ASIA-PACIFIC GOVERNANCE INSTITUTE AND INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC MANAGEMENT NETWORK
BANGKOK CONFERENCE
July 7-9, 2008
Chulalongkorn University
The Many Faces of Public Management Reform in Asia-Pacific: Moving Ahead Amidst Challenges and Opportunities in Emerging Markets
Abstracts for papers to be presented:
"Managing Performance"
1. Soonhee Kim, After the Asian Financial Crisis: Government Performance, Democratic Governance, and Trust in Government in Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand.
In order to resolve the challenges of globalization, economic development, and citizen participation to strengthen democratic governance, government needs close collaboration with citizens and the private sector. It is, therefore, increasingly important to research citizens' perceptions of democratic governance, government performance, citizen empowerment, and trust in government. Since the 1997 East Asian financial crisis, special attention has been paid to public management reforms and democratic governance in Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand. The purpose of this study is to analyze how citizens' satisfaction with democratic governance values and perceived government performance affects public trust in national and local governments in Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand. The study analyzes how citizen satisfaction with democratic governance values, including freedom of association, freedom of speech, the right to be informed about government, and the right to criticize the government, affects trust in government. This study also analyzes the relationship between government performance on specific public concerns including corruption, economic development, quality of government service, human rights, unemployment, crime, and environment protection, and public trust in national and local governments in these countries. The study contributes to the field of public administration by testing the impact of empowered citizenship, interpersonal trust, external social networks, and individual demographic variables on trust in government. The analysis is based on the Asia Barometer Survey data of 2003 and 2004 in Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, and Thailand. The survey targeted all adults aged 20-59 in several cities each country, and a multi-stage-stratified random sampling method was applied.
2. Larry Cooley and Emil Bolongaita, Transforming Institutions for Greater Effectiveness and Results.
During the past decade, multilateral and bilateral funding for governance reforms has risen sharply, with mixed results. While in some cases progress has been considerable, in other cases the quality of country governance has not only stagnated but deteriorated. There have been a variety of explanations used to account for these diverse outcomes. This paper seeks to bring an operational perspective to bear by tackling the following questions: Where, when, and how have development projects been effective in helping public sector partners produce desired results?; How can development managers shape and sequence their initiatives to increase the likelihood of successful implementation and successful outcomes?; What is the role of incentives, strategy, and leadership? This paper addresses these questions based on a review of experience from several international development projects carried out by Management Systems International (MSI) including the 10-year, 40-country, Implementing Policy Change Project; the ongoing National Capacity Development Project supporting civil service reform and improved public administration in 11 Ministries in Iraq; a 4-country study of Ministerial effectiveness in Asia and the Near East; and Anti-Corruption programs in Russia, Ukraine and the Philippines. The conclusions of the paper are organized and assessed relative to the findings in the literature on public management and international development.
3. Robert Taliercio, Cambodia's Public Financial Management Reforms, 2004-2007: Explaining a Case of 'Turnaround.
Over the past three years the Royal Government of Cambodia has successfully and consistently been implementing its Public Financial Management Reform Program (PFMRP), which has focused on improving the credibility of the budget while reducing fiduciary risk. This outcome is surprising not only because of the well known difficulties of implementing ambitious PFM reforms in low income, post-conflict countries, but also because most other reform programs in Cambodia have either failed or stalled, including an earlier effort at PFM reform (2001-2004). The paper develops a case study of the PFMRP (using the methodology in Barzelay et al., 2003) and argues that the success of the PFMRP is due to the way in which it was developed. The hypothesis probed is that the public management processes and techniques that led to the development of the PFMRP are the same ones that explain its successful implementation. These include: a joint government-donor analytical process to define the problem and build consensus, an agreed reform vision and action plan, a pilot civil service reform in the Ministry of Finance to address capacity constraints, and formal coordination mechanisms for government and donors. The paper disputes the dominant hypothesis that the change was related to 'political will,' instead focusing on how public management solved the problem. The conclusion offers lesons on designing reform programs (in terms of public management processes and strategies) that may be applicable to other countries.
4. Richard Norman and Tom Bentley, At the centre or in control? Central agencies in search of new identities.
The central agencies of government play a major role in defining and monitoring performance through strategic planning, budgeting and human resources routines. Results-oriented reforms during the past twenty years have created new challenges and an identity crisis for central agencies as they have delegated functions to line agencies, while also being expected to evaluate and influence service delivery, and coordinate major cross-government projects.
This research focuses on responses by senior managers and focus groups of analysts in more than twenty central agencies in
What are your major strategic challenges? What new capabilities are required to meet those challenges? How are other organisations involved in responding to the strategic challenges? What would you find most useful to learn about practices in other jurisdictions?
References
Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture – Cameron, K. S & Quinn, R. E.
Additional paper to be distributed to participants:
Arwiphawee Srithongrung, Does Results-Oriented Management Make any Differences? : A Practical Perspective from Thai Budgeting Reforms
In theory, the results-oriented budget links budget decisions-making process with macro and micro policies including the country’s policy priorities and department objectives, and at the same time, it is meant to enhance departments’ operating efficiency through performance measurement (Kettl, 1996). This institutional reform is expected to enhance fiscal discipline, strategic resources allocation, macro-policy goal achievement, and agencies’ accountability (Compos & Pradhan, 1997). In practices, the existing literature indicates that output and outcome measurements are not free from technical problems including selecting the right indicators and establishing valid and reliable measurement systems (Willoughby & Melkers, 2001). Furthermore, the answers to the question, is performance data useful in decision making process? and are the data enhance government transparency? remain unclear.
"Decentralization"
1. David Craig and Doug Porter, Decentralisation, new institutional reforms, and the public good: Cambodian experiences; and Eng Netra, Decentralisation And Accountability In Cambodia (authors will collaborate on a joint paper).
Combining two papers: (a)-- Since the mid-1990s, development policy has converged around what may be called the ‘good governance approach to poverty reduction’. This policy convergence intended to achieve both immediate and longer term transformational results. In the short term, institutional reforms would merit increased aid for services and infrastructure for the poor. There would be less waste and corruption, better targeting, and more security for the poor. The approach also carried a longer term, transformational agenda: building a capable, responsive state. Reformed institutions would create more certainty for markets, bring sustained growth, and opportunities for the poor. By re-scaling governance through decentralisation, more responsive relations between citizens and the state should arise. Around this consensus, donors saw prospects to harmonise aid delivery, and align with nationally owned strategies.
Reflecting on Cambodian experience, this paper explores how good governance (or what, referring to a wider literature, we call ‘new institutional’) reforms have had uneven impacts: short and long term reform goals have proven contradictory, and the mix of donor led reforms and entrenched local practices has produced hybrid institutional outcomes which render ongoing reform uncertain. Government is left divided between fragmented islands of strong and transparent donor funded programs delivering local development and Millennium Development Goal outcomes, and a public sector mainstream is still dominated by rent seeking, underperforming on development, and focussed on territorial security and regime stability. Decentralised territorial planning, budgeting and management of development resources, even when backed by laws and support for institution building, have struggled with these difficulties. In
(b) The goal of decentralisation and deconcentration is to bring government closer to the people, so that they can be responsive to the needs of the poor. This D&D aims to achieve by providing and supporting sub-national governments with adequate resources, and, in particular, with good and capable civil servants who are accountable at subnational level, motivated and committed, loyal and professional, and responsive toward service-delivery for the poor. Achieving both accountability and better outcomes for the poor in
The study’s findings suggest that although organized around modern-day rational bureaucracy structures, accountability within
- entrenched and harmful public service centralization, especially around key employer functions such as recruitment, appointments, and performance monitoring;
- politicisation of civil servants, non- meritocratic recruitment and complex accountabilities created by overriding patronage interests;
- the debilitating effects of low pay;
- and the further complexity and accountability fragmentation created by the use of salary supplements by NGOs and vertical donor programmes.
2. Geoff Dixon and Danya Hakim, Budget Decentralisation Experience in Indonesia.
In 1999 Indonesia undertook a far reaching devolution of budgeting functions from national to district level. Local budgets are now approved by local legislatures. Further, the Government has publicly committed to these budgets being prepared on performance budgeting principles and in a medium term expenditure framework by 2009.
This radical devolution has been in place for some eight years. The proposed conference paper reviews progress in implementing performance budgeting and the MTEF at the district level, the main impediments to sound district budgeting, possible solutions to these impediments and lessons for other countries contemplating a radical budget decentralisation. The information is based on the experience of the authors as consultants to the Ministry of Home Affairs on the integration of district planning and budgeting.
Some key lessons to be covered include
Historically separate bureaucratic structures for planning and budgeting at the national level have been slow to adapt to the challenge of creating an integrated planning and budgeting system at the district ‘coal face’.
Lack of certainty about the three year resource envelope for a district relying on national level grants affects its ability to prepare a meaningful MTEF.
The migration path from detailed input based budgeting to preparing a district budget in a more results related medium term expenditure framework has yet to be laid out in national regulations for district planning and budgeting, due to the challenge at the national level of coming to grips with detailed options for district budget preparation.
The case for uniform budget preparation software to be used by both local spending agencies in presenting their budget requests and local budget committees in preparing the district budget, both to structure the budget process and improve its transparency.
"Combating corruption"
1. Jon S.T. Quah, Combating Corruption in the Asia-Pacific Countries: What do We Know and What Needs to be Done?
Corruption is a serious problem in the Asia-Pacific, judging from the rankings and scores of the 26 Asia-Pacific countries included in the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index of 2006. The governments in these countries have initiated various anti-corruption measures since the 1950s but, with few exceptions, have not been effective in curbing corruption. In 1968, the Swedish economist, Gunnar Myrdal, had attributed the lack of research on corruption in South Asian countries to the existing research taboo on corruption.
2. David S Jones, Competition and Transparency in Government Procurement in Southeast Asia.
Government procurement of goods, services and civic works is a significant sector of the economy in most developing countries and may comprise up to 50% of pubic expenditure. It is an important dimension of governance, given its impact on the standards of government administration and public services. However, government procurement in many Southeast Asian states has been marked by significant failings, amongst which are the limitations imposed on both international and domestic competition and insufficient transparency of procurement rules, opportunities, and outcomes. Both the curtailment of competition and the lack of transparency are reflected in the legal and administrative framework governing procurement and also in the everyday purchasing and contracting practices which government procurement entities follow.
3. Roby Arya Brata, Why did an Anticorruption Policy Fail? A Study of the Implementation Failure of Anticorruption Policies of the Authoritarian New Order Regime and the Transitional Democratic Reform Order Regime of Indonesia, 1971-2007.
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