Bangkok Abstracts

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 Australia, New Zealand and Australian states, to these questions:

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?

Preliminary findings indicate that almost all agencies perceive that their ability to influence government directions has declined. In some cases this is because politicians have appointed their own advisers. For Treasury organisations, influence is perceived to be considerably less than during the fiscal pressures of the 1990s. Human resources agencies which were largely emasculated during the 1980s and 1990s when their functions were delegated to line agencies have revived to some extent because of concerns about leadership capacity and capability.

Part of the identity crisis for agencies can be explained by a framework developed by Cameron and Quinn (2006) which clusters organisational culture into quadrants of hierarchy, market, clan and adhocracy. While the trend towards ‘letting managers manage’ has emphasised market and adhocracy, the quest to ‘hold managers accountable for results’ also involves elements of clan and hierarchical control. The three types of agency differ considerably in the ways they approach their work, creating challenges for coordination among central agencies themselves, let alone across government as a whole.

References

Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture – Cameron, K. S & Quinn, R. E. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006.

Additional paper to be distributed to participants:

Arwiphawee Srithongrung, Does Results-Oriented Management Make any Differences? : A Practical Perspective from Thai Budgeting Reforms

From 1953 to 2006, Thai budgeting system has experienced three major reforms: planning-programming budget, performance-based budget, and results-oriented budget. The main purpose of these reforms is to use budget formats and information to align resource allocation processes with the country’s long-term strategic planning, the National Social and Economic Development Plan. Based on the country’s self study (Thailand Development Research Institution, 2004), the failures of planning-programming budget were due to various political and technical reasons including inflexibility in budget decisions and executions experienced by the executive department heads, the lack of incentives to encourage departments’ spending efficiency, and political negotiations which resulted in incremental resource allocation. Performance-based budget, which was expected to enhance the departments’ transparency and accountability, failed to connect resources allocation process with the country’s macro policy planning. Results-oriented or strategic performance-based budget introduced in 2003 was expected to fill these gaps created by the previous budget formats.

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.

This study aims to assess the reform results experienced by Thai government during 2003 to 2006 from the budget practitioners’ perspectives. Specifically, the paper posts three main research questions: 1) does the results-oriented budget create any difference in budget decision outcomes measured through the degrees of fiscal discipline, strategic resource allocation, and agencies’ operating efficiency?, 2) how does Thai government incorporate strategic planning and performance measurement in its resource allocation process in practices?, and 3) are the performance data actually used in resource allocation decisions? Data will be derived from survey questionnaires and in-depth interview with budget officials in the Bureau of Budget. Using the measurement techniques introduced by Compos and Pradhan (1997), the index for the three outcomes will be constructed and weighted to compare the slack of the budgeting outcomes in the post-reform with those of the pre-reform periods. Based on the existing literature, the expected fining is that result-oriented budget influenced resources allocation process through the strategic planning elements; however, it did not influence resources allocation process through performance measurement element due to various technical problems. Conclusions and recommendations that fit the country’s specific context and macro-policies will be provided.

"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 Cambodia and elsewhere, many are now persuaded that by distorting state structures and fragmenting accountabilities, new institutional approaches have enabled neopatrimonial forms of governance. Particularly vulnerable here are institutional areas vital to the protection of everyday livlihoods for the poorest: those institutions which might secure access to common property and primary resources, and guarantee public safety and human security.

(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 Cambodia is however a complex problem, and requires understanding of its key dimensions, and effective engagement to promote and strengthen sub-national accountability. That understanding of accountability and Human Resource Management (HRM) in the Cambodian civil service especially at the sub-national level, is what this paper aims to build.

The study’s findings suggest that although organized around modern-day rational bureaucracy structures, accountability within Cambodia’s wider HRM system faces a number of constraints, all of which directly and indirectly further weaken sub-national accountability, and heavily constrain the ability of subnational managers to get their staff to perform. These include:

• 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.

Beyond this, lack of consistent progress of major cross-cutting HRM reforms, and further fragmentation and complexity emerging in existing government program reforms, further impede progress in achieving accountability. The combination of patronage-based distortion and donor fragmentation has especially strong and long lasting negative effects in the areas of HRM.

Looking ahead, the paper concludes by arguing that if the D&D reform is to achieve its goal of promoting sub-national accountability for democratic development, the reform must find and make use of appropriate strategic opportunities, looking both at specific HRM issues, and at the wider political and administrative context.

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.

Fortunately, this research taboo on corruption in the Asia-Pacific countries no longer exists and this is manifested in the tremendous increase in the number of country studies on corruption since the 1990s. Indeed, in contrast to the dearth of research on corruption in the 1960s, research on corruption in these countries has mushroomed into a growth industry during the past two decades.

Given the vast literature on corruption in the Asia-Pacific countries, the purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it reviews the literature to identify the major strategies adopted by the Asia-Pacific countries to combat corruption. Second, the paper provides an evaluation of these anti-corruption strategies to identify their strengths and weaknesses and to enhance their effectiveness by suggesting how their weaknesses can be rectified.

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.

The paper will examine the different ways governments of Southeast Asian states have sought to limit competition in procurement and why they have considered it necessary and desirable to do so. Also discussed are ways transparency has been undermined and the impact of the lack of it on both competition and fair dealing. The paper will then consider the reforms that have been recently implemented across the region to create greater competition and transparency, and what the key obstacles are to their effective implementation. Here the paper will identify the influence of international organizations in providing the guidelines for reform. Following this, it will highlight the further changes needed to upgrade government procurement practices to internationally recognized standards in certain countries of the region. The paper will focus on both the necessity for reforms of laws and procedures to create a more competitive and transparent procurement system and also on the equal imperative for a shift in the mind-set of leaders and procurement officials to occur, conducive to greater competition and more transparency.

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.

Indonesia has a very poor international reputation in corruption and anticorruption (World Bank 2003). The corrupt dysfunctional political institutions and leadership had ultimately led to the dramatic collapse of the country’s authoritarian New Order Regime in 1998, while the present democratic Reform Order Regime has struggled to combat the country’s still systemic, pervasive corruption. The central research question therefore: to what extent and for what reasons had the implementation of the anticorruption policies of the authoritarian New Order Regime and the democratic Reform Order Regime failed or been ineffective in achieving their legally mandated objectives of combating corruption? The study synthesized the theoretical strengths of the competing, mainstream theories on implementation − the top down and the bottom up theoretical, prescriptive approaches − to analyze and explain the anticorruption policy implementation (law enforcement) failures of the two regimes. The study argues that the defects in the top and bottom operational levels of the implementation (law enforcement) structure and process are the primary explanatory factor or reason for the implementation failure of the Anticorruption Law 1971 of the authoritarian New Order Regime and that of the Anticorruption Law 1999 of the democratic Reform Order Regime in attaining their policy objectives.

The research employed the case study approach combining the paradigmatic strengths of the qualitative and quantitative methods. The study interviewed 67 key informants including law enforcers (judges, police, prosecutors, lawyers) ─ both at the top and bottom levels ─ experts, academics, NGOs, anticorruption commission, and policy makers, in 9 provincial administrations and 15 districts. Employing a theoretical sampling, 253 undergraduate and graduate students in law and government at 13 universities located in 7 provincial regions were surveyed. The study found that from the 253 respondents surveyed, most of them judged that the implementation or enforcement of the New Order’s Anticorruption Law 1971 and that of the Reform Order’s Anticorruption Law 1999 had failed or been ineffective in combating corruption (98.5 % for the New Order, and 84.9 % for the Reform Order). Most respondents (93.3 %) and interviewees agreed that the most fundamental factor or reason for the implementation failure of the two Laws was attributed to the corrupt, dysfunctional, and defective government and law enforcement systems and institutions. The study concludes that combating corruption in a country transforming from an authoritarian to a democratic political system, where corruption has become chronic and systemic, is problematic and difficult. When corruption has systematically infected and defected the institutional structure and process ─ both at the top and bottom levels ─ of the government, in particular the law enforcement mechanisms, implementing or enforcing an anticorruption law is expected to be suboptimal and subsequently failed. To overcome this problem, the factors attributed to the policy implementation failures must be eliminated.