Civil service reform

The politics of civil service reform

It is now recognised that political context and political feasibility is critical to the success or otherwise of civil service reform. Indeed, the widespread (and widely reported) ‘failure’ of civil service reform is often because the reforms do not get past the point of implementation.

Even in cases where civil service reform has been implemented, the political context in which change occurs is probably more important and influential than the technical interventions themselves.

Page contents:

• Bringing politics back in
• Identifying the positive

Bringing politics back in

Unsworth provides a succinct statement of the centrality of politics in a paper reporting on the work of the Centre for the Future State (CFS). She argues that “effective public institutions evolve through a political process of bargaining between the state and organised groups in society”. Practitioner readers can go to the short ‘messages from the research’ section (pp. 6-7).

Unsworth, S., 2007, 'Can Political Science Speak to Policymakers?' Paper presented at PSA Development Politics Group 2nd Annual Conference, 26 January, International Development Department, University of Birmingham.
How far do current high profile debates about governance offer opportunities for political scientists to influence development policy? Drawing on the experience of the Centre for the Future State (CFS), this paper argues that research has had an impact where it is context specific, or has clear operational implications. It has been less successful in challenging conventional approaches to governance, or moving debate away from a focus on formal institutions, towards a real concern with politics.
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Robinson’s paper is an application of Unsworth’s thinking.  It shows that difficulties with reform in Uganda were partly due to failure to anticipate what would motivate stakeholders.

Robinson, M., 2006, 'The Political Economy of Governance Reforms in Uganda', IDS Discussion Paper,  May, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton.
What political and institutional factors explain the different trajectories of governance reforms in Uganda? This discussion paper from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) surveys three governance reforms in Uganda in the 1990s. The Ugandan experience highlights the difficulty of sustaining successful reforms over the long term in a context of patrimonialism and personal rule.
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Robinson, M., 2007, 'The Politics of Successful Governance Reforms: Lessons of Design and Implementation', Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, vol. 45, no. 4.
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This paper argues for taking a political view of civil service reform.  Repeated attempts at reform in Swaziland have fallen at the same invisible political hurdle, in the form of Swaziland’s ‘dual system’ of government in which the traditional, royal side has precedence.

McCourt, W., 2003, 'Political Commitment to Reform: Civil Service Reform in Swaziland', World Development, vol. 31, no. 6, p. 1015
What factors determine a government’s commitment to implementing political reform? How can international donors identify genuine domestic commitment and generate increased political will where it is lacking? This article from World Development uses a case study of civil service reform in Swaziland to highlight the key elements of local commitment and the means available to donors to engage with a government whose commitment is weak. It argues that strong political leadership and irrevocable reform policies are key factors in assuring implementation, while persuasive, high-level donor engagement with elites can help foster commitment.
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Polidano, C., 2001, 'Why Civil Service Reforms Fail', Public Policy and Management Working Paper, no. 16, Institute for Development Policy and Management, Manchester.
Most reforms in government fail. They fail not because, once implemented, they yield unsatisfactory outcomes but because they never get past the implementation stage at all. Why is this the case? This working paper from the Institute of Development Policy and Management seeks to identify some of the obstacles that keep reformers from making good choices. By focusing on the approach to reform, not on its content, the paper establishes that what matters most in improving the record of implementations are the strategic and tactical decisions taken in the course of putting the reforms into effect. The content of reform makes little difference to the success rate. The paper seeks to come to conclusions as to what approach is likely to maximise the chances of success and minimise those of failure. Three key tactical issues are analysed: the scope for reform, the role of aid donors, and the leadership of change.
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Identifying the positive

To some extent, the negative experiences of civil service reform over the last 20 to 30 years have their roots in a perception of failure itself. Singularly identifying things that ‘don’t work’ and then trying to fix them may have been a recipe for failure all along. Some authors have taken a different approach: looking for things that do work and building on them. This approach has resulted in some encouraging results.

Judith Tendler’s book 'Good Government in the Tropics' marked a turning point in thinking about civil service reform.

Tendler, J., 1997, ‘Good Government in the Tropics’, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London.
Why do governments often perform poorly and what causes them to improve? This text discusses good governance in developing countries. Current mainstream development literature is concerned with how governments fail to deliver public services and theory is built from this. The text formulates advice by drawing on cases of good performance and in so doing reveals how some of the current advice goes wrong.
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Donor advice has been directed at limiting the ‘damage’ caused by the public sector and falls into three categories:

1. Reducing the size of the state (sacking ‘excess’, contracting out, privatising and decentralising)
2. Ending many of the programmes that enabled corrupt practices (import/export licenses, subsidised credit)
3. Introducing market pressures and incentives to public agencies and their managers and exposing them to the wishes and dissatisfactions of users.

The explanations for poor performance in the public sector have several flaws. Tendler argues that "much of the current advice offered to developing countries, and the thinking that underlies it, is misguided… Those who formulate the advice have not been curious enough about the evidence imbedded in instances of good government in the countries being advised" (p. 135)

Based on experiences from Brazil’s Northeast, she identifies four explanations for better performance by civil servants:

1. There was a high dedication of workers to their jobs.
2. The government fed this dedication with repeated public demonstrations of admiration and respect for what they were doing.
3. The scope of the civil servants’ work was often wider than their proscribed functions, often done voluntarily. It sometimes involved more brokering than expertise, cohered together in a client-centric, problem-solving approach to service delivery. It gave rise to trusting and respectful relationships between clients and public servants.
4. This wider scope of work was not an ‘extra’ burden on existing work but was seen as a way of defining what needed to be done in order to reach a programme’s goals. It was customisation of tasks in response to what needed to be done.

Others have taken up Tendler’s search for success. The following paper is a summary of findings from a number of policy areas.

Bebbington, A. and W. McCourt, 2006, ‘Where does development success come from? Explanations and practical implications’, University of Manchester: Institute for Development Policy and Management Working Paper No. 70.
What are the key ingredients of successful development policies? This paper from the Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM) uses seven case studies in Africa, Asia and Latin America to explore the nature and explanation of development policy success. Ultimately, success is determined by the balance of power, committed leadership and good institutional design.
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