Navigating welfare regimes in divided societies: Diversity and the quality of service delivery in Lebanon

In many developing countries, non-state actors, including those with religious or political affiliations, provide basic social services. Do politicized ethnoreligious divisions shape citizen choices of providers? Does service quality vary when patients visit ingroup or outgroup facilities? Building on studies of the “diversity deficit” and on outgroup generosity, we focus on how the relationship between frontline service providers and citizens affects the quality of services. Among facilities run by sectarian organizations, citizens largely select into ingroup providers, and report distinct reasons for the rare instances of choosing outgroup versus ingroup centers. Furthermore, when visiting outgroup facilities, service quality is inferior. Preliminary evidence indicates that shared social networks, which facilitate informal mechanisms of accountability, may account for the ingroup advantage. The data are derived from original surveys of a nationally representative sample of health centers in Lebanon, a country with politicized identity cleavages and diverse types of welfare providers.