From long-term qualitative research this paper argues that Chhattisgarh's decentralised mechanisms in implementation of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) foster increased stake of local communities and local politics, and that these work to enhance accountability and programme quality. A larger number of actors with financial interests in the scheme at the level of the sub-block ICDS 'sector' and down to the village leads to wider distribution of financial gains from delivery of ICDS Services, thereby increasing local competition and political interest from lower tiers of governance. Decentralised mechanisms work to enhance checks and balances via formal and informal routes to governance and accountability. Chhattisgarh's ICDS represents a 'hybrid model' between the short and long routes to accountability. While competing interests from local politics and institutions of governance work to improve ICDS accountability, they also work to appropriate the programme for political gain, or unfairly target ICDS workers. The paper unpacks mechanisms by which local politics relate with decentralised prescriptions in ICDS implementation. It gives the decentralised mechanisms a qualified two cheers.
This paper calls for integrating price-setting power and related uneven exposure to price risks into the analysis of governance in global value chains (GVCs) as it adds to other power dimensions in producing unequal distributional outcomes. This is shown for the cocoa GVC, in which-unlike in today's mostly liberalised market structures-the world's top cocoa-producing countries, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, pursue price stabilisation measures. These measures address intra-seasonal producer price volatility, and recent collaboration has achieved a living-income differential on top of export prices, but such measures do not shield export and producer prices from inter-seasonal variations in world prices determined on commodity derivatives markets. Based on interviews with actors along the cocoa GVC, we argue that this is related to the price-setting power of 'grinder-traders' and the key role of financial hedging and trading on commodity derivatives markets in their business strategies. Financialisation processes have increased derivatives trading's complexity and short-termism, accelerating consolidation among grinder-traders and making price stabilisation more challenging. Through their price stabilisation systems, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana have maintained some price-setting power in the cocoa GVC, but largely remain 'global price-takers', with prices determined on derivatives markets and transmitted along the cocoa GVC through grinder-traders.
Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41287-022-00543-z.
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