Understanding the Political Implications of Sector Characteristics for Health Service Delivery

The characteristics of service delivery sectors help explain the different types of political dynamics these sectors attract, even within a single national context. This helps explain variation in accountability, collective action and, ultimately, performance.Within the health sector, the impact of these characteristics can vary in important ways depending on the service involved. This helps explain key differences between curative and preventative health; critical and chronic care; and other important subtypes. Applied to specific health service delivery activities, the characteristics complement analysis of contextual features to provide an analytical framework that can help governance and sector specialists go beyond technical design approaches to understand and unlock the underlying incentives for different actors.