The challenges of poverty worldwide have led to a growing focus on public delivery. When delivery fails, it is assumed that the key strategy for improvement is manipulation of existing processes, better institutions or more efficient management. This is partly because the dominant model for understanding delivery assumes that given a number of inputs, a specific output can be expected. This article explores how delivery came to be understood as a politically neutral process and the impact these understandings have had in post-apartheid South Africa. It argues that a different, more contextual and political, conceptualisation of delivery, which learns from and builds off what works, is needed in contexts that are unequal and underdeveloped.
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