Contacts:
Sunetra Puri
Tel: (202) 473-2049
Email: spuri1@worldbank.org
Timothy Carrington
Tel : (202) 473 8133
E-mail: tcarrington@worldbank.org
Washington, November 16, 2004 — If Africa is to have a well-functioning public sector there needs to be a paradigm shift in how to analyze and build state capacity. Specifically, African governments and their partners should move from a narrow focus on organizational, technocratic, and public management approaches to a broader perspective that incorporates both the political dynamics and the institutional rules of the game within which public organizations operate.
This is the core message in a new book from the World Bank, Building State Capacity in Africa: New Approaches, Emerging Lessons.
Launching the book today in Washington, Frannie Léautier, World Bank Institute Vice President, said: “Where countries have a workable baseline of civil service capabilities and a visionary leadership, possibilities exist for a comprehensive program of capacity building. The administrative reforms in Tanzania’s and the extensive decentralized capacity building in Uganda are good examples”
The book draws from the experience of a new generation of initiatives started in 1990s in more than a dozen countries after decades of failed efforts. It provides pointers on how to align a capacity building strategy with country-specific realities, pointing to the need for a hopeful realism: recognizing that although building effective and accountable states is a centuries-long process, small beginnings can set in motion progressively more profound consequences.
Some key lessons include:
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In reforming state institutions, get the right fit--It probably won’t work unless you face the realities on the ground. Institutions that underpin systems of accountability are country specific, so that undifferentiated, “best practice,” cookie-cutter approaches are doomed to failure. Any efforts to strengthen administrative and accountability systems will have to fit country-specific constitutional structures and patterns of political, social, and economic interests.
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Align a capacity building strategy with country-specific realities. Building states that are both effective and accountable to their citizens is a centuries-long process. But small beginnings can set in motion progressively more profound consequences.
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If the country does not have bureaucratic and institutional capabilities comprehensive reforms may not be the answer. It may be preferable to focus on more modest, viable initiatives, especially those for which results are observable. For example, if you can’t fix the whole government, getting community schools to work may spearhead more reforms down the road.
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Public administrations operate in complex and interdependent systems of bureaucratic, political, social, and economic interests, so that approaches to building state capacity must take into account the underlying drivers of political and institutional change. These approaches complement the earlier and narrower technocratic view that problems are due to poor management and can be fixed by reorganizations, providing technical training, and installing hardware.
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In Africa the record of reforms has been mixed. A survey of World Bank operations in twenty-one African countries showed far-reaching gains in public administrative capacity only in countries with a strongly pro-development political environment.
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Lessons from the last six years also show that the roots of corruption too lie in dysfunctional state institutions. Anticorruption campaigns can play a valuable role but only when used in tandem with institutional interventions. It is now generally agreed that poor governance and corruption are major factors that undermine a country’s economic and social progress. Corruption not only stifles economic growth in society as a whole but also tends to affect the poor disproportionately by increasing the price for public services and restricting poor people’s access to essential services such as water, education, and health care.
The editors, Brian Levy and Sahr Kpundeh note that: “We need to find a middle ground between the bipolar moods that have for decades plagued developmental theory and practice: exuberant optimism that some magic formula for development has been found, followed inevitably by deep disappointment over its limitations. This book describes a hopeful realism: recognizing that although only a few African countries will achieve major gains in the short term, irrespective of a country’s initial circumstance, some way forward for building state capacity is there to be tapped.”
The book presents and analyzes recent experiences with supply side efforts to build administrative capacity (administrative reform, pay policies, budget formulation), and demand-side efforts to strengthen government accountability to citizens (role and impact of national parliaments, dedicated anti-corruption agencies, political dynamics of decentralization, education decentralization).
To order from the World Bank:
Telephone: 800–645–7247 or 703–661–1580; Fax: 703–661–1501; Email orders: books@worldbank.org; Internet: Building State Capacity in Africa: New Approaches, Emerging Lessons. Brian Levy and Sahr Kpundeh, editors. World Bank, 2004.
ISBN 0-8213-6000-0. Stock no. 16000. 380 pages. Price: US$30.
Some Country Examples from
Building State Capacity in Africa: New Approaches, Emerging Lessons
Brian Levy and Sahr Kpundeh, editors
The book presents and analyzes recent experiences with supply side efforts to build administrative capacity (administrative reform, pay policies, budget formulation), and demand-side efforts to strengthen government accountability to citizens (role and impact of national parliaments, dedicated anti-corruption agencies, political dynamics of decentralization, education decentralization).
On the Supply Side
Administrative reform.Of programs in Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia: only Tanzania was succeeding. Ghana’s reforms stalled barely beyond the analytic phase because of a change in government. Zambia made limited progress but is intensifying efforts to improve expenditure accountability. Pay policies. Only Botswana out of eight countries had sustained acceptable standards. Tanzania and Uganda turned politically reactive policies in more technically and politically rational directions. Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Senegal, and Zambia have been stuck in politically reactive modes. Budget Formulation.Out of four countries, only South Africa was clearly committed to prioritizing by consensus; Uganda, by contrast, has been highly effective in prioritizing public spending, but the process has been dominated by a capable Ministry of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development. Neither Zambia nor Mozambique have had much success in this area.
On the Demand Side
The track record of making government more accountable to citizens has also been uneven. For example:
Role and impact of national parliaments. Out of four African democracies, the Kenyan parliament of the past five years is the most independently assertive. The Ghanaian and Beninese legislatures are semi-independent, certainly more independent as of 2002 than 10-15 years earlier. The Senegalese legislature continues to be largely subservient to the executive. Dedicated anti-corruption agencies varied sharply across five countries. Botswana’s agency is a useful part of the arsenal of tools to ensure that public resources are well used. Agencies in Malawi and Sierra Leone have changed little. The Tanzanian and Ugandan experience fall somewhere in between. Political dynamics of decentralization. In a three-country survey, Uganda came closest to meeting the stringent enabling political conditions, and went furthest in pro-decentralization reforms. In Malawi and Senegal, the political conditions were more constraining, with corresponding limitations in the extent to which local governments have been empowered. Education decentralization via community schools has had benefits across many African countries, but decentralization to local governments (as in Uganda and Tanzania) and to regional authorities (as in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and South Africa) have yielded limited gains in the operation of the education system.