CIVIL SERVICE REFORM IN POST-1997 HONG KONG: POLITICAL CHALLENGES,MANAGERIAL RESPONSES?

One of the major reforms promoted by the new Special Administrative Region government of Hong Kong after the 1997 handover is that of the civil service. The March 1999 civil service reform consultation document outlined a number of proposed changes ranging from entry and exit, disciplinary measures, performance management, to performance-based reward system and training and development. This article examines the external and domestic forces (and crises) inducing the reform, and puts the discussion within the context of post-1997 political challenges to bureaucratic power. Given that the civil service stands at the outer firing line bearing the brunt of such challenges which interface with a mixture of legitimacy, accountability, probity and operational deficiencies, the significance of the present reform cannot be fully understood within a narrow managerial discourse of reform for greater efficiency and flexibility. The reform in fact represents managerial solutions to problems essentially of a “political” nature.     

Democratization and bureaucratic restructuring in Taiwan

Taiwan has been moving toward democracy, with a dramatic transition taking place in the past decade. Critical to this transition is a restructuring of the relationship between the state bureaucracy and society. This study focuses on democratization's effect on Taiwan's bureaucracy. In particular, it seeks to examine such aspects of bureaucratic transformation as bureaucratic decisionmaking, legislative-bureaucratic politics, interest group-bureaucratic relations, the expansion of local autonomy, and civil service reform. This study finds that the bureaucratic state is facing a great challenge from political, legislative, and societal forces. The old type of insulated bureaucratic planning and decision making is no longer possible, the bureaucracy is losing its KMT patrons, and bureaucrats are finding themselves answerable to political pressure, legislative oversight, and interest group lobbying. While the bureaucracy has lost its previous level of discretion in terms of macro-management and the formulation of developmental policies, the bureaucratic state has not withered away. Qingshan Tan is Associate Professor of Chinese and East Asian politics and Director of the International Relations Program in the Department of Political Science at Cleveland State University. His recent publications are on issues of democratization in Taiwan and China.     

Social contracts and authoritarian projects in post-Soviet space: The use of administrative resource

Drawing on evidence from Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, this article analyses the use of a tool of political coercion known in the post-communist world as adminresurs, or administrative resource. Administrative resource is characterized by the pre-election capture of bureaucratic hierarchies by an incumbent regime in order to secure electoral success at the margins. In contrast to other forms of political corruption, administrative resource fundamentally rewrites existing social contracts. It redefines access to settled entitlements—public infrastructure, social services, and labor compensation—as rewards for political support. It is thus explicitly negative for publics, who stand to lose access to existing entitlements if they do not support incumbents. The geography of its success in post-communist states suggests that this tool of authoritarian capacity building could be deployed anywhere two conditions are present: where there are economically vulnerable populations, and where economic and political spheres of life overlap.     

The new public personnel and the new public service

The New Public Administration sought a public service whose legitimacy would be based, in part, on its promotion of “social equity.” Since 1968, several personnel changes congruent with the New Public Administration have occurred: traditional managerial authority over public employees has been reduced through collective bargaining and changes in constitutional doctrines; the public service has become more socially representative; establishing a representative bureaucracy has become an important policy goal; more emphasis is now placed on employee participation in the work place; and legal changes regarding public administrators’ liability have promoted an “inner check” on their behavior. At the same time, however, broad systemic changes involving decentralization and the relationship between political officials and career civil servants have tended to undercut the impact of those changes in personnel. The theories of Minnowbrook I, therefore, have proven insufficient as a foundation for a new public service. Grounding the public service's legitimacy in the U.S. Constitution is a more promising alternative and is strongly recommended.

The New Public Administration, like other historical calls for drastic administrative change in the United States, sought to develop a new basis for public administrative legitimacy. Earlier successful movements grounded the legitimacy of the public service in high social standing and leadership, representativeness and close relationship to political parties, or in putative political neutrality and scientific managerial and technical expertise. To these bases, the New Public Administration sought to add “social equity.” As George Frederickson explained, “Administrators are not neutral. They should be committed to both good management and social equity as values, things to be achieved, or rationales. “⁽¹⁾ Social equity was defined as “includ[ing] activities designed to enhance the political power and economic well being of … [disadvantaged] minorities.” It was necessary because “the procedures of representative democracy presently operate in a way that either fails or only very gradually attempts to reverse systematic discrimination against” these groups.⁽²⁾

Like the Federalists, the Jacksonians, and the civil service reformers and progressives before it, the New Public Administration focused upon administrative reform as a means of redistributing political power.⁽³⁾ Also, like these earlier movements, the New Public Administration included a model of a new type of public servant. This article sets forth that new model and considers the extent to which the major changes that have actually taken place in public personnel administration since 1968 are congruent with it. We find that while contemporary public personnel reflects many of the values and concerns advanced by the New Public Administration, substantial changes in the political environment of public administration have frustrated the development of a new public service that would encompass the larger goals and ideals expressed at Minnowbrook I. Building on the trends of the past two decades, this article also speculates about the future. Our conclusion is that ultimately the public service's legitimacy must be grounded in the Constitution. Although its focus is on macro-level political and administrative developments, the broad changes it discusses provide the framework from which many contemporary personnel work-life issues, such as pay equity and flexitime, have emerged.     

Comparative grand corruption and protection pacts among elites: the cases of Ao Man Long in Macao and Hui Si-Yan in Hong Kong

Although Transparency International has consistently ranked the governments of both the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR), both under the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), much higher on the clean governance scale than the PRC itself, the reality is that the two special administrative regions witnessed two prominent cases of political corruption comparable to the mainland corruption. These were the Ao Man Long case in Macao and the Rafael Hui Si-yan scandal in Hong Kong. This paper examines the two cases of political corruption in both Macao and Hong Kong and makes comparisons and contrasts between them. It argues that individual greed contributed to the two cases of high-level bureaucratic (grand) corruption in Macao and Hong Kong, implying that institutional safeguards against corruption, such as the establishment of anti-corruption commissions, and the scrutiny of the mass media, are by no means adequate. In other words, institutional mechanisms against corruption in the HKSAR and MSAR do have loopholes that need to be plugged. Moreover, protection pacts between a minority of government officials and the business elites can be formed because of their close personal connections, strengthening the possibility of grand corruption.     

ISRAELI civll service positions open to political appointments

The incidence of civil service position open to political appoinment in Israel is high by the standards of other western democracies. Moreover, there may have been an increase in the cruder forms of patronage during the current National Unity Government. Without an effective opposition, both major parties may be sharing the spoils.

Among the factors that may explain the generally high incidence of Israeli civil service positions open to political appoinment are: the failure to have developed strong nores of non-partisan professionalism in the 40 years of independence; the importance of government positions in the national economy; and the lack of a strong majority party.     

WEBER AND KAFKA: THE RATIONAL AND THE ENIGMATIC BUREAUCRACY

Max Weber's and Franz Kafka's respective understandings of bureaucracy are as different as night and day. Yet, Kafka's novel The Castle is best read with Max Weber at hand. In fact, Kafka relates systematically to all the dimensions in Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy and give us a much‐contemplated parody, almost a counter‐punctual ideal type, based on four key observations: bureaucratic excesses unfold in time and space; a ‘no error’ ideology generates inescapable dilemmas; inscrutability is a life condition in bureaucracy; civil servants end up walking on the spot, just like the figures in Escher's painting: Ascending and Descending. Nevertheless, Weber and Kafka can both be right. While Kafka looks at the bureaucratic phenomenon through persons who are marginalized, Weber's perspective is historic‐comparative and top‐down. Are the observations of the one more correct than the other? The question is meaningless. As two opposite poles, Weber and Kafka ‘magnetize’ each other.     

Civil society, social capital, and development: Dissection of a complex discourse

This article tries to understand the ongoing intellectual discourse on civil society and related concepts in political science, other social science disciplines as well as among policy-makers and practitioners. It suggests that there are four prominent philosophical lineages going back to the nineteenth century from which most of the contemporary debate draws its inspiration. Thus, there are at least four major schools or approaches to the study of civil society, social capital and development that compete for recognition. The article also draws attention to the need for analyzing these issues, not only at the national but also the associational and global levels. The interaction between these three levels has become increasingly important in the light of the globalization of many conservation and development issues. Finally, the author identifies the principal challenges facing students interested in doing research in this area, focusing, among other things, on the varying implications for civil society that different regime types have. Goran Hyden is professor of political science at the University of Florida. His research interests include issues of governance, particularly as they apply to the interface between politics and development. He has published several books and articles in this area. These includeBeyond Ujamaa in tanzania (1980),No Shortcuts to Progress (1983),Governance and Politics in Africa (co-edited with Michael Bratton, 1992).Human, Rights and Governance in Africa (co-edited with Ronald Cohen and Winston Nagan 1993), andAgencies in Foreign Aid: China, Sweden and the United States in Tanzania 1961–95 (co-edited with Rwekaza Mukandala, forthcoming).     

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE THATCHER GOVERNMENT'S 'GRAND STRATEGY' FOR THE CIVIL SERVICE: A PUBLIC POLICY PERSPECTIVE

Since the Thatcher Government came to office, the policies which it has pursued towards the civil service have been characterized by its determination to emphasize political control over the work of government departments and to'de-privilege' the civil service. The paper traces and evaluates the development of the Conservative Government's'grand strategy' for the civil service which was eventually given the form of the financial management initiative in 1982, an attempt to universalize MINIS and institutionalize Raynerism. Among other things, this policy study considers the cuts in civil service numbers and the changes in its hierarchy, the dismantling of the Priestley pay system, the civil service strike of 1981, and the disbanding of the Civil Service Department, involving as it did the dismissal of the Head of the Home Civil Service.     

The science of administration,the founders,and theories of political association

Drawing on the work of Michael Oakeshott, this paper seeks to examine the theory of political association underlying Luther Gulick and L. Urwick's Papers on the Science of Administration and to contrast this theory with that underlying the Constitution. It is argued that the authors of the Papers clearly viewed the state as a form of purposive association whereas the Founders of the Constitution in large part saw the state as a form of civil association. This explains the difficulties that reformers such as Gulick faced in realizing their vision of administration within our constitutional framework.

Luther Gulick and L. Urwick's Papers on the Science of Administration (1) represent one of the most important attempts at a synthesis of doctrines in the field of public administration prior to World War II. While the Papers exhibit a variety of approaches and views, they are best known for those authors who, like Gulick and Urwick themselves, took a more classical approach to administration. Such an approach rests on a belief in the virtues of hierarchy and centralization of authority and power in the chief executive; a belief in efficiency as the central value of administration; a belief that there must exist certain principles for good administration applicable to all organizations, regardless of institutional setting; and a belief that such principles are susceptible to empirical scientific discovery and verification. These doctrines, expounded so forcefully in the Papers, formed the basis for the administrative reform movement of the time including the President's Committee on Administrative Management, of which Gulick himself was a member. Indeed, the Papers continue to strongly influence modern efforts at administrative reform.(2)

The purpose of this article is to examine the particular vision of political association which seems to underlie the Papers, and to compare it with the vision of political association which guided the Founders of the Constitution. In doing so, the article will draw upon the political thinking of the late Michael Oakeshott, a British political theorist and philosopher. I shall argue that there is a tension between the vision of political association held by the authors of the Papers and that held by the Founders, and that this tension explains the failure of administrative reformers to reshape the administrative state along the lines of classical public administration doctrines.     

The Structure and Culture of Post-Communist Civil Society in Latvia

This article provides an account of post-communist civil society in Latvia. Based on original survey data, the structure of civil society is analysed on both individual and organisational levels and cultural aspects are examined. The weakness of post-communist civil society found in much previous research is confirmed when measured on the individual level and in relation to some organisational aspects. The political culture of civil society in Latvia is relatively trusting, tolerant and pro-democratic, but elitist. The specific weaknesses of post-communist civil society can be attributed to the historical heritage of the communist regime as well as the context in which new foreign-funded civil society organisations emerged.     

Public Accountability in Malaysia: Challenges and Critical Concerns

Despite its laudable roles in steering the process of socioeconomic development, government bureaucracy in Malaysia has not escaped public criticisms for its inefficiency, corruption, and failure to guard public interests. The media, civil society groups, intelligentsia, and the political opposition have successfully utilized the major scandals to highlight the growing public concern over the poor performance of the bureaucracy and its lack of accountability and responsiveness. This has provided impetus for the “clean and efficient government” movement initiated in the early 1980s and a series of subsequent efforts aimed at promoting appropriate values and ethics among public officials. Numerous rules and regulations have been framed, major reforms have been introduced in various spheres of administration, and an extensive program of training and bureaucratic reorientation has been undertaken. Despite all this, recent evidence suggests that the public service continues to suffer from problems of corruption and other irregularities. Obviously, the performance of numerous reforms in public service and the institutional mechanisms put in place for tackling ethical problems, though positive in general, has fallen short of expectations. This paper seeks to examine and analyze the present approach to combating corruption and promoting accountability in the Malaysian public service. In particular, it focuses on institutional mechanisms currently available and identifies and analyzes their constraints and limitations in keeping the public bureaucracy under surveillance and control.     

BUREAUCRACY TRIUMPHANT OR DENIED? THE EXPANSION OF THE BRITISH CIVIL SERVICE, 1919–1939

The power of central government in Britain increased significantly in the inter-war period, but did Britain become bureaucratic? This article examines the expansion of the civil service as a whole through a detailed case study of one particular department (the Ministry of Labour) in the light of traditional critiques of bureaucracy. It concludes that previous over-concentration on the role of the Treasury has distorted analysis. The inter-war civil service became bureaucratic in terms not of rationality, inefficiency or power but only of size and increasing complexity. In this it reflected a general trend in British society, which also affected industry and the trade union movement.     

Mixed Welfare Systems and Hybrid Organizations: Changes in the Governance and Provision of Social Services

Abstract

The provision and governance of personal social services is nowadays often thought as a matter of finding the right balance between market principles and state regulation. However often, personal social services depend as well from a third resource and mechanism of governance: It is the impact of the social capital of civil society, which makes itself felt not only by resources such as grants, donations, and volunteering, but as well by networking and social partnerships. A number of crucial changes in welfare and service provision have led to a situation, where service systems and service units, rather than being part of a clear-cut sector, have increasingly to be seen as hybrids, combining varying balances of resources and mixes of governance principles usually associated with the market, the state, and the civil society.     

Vivir bien governance in Bolivia: chimera or attainable utopia?

The notion of vivir bien – a complex set of ideas, worldviews, and knowledge deriving from indigenous movements, activist groups, and scholars of indigeneity – has become an overarching principle for policy-making and state transformation processes in Andean countries. This article analyses the contradiction between the principle of vivir bien as an egalitarian utopian category and its bureaucratic application in Bolivia to state formation processes and power dynamics involving social movements. It argues that while discursively grounded on such egalitarian principles as reciprocity and rotating authority, its implementation entails bureaucratic propensities to centralise power and authority. Instead of decolonising the state, it is used to discipline the masses.     

Civil Society,Populism and Liberalism

This paper considers the threats that various kinds of populism might be said to pose to the ideal of a civil society that mediates between ‘private’ and family life and the state. Although it is difficult to generalise about populisms, just about all—whether on left or right—share a hostility to ‘intermediate’ powers. Of course civil society is exactly what could be called a forum for intermediate powers. In contrast, populists often tend to emphasise a vision of immediate power in the sense of the possibility of the direct expression of the people’s will in political institutions. Populists, of whatever pitch, often tend to invoke a partisan state that will be on the side of the people (however defined) rather than a putatively neutral ‘liberal’ state that stands over and against civil society. These factors make most populisms more or less generically hostile to liberalism, understood not in ideological terms but more as a doctrine which emphasises the necessity of mediating power through institutions. Very often, populism is a threat to the idea of civil society understood as a concept integral to liberal political theory, as a means of balancing the state and its wider interlocutors. In this paper, various means, largely inspired by the writings of Tocqueville on the one hand and Paul Hirst on the other, are suggested for addressing aspects of this predicament.

     

Culture Governance: Governing Self‐Reflexive Modernity

Political and administrative analysis is today said to be taking a narrative turn: to learning by telling and listening to the different stories that constitute political life. However, this new approach to studying the decentring of politics and policy as multiple discursive practices carries a new grand narrative too. A new connection between political authority and political community is taking shape outside the spheres of modern government and representative democracy. Political authority is becoming increasingly both communicative and interactive in order for it to be able to meet complexity with complexity. It is employed for reforming institutions by opening them towards the culture and by tying them to the political attributes and capacities of self‐reflexive individuals and to the transformation and self‐transformation of their conduct. I call this development culture governance. Culture governance is about how political authority must increasingly operate through capacities for self‐and co‐governance and therefore needs to act upon, reform, and utilize individual and collective conduct so that it might be amenable to its rule (Bang 2003; Dean 2003). Culture governance represents a new kind of top‐down steering; it is neither hierarchical nor bureaucratic but empowering and self‐disciplining. It manifests itself as various forms of joined‐up government and network governance and proclaims itself to be genuinely democratic and dialogical. This I shall show by a study of local Danish politics and policy in Copenhagen. Culture governance, I shall argue, constitutes a formidable challenge and threat to democracy, in attempting to colonize the whole field of public reason, everyday political engagement, democratic deliberation, and so on, by its own systems logic of success, effectiveness or influence. It seeks to take charge of the working of the more spontaneous, less programmed and more lowly organized politics of the ordinary in political communities, thus undermining the very idea of a non‐strategic public reasoning as founding the practices of freedoms.     

Oligarchic rule and best practice migration management: the political economy origins of labour migration regime of the Philippines

The Philippine labour migration regime has been praised as one of the best examples of government-led migration management in the developing world, with some of the most extensive policies and bureaucratic organisations to manage and protect its citizens working abroad. However, not much knowledge has been accumulated that explains its origins or why it emerged in the Philippines and not in other large-scale migrant-sending countries. Contrary to current explanations that emphasise the economic benefits of labour migration and civil society mobilisation, this paper highlights the migration regime's compatibility with the political economy interests of the country's ruling elites. Bringing together the country's two important political and economic features, oligarchic rule and labour export, this paper suggests that the unique genesis of the Philippines’ migration regime casts doubts on the replicability of the Philippine model in other labour-sending countries as currently pursued by the international development community.     

Receptivity to Violence in Ethnically Divided Societies: A Micro-Level Mechanism of Perceived Horizontal Inequalities

Although past scholarship shows that group inequalities in economic and political power (“Horizontal Inequalities”) correlate with dissent, violence, and civil wars, there is no direct empirical test of the perceptual explanation for this relationship at the individual level. Such explanation is vital to understanding how integration, inclusion in power-sharing agreements, and exclusion from political power filter down to mass publics. Moreover, subjective perceptions of group conditions do not always correspond to objective group realities. We hypothesize subjective perceptions attenuate the effect of objective exclusion on support for violence in ethnically divided societies. Cross-national comparative multilevel analyses of the 2005/6 Afrobarometer dataset (N = 19,278) confirm that subjective perceptions both amplify the effect of exclusion on acceptance of violence and alter the readiness of included groups to dissent. These findings carry implications for research, state-building, and conflict management.