ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of governments in providing public services, examining the potential for working “within, against and beyond” the state, including spaces for non-state actors. It explores the different strategies for internal state reform as well as extra-state action, examining actual examples of pro-public change from different sectors and different parts of the world to demonstrate how the building of progressive, non-commercialized forms of state-led public services are possible. Conflicts between different levels of state, for various reasons, have made matters worse, confounding problems of a lack of transparency, limiting forms of accountability and creating overly bureaucratic processes and frustrated public sector employees. The chapter also focuses on an analytical framework of working “within, against and beyond” the state. As such, creating democratic, equitable and sustainable state-led public services is one part of a broad mix of resistance and change when it comes to reconstituting our public sphere.
