Public management in South Asia: dimensions and directions of change

Public management in South Asia has been influenced by the colonial past which has resulted in the domination of administrative systems by the bureaucrats. Bureaucracies remained firmly entrenched as powerful groups and performed both administrative and political functions. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka represent cases with similar backgrounds which opted for different political and economic systems after achieving independence. Consequently, a number of issues have emerged in public management in South Asia. These include debureaucratization of the policy process, complex relationship between specialists and generalists, integration of administrative structures, reconciliation of merit and equity, choice between professional and political patronage, revitalization of management, bridging the ever widening gap between the citizens and administrators, and the establishment of a sound ethical base of administration. The success of South Asian governments in dealing with these issues will determine, to a considerable extent, the dimensions and directions of change. While some of the issues will have to be addressed in the natural course of development, others will require a substantial degree of commitment from the governments as well as the societies.     

Corruption and the Decline of the State in Pakistan

Pakistan is generally included in most discussions of ‘failing states’ that pose the maximum danger to global security, with the rise of Islamic militancy being the most commonly cited reason for the ‘failure’. However, Islamic militancy is a result of impending state failure, not a cause of it. This article argues that the state's inability, caused by decades of systemic corruption, to provide any appreciable level of public goods or services, broadly defined, is responsible for the delegitimization of the state and its inability to maintain law and order in the cities or suppress Islamist insurgents in the rest of the country.     

Shifting emphasis in the role of the state: Urban housing reform in China 1

Studies on the role of the state and its control over the economy favour a reduction of state involvement in the process. While such efforts were conducive to the political and economic arrangements in the capitalist world, China presented an entirely different challenge. The state played a dominant role in the production and delivery of all public goods and exercised effective control over the economy in China. However, the changing circumstances following China's adoption of liberalisation have set in motion a number of changes including an apparent reduction of state control over the economy. A case in point is the shift in the role of the state in the production and distribution of public housing in the urban areas. There have been efforts to introduce a market system in housing provision through privatisation, commercialisation and socialisation, and these have resulted in increased private home ownership as well as the formulation of new regulations to govern the real estate market. The intention was to gradually transfer the responsibility of production and management of this essential commodity to property development and professional management companies. However, the state has continued to play a prominent role on the pretext of protecting the citizens from negative consequences of the reforms. The state must take into consideration the nature of the society and its tradition of providing public services and adjust policies to derive maximum benefit from the reforms. As a result, the role of the state has shifted, rather than reduced, and the transformation provides a new perspective on the potential pitfalls in liberalising and rolling back the state.     

Consumption,savings and investment by social class in Bangladesh: Does the rural sector support the Urban sector?

This article employs input‐output analysis and information from a social accounting matrix and the concept of net savings to examine savings, consumption and investment behaviour by various social classes in Bangladesh in urban and rural areas. Considerable differences between social classes can be identified in all three respects. A majority of the social classes in the rural sector does not appear to generate enough savings to sustain its consumption whereas the urban social classes do. There seems to be little difference in consumption pattern of the rural rich and the urban rich. There is considerable urban‐rural difference in the import intensities of consumption. The findings of this study based on the Hazari model do not establish the existence of urban bias but the problem seems to be one of ‘rich‐bias’ rather than urban‐bias per se. However, the Hazari model cannot capture all possible sources of urban bias and circumstantial evidence indicates concentration of advantages in the urban areas.     

Opposition politics in Malawi: hopeful signs amid the warnings

Across Africa, governments are either peacefully and legitimately ousted, or forced to share power, through the ballot box. In Malawi, the emergence of many political parties since the advent of a multiparty dispensation in 1993 signalled the flourishing of pluralism and opposition politics. However, in the May 2009 elections, the Malawi Congress Party and the United Democratic Front, which constituted the opposition, were largely rejected by the electorate in favour of President Bingu Mutharika's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), credited for his sound economic policies emulated internationally. The reduced presence in parliament of parties outside of the Democratic Progressive Party coalition is troubling. This development has stimulated debate on the opposition's role and ability to defend democratic governance, and the challenges facing it. On the other hand, the DPP's landslide victory has to some degree demonstrated that it is possible to ‘de-regionalise’ and ‘de-ethinicise’ the configuration and alignment of political interests and forces, confirming for other African countries that the analysis of African politics need not be oversimplified into ethnic and cultural terms as is often the case. This paper contends that democratic governance is promoted by a credible opposition that effectively acts as an alternative government. Therefore, there is need for addressing the major factors that militate against its operations to enable it play its rightful role in Malawi's emerging democracy.     

Civilian supremacy in democracies with ‘fault lines’: The role of the parliamentary standing committee on defence in Bangladesh

This article sets out to identify the conditions that promote civilian supremacy over the military in the post-military democracies. The article addresses the case of Bangladesh, where a decade-old post-military democratic political process is riddled with problems, such as the absence of opposition parties in the parliament, chronic political instability and violence and inefficient governance. However, the powerful military has not yet shown any inclination towards intervention in domestic politics. Rather, various civilian institutions, such as the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence (PSCD), have been successful in raising the level of the military's accountability to the civilian government and society. The article seeks to explain the role of PSCD during 1998–2001 in promoting civilian supremacy in Bangladesh. It argues that three sets of factors can explain the PSCD's role. First, there is intense competition for political power between the two major parties, which resists the military's involvement in politics in favour of any one political party. Second, there is the important role of civil society in favour of civilian supremacy. Third, there are external factors such as the donor countries' and international agencies' stance in favour of democracy and the Bangladesh military's participation in United Nations peacekeeping missions, which are discouraging military intervention in politics at home.     

Control rights, bureaucratic corruption and the allocation of resources

In a two-sector model, we show that corruption is endogenously determined by the model parameters. It depends on the fraction of unskilled labor and the relative TFP differential between skilled and unskilled sector. First, for a larger proportion of unskilled labor force, there is widespread corruption and for smaller share of unskilled labor force, there is no corruption. For the intermediate level, equilibrium depends on the number of corrupt bureaucrats and there are multiple equilibria. Second, corruption decreases with the relative TFP differential between skilled and unskilled sector. For the intermediate level of TFP differential, there are multiple equilibria. On its consequences, corruption causes rise in the wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. It distorts the allocation of resources, which results in the output and the welfare losses, and it is associated with the higher tax rate.