Civil Service Reforms: learning from Commonwealth experiences

This article illustrates the degree to which new areas of consensus are emerging in the implementation of civil service reforms. A crucial development in Commonwealth countries has been the change in the strategies being pursued by most governments in achieving economic growth and developmental objectives. The need to change the role of the State for improved economic efficiency is finding greater acceptance in most countries. The article highlights several common themes emerging in the introduction of civil service reform programmes with remarkable similarity about the concerns and changes taking place in very different settings. The article also identifies a set of key strategies that have emerged as major instruments for the implementation of the reform process, such as securing leadership for change, enhancing policy development capacity, improved human resource and financial management systems, establishing efficiency and quality management programmes, harnessing information technology and mobilizing external and internal advice. The article concludes that there is no unique solution and each country would need to identify key strategies drawing on experiences of other countries and keeping in view national priorities. The article hence provides a useful framework for sharing of experiences and cooperation among Commonwealth countries.     

Administrative Reforms in Malaysia Toward Enhancing Public Service Performance

This article attempts to define and highlight the concept and context of administrative reform efforts in Malaysia. It describes changes and reforms in the civil service that are on-going processes along with the search for efficiency, effectiveness, economy and accountability that never ends. Reform efforts in Malaysia can be grouped into two phases: the period of rapid economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s which required development administration and institution building, and the period from 1985 to the present which necessitates the consolidation and qualitative upgrading of the machinery of government. The administrative reform experiences are uniquely Malaysian efforts to respond to the Malaysian socio-political environment and needs.     

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.     

The Politics of Civil Service and Administrative Reforms in Development—Explaining Within‐Country Variation of Reform Outcomes in Georgia after the Rose Revolution

This article examines the role of politics as a determinant of civil service and administrative (CSA) reform outcomes in Georgia. The majority of existing studies on CSA reforms face several methodological challenges, which make it difficult to understand the influence of politics in more detail. Based on literature review findings, the article proposes a model for within‐country comparisons that allows one to control for a number of variables such as context and policy design. Comparing CSA reform outcomes in the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs in Georgia after the 2003 Rose Revolution through a matched case study, the article shows that certain countrywide legal adjustments, anti‐corruption measures and context variables are necessary but insufficient conditions for successful reform. While in general Georgia has achieved considerable success in its CSA reform efforts, the President's leverage over reform implementation, leadership at the ministry level and the politics of foreign aid have led to significant variation in reform outcomes across the analysed institutions. In addition to this, institutional constraints reflecting inherent differences between policy sectors explain another part of the variation in outcomes in Georgia. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ministerial Leadership and Endorsement of Bureaucrats: Experimental Evidence from Presidential Governments

Scholars have debated what constitutes effective ministerial leadership with respect to administrative competence versus political influence. The authors contribute experimental evidence to this debate through a unique survey design of endorsement experiments. Using original data from 949 national civil servants in South Korea, this article examines civil servants’ assessments of ministerial leadership in three central dimensions of public management: internal management, interbranch coordination, and policy formulation/implementation. Further, existing variation in the characteristics of agencies is used to test whether such variation induces systematic differences in civil servants’ responses. Findings show that that civil servants’ attitudes toward ministerial leadership are asymmetric in nature. Ministers with civil service backgrounds are endorsed in all three dimensions, whereas ministers with legislative backgrounds receive increased support only for interbranch coordination skills. The levels of support for ministers with different backgrounds also vary across agency types. This analysis has implications for public management practice and agency control in presidential governments.     

西方行政改革对我国公共服务生产模式再造的启示

西方行政改革中新公共管理理论提出的公共服务市场化和社会化理念,在促进西方国家公共管理取得巨大成就的同时,对我国政府公共服务生产模式的再造也提供了一个值得借鉴的全新治理模式,即公共服务生产管理理念的市场化、以顾客为导向设计公共服务产品、公共服务决策和生产分离、公共服务生产范围的细化及公共服务主体的社会化和多元化。     

The Politics of Administrative Reforms in Asia: Paradigms and Legacies, Paths and Diversities

Many Asian governments have embarked on administrative reforms of one kind or another, engaging in rhetoric that resonates with the global paradigms of "new public management" and "good governance." This article seeks to understand Asian administrative reforms against the background of international influence, policy diffusion, domestic politics, institutional dynamics, and administrative traditions and legacies. It is impossible to capture the whole range of national reform types within any neat and tidy Asian paradigm, but some common strands of national reform paths in the region can still be traced. Different problems and failures are found to be addressed by Asian reforms, reflecting diverse motives and resulting in varied outcomes. The "old" public administration regime has largely coexisted with the "new" public management approaches and tools.     

略论当代西方国家行政领导模式的嬗变

新公共管理中“企业家政府”力主“掌舵”的行政领导模式，政府行政领导效能由此明显改观，并且推进了治理变革，但也造成参与价值的隐去、社会公平的缺失与治理易于失灵等问题。后新公共管理“整体政府”改革由此尝试“共享领导”的新型行政领导模式，并将其内涵界定为鼓励公众参与公共决策、增进公共服务均等化以及实施愿景型领导等几方面，从而相应弥补了企业家政府掌舵模式所存在的诸多缺陷。     

The Hidden Politics of Administrative Reform: Cutting French Civil Service Wages with a Low‐Profile Instrument

The article addresses internal and hidden politics of changes in bureaucracies by focusing on the introduction and use of policy instruments as institutional change without radical or explicit shifts in administrative systems. Beneath public administrative reforms, it examines the use of “low‐profile instruments” characterized by their technical and goal‐oriented dimension but also by their low visibility to external actors due to the high complexity of their commensurating purpose and the automaticity of their use. The core case study of the paper offers a historical sociology of a technique for calculating the growth of the French civil service wage bill from the mid‐1960s to the 2000s. The origins, uses, and institutionalisation of this method in the French context are explored to emphasize the important way of governing the bureaucracy at times of crisis through automatic, unobtrusive, incremental, and low‐profile mechanisms. While insisting on the salience of techniques for calculating, measuring, classifying, and indexing in the contemporary art of government, it also suggests the need for observing and explaining “everyday forms of retrenchment” in bureaucracies.     

Sailing with Northern Winds: Party Politics and Federal Reforms in Italy

Territorial reforms have been on the political agenda in Italy for the last two decades, becoming a stable issue of party competition. The breakthrough of Lega Nord (LN) in the party system has represented the main driver for federal reforms. The article argues that the bipolar and majoritarian institutional environment of the Second Republic has compelled the main state-wide parties to adopt an electoral logic that led them to accommodate the LN’s claims. However, the ideological orientations and the territorial interests of centre-left coalition proved more compatible with this accommodative strategy than those of the centre-right coalition. The majoritarian and adversarial style of government–opposition relations has made compromise on territorial reforms difficult, contributing to their rising salience in party competition.     

The Federal Civil Service: The Demise of an Institution

Recent changes in federal personnel practices, ostensibly for the purpose of "performance," serve to deprive the civil service of its moral content and hence to undermine its viability as an institution.     

Moral Leadership and Administrative Statesmanship: Safeguards of Democracy in a Constitutional Republic

The pursuit of the common good must be understood from the reality that governing is ugly. The ability to grapple with situations that are ambiguous requires administrators to be cognizant of action that might be suspect but necessary to accomplish the public interest. This often requires them to become active players. John Rohr postulates that the U.S. Supreme Court's standards of strict scrutiny is one approach that could be used to justify such action. Building on this line of thinking, the strict scrutiny test can be used as a guide to shape the constitutive character of administrative statesmanship while simultaneously restraining it. The ability to balance formative action and restraint provides a different dimension to an understanding of administrative statesmanship. Even though this process is not easy, it helps administrators refrain from going beyond the mark and enables them to act like statesmen in seemingly unresolvable situations.     

Leadership in Local Government Reform: Strategic Direction v Administrative Compliance

This paper reports on a survey across 26 Victorian local councils which assessed the impact of local government reform – boundary restructuring – compulsory competitive tendering, across-the-board rate cuts and rate capping, on the management and organisation of local government organisations in that state. It highlights the fact that leadership, planning and performance management is essential in responding to these reforms. It also reveals thatsome councils have been able to assist employees to make the shift to an outcomes-oriented deliverer of local services while others have made much less progress and are still focused on the traditional, compliance-oriented culture of local government administration.     

我国公务员制度创新的行政生态学分析

所谓公务员制度创新,简言之,就是指公务员制度创新主体在特定行政生态下进行的公务员制度创新活动,是特定行政生态环境与公务员制度等诸多因素相互作用的结果,换言之,行政生态环境对公务员制度创新具有重大而深刻的影响。因此,选择行政生态学作为我国公务员制度创新研究的方法论工具是极具解释力的。本文从行政生态环境的性质、现状与发展方向三个面向对我国公务员制度创新进行深入剖析,以期对我国公务员制度创新实践有所助益。