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Legitimacy and Context: Implications for Public Sector Reform in Developing Countries

Author: Christine Andrews
Date: 2008
Size: 10 pages (98 KB)

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Summary

How can successful public sector reform be achieved in developing countries? This article from Public Administration and Development argues that understanding the interplay between public institutions and the surrounding social context is fundamental to developing a reform strategy. Poorer and socio-economically stratified countries face greater reform challenges owing to public institutions' lack of legitimacy. Reforms should focus on areas of governance that impact on poverty and inequality.

The socio-economic context of a country and the legitimacy of its public institutions are important factors in designing public sector reforms. However, reformers often fail to take them into account. Civic morality is also important. Civic morality can be defined as citizens’ respect for and cooperative attitude towards public institutions and associated norms, such as paying taxes and claiming government benefits.

Developing countries have distinctive characteristics that require particular reform strategies. Many developing countries became democracies only in the 1980s. In these nations, democratisation involves not only establishing traditional political institutions, but also improving the legitimacy of the civil service, which tends to undermine the performance of public institutions.

The following characteristics of developing countries are relevant to public sector reforms.

• In Latin America, public institutions are still too frail to impact on the civic morality of their citizens. Hence, high or low levels of civic morality cannot be explained by the level of confidence in institutions.
• Mass phenomena such as inequality and unemployment are more important in explaining the level of civic morality.
• In some countries, a handful of public institutions show high levels of professionalism and effectiveness compared with the overall ineffectiveness of the civil service.
• In ‘predatory states’, corruption has privatised public services to such an extent that the idea of a public good has almost completely disappeared.
• Public institutions are more likely to be perceived as corrupt in unequal countries.
• In these countries, institutions cannot win the confidence of the public and, thus, cannot be effective in delivering public services, implementing public policies or setting a moral example for citizens.

Although poor and socio-economically stratified countries face greater challenges, public sector reforms should focus on areas of governance that impact on poverty. In unequal societies reforms should start by addressing economic and social injustice.

• Because governmental resources are scarce, it is not feasible to reform all systems in all public organisations simultaneously.
• Financial, human and political resources should be targeted at the government sectors that are more likely to make an impact on inequality, poverty or other pressing social problems.
• Because poverty and inequality demand different policies, improving governmental performance may require simple approaches or very complex strategies.
• Poverty may be addressed by cash transfer schemes, which have been quite successful in Brazil and Mexico, and which require only a database of poor families, electronic cards and some surveillance of obligations, such as school attendance or taking vaccines.
• An enduring solution to the problem of inequality requires an effective education policy.

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Source: Andrews, C., 2008, ‘Legitimacy and Context: Implications for Public Sector Reform in Developing Countries’, Public Administration and Development, vol. 28, pp. 171-180.