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International Public Administration Reform: Implications for the Russian Federation

Author: N Manning and N Parison
Date: 2003
Size: 28 pages (189 KB)

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Summary

What is the best way to tackle administrative reform? What are the key reforms? This research carried out in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Finland, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States by the World Bank identifies key country comparators and relevant variables in order to assist the Russian Federation authorities as they prepare for implementation of the Program for the Reform of the Civil Service System in the Russian Federation. The study concludes that there is at present little international convergence of ideas on administrative reform.

The period from the mid-1980s to the end of the 1990s saw a huge volume of major and complex public administration reform programmes. The four areas of public sector institutional arrangements and public policy that are amenable to relatively short-term change are: (1) public expenditure arrangements, (2) personnel management and civil service (3) organizational structure of the executive, (4) role of and policy load carried by government. These 14 countries carried out such reforms at various levels and therefore with varying degrees of success in terms of reductions in public expenditure, efficiency improvements, and other gains such as political satisfaction with outcomes in terms of policy flexibility and responsiveness.

Given that many governments were driven by very similar sets of concerns, why then did they often pursue different reform activities? Generally, they did different things because:

They were constrained by the basic architecture of public administration: Some reformers found themselves able to gain more from existing administrative structures than others.
Some reformers were concentrating on basic reforms and others, who already had sound basics in place, were selecting from an optional menu of reforms.
Those reformers grappling with basic reforms had to be distinctly opportunistic, that is, they had to take advantage of idiosyncratic developments as they emerged.
Circumstances dictated action, but the leverage available to reformers - the points of entry to comprehensive reform programs - and the malleability of basic public sector institutions varied considerably among countries.
The level of reform activity is significantly determined by the resulting traction that was available to reformers.
Finding a point of entry is the underlying problem facing the reformers who have little traction and certain non-optional basics to achieve.

Review of the possible entry points to public administration reform for the Russian Federation suggests that it could be appropriate for the reform team in Russia to seek to:

Keep firmly in mind the need for realism and managed expectations.
Start with the basics and focus on fundamental civil service reforms.
Create more traction, particularly by developing central agency capacity.
Seize opportunities through forging partnerships with regional administrations, cities, municipalities, and districts, and encourage pilot reform schemes and experiments at the agency or sub-national level.
Create opportunities through the judicious use of functional reviews and stimulate external pressure on the executive (including the cautious introduction of some freedom of information legislation and the development of an ombudsman's office).
Look particularly at the experiences of other low-traction countries that also have broad reform concerns and some need to focus on the basics: Brazil, Hungary, Poland, and the Republic of Korea.

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Source: Manning, N. and Parison, N., 2003, ‘International Public Administration Reform: Implications for the Russian Federation’ The World Bank, Washington
Author: Nick Manning , nick.manning@oecd.org