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Social services
(2021)
People are usually exposed to multiple economic and social risks, including discrimination, abuse, violence and social exclusion. While material support has a positive impact on the reduction of social risks and aspects of exclusion (WHO 2019), some situations require concrete, personal and guiding support on an individual basis. This type of service is commonly referred to as social services (Trukeschitz 2006).
With the roll out of social protection programmes to national scale, questions about implementation and delivery move more and more into the centre of debate (e.g. UNDP 2020; UNDP and UNCDF 2014; Kramon 2019). This concerns in particular the local level, where key processes of implementation are taking place, but where at the same time institutional, operational and financial capacities are often the weakest. While social protection programmes are usually based on a clearly defined set of operational rules and regulations – usually set out in a programme manual – in practice these processes often tend to look quite different. Although many social protection programmes have explicitly excluded traditional authorities from playing an active role in programme delivery, there is ample evidence from across countries that in many local contexts, these ‘informal institutions’ continue to play an important role in the delivery of social protection programmes.
The article contributes to understanding the political economy of implementation of social protection programmes at local level. Current debates are dominated by technocratic arguments, emphasizing the lack of financial resources, technology or skills as major barriers for effective implementation. Describing how chiefs, assistant-chiefs and community elders are routinely at the centre stage of core implementation processes, including targeting, enrolment, delivery, monitoring, awareness and information, data collection or grievance and redress, this study on Kenya argues for the need to look more closely into the local political economy as an important mediating arena for implementing social policies. Implementation is heavily contingent upon the local social, political and institutional context that influences and shapes its outcomes. These processes are ambivalent involving multiple forms of interactions between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ institutional structures, which may support initial policy objectives or induce policy outcomes substantially diverging from intended policy objectives.