Effects of the Institutional Design of the Civil Service: Evidence from Corruption

ABSTRACT

This research tests the direct effects of civil service structure on perceptions of corruption. Numerous studies suggest a relationship between civil service structure and corruption, but few test this link. It is hypothesized that corruption depends on the presence or absence of civil service policies, including job duties, tenure and security provisions, discipline policy, and rules on rewards and bargaining rights; the impact of government wages, per capita GDP, and democratization on corruption is also assessed. These hypotheses are tested using World Bank data for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and central and eastern European countries. No statistically significant relationships between civil service structure and corruption are found; however, occasional evidence that corruption is higher in countries with higher total government wage bills was obtained. Results additionally indicate that corruption is lower in countries with higher GDP. While the conclusions presented here are largely exploratory, there is a distinct lack of evidence indicating a relationship between civil service systems and public perceptions of corruption.     

我国政策执行中的目标扭曲研究——对我国四次公务员工资改革的考察

运用案例研究的方法分析了我国四次公务员工资改革的政策执行,基于2008年和2009年的一线调研,试图运用政策执行的理论评估在公共管理文献中很重要、但被忽略的工资管理事项.回顾了我国四次公务人员工资改革的特点和问题.在此基础上,重点分析了工资管理中的欠薪问题、工资统发和激励机制问题.结论是,有依赖关系的多部门执行是政策执行走样的原因之一.另外,工资管理中给一线执行人员的自主权也过于有限.从更大的层面来分析,本文提出一个今后研究公共政策可以深入探讨的问题:成功的执行应以政策文件所表述的内容为基础,还是以公共利益为基础.提出一些政策建议:从工资管理权来看,要改变工资管理多家分享的局面; 从决策过程来看,工资改革要吸收基层公务员的意见;最后,工资作为一项人力资源管理手段,要注意内部公平和奖优罚劣的双重功能.     

Civil Service Reform—Trust on Trial

In July 2013 the UK's coalition government published “The Civil Service Reform Plan – One Year on”, reporting on progress against minister Frances Maude's objectives to shake up the civil service. This followed various reported disagreements between ministers and civil servants over policy implementation, and a research report commissioned by the government from think tank IPPR into lessons from overseas for civil service reform. This trio of short articles reviews the government's proposals from three perspectives: that of the lead author of the IPPR report, a former senior civil servant, and the chair of the House of Commons Public Administration Committee (PASC) which oversees the civil service. The authors take differing views on the proposals, which include introduction of ‘extended ministerial offices’, and greater control by ministers over choosing their civil servants. Should these be seen as useful next steps, worrying developments, and/or large and important enough to merit a Commission on the civil service, as PASC has suggested?     

Civil service policies in Indonesia: An obstacle to decentralization?

Decentralization of a substantial portion of development activity under Indonesia's New Order has been attempted in the context of centralizing civil service reforms. This analysis, based on field observation in two areas distant from the ‘bureaucratic centre’ of Java, South Sulawesi and East Nusa Tenggara in early 1986, shows some ways in which the structure of the civil service and recent policies governing it have handicapped regional governments in their attempts to develop an apparatus capable of managing decentralization. For example, the structure often leads local officials to prefer rank over technical qualifications in appointments to managerial positions. The analysis also shows how they cope and attempt to maintain their legal prerogatives vis-à-vis the central government. In conclusion policy recommendations are offered that would help to achieve a better balance between the New Order's concerns for centralization and decentralization.     

The Civil Service Reform Plan One Year On,and the International Evidence

In July 2013 the UK's coalition government published “The Civil Service Reform Plan – One Year on”, reporting on progress against minister Frances Maude's objectives to shake up the civil service. This followed various reported disagreements between ministers and civil servants over policy implementation, and a research report commissioned by the government from think tank IPPR into lessons from overseas for civil service reform. This trio of short articles reviews the government's proposals from three perspectives: that of the lead author of the IPPR report, a former senior civil servant, and the chair of the House of Commons Public Administration Committee (PASC) which oversees the civil service. The authors take differing views on the proposals, which include introduction of ‘extended ministerial offices’, and greater control by ministers over choosing their civil servants. Should these be seen as useful next steps, worrying developments, and/or large and important enough to merit a Commission on the civil service, as PASC has suggested?     

Civil Service Reform as National Security: The Homeland Security Act of 2002

The events of 9/11 have influenced policy making in public administration. The Homeland Security Act of 2002, which created the Department of Homeland Security, contained language that empowered the secretary of homeland security and the director of the Office of Personnel Management to establish a personnel management system outside the normal provisions of the federal civil service. Why did civil service reform succeed as part of this legislation when previous attempts at large‐scale reform had failed? A case analysis of the enactment of civil service reform in the Homeland Security Act points to theories of policy emergence and certain models of presidential and congressional policy making. In this case, civil service reform became associated with national security instead of management reform. An assessment of the rhetorical arguments used to frame this policy image offers a powerful explanation for the adoption of the personnel management reforms in the Homeland Security Act. This case has implications for understanding how policy makers might approach future management reform agendas.     

Civil service reform in post-communist Europe: the bumpy road to depoliticisation

This article seeks to explain why civil service reform trajectories have differed in post-communist Europe, and why reforms have so far not led to the de-politicisation of personnel policy. It argues that the communist legacy of over-politicised personnel policy, the mode of transition and the constellation of actors after the first free elections shaped the personnel policy and civil service reform dynamics in the period directly after the change of regime. However, in terms of reform outcomes, the road to de-politicisation of post-communist civil services posed too many obstacles to lead rapidly to successful reforms. Neither governments of the left and the right nor new generations of senior bureaucrats have an incentive to engage in efforts to de-politicise post-communist civil services. The context of post-communist transformation has tended to lock in a pattern of civil service governance that is characterised by high levels of political discretion.     

Civil service reform in the People's Republic of China: case studies of early implementation

The adoption of the civil service system is the most comprehensive reform of the personnel system in the history of the People's Republic of China. The reformers want to establish a highly qualified and professional administrative corps. Elements of the reform include a merit‐based performance evaluation system that rewards good employees and punishes poor ones, open and fair competition in recruitment and promotion to assure the quality of government officials, and a system based on law that provides continuity and consistency for government policies. The article summarizes case studies of implementation challenges such as recruitment, examinations, selection and promotion, performance evaluation, training, job rotation and salary systems. The cases provide snapshots of some of the most difficult issues involved in reforming China's civil service. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trajectory of Civil Service Development in Kazakhstan: Nexus of Politics and Administration

Although Kazakhstan's civil service reforms have the explicit objective of depoliticizing administrative personnel, they have had limited success in achieving that end. Contrary to the formal objective, they make the worlds of political and administrative executives all but indistinguishable. A considerable gap between formal rules and their informal understanding creates loose boundaries of permitted behavior and allows discretionary enforcement and influence. The failure to reach the stated policy objective underscores the paradoxical coexistence of two political environments: one marked by its de jure centralized political structure and another by its de facto decentralization at various levels of civil service.     

Civil society organizations and the prevention of mass atrocities: Perspectives from south Sudan

Nowhere is the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in development and democratization more critical than in countries at high risk of mass atrocities. In this article, we examine the actual and potential role of development CSOs in the prevention of mass atrocities based on an analysis of 302 CSOs in South Sudan. The article examines if and how service-providing CSOs frame their work as contributing to the prevention of mass atrocities. The article seeks to understand how these CSOs deliver services and articulate their work regarding the prevention of large-scale identity-based violence. We aim to explore the degree to which organizations describe atrocity prevention as an intentional part of democratization efforts. The article is situated within the larger debates about the service delivery and civil society functions of CSOs. Specifically, we ask: To what extent do development CSOs articulate a contribution to the prevention of mass atrocities? We posit that the service delivery and civil society functions can be better achieved by giving deliberate attention to an atrocity prevention perspective.     

The Durability of EU Civil Service Policy in Central and Eastern Europe after Accession

This article examines the post‐accession durability of EU civil service policy in Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs). Civil service professionalization was a condition for EU membership but the European Commission has no particular sanctions available if CEECs reverse pre‐accession reforms after gaining membership. Comparing eight CEECs that joined the EU in 2004, the article finds that post‐accession civil service developments are characterized by great diversity. The three Baltic States continued civil service reforms, while Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia are classified as cases of post‐accession reform reversal. The post‐accession pathway of Hungary is identified as a case of reform reorientation. The diversity in post‐accession pathways was almost exclusively the result of domestic political constellations, in particular, patterns of government alternation after accession. There were hardly any factors that could have locked in the level of professionalization that had been reached at the time of accession.     

我国不同级别公务员心理契约的差异性分析

重点研究了我国政府中行政管理部门的公务员心理契约问题,主要目的是了解公务员心理契约所包含的要素、不同级别公务员对这些要素的重视程度和建立公务员的心理契约结构模型.在两轮问卷调查的基础上,明确了组织与公务员之间相互期望的各10个要素.利用t统计检验,表明不同级别公务员对期望要素的认识有显著的差别.应用因子分析方法,建立了公务员心理契约的结构模型,该模型显示组织与公务员之间双向心理契约共包含了8个主要方面.研究的主要结论是:盈利组织的心理契约与非盈利组织的心理契约之间的差异是明显的,不同级别的公务员对心理契约中的要素重要性认识程度是不同的.我国各级公务员(从科员到厅局级)主要将敬业精神、诚实忠诚、职业前景和公平公正待遇放在心理契约要素的最重要位置上,而物质激励则处于次位.政府中的创新动力主要来自领导层面,而较低级别的公务员创新动力不足.这些研究结果对政府各级组织建立公平、透明的运作机制具有参考价值.同时为设计相应的激励制度提供了新的视角.最后提出了我国公务员心理契约需要进一步研究的问题.     

Civil service reform in Uganda: Lessons learned

This article presents the Civil Service Reform Programme (CSRP) in Uganda. It outlines the context in which the CSRP is being implemented and establishes the link between the CSRP and other reform programmes, particularly constitutional decentralization, liberalization/privatization and army demobilization. It also analyses the progress made so far, given certain obstacles, and attempts to assess and make some suggestions for the road ahead. The issues of civil service reform go beyond addressing the need for pay reform and improving organizational structure. While these are important pieces of the puzzle, they cannot stand alone. Issues of greater participation, transparency and accountability in decision making—all of which strangthen democratization—are also at stake. The aim of these reforms is to enable the state to function more rationally and effectively, as the duties it performs—as well as the country's needs—become more complex and varied. The overarching theme is to develop the state's own capacity in order to create sustainable reforms in the quest for long-term development. The close of the cold war has brought many changes. In recent years, for example, the international donor community has paid increasing attention to reform issues. It has called on recipient governments to participate in the design and implementation of these programmes. In recipient countries, the movement toward decentralization, privatization and commercialization of many government functions has increased the range of opportunities available to citizens. It has also brought demands for greater responsiveness on the part of the government and parastatal agencies. Moreover, in an era of dwindling aid budgets, donors are now seeking better value for their money, and they are less willing to excuse widespread graft and corruption on geopolitical grounds.     

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.     

Senior Civil Servants and Bureaucratic Change in Belgium

The Belgian civil service used to be a Weberian bureaucracy, with a strict division of labor between civil servants and politicians, administrative careers based on both seniority and partisan patronage, and a technocratic culture coupled with a high level of alienation from both politics and politicians. Administrative reform came in the wake of the constitutional reform that transformed unitary Belgium into a federal state with several governments, each with a civil service of its own. The fiscal crisis prompted them to look favorably on the promises of New Public Management (NPM). The new Flemish government was first to take advantage of this opportunity, as it had the financial resources, the tendency to refer to Anglo-Saxon and Dutch examples, and the right political and administrative leadership.The staying power of these as yet precarious reforms depends on the continuity of political leadership, the establishment of an administrative culture matching the institutional innovations, and resistance to the endemic temptation to use them for partisan purposes.     

The Earthquake, Civil Society, and Political Change in Turkey: Assessment and Comparison with Eastern Europe

Civil society has been widely celebrated as instrumental in democratization, but in some countries it remains poorly developed. Such was the case in Turkey, but many hoped that the 1999 earthquakes would lead to an invigoration of civil society and subsequent political liberalization. Examining this claim shows that Turkish civil society has not been able to sustain the energy it enjoyed immediately after the earthquake because of factors within civil society itself and the attitude of the state. This relative failure is then contrasted with the more positive experience of civil society in East-Central Europe. The comparisons reveal some limits to the utility of a civil society approach to democratization. I conclude by assessing the ability of other actors and factors to fashion political reform in Turkey today.     

Civil society and democratization: The role of service-providing organizations amid closing civic spaces

This article argues that current democracy promotion strategies relying on rights-claiming advocacy NGOs are falling short of their democratization goals, as authoritarian regimes are closing the space through restrictions on the NGOs that attempt to carry them out. In response, we suggest a reexamination of earlier approaches to involving civil society in democratization efforts by shifting the focus back on service-providing civil society organizations that have largely become side-lined in democracy-building agendas. Specifically, service providers tend to be more capable of functioning “under the radar” thus contributing to democracy in both direct and indirect ways, and thus escaping closing space restrictions. The key concerns about their independence from the state, as well as under what conditions the state may be less successful in coopting the independent service-providers, however, remain unresolved and warrant future research.     

The Civil Service under One Country, Two Systems: The Cases of Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China

Under the principle of "one country, two systems," Hong Kong's and China's civil services are changing, but they clearly are not converging. The civil service reforms made in Hong Kong and China appear to be heading toward two logical extremes: one toward strengthening political authority over the civil service, and the other instituting greater institutionalization. What appears to be a problem in Hong Kong may be seen as a solution in China. Not only reform problems, but also reform options, are defined in relation to wider political institutions and changing socioeconomic dynamics. The study shows that while some things do need to be uniform, such as loyalty to the state and central government, a great deal of flexibility regarding administrative systems within one country is possible. There can be a modern nation without a truly national civil service.     

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.     

The Rise and Fall of Radical Civil Service Reform in the U.S. States

Initiated by a 1996 Georgia statute, “radical” civil service reform quickly swept the United States. This article explains the wax and eventual wane of state efforts to increase the number of at‐will employees at the expense of the population of fully protected merit system employees. Using an event history approach to explain this policy diffusion with state‐level variables, the author shows that electoral competition and gubernatorial powers are the most significant determinants of this kind of policy diffusion. Whereas previous literature concluded that these reforms ceased spreading because the new programs were failing to create the promised governmental efficiency, this article argues that the institutional conditions for these human resource management policies have been less propitious in recent years. The article signifies an important contribution in that it brings civil service reform back into the scope of policy diffusion literature and identifies political insights into a perpetually important question.