Building blocks toward a more effective public sector

The basic building blocks for effective state capacity are the same for many low-income developing countries as they were historically for developed and more recently for the East Asian economies: strong central capacity for strategic policy formulation and coordination; merit-based recruitment, long term career rewards, adequate pay for professional civil service, and well-functioning systems of financial accountability. Recent reforms in some Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development countries contain some important elements that can improve performance in developing countries including a greater emphasis on results, enhanced transparency, and greater contestability in service delivery and policy advice. At the same time, many other components of these reforms will impose unrealistic demands on state capacity and are in any event no substitute for the basic foundations for effectiveness. In developing countries with weak state capacity, the challenge is to restore or create a professional and accountable bureaucracy and substitute institutionalized feedback and accountability for patrimonial patronage. The principal conclusion is that effective public-sector capacity has been built upon the basic foundations of a professional, meritocratic, well-paid bureaucracy with internal coherence and institutionalized links to external stakeholders for feedback and accountability.