Management and performance in mid-level bureaucracies: evidence from Ghanaian education districts

This paper studies mid-level bureaucracies: organizations operating between national
and street levels that are commonly tasked with implementation of sector plans. We
examine how these bureaucracies approach policy implementation, how they perform,
and the relationship between the two. Our data come from a nationally representative
survey of 174 Ghanaian district education offices (and six schools within each of these
districts for triangulation), together with a more detailed survey of 1,261 schools in
the north of Ghana. We document substantial variation in how district education offices
approach policy implementation and their performance (conceptualized in terms of effort
by office staff, direct office outputs, and indirect outputs at the frontline). We then show
that our management index—a measure of organizational approach to implementation
across four delivery functions—is positively associated with performance. Not all of the
delivery functions matter equally. Our descriptive evidence points toward benefits from
problem-solving practices over top-down accountability, raising policy considerations for
Ghana’s current delivery approach and beyond.