WHAT ROLE FOR GOVERNMENT? THE PROMOTION OF CIVIL SOCIETY THROUGH FORESTRY‐RELATED CLIMATE CHANGE INTERVENTIONS IN POST‐CONFLICT NEPAL

This study examines rationales behind the choice of local interlocutors by forestry‐related climate change projects in post‐conflict Nepal. In their stated objectives, all projects claim to involve the government, and most project decision makers are in favor of government involvement, yet project resources overwhelmingly favor civil society institutions. Project decision makers' choices are shaped by a combination of donor conditionalities, contextual constraints, and beliefs about which institutional attributes matter and how to address historical marginalization. The projects' empowerment of civil society sidesteps opportunities to strengthen the local government, which is described as weak, disinterested, and lacking legitimacy owing to the absence of elections due to the unsettled post‐conflict situation. Through the choices made and their justifications, projects and donors further marginalize the local government materially and discursively and thereby entrench its perceived deficiencies. We argue that this privileging of civil society may have implications for government legitimacy and post‐conflict reconstruction and call for donors and the intervening institutions they fund to critically and collectively reassess the role of forestry‐related climate change projects in the larger process of post‐conflict reconstruction in Nepal. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reforming war's administrative rubble in Lebanon

After 17 years of civil strife in Lebanon, an Office of Minister of State for Administrative Reform (OMSAR) was established in 1993 to plan for short‐term rehabilitation and long‐term institutional development within the public sector. Since external technical assistance to public administration was delivered through OMSAR, its role as a host agency for international aid donors' efforts in reform policy‐making and implementation is critical. The article discusses OMSAR's approach to channelling foreign aid for administrative development in post‐war Lebanon. Lessons from the Lebanese experience in post‐war institutional development may interest countries emerging from conflicts and trying to rebuild administrative infrastructure. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Destroying one Public Service Bargain Without Making Another: A Comment on Lowe and Pemberton,The Official History of the British Civil Service,Volume II: 1982–1997

This article responds to Lowe and Pemberton's second volume on the history of the civil service and analyses fundamental shifts in British governance at the centre that occurred during the 1980s and 1990s. The traditional ‘public service bargain’ (PSB) that underpinned the relationship between ministers and officials has been repeatedly undermined. The article examines how far prior civil service reforms relate to the changes of the contemporary era instigated by Conservative‐led governments since 2010. As Lowe and Pemberton's work illustrates, the impulse to reform the state and the managerial reforms it unleashed were long in the making. Their legacy can be traced to the emergence of Thatcherism after 1979. The core argument of the article is that the more recent efforts of the Johnson administration to transform the state and undermine the PBS were scarcely original. Rather, they consolidated and drew upon earlier initiatives.     

Of ‘Strong’ Leadership,Crisis Communication,and Pooper Scoopers: Change in the Queensland Public Service Under Newman

Governments have historically offered their workforce a public service bargain founded on stable pay and conditions and job security. However, while the Westminster system aims for public service employment to be protected from the whims of government, public servants are nonetheless affected by the political environment in which they operate and changes to this bargain can occur with a new government. This paper focuses on a Queensland public service change process that resulted in large‐scale forced redundancies, non‐renewal of temporary contracts, and legislative changes that nullified the provisions in job security, organisational change, and redundancy policies. Using communication as a lens through which to understand leadership, it examines how the government communicated with the public service about this organisational change, immediately before and after the 2012 election. In particular, through analysis of public and media commentary, speeches and Hansard records, it examines Premier Newman's change leadership and communication by contrasting pre‐election messages to the public service with post‐election messages about the public service and the justifications for change during this period of downsizing. This analysis is used to reflect on political leadership, communication, fair treatment, and trust in public service change.     

“Big Tigers,Big Data”: Learning Social Reactions to China's Anticorruption Campaign through Online Feedback

This article examines the effect of campaign‐style anticorruption efforts on political support using the case of China's most recent anticorruption drive, which stands out for its harsh crackdown on high‐ranking officials, known as “big tigers.” An exploratory text analysis of more than 370,000 online comments on the downfall of the first 100 big tigers, from 2012 to 2015, reveals that public support for the top national leader who initiated the anticorruption campaign significantly exceeded that afforded to anticorruption agencies and institutions. Further regression analyses show that support for the leaders with respect to intuitions increased with the tigers' party ranking. Findings suggest that while campaign‐style enforcement can reinforce the central authority and magnify support for individual leaders, it may also marginalize the role of legal institutions crucial to long‐term corruption control.     

Debt administration in Small Island‐States

Public debt management is an infrequent focus of public administration studies. Yet without appropriate debt management, administrators have few financial resources for public service provision. Island‐state administrators face an enhanced service provision challenge. The peculiarity of island‐state economies, the unpredictability of exogenous events and the state's endogenous choices increase debt administration's importance. Via its focus on debt management office location and the administrative constraints posed by brain drain, transparency and regionalization, this paper goes beyond typical debt management studies to engage debt administration spaces. The result is a framework for studies of debt administration in Small Island‐States.     

Reforming Ghana's Public Service: Issues and Experiences in Comparative Perspective

This article addresses how the public service can be reformed to make it relevant to the circumstances and useful to the majority of people living and working in Ghana. In many public administration journals, reforms in sub-Saharan Africa have received scant attention. Using Ghana as a case study, this article first summarizes and evaluates that country's reform efforts and compares them to mainstream Anglo-American reform ideas. The article comments on the conceptualization of reform based on the notion of community, encompassing the unique political, social, and cultural experiences of the people of Ghana. Finally, the article discusses what a composite formulation of the notion of community might imply for a cross-cultural understanding of comparative public administration.     

Forgoing New Public Management and Adopting Post‐New Public Management Principles: The On‐Going Civil Service Reform in Israel

Since the 1980s, New Public Management (NPM) and post‐NPM reforms have dominated attempts to improve public administration. The literature suggests several reasons for the latter approach. However, these explanations seem to be less relevant to the ongoing civil service reforms in Israel. The Israeli experience is an example where NPM reforms did not occur, but post‐NPM reforms were adopted enthusiastically decades later. Our findings demonstrate how under the structural conditions of both non‐governability and bureaucratic centralization, post‐NPM reforms may provide an attractive layering strategy, offering the option of changing certain features of the system without requiring a drastic, comprehensive overhaul of it. Once Israeli decision makers decided that there was a real public demand for reform, and long‐term learning and diffusion processes convinced them that change was needed, the characteristics of the post‐NPM approach made it much easier politically for them to adopt. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rethinking Democratisation and Citizenship: Legal Pluralism and Institutional Reform in Guatemala

The December 1996 peace settlement in Guatemala agreed a series of institutional reforms in order to recognise the rights of the country's indigenous peoples; some 23 different ethno‐linguistic groups which make up 60% of the overall population. This article explores the relationship between pluri‐culturalism, citizenship, democracy and law in the contemporary politics of Guatemala. While territorially autonomous regions or separate legal jurisdictions are often proposed as a means to ensure indigenous rights, I argue that within a framework of post‐conflict reconstruction, integration with a measure of autonomy for democratically organised communities is the ideal. This is linked to development of an integrative form of citizenship which combines both social membership and identity and rights. Finally, I argue that support for pro‐active efforts to challenge the legacies of authoritarianism, militarisation and inequality will be necessary in order to strengthen democracy, build a culture of citizenship and increase justice.     

Not‐for‐Profit Advocacy: Challenging Policy Images and Pursuing Policy Change

The not‐for‐profit sector has long played an important role in the policy process through encouraging political engagement, policy research and advocacy, and service delivery. This paper examines two not‐for‐profit organizations, National Children's Alliance and National Alliance on Mental Illness, both of which are grassroots organizations formed to radically change public and professional perceptions of their respective issues and reform the way services are offered to those in need. Borrowing from the literature on policy image and agenda setting, we identify the strategies used by these two highly successful not‐for‐profit groups in their efforts to change the system through redefining problems, reframing issues, and securing legislation with the help of policy entrepreneurs and politicians sympathetic to their causes.     

Value-Based Integrity Management and Bureaucratic Organizations: Changing the Mix

ABSTRACT

This article examines integrity management initiatives designed to introduce more value-based elements in public bureaucracies. Incorporating value-based practices, which emphasize the personal ethical responsibilities of individual public servants, into a hierarchical, rule-based system may present difficult organizational problems. A central issue is to determine whether any change has actually occurred or whether the organization is simply functioning as it did previously. In addition, there are problems of implementation: new value-based initiatives may conflict with the pre-existing system; they may not be adequately reflected in training programs; and there may be differential impacts on departments and agencies. We analyze problems in this new organizational mix in a classical Weberian bureaucracy, the Hong Kong civil service. The findings are based on a 2011–2012 administrative ethics survey of 355 senior public servants, a separate survey of 70 Ethics Officers, and semi-structured interviews with 32 senior public servants.     

A candidate for relegation? Corruption,governance approaches and the (re)construction of post‐war states

The article discusses the place of anti‐corruption in the post‐war donor agendas. It uses examples from a set of country reports to demonstrate the divergence between the rhetoric and reality of donor‐led initiatives, and the delivery of reform through the governance approach of which addressing corruption has been a part. It suggests that dealing with corruption has often been diluted or downplayed within the wider approach. Within the debate to revise that approach, corruption may be relegated further down the agenda. While recognising the complexity of the post‐war reform process, and the demands from the multiple tasks and volume of funding being addressed by a range of domestic and external actors, the article suggests that failure to address corruption within any new approach in favour of what are considered more pressing reform issues may well cause problems for the future. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

Public sector capacity reform in Ethiopia: a tale of success in two ministries?

To enhance the capacity of public institutions in Ethiopia and to create an ideal environment for investment and economic growth, the public sector has gone through a series of reform processes including the civil service. This article attempts to assess the outcomes of the Public Sector Capacity reform, based on a small‐scale survey conducted in two ministries. The survey, which was conducted between March and May in 2005, reveals a notable transformation of service delivery in each organisation. Very high levels of user satisfaction and spectacular improvements in performance were also recorded as a result of the introduction of business process reengineering (BPR). Although the change process in both organisations tended to be sluggish, these improvements appear to be outstanding within the context of Ethiopia's system of public administration. However, one challenge will be for the government to maintain the momentum of reform and to cascade BPR and other elements of the reform to other divisions, departments and work units in the government. Putting in place incentive schemes and an appropriate monitoring system should protect the reform from backsliding. Despite the pessimistic accounts of public sector reform in African countries, this article reveals that there are positive findings of interest to the field of development administration. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public administration reform in Vietnam: problems and prospects

Public Administration Reform (PAR) in Vietnam is an ambitious programme that seeks to implement ‘rule by law’ within a centralized, state management framework. It is a political strategy by the key party and state officials with the aim of institutionalizing and legitimizing the transition to the ‘socialist market economy’ through creating a dependable system of rule‐bound public administration. This programme has received extensive donor support. In the content and trajectory of PAR, external models and technical assistance are influential but the political struggle over control of state resources shapes the process. This is seen in the attempts to constitutionalize the powers of state organs and to distinguish them from the party; to separate owner and manager roles and to replace political with economic criteria in the operation of state owned enterprises; to combat corruption in ‘street level’ decision making; to rationalize the machinery of government; to create a centrally managed, professional civil service; and to reform the system of public finances. In each of these areas, there is resistance to reform proposals and evidence of implementation gaps. In these circumstances, concentration of donor support on the centrally managed PAR programme is a high risk strategy. Continued support for local, ‘bottom‐up’ reform initiatives could help sustain the demand for reform. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public sector reform in Sub‐Saharan Africa: what can be learnt from the civil service performance improvement programme in Ghana?

This paper focuses on public sector management reform ‘best‐practice’ case experience from Sub‐Sahara African (SSA). Given that ‘best‐practice’ is a relative concept and often debatable, the paper uses the Ghana Civil Service Performance Improvement Programme (GCSPIP) experience as rather a ‘good‐practice’ case with the view to sharing the outcome and lessons to encourage collaborative‐learning. It seeks to share the outcome and lessons learnt by the Ghana civil service reform with future public service reformers and to contribute to the literature. The paper concludes with an adaptable three‐dimensional framework. The framework argues that successful future public service reform (PSR) should consider three broad issues: first, are the ‘critical success factors’, including wholehearted political leadership commitment; wholehearted bureaucratic leadership commitment; thoughtful synergistic planning/preparation; patience for implementation and evaluation; capacity to convince; neutralise and accommodate reform‐phobias and critics; sustainable financial and technical resource availability and conscious nurturing of general public support. Second, is the need for reformers to appreciate the concerns of the public and the civil society scepticism of public ‘institutions’ and its ‘operatives’ and finally placing any reform programme in a country‐specific context, including understanding its history, culture, politics, economy, sociology, ideology and values. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

State reform and the ‘privatized state’ in Paraguay

This article uses Paraguay, in Latin America, as a case study in order to examine the difficulties of introducing state reform where the state itself has a long history of control by private interests. It shows how the ‘privatized’ nature of the Paraguayan state is central to an understanding of how it has functioned and responded to recent reform efforts. The article provides an overview of the Paraguayan public sector and identifies several of its peculiar features that are relevant to understanding the state reform process: its small size, high levels of inefficiency and ineffectiveness, rampant politicization and endemic corruption. The article examines the three major components of an externally driven state reform process that began with democratization in 1989: privatization of loss‐making state corporations, civil service reform and decentralization. It shows how the ‘privatized’ nature of the state has proved a major obstacle to these efforts and is a major factor in explaining their limited success. The article concludes by offering a pessimistic assessment of the likely prospects for state reform and highlights the danger that Paraguay could descend into a ‘failed state’. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reining in the Bureaucrats: Democratic Transition and Administrative Procedural Reform in Korea

How do civilian presidents control their bureaucracies after taking over from an authoritarian regime? To answer this question, I develop a “reining in” theory of delegation. I argue that presidents who faces intrabranch conflict over policy issues and cannot appoint—and dismiss—freely will solve their delegation problems through administrative procedure acts (APAs) and related laws. While some scholars argue that APAs are tools for preserving the status quo, I find that APAs help presidents change policy. Building on the delegation literature from economics, my theory represents a more general argument than prior theories for why presidents support APAs. I test the theory through a case study of South Korea's first civilian government (post‐1961), under President Kim Young Sam. Kim initiated an APA to rein in a professionalized civil service that opposed his policy preferences. Strict procedural requirements designed to keep tabs on bureaucratic activities enhanced Kim's control over his bureaucracy.     

N Generations of Reform in UK Local Government: Compliance and Resistance to Institutional Pressures

ABSTRACT

The UK government under the Thatcher administration was one of the first to launch NPM-type reforms. Since then, several generations of reform initiatives can be identified in the UK—including the “quality” initiative under Major, the Blair administration's early emphasis on “Best Value,” followed by its emphasis on targets and inspection, and its recent reconversion to public governance concerns. The UK, then, represents an interesting test case for studying how several generations of reforms co-exist and inter-relate. This article examines the imprint of past reforms in the current drive towards contestability and choice in local government modernization. It argues that coercive isomorphism has been evident in local government but that resistance has been successfully mounted against each generation of reforms, that these resistance efforts have themselves displayed isomorphic tendencies but that, nevertheless, a gradual move towards a mixed economy of provision has emerged in many local authorities.     

Employee Engagement as Administrative Reform: Testing the Efficacy of the OPM's Employee Engagement Initiative

Researchers have long recognized administrative reform as a constant feature of American public administration. The employee engagement initiative of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has become one of the most prominent administrative reforms underway in the federal government. Like many reforms, the veracity of claims about this reform have gone untested. This article addresses this gap by testing the relationship between the OPM's employee engagement initiative and agency performance. After establishing the psychometric validity of the OPM's Employment Engagement Index, the authors use a five‐year panel data set of federal agencies and two‐way fixed‐effects regression to test the efficacy of this prominent reform. The analysis shows that efforts to encourage employee engagement generally have the expected relationship with performance, but the relationship varies according to the components that make up the index and the organizational level at which these efforts are expended.