Political Science and Public Administration (Part 2)Lecture-8: Administrative Reform

Professor Dr. Mohammad Mohabbat KhanSeniormost Professor University of Dhaka

Department of Public Administration Dhaka -1000Bangladesh

Public Administration Reform (PAR)

Public Administration Reform can be very comprehensive and include process changes in areas such as organizational structures, decentralization, personnel management, public finance, results-based management, regulatory reforms etc. It can also refer to targeted reforms such as the revision of the civil service statute.

Public administration refers to: 1. The aggregate machinery (policies, rules,

procedures, systems, organizational structures, personnel, etc.) funded by the state budget and in charge of the management and direction of the affairs of the executive government, and its interaction with other stakeholders in the state, society and external environment.

2. The management and implementation of the whole set of government activities dealing with the implementation of laws, regulations and decisions of the government and the management related to the provision of public services.

The Note focuses on the executive branch of government. It does not include the administration of the other branches of government, including the legislative and the judicial branches, which share some of the issues of the executive branch, but are nevertheless distinguished in their particulars.

It takes an approach that is informed by recent thinking in the realm of public management, which borrows from a number of other areas of research as well as from the private sector to find new solutions, places the public sector in its cultural and political environment, and sees the role of public manager as an active and motivating agent.

Evolution of Public Administration Reform Increasing concern for PAR in developing countries

derives from three main intellectual threads. A. New public management -- a number of

Anglo-Saxon countries (the UK, New Zealand, Australia, the United States and Canada) starting in the early 1980s, began implementing wide ranging reform programmes that provided both the model and the experience that could be applied in developing countries.

NPM seeks to roll back the role of the state by applying private sector management principles to government organisations. The enthusiastic dissemination of this model to developing countries was seen by some as a new attempt to colonize development administration with a standardised, western approach to PAR. Nevertheless, the language of NPM, and the principles of client focus, decentralization, the separation of policy making from implementation, and the use of private partners for service delivery continues to inform current thinking about PAR.

B. Structural adjustment reforms -- in the mid 1980s, efforts at reforming the public administration in developing countries, supported by the IFIs, focussed on reducing overall costs of the government, mainly through privatisation of state owned enterprises and reduction of the wage bill to bring government spending down to sustainable levels and free resources for other uses more beneficial to the overall economy.

However, most of the public sector reforms supported through the SAPs have met with considerable resistance (not least because in many countries the public sector is the principal source of formal employment), and their implementation has rarely been successful.

C. Transition from central planning to market economy, and from single party systems to multi-party democracies -- The fall of the Soviet Union has persuaded governments of previously socialist countries to transform their economies to adhere more to market principles often linked to political reforms. In the 1990s, a large number of economies, especially in Central and Eastern Europe (but also in countries in South-East Asia) began this transition. This implied the reorientation of the system of public administration.

Recent trends in Public Administration Reform In spite of the influential neo-liberal arguments of

the 1980s and 1990s which sought to roll back the state, recent surveys find that citizens want state institutions that are democratic, efficient in the use of public resources, effective in delivering public goods, but also strong and capable of standing up to powerful global forces. People want the state and its public administration to act as a social and economic promoter, capable of ensuring equitable distribution of opportunities, sustainable management of resources and equitable access to opportunities (political, economic, social and cultural).

An established public administration has been, arguably, far more vital to economic development in historical fact than either free elections or parliaments. In the LDCs and post conflict countries in particular, underdeveloped private sectors require the public administration to play a major role in the delivery of services and the provision of much needed economic infrastructure. But, most important of all, an established non-partisan civil service is vital to democracy as it makes it possible to have a peaceful and orderly political succession, and thus genuine pluralism.

In recent years public sector management is increasingly seen as more than just modernizing state institutions and reducing civil service costs. It is also about fostering dynamic partnerships with the civil society and the private sector, to improve the quality of service delivery, enhance social responsibilities and ensure the broad participation of citizens in decision-making and feedback on public service performance.

Public Administration Reform and the MDGs. The Millennium Declaration recognizes good

governance, of which public administration is a central part, as the means for achieving the goals of the Declaration. Support to modernizing state institutions is linked to achieving the MDGs in several ways. First, more resources in poor countries are freed to be used in pursuit of MDG goals if the efficiency of the public administration is increased. Second, by increasing transparency and eradicating corruption, fewer scarce resources in poor countries will be misdirected away from achieving MDGs.

Third, a public administration that responds to the needs of citizens, especially women and marginalized people, is critical to ensuring the sustainability of the achievements within the rubric of the MDGs. Finally, increasing the accountability of state institutions is an essential feature of governments’ strategies to close the democratic deficit, which is key to achieving the MDGs within the context of the broader Millennium Declaration.

The rights-based approach to development More recently, as the concept of governance

has evolved, and as the exercise of democratic freedoms has become associated with sustainable human development, so the role of state institutions in providing services and protecting rights and freedoms has become more prominent in development thinking. The added emphasis during the last decade on anti-corruption and transparency draws from this thread.

UNDP’s focus on public administration is not only informed by, but also derives from its commitment to a rights based approach to development. First, a cardinal concept of the Millennium Declaration is the right to development, for which good governance is an essential guarantee.

Second, key components of a human rights based approach can only be achieved with the aid, inter alia, of an effective public administration. These are:

Participation and transparency in decision-making -- participation throughout the development process is a right, and obliges the state and other actors to create an enabling environment for the participation of all stakeholders.

Non-discrimination – equity and equality cut across all rights and are the key ingredients for development and poverty reduction.

Empowerment – people should be enabled to exercise their human rights through the use of tools such as legal and political action.

Accountability of actors -- public and private institutions and actors should be accountable to the public, especially to poor people, to promote, protect and fulfil human rights and to be held responsible if these are not enforced.

Finally, since the rights-based approach seeks to develop not only the capacities of rights holders to claim and exercise their rights, but also of duty bearers to fulfill human rights obligations, it increases the pressure on the public administration to put the poor and marginalized groups at the core of policy and of development strategies.

Globalisation The pressures of globalisation have focused

more attention onto the public sector. While globalisation could serve to integrate people, it has demonstrated a capacity to marginalize many. To combat this requires governance approaches that embrace transparency, accountability and stakeholder participation in policy debates, as well as a government that uses its resources efficiently to allow its citizens to compete in a global market, and to reduce the gap between the poorest and richest inhabitants of the world.

Decentralization In many countries, decentralization provides the context

in which PAR Interventions are taken up. A major drawback with many decentralization initiatives is the lack of administrative capacity of the public administration at the local levels and the absence of accountability lines of this administration to the local people. For decentralized government to succeed there needs to be a centre to enable it; thus attention must focus on, for example, fiscal transfer mechanisms; mechanisms for ensuring local level planning and budgeting is informed by and integrated in national planning and budgeting; systems for monitoring and oversight linked to the budget; and appropriate human resource régimes.

Problems and Issues of PAR in Bangladesh

Administrative reform is not new in Bangladesh. Numerous reform programs were undertaken during the Pakistan period because there were widespread criticisms of anti-democratic practices in the service structure. However, reform efforts failed to produce significant results. Bureaucracy, by virtue of its historically strong position, allegedly manipulated all reform measures in its favor (Khan 1980).

Since the emergence of Bangladesh as a sovereign state, different governments attempted to reorganize the administrative system to suit the needs of their respective policy declarations. Different types of regimes have ruled the country in the last three decades.

However, there is no serious attempt to implement the recommendations of different reform committees/commissions/study groups. At this point, we will focus on major factors that hinder the implementation of administrative reform. Particular attention will be given to an analysis of factors impeding NPM-style reforms in Bangladesh.

Lack of Political Commitment The commitment of political leadership is a driving

force behind implementation of administrative reform efforts. In Bangladesh, the experiences of the last three decades suggest that the political leadership has never been serious in its attempt to overhaul the administrative system (Khan 1998, 173). While campaigning for electoral victory, the major political parties always emphasize reforming the administrative system. After assuming power they never translate their intention into reality. With elections every five years short-run political calculations have dominated decision making, as the political leadership perceives the immediate political costs of administrative reforms to out weigh the longer-run benefits.

Limited Capacity of Government Administrative reforms need concerted efforts on the

part of the government in power. Unless it can demonstrate its capacity, its reform agenda is bound to fail to deliver the desired results. It is now a fact that successive governments in Bangladesh have miserably failed to demonstrate this capacity. A number of factors can be discerned that have stifled the capacity of successive governments to push through reform initiatives. The failure in the institutional structure of the state has been quite alarming in recent years. The rule of law is in limbo, crippling public lives in all spheres. The state appears to be a captive to predatory interests. Development agencies constantly break rules and regulations to serve sectional interests (World Bank 1996).

Massive corruption and underhand deals with criminals have made them virtually ineffective. Moreover, there has been a systematic abuse of the office of the police force by politicians (CPD 2001). On the other hand, the judicial system is subjected to some fundamental and procedural problems. The union of the police and the criminal justice authority, in the hands of the executive government, has simply eroded their autonomy and bred a tendency to the misuse of power for personal and political gain by members of the ruling party (U.S. State Department 2001).

Bureaucratic Resistance The issue of comprehensive administrative

reform has to be seen in the context of the role and influence of the public bureaucracy. In Bangladesh, administrative reforms have faltered for lack of appreciation and support by the civil servants who are responsible for implementing reforms that are likely to impact on them (World Bank 1996; Khan 1991;Khan and Zafarullah 1982). Most civil servants adopt a protectionist attitude toward the existing power configuration, which usually benefits vested interest groups including themselves.

They see reform attempts as downgrading their present status, position, and power and orchestrate resistance to frustrate reform implementation. The tendency of most civil servants to preserve the status quo, and, if possible, extend their zone of influence within the public service system, is very much evident in Bangladesh (Khan 1991, 81).

Weak political leadership further bolsters bureaucratic resistance to administrative reforms.This issue is particularly important when the Bangladesh government has an NPM-stylereform agenda on the table.

Factionalism in the Public Sector Instead of implementing broad-based reform

programs, successive governments have been interested in playing with the existing factional strife within the public bureaucracy, in maintaining status quo, and in building up their own support base. The deep-seated factionalism has many dimensions: rivalry between the generalists and the specialists, spoils system entrants versus recruits through competitive examinations, freedom fighters versus non-freedom fighters, pro-Awami league versus pro-Bangladesh Nationalist Party civil servants, civil servants with a military background versus civil servants with civilian backgrounds, and factionalism based on district affiliation (Siddiqui 1996, 18-19).

Allthese groups bargain with the political leadership regarding matters affecting their own interests. If the reform program threatens the interests of particular groups, they tend tomount all-out efforts to halt implementation.

Ineffective Basic Public Management Processes It is known that, in developed countries, NPM

is typically used to improve existing institutions where the bureaucracy is already conversant with basic public management processes. However, in most developing countries, including Bangladesh, solid institutional frameworks, rule of law, proper control structures, checks and balances, the civil service system, and accountability systems are all absent or ineffective (Arellano-Gault 2000, 400; Schick 1998).

Western countries are now trying to change the precepts of classical organization theory as a way of reinventing government. Despite good intentions ,most developing countries have failed in that direction. Commentators argue that the precepts of NPM such as strategic management, performance management, etc., can be effective only when the basics of administration are in place (Kiggundu 1989).

Bangladesh public administration has demonstrated its deficiencies in establishing a rule-based system and enforcing a control structure, resulting in numerous dysfunctional consequences (Hudaand Rahman 1989; World Bank 1996).

Corruption Although corruption is one of the areas identified by

different commissions, committees, and study groups as needing reform intervention, it may be considered as a factor impeding the reform programs. Bangladesh administration has been plagued by both political and administrative corruption. Corruption is an old phenomenon. However, in recent years, it has reached its peak (Sobhan 1993; Khan 1999). One report suggests that since independence corruption has accounted for a staggering Taka 540 billion in only three sectors of the economy: privatization of industries, banking and insurance, and the upazila parishad (Transparency International, Bangladesh Chapter 1999, 2).

In fact, it is difficult to find any sector of the government without corrupt practices (Kochanek 1993,258-263; Khan 1999). Almost all forms of corruption are found in politics and administration in Bangladesh: bribery, abuse of authority, nepotism, favoritism, patronage, theft, and deceit (Khan 1999; Haque 2001b; Sarker 2001).

It is really an intractable problem for Bangladesh. While the bureaucratic provision of service as well as state ownership of enterprises are causing serious problems, their outright contracting out and privatization may not solve the problem.

Politicization of Administration There is also an unprecedented level of

politicization of administration. While this phenomenon is common in almost all countries, it has taken an ugly turn in Bangladesh and its ramifications are detrimental to the basics of administration. There are basically two aspects of politicization. One aspect relates to politicization of the service delivery system in that loyalty based on the clientelist nexus gets preference in the system. The other aspect relates to how public servants are politicized for petty party or sectional interests (Zafarullah and Khan 2001; Khan 1998; Siddiqui 1996).

Over the last thirty years since independence, all governments have tried to entice civil servants for petty party interests. In doing so, they have inducted people under the spoils system, promoted people on party or other petty considerations, politicized the Public Service Commission by appointing people to this constitutional body based on party affiliations and tampered with the selection process to choose party loyals (Zafarullah, Khan, and Rahman 1997; Ahmed 1986; Siddiqui 1996; Sobhan 2002). The culture of partisanship has infected the bureaucracy to a point where professional advancement is unrelated to performance or integrity.

This parochial administrative culture has encouraged rank opportunity and protected corruption as well as incompetence. The politicization itself is related to the clientelist nature of Bangladesh politics. With this pattern of politicization, it is an impossible task to reform the public administration system along the NPM model

The Role of International Donor Agencies Being an aid-dependent country, Bangladesh has

always remained susceptible to the pressures of the international donor agencies in formulating and reformulating its reform agenda. As one Bangladeshi scholar observed two decades ago, “Bangladesh policymakers must wait upon decisions in Washington, London, Tokyo, Bonn and Paris be fore they formulate their annual development budgets, announce an import policy, formulate a food policy, or even decide how many children should be born. The decision makers of the developed world hold the lifeline of any regime in Bangladesh in their hands and can create havoc in the life of a country in a way that was inconceivable two decades ago” (Sobhan 1981, 345).

Donors’ involvement in the reform program is not new in Bangladesh. In fact, it dates back to the 1950s and 1960s when the international technical assistance program contributed to institution building efforts in Pakistan. In the post-independent period, the World Bank funded the public administration project in 1983. It was designed to enhance efficiency in the civil service through improved and expanded training, upgraded personnel management, and better organization and management

Looking Ahead Administrative reform is not an easy task, particularly

in a country like Bangladesh which is confronted with multifarious problems. This does not imply that the government should be indifferent toward reforms. Some initiatives can be taken-

First, the political leadership must commit itself to reform programs, as they are bound to yield both high political and economic payoffs to the government itself.

Second, the government must act promptly to restore discipline in the governing system through positive instruments of order, protection, provision, redress, and rule before embarking on micro level reforms in the administrative system.

Third, we endorse the comments of Schick(1998), that the politicians and officials must concentrate on the basic processes of public management.