Cleaning up and invigorating the civil service

Reliable quantitative estimates are not available of: (1) the quality of civil service performance and changes therein as the result of development projects, or (2) the importance of civil service performance for various development outcomes. Nonetheless, anecdotal evidence indicates that in some countries government performance has indeed collapsed, with calamitous effects on development. Although poor government performance is theoretically overdetermined—there are many possible causes, which we cannot disentangle in practice—a plausible story can be told based on institutional economics, using such concepts as information, incentives, and credible commitment. This version of both problems and solutions is supported by examples of successful reforms. The article argues that “institutional adjustment’ deserves more consideration as a basis for reforms. Two practical examples are discussed in some detail: improving incentives in the public sector and strategies to combat corruption. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does corruption suppress voter turnout?*

This paper investigates to what extent voters’ perceptions of political corruption affect turnout. In previous research, two opposing views are put forward with regards to the relationship between corruption and turnout. On the one hand, corruption increases turnout because voters either are bought off to participate or because they are mobilized on clean government issues. On the other hand, corruption decreases turnout because presence of corruption corrodes the political system which leads to general cynicism, distrust and voter apathy. In this paper, we contribute to the existing research by adopting a multi-level approach to the relationship between corruption and turnout. We test the hypothesis that voters’ perceptions of corruption dampens turnout but that the effect is conditional upon the corruption context. We test our hypothesis by combining individual-level data and country-level data from 26 countries from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and country-level data from the Quality of Government Data Set. The findings show that perceiving corruption negatively affects turnout, but only in countries with low to medium levels of system corruption.     

A Topography of Civil Service Laws

ABSTRACT

We offer a comparative study of the differences in civil service laws across countries in order to observe how these systems relate to one another. We compare the civil service laws of 26 countries from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and eight non-OECD countries from Central and Eastern Europe to identify how different configurations of civil service systems are revealed through their shared attributes. Our data are drawn from the contents of civil service legislation and the status of those civil servants covered by the civil service laws of these countries. We use cluster analysis to identify several groups of countries whose civil service systems share similar features. We find that the estimated topography, or similarity among systems, depends on both subjective decisions about the number of groups and the variables used to estimate the space. However, we draw key conclusions about the value of certain cases, like the United States, for learning about other systems, and the need for expanded knowledge of systems from Central and Eastern Europe.     

Corruption in the Eye of the Beholder: Survey Evidence from Mainland China and Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

This article explores how and to what extent people differ in their level of tolerance for corruption and why some people show a stronger propensity to counter corruption actively, while others seem more willing to accept it. We draw on the original data collected from a survey on perceptions of corruption among university students in Hong Kong and Mainland China to answer these questions. The respondents’ perceptions of corruption are measured by how they identify corruption, understand its causes, and interpret the consequences it may bring to society. Our empirical findings show substantial differences in perceptions of corruption across and within the two regions and also reveal a strong association between the way people perceive corruption and their level of tolerance for corruption and propensity to act against it. We see that, other things being equal, different perceptions of corruption lead to different tolerance levels for corruption and influence people's willingness to take part in the fight against corruption. Our findings also suggest that it is important to address the deficit in people's understanding of corruption in order to achieve desired anti-corruption effects.     

So far so good? Tracking the poverty eradication goal of SDGs in Kenya,Nigeria, and South Africa

This paper tracks the progress of the Sustainable Development Goals in selected countries in sub‐Saharan Africa, namely, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. The study assesses economic indices such as GDP growth, employment, and poverty rate of each country to understand the present performance of these countries and the feasibility of it attaining the first goal of the Sustainable Development Goals. Considering the current economic outlook and trajectory of these countries, eradicating poverty in 2030 is highly unlikely, unless drastic measures are taken. GDP growth in Kenya is currently low, whereas the poverty and the unemployment rate are very high. Nigeria still battles with economic recovery following the recession since 2016 and a soaring poverty level. Equally, South Africa is saddled with the problem of rising poverty, unemployment, and corruption. The study recommends that cooperation between government, civil society, and the private sector needs to be drastically improved and promptly to meet the poverty eradication goal by 2030.     

Who Will Be the “Principled‐Principals”? Perceptions of Corruption and Willingness to Engage in Anticorruption Activism

Many anticorruption campaigns aim to encourage citizens to demand better control over corruption. Recent literature suggests that perceived high levels of corruption and government effectiveness in controlling corruption will limit citizens' willingness to actively oppose corruption. Using Transparency International's 2013 Global Corruption Barometer, we test these ideas across a 71‐country sample. We find that perceived government effectiveness tends to encourage anticorruption civic action, while perceptions of corruption being widespread tend to have the opposite impact in non‐OECD countries. Our analyses also suggest that the interaction between these perceptions is important; we find that, especially among those who perceive that the level of corruption is high, when confidence in the government's efforts grows, so does their willingness fight corruption.     

Testing the Influence of Autocratic Leadership,Democratic Leadership,and Public Service Motivation on Citizen Ratings of An Agency Head’s Performance

Abstract

Research is lacking concerning the impact of leadership styles on citizen attitudes toward the performance of government leaders. To address this gap, an online experimental survey was conducted to determine the effect of leadership styles on respondents’ perceptions regarding a fictitious superintendent’s performance in a school district. The results demonstrate that democratic leadership practices enhanced the performance reviews of the superintendent, while autocratic leadership practices decreased them. Respondents’ level of public service motivation (PSM) was also found to have a positive effect on the superintendent’s performance ratings. Furthermore, democratic leadership style moderated the relationship between PSM and the performance ratings assigned by respondents. In particular, individuals with high PSM rated the performance of democratic leaders higher as compared to individuals with low PSM. However, autocratic leadership was not found to moderate the relationship between PSM and the superintendent’s performance. These results are thoroughly discussed in the paper.     

DANGER ZONES OF CORRUPTION: HOW MANAGEMENT OF THE MINISTERIAL BUREAUCRACY AFFECTS CORRUPTION RISKS IN POLAND

This article examines the relationship between management of the ministerial bureaucracy and the risk of high‐level corruption in Poland. Four danger zones of corruption in the ministerial bureaucracy are distinguished, comprising the personalisation of appointments, the emergence of multiple dependencies, the screening capacity of the personnel system and the incentive of bureaucrats to develop a reputation of honesty and competence. Empirically, the article investigates the case of Poland from 1997 until 2007 and sets the findings in a comparative East Central European perspective. The article shows that corruption risks in the ministerial bureaucracy increased in most but not all danger zones after 2001 and, in particular, during the period of the centre‐right governments that were in office between 2005 and 2007. The increase in corruption risks is reflected in Poland's deteriorating corruption record during the same period. The conclusion discusses the findings with regard to alternative causes of corruption and the relationship between civil service professionalisation and corruption in other East Central European countries. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Downsizing the civil service in developing countries: the golden handshake option revisited

In recent years, more and more calls are being heard in a growing number of developing countries to downsize their civil services. It is argued that downsizing is needed because of the increasing shortfalls in government recurrent and development budgets. This situation results in underutilized, underfunded staff and often in the siphoning-off of donor funds in the development budget for recurrent expenditure. The main problems addressed in this article are why should and how can the civil service in developing countries be downsized. The questions of how much to trim the bureaucracy and how to redeploy redundant public servants in the private sector are also addressed. The article examines alternative strategies for significantly downsizing the civil service. It is contended that problems in this area are indeed common to many developing countries. Various golden handshake options for civil service leavers receive particular attention. It is suggested that economic jumpstart is a better term than golden handshake to characterize the incentives package offered to induce staff to accept voluntary redundancy. Civil service reform is not presented here as a panacea for all developing countries' ills. The article makes a number of mostly untried but nevertheless attractive suggestions that bring some fresh thinking to bear on a difficult issue. Paths and avenues worth exploring when starting to design civil service trimming operations are presented, including some of their limitations. The point is finally made that this type of downsizing is overdue in many places. The article should be considered as a contribution to demystifying the process of downsizing the civil service in developing countries. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distance,services, and citizen perceptions of the state in rural Africa

In most poor countries, basic services in rural areas are less accessible and of lower quality than those in urban settings. In this article, we investigate the subnational geography of service delivery and its relationship with citizens' perceptions of their government by analyzing the relationship between service access, satisfaction with services and government, and the distance to urban centers for more than 21,000 survey respondents across 17 African countries. We confirm that access to services and service satisfaction suffer from a spatial gradient. However, distant citizens are less likely than their urban peers to translate service dissatisfaction into discontent with their government; distant citizens have more trust in government and more positive evaluations of both local and national officials. Our findings suggest that increasing responsiveness and accountability to citizens as a means of improving remote rural services may face more limits than promoters of democratic governance and citizen‐centered accountability presume.     

Corruption, Political Allegiances, and Attitudes Toward Government in Contemporary Democracies

Using surveys conducted in sixteen mature and newly established democracies around the globe, this study examines the effect of corruption on people's attitudes toward government. The analysis demonstrates that citizens in countries with higher levels of corruption express more negative evaluations of the performance of the political system and exhibit lower levels of trust in civil servants. However, the results also show that the negative effect of corruption on evaluations of the political system is significantly attenuated among supporters of the incumbent political authorities. These findings provide strong and systematic evidence that informal political practices, especially those that compromise important democratic principles, should be considered important indicators of political system performance. Moreover, they imply that, while corruption is a powerful determinant of political support across widely varying political, cultural, and economic contexts, it does not uniformly diminish support for political institutions across all segments of the electorate.     

Public Financial Management Systems and Countries' Governance: A Cross‐Country Study

The objective of this study is to explore whether a relationship exists between public financial management (PFM) systems and expert perceptions of countries' governance in an international cross‐country study. We examine the extent to which variations in accounting, budgeting and auditing practices are associated with governance in a sample of 97 countries that represent different levels of development, analysing the differences between countries classified into factor, efficiency and innovation‐driven economies. Our concept of governance perception includes three dimensions: accountability, government effectiveness and corruption. We find that countries with a higher level of economic development show, on average, more sophisticated PFM systems characterized by the presentation of accrual‐based financial statements, the application of value for money audits and higher budget transparency. When analysing the sub‐samples of countries according to the level of economic development, we find that countries with similar governance perception scores show different patterns of PFM practices, suggesting that there is no one‐size‐fits‐all approach. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effectiveness of Administrative Reform in New Democracies

Practitioners and scholars of postcommunist politics disagree on the accomplishments of administrative reforms in new Eastern European democracies. The transformation of the public sector after 1989 has aimed to consolidate the democratic process and enhance economic development. Skeptics, however, argue that administrative reforms face serious challenges in the context of economic liberalization, insufficient capacity for modernization, and cultural legacies of the past. The authors judge reform effectiveness by testing the impact of civil service reform on government transparency and foreign direct investment. The results of the empirical analysis confirm that once reform is adopted, administrations become more effective at reducing corruption and attracting investment. Despite the delays and difficulties of implementation, the adoption of reform is important in and of itself, and countries can expect positive results sooner than skeptics predict.     

Awareness of Corruption in the Community and Public Service: a Victorian Study

Corruption hurts the public and undermines government. This study of perceptions of corruption in Victoria shows that the community believes corruption is on the increase, yet this view is not shared by public servants. In general corruption is not on the radar of senior Victorian public servants. There are more perceptions of corruption in line agencies than in central agencies. Behaviours most commonly suspected and observed were hiring family and friends, conflict of interest, abuse of discretion and abuse of information. One‐ third of public servants surveyed thought there were opportunities for bribery, yet only 4% had suspected bribery and less than one per cent had personally observed it. Almost half do not believe they would be protected from victimisation should they report corruption. The data reported here poses challenges in thinking about corruption when devising integrity standards in the public service.     

论构筑反腐败的制度平台

中国目前正处于从单一的以政府为中心的治理结构向多中心的、自主的治理结构的转变过程之中。中国目前许多腐败形式的流行,都与转型期治理结构的某些过渡性特征有着密切的关系。推进治理结构的变革,建立政治国家-市场经济-公民社会分工合作的新型治理结构,乃是构筑反腐败制度平台的重要举措。为此要求深化以市场化、民营化、分权化、自治化、网络化为基本面向的反腐败体制改革,同时要求市场经济和公民社会的各类主体共同参与到反腐败过程中来。     

Weak civil society in a hard state: Lessons from Africa

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of civil society in Botswana within the broader context of the state–civil society dynamic in Africa. It is argued that, like other countries in Africa, civil society in Botswana is rather weak. Conversely, unlike other countries in Africa, a weak civil society is accompanied by a hard state. Thanks to wise leadership, Botswana has experienced remarkable economic growth rates and significant improvements in human development over a period of about four decades. Botswana is also considered a ‘shining liberal democracy’, with elections held every five years, an independent judiciary system, and low levels of corruption. Yet it has been a democratic system with a weak civil society. Four main reasons are provided: first, the political culture makes it difficult to question authority; second, it is arduous to mobilize citizens because of the culture of dependency created by the clientelistic state; third, the Government has for a long time denied—and still does—the role of civil society as a legitimate player in the development process; fourth, civil society is not a cohesive group and lacks funds, especially the advocacy groups.     

Transparency and corruption: Measuring real transparency by a new index

Despite the salience of transparency in policy and democracy debates a global measurement of transparency has always been missing. In its absence, measuring the impact of transparency on accountability and corruption for a large number of countries has been difficult, with scholars using more or less adequate proxies. This paper introduces a new measurement of real transparency—the T-index—using 14 de facto components, based on direct observations of official websites in 129 countries and five de jure components, based on the transparency laws and conventions adopted. The resulting index is a measurement with very good internal and external validity and moderate precision. The paper argues that de facto transparency must be considered alongside de jure (legal) transparency if we are to judge the impact (or lack of) transparency against accountability and corruption, as a large implementation gap exists, in particular in poor countries, between legal commitments and real transparency. The T-index has significant impact on both perception and objective indicators of corruption, including perceived change in corruption over time as measured by the Global Corruption Barometer. An analysis of outliers shows that high transparency alone is not sufficient to achieve control of corruption, especially in countries with low human development and poor rule of law, although transparency is a robust predictor of corruption with GDP controls. The data with all sources is available for download as T-index 2022 dataset: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.7225627 and an interactive webpage developed for updates is available at www.corruptionrisk.org/transparency .     

Rejecting refugees in illiberal Poland: The response from civil society

ABSTRACT

Since 2015, the European Union and its members have been responding to the increased arrivals of migrants and refugees at Europe’s southern shores. The states and societies of East and Central Europe are rarely discussed in this context. Even though their governments support the overall EU policy objectives in the area of freedom, security and justice, they vocally refused to participate in EU ‘burden sharing’. In this way these countries earned the label of uniquely xenophobic. This article seeks to complicate this perception by highlighting how civil society in Poland responded to the right-wing Polish government’s anti-refugee stance. Through the lens of Aronoff and Kubik’s concept of Legal Transparent Civil Society (LTCS) the author examine the evolving relationship between the ruling Law and Justice party and civil society organizations, proposing that activities for the benefit of refugees offer an insight into the transformation of civil society in the emerging illiberal political system.     

An empirical approach to the optimal size of the civil service

This article attempts a purely empirical approach to the issue of optimal civil service size by looking for a systematic relationship between observed size and underlying explanators. The residuals from such a fitted relationship then serve as a first approximation to whether the government in question is overstaffed or not. The data are from Indian subnational states, which as members of a single federation, follow the same definitional conventions with respect to the civil service. The contribution of the article is methodological, and addresses an issue of central importance, since staff downsizing conditionalities attached to externally funded structural adjustment programmes are not analytically underpinned. The article also explores issues surrounding the composition of the civil service. There is no evidence that overstaffing, as determined from the residuals of the estimated specification, is the joint outcome along with staff composition, as proxied by mean salary, of job creation pressures at the lower salary scales. This suggests that correction of overstaffing might be possible without political opposition, while at the same time leaving unexplained the variation in staff composition across states. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Decentralisation and corruption: evidence from drinking water sector

This article presents empirical findings regarding the relationship between decentralisation of provision of water supply and corruption in provision of services. The current policy advice from the international agencies of aiming for decentralisation as an end in itself is questioned. The conventional wisdom that decentralisation brings management closer to the service recipients and is therefore likely to reduce corruption is also disputed. Drawing on a large database from two large Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the interaction between various actors is analysed. We find that the level of corruption in water supply agencies run by local governments is higher than that in the agencies run by the regional government. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.