Connecting Communities to the Nation: Review of the Relationships between Local Communities and National Policy Systems

The framework outlined reflects the realities of service delivery for the purposes of research and to assist practitioners to reflect on their policy context. The evidence indicates that service delivery remains predominantly vertical, connecting the centre and the locality, while the recently much touted horizontal, 'cross-cutting' links across services remain underdeveloped. The framework hinges on the key point that local discretion must be understood as a function not only of the freedom enjoyed by those within a service delivery chain but also of their ability to influence national policies which determine how those chains work. The framework has three components:
(1) service delivery chains are characterised by tensions over how problems should be defined or understood, how specific policy frameworks should be and how (and why) providers are subject to multiple, and often competing, accountabilities. These chains are also associated with:
(2) mechanisms of representation which refer to the ways in which some stakeholders are recognised as 'representative' and formally integrated in the policy process, and others excluded, and by
(3) routes to influence which are available to those seeking to influence the policy settings and operation of the chain, or even resist change.