Administrative Reform
BLUE TEAM
“Administrative reform means an induced, permanent
improvement in administration” (Wallis 1989, 170)
Part I: Golden Oldies
Miewald: Life and Hard Times of Bureaucracies
Organizations aren’t instrumental – i.e., they ‘are not
supposed to accomplish anything beyond their own
existence’ (100)
Problem with way organizational theory sees
organizations (rational)
In reality, can look at them as technical, human relations
and political problems
Technical
Personal: ‘can bend an organization out of shape’ (105)
Political: most important; key is budgeting (‘clash of values and the
making of allocative decisions’ [107])
Stages of the bureau
Birth, growth (survival), maturity (little search); death
Miewald: Responsibility
Difficult to get a grasp of. What is it?
Responsiveness, flexibility, consistency, stability, leadership, probity,
candor, competence, efficacy, prudence, due process, accountability
(237)
‘Sins’ of bureaucracies
Arrogance, political involvement, corruption, unethical behavior,
inefficiency, failure to respect legislative intent, ignoring procedures,
information manipulation, abuse of subordinates, failure to show
initiative
Concrete ways to prevent/remedy irresponsibility
Administrative law (discretion vs Rechtsstaat); ombudsman (the
public’s ‘agent’); individual responsibility (human values and self-
regulation of bureaucrats; encouragement of whistle blowers)
Marini: The Minnowbrook Perspective
In light of ‘new public administration’
Make PA relevant to societal problems of the day
Moving away from value-free (positivist) research
approaches
Focus on what schools/education of PA should look
like
More comparative, empirical, focused on social equity
Teach PA as the applied social science
PA as ‘educational’ versus merely ‘training’
Curriculum: ‘up to date, alive, problem oriented, and relevant’
(361)
Policy, Implementation and Local Institutions in
Botswana (Picard and Morgan 1985)
• Focus of this chapter
– the relationship between rural development goals and central-local institutional
arrangements
• “Governments has many good ideas but we don’t know too much about
them out here” (125)
• In an interview with one administrative secretary to the district Land Board in
Botswana
• Challenges of local officials
– Implementation decisions taken far away in the national capital
– Little knowledge of the reasoning behind the policy
– Few resources, financial and administrative to carry out the policy
• Agenda and the reality: Tribal Grazing Land Policy (1975)
– Original policy: generating responsibility for the control of land use/writing a
land use plan for the district/supervising the division of district land/protecting
the interests of the poorer people
– Reality and implementation: the land boards understaffed/ill-equipped/ without
adequate office space
Policy, Implementation and Local Institutions in
Botswana (continued)
Why?
Dynamics of policy implementation
Multi-dimensional policies and institutions
Interplay between policy and institutions/reciprocal effects
Framework for analysis
The degree of asymmetry between the public policy goals and the
organizational capacity of local institutions
Policy implementation as the main consideration within the “policy context”
Local government: Devolution and retreat
The evolution of district councils, 1966-1970
Faith in the center, 1970-1976
Stalled attempts at local government perform, 1977-present
Organizational capacity at the local level
Central government, unwilling to increase the capacity of local government
The affective dimension of local government
The Mouse that Roared: Taiwan’s Management of
Trade Relations with the United States (Chan 1987)
Main focus:
How dependent country like Taiwan has faced conditions
of basic asymmetry in international relations?
How we can understand the trade relationship and
predict the future?
How small and dependent economies have tried to lessen
or evade the full impact of U.S. protectionist pressures?
The Mouse that Roared: Taiwan’s Management of Trade
Relations with the United States (Continued)
Micro level of bargaining tactics
Problem redefinition, damage limitation, exploring loopholes,
linkage politics and transnational coalitions
Macro level factors
Taiwan’s policy capacity and U.S. accommodating behavior
Taiwan’s institutional capabilities especially in terms of the
autonomy and strength of the state; its historical niche in U.S.
domestic policies and Washington’s cold war containment
policy
Metagame: Taiwan’s coping behavior in the trade can be
understood in the broader context of a “metagame” that seeks
to preserve the vital political and security contributions from
the U.S.
Part II: Literary Maps and
Synthesis
Preview
The meaning of public sector reform
Literary maps - how we have conceptualized the field
How bureaucracy provides services
Privatization
Role of personnel
Human resource management
Accountability
Implementation
Governance
Accountability
Corruption
Development
The meaning of public sector reform
“Induced, permanent improvement in administration”
(Wallis 1989, 170)
Administrative reform strategies (Turner and Humle 1997)
Restructuring
Participation
Human resources issuesAccountability Public – private mixes
Challenges
Management (finance/human resource/leadership)
Measuring performance
Accountability/responsibility for implementation
Governance
Human
Privatization Accountability Resource
Management
Miewald
Picard and /
Fuller/ Garrity/ Barzelay
Savas Nelson
Marini
(Minnowbrook
Arnold Perspective)
and
White Klitgaard
Morgan
Picard and
Turner Morgan
Wallis and
Hulme
Development Governance Corruption Implementation
How bureaucracy provides services
Privatization
Savas: “the key to better government”
Alarmed by growth in government
Lays out a spectrum of privatization options from contracting out, to
franchising, to government vending
Arnold and Morgan: projects, plans, and programs
Need organizational framework for managers
Distinguish between project and program management
• Project: clear objectives; defined roles and responsibilities; plans and
schedules; rewards/sanctions; feedback/adaptation mechanisms
• Program: design, implementor capacity; expanding resources/support;
collaboration with other organizations; proactive leadership
Result: towards better effectiveness in implementation of public policy
goals
Role of personnel
Human resource management
A key way to reform, over time
Education rather than technical training (Minnowbrook)
Accountability
Barzelay: need to move to “post-bureaucratic” structure where officials,
civil servants “build” rather than “enforce” accountability
Often seen in terms of accountability to overseers, line agencies and staff
Should move from “guardianship to problem solving” (99)
Need “new routines” and a new culture
• “way things should and could be”
• Problem-solving
• “customers and public policy”
• “producing value”
• “caring about people”
Implementation
Governance
World Bank Policy and NGOs: World bank has expanded collaboration
with private agencies and grassroots groups in projects (Nelson 1995).
NGOs tendencies to process-oriented programming contradicts the
interests of World Bank (Nelson 1995).
Beyond the market, beyond the state (Turner and Hulme 1997, 200)
the rise of non-governmental organizations
Governance and creating civil society (Garrity 1996)
Institutional development/changing organizational behavior
and management practices (Garrity 1996)
Implementation (Continued)
Corruption (Klitgaard 1991)
Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC):
analyzing the ICAC’s success: several principal-agent client
relationships
Singapore: Cleaning up corruption
Changing rewards and penalties
Gathering information
Restructuring the principal-agent-client relationship
Case of Korea: collusion in bidding/attempts to make competition
work
Administrative reform and development
Bureaucracy and development (Turner and Hulme 1997)
Leading issues relating to bureaucracy and development
Size
Capacity: project implementation and capacity
Culture: bureaucracies of developing countries are heavily
influenced by endogenous cultures.
Power, politics, and authority: power distribution in
society/in government
Bureaucratic bias
Gender and bureaucracy
Corruption
Administrative reform and development
(Continued)
Reform cases (Wallis 1989)
China – public health program/Kenya - tea development
authority/Korea - government invested enterprises
NGOs, empowerment and politics (Turner and Hulme 1997)
Empowerment as a grand object
NGOs claim to be redistributing power at the local level and
influencing policy
People-centered development
Referneces
Marini, Frank. 1971. Toward a new public administration:
the Minnowbrook perspective. Scranton, PA: Chandler Pub.
Co.
Chan, S. 1987. "The mouse that roared: Taiwan's
management of trade relations with the US." Comparative
Political Studies 20 (3):251-92.
Picard, Louis A., and Philip E. Morgan. 1985. "Policy,
implementation and local institutions in Botswana." In The
evolution of modern Botswana, ed. L. A. Picard. London: Rex
Collings.
Miewald, Robert D. 1978. Public administration: a critical
perspective. New York: McGraw-Hill.
References
Baker, Randall. 1994. Comparative public management:
putting U.S. public policy and implementation in context.
Westport, CN: Praeger.
Barzelay, Michael, and Babak J. Armajani. 1992. Breaking
through bureaucracy: a new vision for managing in
government. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Picard, Louis A., Michele Garrity, and International Institute
of Administrative Sciences. 1994. Policy reform for
sustainable development in Africa: the institutional
imperative. Boulder, CO: L. Rienner Publishers.
Savas, Emanuel S. 1987. Privatization: the key to better
government. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers.
References
Klitgaard, Robert E. 1988. Controlling corruption. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Wallis, Malcolm. 1989. Bureaucracy: its role in Third World
development. London: Macmillan.
Nelson, Paul J. 1995. The World Bank and non-governmental
organizations: the limits of apolitical development. New York: St.
Martin's Press.
White, Louise G. 1990. Implementing policy reforms in LDCs: a
strategy for designing and effecting change. Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner Publishers.
Turner, Mark, and David Hulme. 1997. Governance, administration,
and development: making the state work. West Hartford, CN:
Kumarian Press.