Elsevier

World Development

Volume 24, Issue 6, June 1996, Pages 1073-1087
World Development

Special section
Crossing the great divide: Coproduction, synergy, and development

https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-750X(96)00023-XGet rights and content

Abstract

Coproduction is a process through which inputs from individuals who are not “in” the same organization are transformed into goods and services. Two cases are presented — one from Brazil and one from Nigeria — where public officials play a major role. In Brazil, public officials actively encourage a high level of citizen input to the production of urban infrastructure. In Nigeria, public officials discourage citizen contributions to primary education. The third section of the paper provides a brief overview of the theory of coproduction and its relevance for understanding the two cases. The last section addresses the implications of coproduction in polycentric systems for synergy and development.

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    ∗

    The author wishes to thank Robert Putnam for his energetic intellectual, and entrepreneurial leadership of the Social Capital and Public Affairs Project and Peter Evans for his similarly skilled leadership of the Economic Development Working Group and for his comments on the first draft of this paper. The author is appreciative of the materials made available by, and useful comments of, N. Vijay Jagannathan of the World Bank, about condominial systems and other water user organizations; and of the time and generous help extended by many public officials and local villagers while the author was in Nigeria during the summer of 1991. Mark Granovetter and Michael Lipsky provided insightful and useful comments on earlier papers. George Varughese and Patty Dalecki both greatly improved the readability of this manuscript. Financial support from the Ford Foundation (Grant 920-0701) is gratefully acknowledged.

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