that benefit public school students (Savedoff, 1997, p. 265). While reformers often view unions as entirely parasitic, unions guarantee political attention and financial resources to the social sector.

Second, following from the notion that unions solely pursue their narrow self-interest the book suggests that unions, as illustrated by the cases of Mexico and Colombia, “extract a very high price in salary increases” when they allow reform to take place (p. 264). While recent econometric analysis suggests that many unions do earn more money than their educational equals in the private sector, teacher earnings vary throughout the region (Liang, 2004). The editors state that in Nicaragua reforms “were designed to appeal to teachers’ self interest in augmented salaries” (p. 515). They do not mention that Nicaragua’s teachers earn as little as $42 a month (p. 414), nor that in 2001 teacher wages bought less than half Nicaragua’s basic consumption bundle (Morales, 2001). Generalizations about bloated union salaries must be tempered with counter examples of unions legitimately lobbying for living wages.

Finally, the editors challenge the widely held faith in the panacea of political participation and inclusion in policy design. Instead they warn that “early consultation can be problematic” and “extensive consultation takes time and permits opposition groups to mobilize” (p. 514). While the editors prudently qualify this statement by mentioning the cases of union acquiescence in Mexico and Minas Gerais, Brazil, they neglect mentioning El Salvador. In El Salvador during the mid 1990s the minister of education, a technocrat, “conducted a series of workshops with 2,000 teachers” to include them in reform design (Reimers, 1996:21). This broad consultation effort legitimized reform and “enriched the quality of the final product” by drawing on the knowledge of teachers—the people that work in the classroom (McGuin and Reimers, 1997:27). While Kaufman and Nelson correctly suggest that consultation may be disruptive, constructive dialogue is possible, profitable for reformers, and should be normative.

Kaufman and Nelson’s generalizations about unions contain a negative bias. However, the editors cannot be entirely faulted for this one-dimensional account of unions. Despite work by Murillo (2001), Palamidessi (2003), Grindle (2004), and Navarro (2002), there remains a dearth of information about union structure, strategy, and goals. While some studies, like this one, have examined unions from the ouside none have gone inside public sector unions and studied their self-perceptions. Future studies must develop a more complex account of union behavior to facilitate dialogue between these important stakeholders and reformers.

References

De Deferranti, David: Perry, Guillermo E.: Ferreira, Francisco H.G.: Walton, Michael Inequality in Latin America: Breaking with History? Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004

Grindle, Merilee. “Despite the Odds: The Contentious Politics of Education Reform.” Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004

Liang, Xiaoyan. “Remuneración de los docentes en 12 países latinoamericanos” in Maestros en America Latina: Nuevas Perspectivas sobre su Formación y Desempeño Santiago, Chile: PREAL, 2004

McGinn, Noel and Fernando Reimers. Informed Dialogue: Using Research
to Shape Policy Around the World. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1997

Morales, Amelia. “Dudas sobre cuantos maestros reciben bono” La Prensa Nicaragua:25 de agosto, 2001

Navarro, Juan Carlos. ¿Quienes son los maestros? Carreras e incentivos docentes en America Latina Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2002

Palamidessi, Mariano. “Sindicatos docentes y gobiernos: Conflictos y diálogos en torno a la Reforma Educativa en América Latina” PREAL documentos de trabajo no. 28, diciembre 2003

PREAL. “Lagging Behind” Washington, DC: 2001

Reimers, Fernando. “Participation and Educational Change in Latin America” 1996 http://drclas.fas.harvard.edu/uploads/images/44/reimers.pdf

Savedoff, William D. Organization Matters: Agency Problems in Health and Education in Latin America Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 1998

Tilly, Charles. Stories, Identities, and Political Change. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002.

About the Reviewer

Christopher Chambers-Ju
The Inter-American Dialogue (PREAL)
1211 Connecticut Ave, NW, Suite 510
Washington, DC 20036

Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.

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