title: Addressing governance challenges in the provision of animal health services: A review of the literature and empirical application transaction cost theory.
abstract: Providing adequate animal health services to smallholder farmers in developing countries has remained a challenge, in spite of various reform efforts during the past decades. The focuses of the past reforms were on market failures to decide what the public sector, the private sector, and the "third sector" (the community-based sector) should do with regard to providing animal health services. However, such frameworks have paid limited attention to the governance challenges inherent in the provision of animal health services. This paper presents a framework for analyzing institutional arrangements for providing animal health services that focus not only on market failures, but also on governance challenges, such as elite capture, and absenteeism of staff. As an analytical basis, Williamson's discriminating alignment hypothesis is applied to assess the cost-effectiveness of different institutional arrangements for animal health services in view of both market failures and governance challenges. This framework is used to generate testable hypotheses on the appropriateness of different institutional arrangements for providing animal health services, depending on context-specific circumstances. Data from Uganda and Kenya on clinical veterinary services is used to provide an empirical test of these hypotheses and to demonstrate application of Williamson's transaction cost theory to veterinary service delivery. The paper concludes that strong public sector involvement, especially in building and strengthening a synergistic relation-based referral arrangement between paraprofessionals and veterinarians is imperative in improving animal health service delivery in developing countries.
authors.affiliation: University of Hohenheim, Institute of Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences in the Tropics and Subtropics, Germany; CGIAR Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC) Secretariat- FAO Rome, Italy; Makerere University Business School, Uganda. Electronic address: john.ilukor@gmail.com.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ilukor
authors.affiliation: University of Hohenheim, Institute of Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences in the Tropics and Subtropics, Germany.
authors.forename: Regina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Birner
authors.affiliation: University of Hohenheim, Institute of Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences in the Tropics and Subtropics, Germany.
authors.forename: Thea
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nielsen
mesh_terms: D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000191:economics / Q000458:organization & administration; D003906:Developing Countries; D007630:Kenya; D018803:Models, Economic; D014454:Uganda; D018634:Veterinarians; D014730:Veterinary Medicine / Q000191:economics
keywords: Animal health services; Community animal health workers; Governance challenges; Institutional arrangements; Market failures; Paravets; Transaction cost economics