International Public Management Review
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Political Software: Understanding What Works
Get PDFPublic Administration (PA) is no longer considered as essential as it once was for students from developing countries. In regard to both PA and Public Management (PM), much of the difficulty stems from a lack of an acceptable overarching theory. This is the objective of Political Elasticity (PE) Theory, as here introduced, including the concept of “political software” (referring to the social relationships essential for effective governance). The usefulness of the theory is suggested by a series of American and Less Developed Country (LDC) urban case studies. At the conclusion, the analytical and foreign aid implications of using PE theory (emphasizing political software) are presented
Global Financial Crisis and Government Intervention: A Case for Effective Regulatory Governance
Get PDFThe recent financial and economic crisis in the United States and the rest of the world, as well as the interventionist efforts of respective governments to stabilize their economies, have generated a lot of controversy about the virtues of the free-market system and the wisdom of state intervention. The objective of this article is to put the debate on the relative efficiency of the free-market and government intervention in a larger theoretical perspective and make the case for the importance of efficient regulatory governance of financial institutions in ensuring economic stability. Drawing on the theories of laissez faire and market failure, the Keynesian and Marxian theories and the theory of regulation, I argue that mutual co-existence of the market and the government is beneficial to society, and that periodic global financial crisis occur because of the failure to learn from history and ineffective regulatory governance. Governments need to put in place proactive regulatory framework to guard against regulatory capture, arbitrage and forbearance in order to control financial market excesses
Land Registration and Administrative Reform in Southeast Asian States: Progress and
Get PDFAn aspect of good governance is an effective system of land administration. A central component of this is the comprehensive registration of rural property title by the state to create more secure and legally protected tenure for farmers and cultivators. In response to the need for comprehensive land titling in rural areas in most states of Southeast Asia, major reform programs have been implemented to this end in recent years. However, constraints have been encountered, resulting in only variable progress in achieving comprehensive registration, especially of small land holdings. These constraints will be examined in the article in relation to both individual and communal tenure. Also considered will be institutional constraints that have impeded registration. In conclusion the article will explain the impediments in title registration in relation to three sets of factors: poor standards of governance, receptivity of traditional communities to title registration and policy capture of title registration by business and bureaucratic elites
Analysis of Kyrgyzstan’s Administrative Reforms in Light Recent Governance Challenges
No full textThis article provides an overview and analysis of public administration reforms attempted in Kyrgyzstan since 1991. The article’s purpose is to generate insights for better understanding and responding to its governance challenges
Book Review: Hossein Jalilian and Vicheth Sen, eds., 2011. Improving Health Sector Performance: Institutions, Motivations and Incentives - the Cambodian Dialogue. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing.
Get PDFThis volume presents a set of papers prepared by a mix of international and Cambodian scholars, researchers and practitioners originally discussed at an international conference organized by the Cambodian Development Resource Institute and the Oxford Policy Institute in April 2010. A useful overview chapter sets out the a conceptual framework for understanding the role of formal as well as informal – or ‘intrinsic’ incentives as determinants of health worker behavior and performance, arguing that policy to harness changes in incentive environment for improving health system performance must be carefully matched to specific national and local contexts. The volume then presents a set of specific country cases which document and discuss evidence of effectiveness of a range of different schemes which sought to enhance incentives for performance. Not surprisingly, various experiences in Cambodia receive the lion’s share of attention (five of the ten cases), but experience and lessons learned in the UK, Italy, Indonesia , Bangladesh New Zealand and Curtiba, Brazil are also presented
Reply to the Comment: Observed Differences in Corruption between Asia and Africa: The Industrial Organization of Corruption and Its Cure
No full textI was given the opportunity to read Dr. Moloney’s revised comments. I add three observations, but I see no reason to change either the paper or my original reply. First, her opinion that my “observation flows from the World Bank’s 1997 World Development Report” is not true. The paper was based on direct real world observations not reading the WDR or other reports. The main ideas of the paper were developed before (see the quote from Winnicott below). The second is that the 'talking cure’ works best with motivated participants. If there is no motivation to end corruption, efforts at cure will fail. The paper has a lengthy discussion of the merits and demerits of the intellectual approaches combined with punishment, and of the ‘talking cure’. The latter is difficult and slow in comparison to the results-oriented approaches (which invariably lead to failure and unintended consequences). Often, erroneously, giving intellectual instructions and naming projection “analysis” are preferred to study and real analysis that enable emotional communications to set change in motion. Third, unlike Dr. Moloney claims, the paper’s theory about corruption is well and correctly conceptualized and does not fade in to Barbra Streisand lyrics
Analysis of the Field of Public Management: A Response to Kelman, Thompson, Jones and Schedler
Get PDFThis essay examines the field of public management as explicated in the dialogue between Kelman, Thompson, Jones and Schedler (2003) and others, from the perspective of the philosophy of science. While there may be wide consensus that a substantial body of information about public management exists, Kelman, Thompson, Jones and Schedler are consistent in their view that empirical generalizations and underlying principles do not exist. This assertion notwithstanding, this essay does not attempt to make sense of the theories of public management, rather it tries to make sense of public management as a separate and distinct field of scientific inquiry, and, for that purpose, the philosophy of science is useful. What follows are three views of public management looking through that philosophical lens: the origins of the discipline, the nature of the practice, and the community of scholars
Reducing Corruption in Post-Communist Countries
Get PDFInternational experience in combating corruption is relatively easily identify the causes and single out the societies with high levels of corruption in their bureaucracies and private sectors. It is much more difficult to prescribe effective remedies and even more problematic to get new approaches applied in an appropriate and sustained fashion. This is particularly true with respect to the post-communist countries that embarked on the road of transition to a new economic and political reality over a decade ago. Making significant advances along this road has turned out to be much more difficult than expected at the beginning and has revealed risks and obstacles not anticipated. The article explores to what extent the task of containing corruption was on the agenda of public management reforms in these countries, the impact of these reforms on the level of corruption, if any, and seeks to identify more effective approaches for combating corruption in transitional states
Open Government and Transparent Policy: China's Experience with SARS
Get PDFThis article explores the close link between information exposure and good governance as well as high government institutional performance in light of a special case study of how the Guangdong provincial government and China’s central government responded to the outburst of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in November 2002. It analyzes the possible reasons behind the initial misinformation on the crisis. Also, it analyzes the lessons the Chinese government learned from the event and the mutative character of government behavior toward information exposure after this short SARS episode. In this regard it focuses on several pioneering programs leading to more open government and transparent policy, such as in Guangdong and Shanghai, and emphases the significant importance of public participating for sound policymaking and democratic governance in the country
Outyear Budgetary Consequences of Agency Cost Savings: International Public Management Network Symposium
Get PDFAt the end of November 2004, well-known and highly respected scholar Steven Kelman of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University asked a question about research on outyear budgetary consequences of agency cost savings. Kelman's question stimulated a dialogue on the topic on the IPMN listserver that is represented in this symposium, in roughly the order in which comments were transmitted, with only minor editing. The dialogue tells much about current views on the utility, or lack thereof, of research on outyear savings and the wisdom of allowing agencies to carry-forward savings from one year to another