This paper studies mid-level bureaucracies: organisations operating between national and street levels that are commonly tasked with implementation of sector plans. We examine how these bureaucracies approach policy implementation, how they perform, and the relationship between the two. Our data come from a nationally representative survey of 174 Ghanaian district education offices (and six schools within each of these districts for triangulation), together with a more detailed survey of 1,261 schools in the north of Ghana.

We document substantial variation in how district education offices approach policy implementation and their performance (conceptualised in terms of effort by office staff, direct office outputs, and indirect outputs at the frontline). We then show that our management index—a measure of organisational approach to implementation across four delivery functions—is positively associated with performance. Not all of the delivery functions matter equally. Our descriptive evidence points toward benefits from problem-solving practices over top-down accountability, raising policy considerations for Ghana’s current delivery approach and beyond.