Personnel Management Reform in the Philippines: The Strategy of Professionalization

The strategy of professionalization which is a multi-pronged system aimed at efficient, effective, and responsive delivery of government services is the current thrust of the Civil Service Commission (CSC). As such, a package of personnel reform measures is instituted by the Commission which includes the pursuit of merit, competence and performance; development and institutionalization of positive attitudes, ethical conduct and behavior; motivation through an integrated system of rewards and punishments; continuing human resource development; and the encouragement of public sector unionism. Relevant issues on the professionalization thrust have been raised: (1) since the strategy of professionalization rests more on administrative controls, will the effort bring about increased bureaucratization and routinization instead (or the issue of professionalization vs. bureaucratization)? (2) are the policies coming from diverse sources like the CSC, Department of Budget and Management, Office of the President, and Congress — to mention a few — fully coordinated so as to produce convergent rather than divergent results? (3) is the government really sincere on the issue of public sector unionism since it denies the unions their basic rights to strike and bargain collectively for better pay and working conditions? There is a need to assess further the current efforts toward professionalization to find out if the Commission is really moving toward its avowed goals of deregulation, decentralization and managerial and professional discretion rather than becoming more routinized or bureaucratic.     

Competency, Bureaucracy, and Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis

Competency can be considered a central theme in contemporary public service reforms. This article analyzes the development of competency frameworks for senior public servants at the national–government level in three countries (the U.S., the U.K., and Germany). By tracing the development of competency as an idea, it is shown that competency reforms drew selectively on management ideas, and by tracing the nature and time-patterns of competency reform developments in the three countries, it is shown that competency came onto the reform agenda at different times and by various routes rather than by a simple pattern of international policy transfer or business-to-government transfer. It is argued that the adoption of competency frameworks took place at critical junctures for preexisting public service bargains or agreements in each case and that they were shaped by the particularities of institutional context. However, although competency is arguably central to public service reform, it is far from clear that the competency frameworks in these three cases contributed to the declared aims of many contemporary public service reformers.     

Anticipating Uncertainty: The Strategy-Structure Problem in Public Bureaucracy

The connection between administrative structure and policy strategy for public agencies is neither well understood, nor widely appreciated in political science. Much more emphasis is placed on the structure of linkages between bureaucracies and other political institutions. In this article, 1 advance an argument explaining the importance of strategy in policymaking for public agencies, and demonstrate how the concept needs to be refined in order for it to have meaning for public sector organizations. Strategy is analyzed in terms of two categories of uncertainty: generalized and contingent. Because of the ubiquitousness of generalized uncertainty in public policymaking, developing a capacity for anticipating uncertainty problems is critical in strategy formation. Whether that capacity exists is a function of administrative structure. 1 further present an argument for why structure deserves consideration as a political and technical matter, and not simply as a consequence of political preferences.     

Bureaucracy and development in Saudi Arabia: A behavioural analysis

The objective of the paper is to evaluate the developmental potential of the Saudi bureaucracy in terms of the innovative or developmental attitudes of its members. The paper is divided into four sections: (1) a brief discussion of the research procedures used in the study, (2) an analysis of group perceptions of innovative values within the Saudi bureaucracy, (3) an analysis of the innovative attitudes of Saudi bureaucrats and (4) an analysis of the factors inhibiting the development of innovative behaviour among Saudi bureaucrats. The results of the study indicate low levels of innovative behaviour among Saudi bureaucrats.     

Bureaucracy Versus Markets in Hospital Care: The Dutch Case

In this paper we analyze the bureaucratic negotiation processthat is implied by the budgeting system applied in Dutchhospital care. This system is based on centralized pricesetting while simultaneously allowing for decentralizednegotiations on volumes. We apply a variant of the bureaucracytheory, according to which the bureaucratic agency (in ourcase the joint hospitals) are not allowed to pricediscriminate, but will receive a flat price per unit ofoutput. We find that central price setting, where the insurercannot exploit its information on hospital costs, leads to asuboptimal supply of hospital care.     

Management problems of the proliferation of local government in Nigeria

Local government throughout Nigeria was reconstituted on a uniform basis in 1976. The 1979 Constitution then empowered state governments to create new local governments. This article describes how the state governments have used their authority to proliferate the number of local governments; it explains the reasons for doing this both on the part of state governments and on that of local communities. The drive to create additional local governments has derived in part from a desire to promote local level development, yet enquiries into the managerial capacity of existing local governments suggest that this expectation will be frustrated.     

Stability of the Federal System in Nigeria: Elite Attitudes at the Constituent Assembly Toward the Creation of New States

The Constituent Assembly which approved the constitution forNigeria's Second Republic (1979–1983) decided that nonew states should be created at that time and adopted proceduresmaking state creation in the future virtually impossible. TheAssembly's action implied that elite consensus had been achievedon the existing territorial configuration of the federation.Yet events during the Second Republic seemed to belie such aninterpretation. To resolve the contradiction a content analysisof the Constituent Assembly debates was undertaken. It showedwidespread dissatisfaction with the existing nineteen-statestructure. The study concludes that the Constituent Assembly'sdecisions on state creation did not reflect an elite consensus.Instead, the period of relative stability in federal territorialconfiguration, which elsewhere seems to follow early years ofinstability, had not yet been reached in Nigeria.     

Robotic Bureaucracy: Administrative Burden and Red Tape in University Research

This Viewpoint essay examines university research administration and the use of software systems that automate university research grants and contract administration, including the automatic sending of emails for reporting and compliance purposes. These systems are described as “robotic bureaucracy.” The rise of regulations and their contribution to administrative burden on university research have led university administrators to increasingly rely on robotic bureaucracy to handle compliance. This article draws on the administrative burden, behavioral public administration, and electronic communications and management literatures, which are increasingly focused on the psychological and cognitive bases of behavior. These literatures suggest that the assumptions behind robotic bureaucracy ignore the extent to which these systems shift the burden of compliance from administrators to researchers.     

Coordinating the Government Bureaucracy in Hong Kong: An Institutional Analysis

The change in sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997 has brought about an interesting puzzle: despite a high degree of institutional continuity, the Hong Kong bureaucracy that was considered highly efficient during the colonial era has appeared to turn into an inept administrative structure generating blunder after blunder. The bureaucracy seems to face greater difficulties in horizontal coordination under the new governance, and has lost the ability to produce coherent policy actions.
Drawing upon a literature of institutional analysis, this article examines the institutional design for coordination in the Hong Kong government. The article argues that the bureaucracy in Hong Kong is designed upon a logic of colonial rule. Like any institutional arrangements, the colonial administrative system has inherent coordination limitations. During the colonial era, some smoothing mechanisms were developed as the lubricant for the bureaucracy's operation, but the new governance has inevitably impinged upon some of these—making the bureaucracy more prone to coordination problems.     

Serving Two Masters: Professionalization versus Corruption in Ukraine's Election Administration

The development of a neutral, professional bureaucracy has been a profound concern for emerging democracies. International and domestic actors have expended significant resources to encourage the development of the rule of law, yet many postcommunist societies remain mired in corruption. When corrupt behaviors are integrated with a core function of democratic states, such as the implementation of free and fair elections, the implications of failures to professionalize bureaucrats are enhanced. This article empirically evaluates how professionalization and corruption interact in election administration, using unique survey data from Ukraine. We assess the results of pre‐ and postelection surveys of administrators conducted across Ukraine during the 2014 parliamentary elections. Our results suggest that aspects of a professionalized bureaucracy coexist with corruption and that mitigating incentives for state capture is a major challenge for democratization.     

The Public/Private Cleavage in a Welfare State: Attitudes Toward Public Management Reform

This study contributes to the growing literature on differences in attitudes between public and private sector employees, particularly with respect to their receptivity or resistance to public management reforms. We begin by asking the question: to what degree does perceived self-interest play a role in accounting for attitudes toward public management reforms such as downsizing, privatization, and public spending? Using attitudinal data from Sweden, a social welfare state with a large public bureaucracy, a tension is observed both among public employees in different levels of government and between public and private sector employees. In the context of public management reforms, national government employees emerge as more right-leaning politically and more supportive of public management reforms than those working in local government. The analysis finds, particularly among national government employees, that while interest as measured here is strongly related to attitudes toward reform, status as a public employee and status as a public bureaucrat are not as significant as other components of interest in accounting for attitudes toward public management reform.     

Experiential Learning and Presidential Management of the U.S. Federal Bureaucracy: Logic and Evidence from Agency Leadership Appointments

Presidents become increasingly effective at managing the bureaucracy because of the information and expertise that they acquire from on‐the‐job experience. In their appointment choices, this theory predicts that presidents become better at reducing information asymmetries incurred from the bureaucracy (Agent Selection Learning), improve the vertical balance of leadership agent traits between top supervisory positions and subordinates directly beneath them (Agent Monitoring Learning), and place a greater relative premium on loyalty in response to horizontal policy conflict between the White House and the Senate (Common Agency Learning). This logic obtains empirical support from the analysis of bureaucratic agent traits for Senate‐confirmed presidential appointees serving in leadership positions covering 39 U.S. federal government agencies from 1977 to 2009. Presidents’ appointment strategies reflect their increasing effectiveness at managing the bureaucracy, thus complementing their increasing reliance on administrative mechanisms to achieve policy objectives as their tenure in office rises.     

The Bureaucracy and Its Masters: The New Madisonian System in the US

The bureaucracy's masters have redesigned the American political system over the past 20 years. As before, checks and balances play a critical role. This time, however, relations between one branch of government (the bureaucracy) and the rest are decidedly and deliberately asymmetrical. While acknowledging the need for bureaucratic accountability, the author raises questions about a growing emphasis on highly coercive controls from above. Instead he recommends greater reliance on catalytic controls from below, which energize the bureaucracy without stifling bureaucratic creativity and eroding bureaucratic integrity.     

Conservation in Context: Toward a Systems Framing of Decentralized Governance and Public Participation in Wildlife Management

Governance scholars have long championed the adaptive utility of decentralized management institutions, in part due to their ability to bring diverse stakeholders into decision‐making processes. However, research into the link between decentralization and participation often looks at policy design but bypasses important system feedbacks that shape sustained participation over time. To paint a more robust picture detailing how decentralization and participation are related, this paper uses a complex systems framework to explore interacting structural, operational, and cultural components of decentralized wildlife governance institutions in the United States and Botswana. Through this comparative analysis, I argue that the landscape of public participation in decentralized governance institutions appears to be significantly impacted by three factors: 1) how decentralization processes occurred, 2) where in the process of decision making participation is situated, and 3) perceptions of power distribution between groups with competing interests.     

Constraining Executive Action: The Role of Legislator Professionalization in Latin America

What explains the failure of legislatures with strong constitutionally endowed powers to exert themselves over the executive in practice? We examine the role of legislator professionalization in strengthening the legislature's ability to constrain executive action, conceptualizing legislator professionalization as prior legislative experience and prior professional work experience. We argue that more professionalized legislators, through the skill and knowledge they bring to the policymaking process from prior experience, will be better equipped to challenge executive authority. In a sample of four Latin American countries from 1990 through 2010, we find that legislatures are more likely to curb executive decree issuance when individual legislators are strongly professionalized, controlling for constitutional powers and several other partisan and political factors. Our findings suggest that legislatures composed of more professionalized legislators can constrain executive action, especially in the context of a unified political opposition in the legislature.     

Bureaucracy as an issue in Third World management: An African case study

Organizational theory has been of surprisingly limited value in illuminating the problems of public sector management in the Third World. One reason for this is the ideal-typical bias of most studies of Third World management. This has led to an emphasis on assumed optimal performance criteria to the detriment of an understanding of how Third World organizations actually perform. The case of public sector administration in Liberia is used to illustrate this theme. The major role of administrative incorporation in the stabilization of the Liberian State is established, and consideration given to the ways in which the span of administrative employment and the extent of its popular impact were maximized through the elaboration of an idiosyncratic bureaucratic ideology. Central features of the Liberian bureaucracy are discussedthe over-definition of its external boundary; the weakness of its internal boundaries; the relative insignificance of specialized expert knowledge to bureaucratic roles; and the idiosyncratic nature of the bureaucratic career. While Weberian standards did not apply in the Liberian instance, it cannot be assumed that the latter was therefore a ‘failed bureaucracy’; for the Liberian administration was arguably effective in relation to certain goals, even if these were not ones which would have applied in the ideal-typical case. These goals were essentially political and must be understood in relation to political constraints, rather thanas is often suggested in studies of Third World managementas ‘cultural’ phenomena. Attempts to improve public sector managerial performance in the Third World need to give as much attention to operational issues as to conventional targets.     

反对形式主义官僚主义:党的作风建设无法回避的课题

形式主义、官僚主义已经成为影响我们事业发展的一大祸害。坚持党的群众路线 ,密切联系群众 ,必须坚决克服形式主义、官僚主义。在我国 ,形式主义、官僚主义有着深厚的历史根源。党的十五届六中全会通过的《决定》把反对形式主义、官僚主义列为端正党风、坚持党的宗旨、密切同人民群众的联系的重要任务 ,体现了以江泽民同志为核心的党中央无比坚强的决心和信心。当前 ,克服形式主义、官僚主义 ,至少要从五个方面加强和改善党的作风建设。