Rethinking Civil Service Reform

A gnawing critique of civil service reform efforts persists, intimating that these civil service reform operations of the World Bank have boosted neither efficiency nor effectiveness. The outlines of the problem are fairly clear: civil service pay and employment reforms have had only limited achievements, and there have been difficulties with government ownership and oversight--especially in Africa. At the same time, an emerging agenda for government reform includes standard personnel management and pay and employment reforms, but also tries to link these activities with fundamental tasks of transforming the state. The main problem with the Bank's conventional approach to civil service reform is that it has tried to use palliative measures to solve problems that require major surgery. Technical administrative fixes have been applied to fundamental problems of political economy. And even the technical side of the focus has been narrow, ignoring crucial links with other parts of the larger system. Overcoming the limitiations of this approach will require a more comprehensive and realistic framework for reform--as well as new instruments of support.