Paper short abstract:

The paper describes the implementation of the CT-OVC in three Kenyan counties that evolve between 'formal' and 'informal' institutions and processes. These hybrid delivery structures are not always dysfunctional to effective delivery, but have important complementing and substituting functions.

Paper long abstract:

This paper questions the general assumption that pro-poor social policies - once an operational structure have been designed and guidelines for its implementation developed - are implemented evenly across geographic and political entities. Instead, a re-interpretation and adaption of operations and institutions delivering them is taking place, as they become enmeshed into the local political and institutional context. Describing the dynamic interplay of formal operational structures and institutions and traditional authorities as their informal counterpart in delivering the CT-OVC - the largest and oldest cash transfer programme in Kenya - we argue for the need to look more closely into local political economics as an important mediating arena for implementing social policies. While technical constraints play a role, such as limited human and financial capacity, implementation is heavily contingent upon the local social and political context that influence and shape its outcomes. Rather than making a static assessment of these institutional factors as either functional or dysfunctional in delivering effective social assistance programmes for the very poor, the article argues for an understanding of institutionalization processes as a highly dynamic and ambivalent interplay that evolves between 'formal' programme structures and 'informal' power structures and institutions. While programmes seem to settle into these local power-constellations, the institutionalization of programmes over time appears to create a new institutional equilibrium in which 'formal' rules and regulations are getting engrained and differentiate themselves out as separate autonomous structures