Institutional Change and the Delivery of Urban Public Services.

Problems associated with providing efficient and equitable distribution of public services are attributable in part to the inabilities of government or other public institutions to be responsive to requirements of their clientele. To permit a better understanding of the nature of such institutional failures, and to suggest avenues of effective reform, this paper views institutional systems of service provision in a "control systems" framework. In this perspective, the elements of "feedback" are seen as essential to successful system performance over time and changing conditions. The paper identifies the kinds of "error signals" a system needs to generate, and the types of "corrective mechanisms" that it may employ, and then discusses three basic modes of institutional reform-performance evaluation, decentralization, and market competition-for improving the dynamic capability of systems of providing urban public services. Two service areas-sanitation and criminal corrections-are used for illustrating possible applications of the reform strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]