Exactly ten years ago I presented a paper at the Black Sea resort of Varna to the NISPAcee annual Conference (Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Admin in central and eastern Europe). The paper was called “The Long Game – not the logframe” and exposed the superficiality of the assumptions EC bureaucrats seemed to be making in its Technical Assistance programmes about what I called the kleptocracy or “impervious regimes” which prevailed in most ex-communist countries. The paper
·
argued
that the variety of terms used to try to describe the nature of the regimes
which control both the countries targeted by the EC’s Neighbourhood Policy and
wider afield indicate weak understanding of the
structure of power
·
suggested
the term ”impervious” regime as a useful description of an all-too common
system which can ride rough-shod over its subjects’ concerns in the pursuit of
its own selfish goals
·
asked
what we expect administrative reform to deliver in such systems
·
questioned
the efficacy of the tools which international bodies favour in the reform of state bodies in such contexts
·
looked
briefly at the (scanty) literature about the results from these tools
·
explored
the concept of ”windows of opportunity”
·
concluded
that technical assistance is built on shaky foundations
· not least in relation to the knowledge base of westerners and their sensitivity to context
Basically my argument was that more attention needed to be
paid to creating the conditions whereby senior politicians in the Region would
actually want reform….
These were the tools which
the paper examined which transition countries were being asked to use to get a
system of public administration more responsive to public need[1]
–
- Judicial reform; to embed properly
the principle of the rule of law[2]
- Budgetary reform; to ensure the integrity
and transparency of public resources
- Civil service laws,
structures and training institutions – to encourage professionalism and
less politicization of staff of state bodies
- Impact assessment – to try to move the
transition systems away from a legalistic approach and force policy-makers
to carry out consultations and assess the financial and other effects of
draft legislation
- Functional Review – to try to remove
those functions of state bodies which are no longer necessary or are best
handled by another sector or body[3].
- Institutional
twinning –
to help build the capacity of those state bodies whose performance is
crucial to the implementation of the Acquis Communautaire
- Development of local
government and NGOs – to try to ensure that a redistribution of power takes
place
- Anti-corruption
strategies[4]
– which incorporate elements of the first three of the above
- Performance
measurement and management eg EFQM
- report-cards[5] -
Needless to say, my paper went down like a lead balloon. My audience, after all, were the directors and teachers of central European schools of public administration – and I was asking them to take on the additional task of networking with politicians to persuade them of the need for change!
Seven years later a small but astonishing report was submitted to the EC as part of an EC-funded programme which stated quite baldly that very little was known about the way public administration was organised in the Region – but broadly confirming the tenor of my paper
At the same time, the EC, World
Bank and OECD were producing Manuals such as Quality
of Public Administration – toolbox for practitioners (EC 2017 edition) and Principles
of Public Administration (SIGMA 2018) to make sure that new and aspiring member
states properly understood what was expected of them. A somewhat belated recognition that several states had
been allowed to join the European Union before they had actually achieved the
relevant capacity – not just in the contentious judicial field but in basic
aspects of good government.
The SIGMA guidelines, for example, state that
Modern
public service is regarded as possible only when a set of conditions is in
place that ensures:
· separation between the public and private spheres;
· separation between politics and administration;
· individual accountability of public servants;
· sufficient job protection, levels of pay and
stability, and clearly defined rights and obligations for public servants;
· recruitment and promotion based on merit
The EC contribution to the development of capacity in state institutions is massive - billions of euros of Structural Funds and accounts for at least a quarter of the new investment in the Region. But the EC Toolbox (coming in at 487 pages) is quite unrealistic in its expectations and has clearly forgotten the excellent advice in 2002 of Merilee Grindle in her article Good Enough Governance – namely to focus on the important things….
[1] The
Governance and Social Development
Resource Centre published in 2011 an interesting overview of ”Current trends in
governance support”- at http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/HD755.pdf
[3] a rare set of
guidelines was given in 2001 by Manning et al http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2005/06/22/000090341_20050622142938/Rendered/PDF/32699.pdf
[4] the sociologists
and anthropologists have given us a useful critique of the role of
anti-corruption
[5] consumer feedback
on public services - one of the tools summarised in a useful meniu published by
the World Bank in 2005 http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/civilservice/ACSRCourse2007/Session%208/IncreasingGovEffectiveness.pdf
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