Working with the politics: how to improve public services for the poor

The post-2015 dialogue is an opportunity to develop a practical agenda that will ensure that the principle of ‘leaving no one behind’ translates into concrete changes for the delivery of essential services to the poor. Such an agenda must recognise that both institutional capacity and politics matter for the more equitable delivery of these services. There is no blueprint for this, but evidence from ODI and others points to the need to adopt more grounded, flexible and innovative service-delivery frameworks, which will also require changes to donors’ own models.