This ambitious and insightful book provides a unique regional perspective on health policy across South Asia, focusing on how the decentralization of policy and governance leads to differing health outcomes across different countries in the region. Comparing the contexts and outcomes in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, the book asks how power sharing arrangements between central and subnational layers of government nevertheless result in varying levels of success across issues such as infant and under-five mortality rates. The book argues that it is the role of central government in formulating policy, and how this feeds into regional implementation, that partly explains the disparities in health outcomes across the region. The book will interest students and scholars of South Asia politics, global health and health policy more generally.

South Asia is a region of contrasts, with impressive technological achievements but also more than 40 percent of the world's poor. These contrasts are evident in the health sector, which demonstrates large variations in health, nutrition, and fertility outcomes.'Health Policy Research in South Asia' showcases some of the innovative qualitative and quantitative research methodologies being used in South Asia to provide empirical guidance for health sector reform and policy development. The four research areas presented are analysis of inequality, expenditure analysis, private sector analysis, and consumer and provider perspectives.Salient themes emerge from the 12 health policy research activities reviewed and emphasize the importance of strengthening local capacity and building ownership: • Governments can and should distribute subsidies in the health sector more efficiently and effectively. • The private sector, which dominates service delivery in most of South Asia, requires a different set of public sector policy instruments. • Informed consumers/citizens can and should play an important role in influencing health service delivery. • Empirical research can and should provide policymakers with some of the tools needed to improve and monitor the performance of the sector. This book will be of interest to health sector policymakers and analysts, to academics and students in public health and health economics, and to anyone with an interest in the impact ofhealth policy on development.

This volume examines the myriad factors responsible for the poor state of the health sector in South Asia. It blends theoretical critiques of health sector reforms with micro and macro data to offer insights into issues of public health.

"This book describes the transition in Indian healthcare system since independence and contributes to the ongoing debate within development and institutional economics on the approaches towards reform in the public health system. The institutional reform perspective focuses on examining the effective utilisation of allotted resources and improvements in delivery through decentralisation in governance by ensuring higher participation of elected governments and local communities in politics, policymaking and delivery of health services. It discusses the economic (resource) reforms to explain the relevance and expansion of state interventionism along with its influence on the health sector, accountability and allocative efficiency. The author also explores the connections between neoliberal thought and privatisation in health sector, and examines the greater role of insurance-based financing and their implications for health service access and delivery. The book offers ways to address long-standing systemic and structural problems that confront the Indian healthcare system. Based on large-scale surveys and diverse empirical data on the Indian economy, this book will be of great interest to researchers, students and teachers of health economics, governance and institutional economics, political economy, sociology, public policy, regional studies and development studies. This will be useful to policymakers, health economists, social scientists, public health experts and professionals, and government and nongovernment institutions"--

This is a study of issues in good governance in South Asia, viz. in the countries of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. The focus is on the interconnections between governance, decentralization (of authority and decision making) and poverty eradication. The book submits a stratagem to turn South Asia's greatest handicap, poverty, into a source of strength, in which the poor contribute directly to growth. The key to this pro-poor growth strategy, according to the authors, is community mobilization through social movements and non-governmental development initiatives. The book is divided into three parts, the conceptual framework, illustrative case studies and lessons for macro/microeconomic policy. Part I critically evaluates conventional developmental thinking and suggests the outline of an alternative pro-poor developmental strategy. Part II, the backbone of the volume, is a collection of six case studies from selected locations in south Asia, covering both rural and urban experiences. Part III draws lessons from these studies for a value-driven policy with both short-term and long-term implications. The book is a first of its kind, examining in-depth issues of vital importance to the development of the South Asian region. The importance of this volume lies in the synthesized lessons for policy and implementation drawn from cases where new ground has been broken in the conceptualization of social mobilization and pro-poor growth.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the question of local governance and inter-governmental coordination to the centre of public administration. There is a general feeling across the world that the local government space is critical in managing pandemics. This volume is a collection of articles on the experiences of the local governments in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the focus is on South Asia, especially India, it also provides perspectives on Europe, Africa and Latin America. The book will appeal to researchers, policy makers and practitioners who are interested in the interface between public health and local governance, particularly during emergencies. It also provides clues about the design of sustainable policy and governance, including the type of intergovernmental relations that should emerge in the post-COVID situation.

Exploring the capacity and impact of decentralization within European health care systems, this book examines both the theoretical underpinnings as well as practical experience with decentralization.

This book explores the important topic of fiscal decentralization in Asian countries, and focuses on how government finance and administration are being reformed to bring budgetary decisions closer to voters. The focus on Asia is especially important because all countries in this region have been undergoing serious fiscal reforms in the past decade. They include one of the biggest decentralization reforms in Indonesia, significant reforms in democratic Philippines and Vietnam which are in transition, and Japan, whose fiscal reconstruction program is covered extensively. India and China, which are also covered, are very special cases because of their size and because their policies must fit decentralization into a significant economic growth scenario.

Indonesia over the past two decades has embarked on a process of decentralization as part of a broader process of democratization, which followed earlier periods of centralized governance and authoritarian rule across the archipelago. The purpose of this book is to begin to explore the connections between governance and sustainable society in a wide variety of policy fields in Indonesia, and how reforming governance structures may contribute to societal benefits and the creation of a long-term sustainable society. This book bridges important theoretical debates related to governance and sustainable society and provides empirical research from Indonesia in important policy areas related to this debate. By placing research in different policy areas in a single volume, the link to the broader concepts of governance, decentralization, and societal outcomes is strengthened. The book builds on the recent interest that has focused on Indonesia and the continued development of democracy in the country. The chapters in the book show a rich variety of decentralized governance arrangements and capacity building at the local level in particular. Central standards (for example for social sustainability, anti-corruption arrangements, or for dealing with direct foreign investment), combined with local innovation (for example for municipal coordination of primary health care or metropolitan transport), are key to Indonesia as a country in a continuing process of transformation. We identify three key trends in the on-going process of decentralization and governance in Indonesia. First, we find that formal governance, the relation between the national and local government, is characterized by a system of ‘variable geometry multi-level governance’ depending on the policy area. The challenge ahead is strengthening accountability mechanisms to assure national standards while preserving and encouraging local innovation. Secondly, informal governance mechanisms are evolving to move from ‘hierarchical to network’ forms of governance. Here the challenge is to insure democratic input by citizens and civil society organizations. Finally, we identify a trend toward ‘shared value creation and sustainable cooperation.’ Indonesia is beginning to move from a rather singular policy focus on economic growth to a more complex and developing notion of policymaking for inclusive growth and the creation of a sustainable society for present and future generations. Here the challenge is sound implementation and to increase the effectiveness of governance mechanisms. There is also a noted diffusion of goals, to focus beyond the Jakarta metropolitan area to smaller regional cities, as urbanization continues and rural areas are changing. This book will be of interest for use in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses related to Southeast Asia in the fields of international relations, political science, public administration, economics, law, sociology, educa tion, public health, and the spatial sciences. It will also be of interest to policymakers and government officials at the national and local level in Southeast Asia and middle-income developing countries, officials and policymakers in institutions of regional governance such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and of global governance such as the United Nations and World Bank. It will also be of interest to civil society organizations and other actors focused on policy development and economic development, health, education, the environment, sustainable transport, etc. The book will also be of interest to business people interested in economic and governance issues, such as the management and governance of in-bound foreign investment, inclusive growth, and corporate governance. Finally, the book should be of interest to citizens in advanced, middle-income, and developing countries motivated to learn more about the links between governance and the creation of a sustainable society for current and future generations.