Decentralization and the Provision of Public Services: A Case Study of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

The effective provision of public services is integral to a functioning democracy as it connects the public to the government and grants it legitimacy. Public services are ones that are provided by the federal and local governments and paid for with constituent taxes. Public services provided by the state are education, health, water/sanitation, environmental measures, security, policing, labor and legal guidelines and so on. Whether the structure of the government is centralized or decentralized is an important factor which impacts the provision of services. Decentralized governments are state or local governments which receive monetary and institutional resources from the federal government. Previous research has shown that decentralized services are more effectively delivered than centralized services. My study examines the impact of decentralization on the provision of two services, health and education, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from 2008-2018. There are two parts to the study. First, I will use process tracing to portray the historical context of decentralization in conjunction with sociopolitical factors of the region of KP. The second part observes the impact of decentralization on the health and education services. In this inductive study, I expect to find a positive impact of decentralization on the provision of services