JAN KEES VAN DONGE
Ole Therkildsen’s writings are closely related to social practice, but he is careful not to impose political opinions on his readers. He is above all a servant to the political process, and he has produced political analyses that bring out the implications of policies that have been adhered to, such as civil-service reform, rather than advocat-ing policies from the outset. His work is reminiscent of the high standards that Har-old Lasswell set for political science: if political scientists usurp the authority to make decisions, then democracy is in danger. Political scientists should limit them-selves to clarifying the political process and the policy issues involved (Ascher and Hirschfeld-Ascher 2004). Yet, there is a clear concern in Ole Therkildsen’s writings about the need for an effective state. This becomes evident, for example, when he is writing on the fragmented policy arena in Tanzania (Therkildsen 2000) or in his im-pressive overview of public-sector reform efforts for UNCTAD (Therkildsen 2008).
This concern is particularly significant, albeit implicit, in the paper he wrote on the long-term involvement of aid embedded in structural conditionality in the recurrent expenditure of African governments (Therkildsen 2010). The latter paper raises the question of whether African governments may be too poor to provide the minimal government services required on their own, especially in the health and education sectors. This is closely related to issues in civil-service reform as this impinges on the right-sizing of government. It can also be seen as a question of political opinion.
Whether the state or the market should provide services is a matter of political de-bate all over the world. It touches on the further question of power structures in society and is therefore a major subject for political analysis.
Jan Kees van Donge is Professor of Political Science at the University of Papua New Guinea.
However, unlike, for example, Kjær (2004), Therkildsen avoids an explicit political analysis. In his state of the art paper for UNCTAD (Therkildsen 2008), he gives a clear priority to following a technical pragmatic approach. Politics comes last and is intractable:
More specifically, this report showed three things about the role of the state in developing productive capacities. One is that this role requires the strengthening of basic bureaucratic capacities through, for example, pay reforms, human resources management reforms and results orien-ted capacity development efforts. The second is that specific capacities are also needed, and that creating ‘islands of excellence’ in key organiza-tions may sometimes be strategically relevant. Finally, domestic politi-cal power to define and implement reforms is crucial but there are no general recipes for how such powers can be strengthened. (Therkildsen 2008: 46–47)
Therkildsen’s paper is pessimistic and notes widespread failure in attempts to re-form the public sector. This is common in the recent literature, and the role of poli-tics in this failure is variously interpreted. For example, Richard Crook wrote another impressive overview of public-sector reform in which he dismisses political explana-tions such as a ‘lack of political will’ or the ‘inherent problems of neo patrimonialism’
(Crook 2010). The challenge is, he suggests, to revive the morale of those who actu-ally carry out the roles of service provision:
After nearly 30 years, what results have these successive generations of public service reform achieved? Unfortunately, the general consensus to be found in both consultants’ reports and in the academic literature is that their achievements have been extremely limited, even negative in some instances. My proposal is that governments and donors abandon overambitious, best-practice-based general PSR programmes and focus instead on the talent and commitment which already exists in Africa among hard-pressed middle and front-line service managers.
They need to be encouraged by being provided with the resources, the staff and the pay which they need. (Crook 2010: 499)
Willy McCourt, on the contrary, gives a prime place to politics in his overview of public-sector reform: ‘a growing body of literature [is] concerned with how govern-ance and political factors may determine not only whether services are delivered, but also where, to whom, and how well’ (McCourt 2012: 132).
Empirical research on the politics of reform has demonstrated that reform leaders’ ability to alter the political equilibrium of interests and institutions that sustains an existing policy depends on their ability to mobilise their constituencies (Grindle 2006). This is complicated by the fact that international agencies have often been important determinants of the balance of power between national elites and of the programmes they, at least nominally, follow. (Batley, McCourt and Mcloughlin 2012:
136)
This chapter also argues that more political analysis is needed to understand what happens to public-sector reform. That should add to understanding through build-ing capacities, which is essential in Therkildsen’s thinkbuild-ing and which is close to Crook’s analysis as well. Yet, the kind of political analysis proposed, for example, in the volume edited by Batley et al. (2012) remains imbued by social and political en-gineering. This paper argues that questions on the ineffectiveness of states should be asked outside a quasi-technical framework. It advocates a methodological shift towards a form of analysis that does not necessarily result in recommendations for action, but does provide a general intellectual context through which to interpret what has been happening in civil-service reform.
In what follows, and drawing on reflections on Malawi’s experience with civil-service reform, I shall argue that three kinds of analysis are needed. First, greater historical awareness is required. In Malawi, the civil service was quite efficient for several decades, and it was also small, contrary to general beliefs on the development of African states after independence. This has been overlooked in civil-service reform, and the question is what caused this efficiency to be lost. Secondly, the neo-liberal ideology behind much thinking on the state in Africa needs to be more critically an-alysed in respect of its internal consistency. Analysis of the major policy document setting out civil-service reform in Malawi shows that the ideology underlying this reform was fraught with assumptions that bear no relation to reality. A critical anal-ysis of the ideological content in some civil-service reform needs a much more de-tached view of the assumptions that have been made regarding the nature of mar-kets and motivation. Thirdly, there is need for more reflective sociological analysis.
When it comes to civil-service reform, such analysis has remained stuck in
stereo-typical thinking about patrimonial systems and patron–client relations, as well as in more pedestrian thinking about issues of leadership and political will. The issue of civil-service reform has become prominent again after relative inactivity in the past decade. The reason for this is ‘cashgate’: a massive case of theft by public servant.
This revealed important insights into the power structure surrounding the civil ser-vice which necessarily leads to a confrontation with civil serser-vice reform. Finally, there is a call to study this destructive behaviour in order to see what moves people to behave like this.