International Experience with Institutional Development and administrative Reform: Some Pointers for Success

Whatever their stage of development, all countries need to enhance institutional capacity so that they can keep up with advances in this age where the rate of change is greater than at any previous time in history. All lay stress on the central importance of management capacity within the public service. In the developing world, and nowhere more so than in sub-Saharan Africa, attention is drawn to the substantial role played by government in social and economic development. Efforts to improve the capacity to manage development policy have come to focus on the need to reform central administration and to redefine its relations with civil society and the international donor community. Reviewing the capacity requirements of central government is not only a question of looking at the internal functions of the central ministries and agencies. It involves also ascertaining the roles of the other actors - existing and potential - in the process of managing policy at national level. The relationships government has with other parts of the economy and with the international community will affect the kind of capacity needed. This Working Paper notes the changed perception of the role of the state in development - from minimalist to monitoring and facilitating. It outlines some of the hurdles to civil service reform such as the inadequate level of capacity, problems of securing and retaining support for such programmes especially in periods of economic stringency and the generally inadequate knowledge of the reform management process. It describes some approaches to help negotiate the hurdles successfully and finally points out that reform measures have a wide range of stakeholders and that it is important to involve as wide a network as possible in the reform process. [author]