There was little that united South Africans at the dawn of their democratic transition, but if there was anything – other than the desire to avert a civil war – it would have been a yearning for political accountability and service delivery. South Africans may have meant different things by these terms, but there was nevertheless a general desire across racial, class and gender divides for a political elite and a state that would be responsive to the needs of its citizens. Yet, by 2013, public opinion across the breadth of the political spectrum concurred that there was both a lack of accountability and a general shortfall in service delivery in South Africa. How did this come to pass?

Much of the debate about these issues has focused on institutional design and the quality of the country's human resources. Thus, since 1994, state officials have regularly redesigned state institutions and the relations between them, with a view to enhancing their effectiveness (Presidential Review Commission, 1998; Swilling et al., 2008). Poorly trained officials have been blamed for the inefficiencies and training and development programmes have thus been introduced (Fraser-Moleketi, 2002). Critics of government have condemned the ruling party's policies of cadre deployment and affirmative action for leading to the appointment of inappropriately skilled personnel and bloated administrative systems (Democratic Alliance, 2012b; The Economist, 3 June 2010). The ruling party's allies have commented on these issues too – see, for example, the call by Zwelinzima Vavi, the general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), for the scrapping of the country's provinces (Business Day, 21 December 2011; Paton, 2012).

But, while institutional design is important, it alone cannot account for the malaise affecting South Africa's governance and political landscape. After all, societies with similar institutional and governance frameworks have fundamentally different service delivery and accountability outcomes. Federal Germany, for example, is far more accountable and efficient than federal Nigeria. Similarly, unitary Britain is more accountable and efficient than federal Nigeria. Clearly, therefore, it is necessary to look beyond institutional design to understand the variety of governance and political outcomes in different societies. Comparisons can be useful, but they cannot replace an understanding of a particular social context and an investigation of how this affects the performance of institutions, individuals and state officials.