what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Monday, October 4, 2021

Focus on what;s important

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

[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

No comments:

Post a Comment