The co-governance of basic education: Assessing the complementary effects of intergovernmental support, municipal capacity, non-governmental organization presence and international development assistance

Ensuring equitable local service delivery requires sustained investments that are often beyond the reach of local governments in poor countries. In many developing countries, access to basic education is achieved primarily through the complementary efforts of state, municipal, non-governmental and international development agencies — what I call the complementary “quartet” of service delivery. While the current literature acknowledges the individual roles of this “quartet,” it has not given much attention to the influence of their complementary efforts on access and quality of education outcomes. Using a unique (2013–2015) dataset of 260 Ghanaian municipalities in a cross-sectional pooled regression analysis, the study finds that state assistance has broader influence on both access and quality of education outcomes, while municipal capacity, international development assistance and the presence of education focused non-governmental organizations are associated with access (enrollment).