This report discusses selected issues regarding accountability in public services. The introduction discusses the accountability framework that will be used for the report. Chapter 1 assesses South Africa's progress on service access and quality, and summarizes recent policy initiatives. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 describe the international and South African experience with mechanisms that seek to improve accountability - public sector reform, citizen report cards, and others - and posits hypotheses to be explored in the following chapters. Chapter 5 applies the World Bank's accountability framework to a participatory assessment of services in six municipalities in South Africa. Chapters 6 and 7 apply the framework to the education and water and sanitation sectors. Chapter 8 explains why community-driven development does not factor in any main South African development programs. Chapter 9 explains the continuing learning practices pioneered in the manufacturing sector and addresses how these practices might be used by the South African government to effect change. Chapter 10 summarizes the conclusions, translates these into main hypotheses to be tested in future work, and formulates a number of policy recommendations for public debate.

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There is a growing recognition that rapid action in response to climate change is urgently necessary, and that many of the responsibilities for this action (e.g., relating to transport, land-use planning and economic development) rest at the local level. This is attested to by the growing number of local authorities that have declared climate emergencies across the globe. Responding to this emergency will require significant changes in the assumptions, expectations, priorities and procedures of locally elected representatives and government officials. This Special Issue will explore the responses of local government, as a key locus of sustainability  governance, to the need for rapid climate action, drawing on examples from diverse locations (UK, western Europe, Chile and South Africa) and at various scales (from the smallest local areas, to city regions, counties and provinces.)

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Governments play a major role in the development process, constantly introducing reforms and policies to achieve developmental objectives. Many of these interventions have limited impact, however; schools get built but children don’t learn, IT systems are introduced but not used, plans are written but not implemented. These achievement deficiencies reveal gaps in capabilities, and weaknesses in the process of building state capability.

This book addresses these weaknesses and gaps. It provides evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, analyses this evidence and identifies capability traps that hold many governments back—particularly related to isomorphic mimicry and premature load-bearing. The book then describes a process that governments can use to escape these capability traps. Called PDIA (Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation), this process empowers people working in governments to find and fit solutions to the problems they face. This process is explained in a practical manner so that readers can actually apply tools and ideas to the capability challenges they face in their own contexts. These applications will help readers implement policies and reforms that have more impact than those of the past. 

[See Download link for more book details]

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This open access book is about mismanagement of public agencies as a threat to life and limb. Collapsing bridges and buildings kill people and often leave many more injured. Such disasters do not happen out of the blue nor are they purely technical in nature since construction and maintenance are subject to safety regulation and enforcement by governmental agencies. The book analyses four relevant cases from Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Germany. Rather than stressing well-known pathologies of bureaucracy as a potential source of disaster, this book argues, learning for the sake of prevention should aim at neutralizing threats to integrity and strengthening a sense of responsibility among public officials.

Reviews:

“In what is certain to become an indispensable book on public failures, their origins, and consequences, Wolfgang Seibel builds piece-by-piece a unique contribution to the study of rare events and the search for resilience in public policy. Bridges and buildings are perhaps the best real-world synonym for rational design and deliberation; proper construction and maintenance is the first and primary goal of entire professions. This book demonstrates how accidents happen, how social processes are fundamental to their occurrence, and how learning and inference about their causes is a core public management function. Along the way, Seibel masterfully musters evidence from a multitude of sources to painstakingly document both bridge and building failures and the organizational pathologies that accompany them. This is a must-read for those who want to better understand such 'black swan' events and the search for resilience.” 

     --(Andrew B. Whitford, Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia, USA)

“A must read for practitioners and scholars, Wolfgang Seibel's latest book provides profound insight in the intersection of public administration mismanagement and the absence of responsible leadership. Through a series of devastating cases, he provides a forensic analysis of how and why disasters occur, showing us what happens when we ignore warning signs and fail to act. His work challenges us all to step up, embrace a more strategic approach to learning, and prevent these catastrophic disasters from happening. An exceptional contribution to the field.” 

     --(Janine O’Flynn, Professor of Public Management, The Australia and New Zealand School of Government, Australia)

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[NOTE: This is an Australian textbook but it includes some general principles that may be applicable in other regions/countries too - see below for the Contents page.]

Amidst growing dissatisfaction with the state of government performance and an erosion of trust in our political class, Competing for Influence asks: what sort of public service do we want in Australia?

Drawing on his experience in both the public and private sectors – and citing academic research across the fields of public sector management, industrial organisation, and corporate strategy – Barry Ferguson argues the case for the careful selection and application of private sector management concepts to the public service, both for their ability to strengthen the public service and inform public policy. These include competitive advantage, competitive positioning, horizontal strategy and organisational design, and innovation as an all-encompassing organisational adjustment mechanism to a changeable environment.

But these are not presented as a silver bullet, and Ferguson addresses other approaches to reform, including the need to rebuild the Public Sector Act, the need to reconsider the interface between political and administrative arms of government (and determine what is in the ‘public interest’), and the need for greater independence for the public service within a clarified role. This approach, and its implications for public sector reform, is contrasted with the straitjacket of path dependency that presently constricts the field.

Contents page:

Foreword  

1. Introduction  

2. Government and governance  

3. The problem of policy formation  

4. Public administration performance measurement  

5. The role and activities of the public service  

6. Organisational design  

7. Arguments for better strategy  

8. The competitive advantage of the public sector  

9. Adjusting to change: The role of innovation  

10. Public policy towards the public service  

11. Reflections  

References  

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Consolidating Developmental Local Government documents the dynamics of local government transformation and captures the key themes of the debates about policy options, lessons and key strategic decisions. These debates are aimed at ensuring that municipalities play a key role in creating more democratic, non-racial, equitable and sustainable communities, towns and cities.

Compiled and written by people who participated in one way or another in the experience of democratic consolidation, this text will be an indispensable resource for government officials, students, researchers, specialists, community leaders, businesses and the general reader. Critical questions are raised throughout the book about the kinds of challenges that all those involved with the future of local governance will face in the years ahead.

Contents page:

Foreword

Preface

Contributors

1. Consolidating developmental local government

I. DEVELOPMENTAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN COMPARATIVE CONTEXT

2. Continuities and discontinuities in South African local government

3. Developmental local government : squaring the circle between policy intent and impact

4. Local governance and the politics of sustainability

5. From spheres to tiers : conceptions of local government in South Africa in the period 1994-2006

6. Rural local governance

7. Local democracy and development in comparative perspective

II. STRATEGIC PRIORITIES OF DEVELOPMENTAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT

8. The emergence and endurance of an evolving human settlements imaginary

9. Reframing urban passenger transport as a strategic priority for developmental local government

10. Social development : an imperative for local government

11. The implications of HIV/AIDS for local governance and sustainable municipal service delivery

12. Institutional arrangements for local economic development implementation in South Africa

13. Key themes and trends in municipal finance in South Africa

III. TOOLS AND REGULATORY INSTRUMENTS OF DEVELOPMENTAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT

14. The origins and outcomes of South Africa's integrated development plans

15. Intergovernmental delivery in municipal areas : reflections on current practice

16. Tools and trade-offs in environmental decision-making

17. Local government planning legal frameworks and regulatory tools : vital signs?

18. Urban land use regulation in the context of developmental local government

19. Municipal entities : a panacea for service delivery constraints?

20. The distribution of power : local government and electricity distribution industry reforms

IV. INSTITUTIONAL MODELS OF DEVELOPMENTAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT

21. Political systems and capacity issues

22. Participatory mechanisms and community politics : building consensus and conflict

23. Beyond cooption and protest : reflections on the FEDUP Alternative

24. A case study of community participation in governance and service delivery in the City of Johannesburg

25. Democratisation with inclusion : revisiting the role of ward committees

26. Rolling back the spatial barriers to socio-economic development : Experiences from the demarcation of district and local municipalities

Index.

Reviews:

"We are confident that policymakers, researchers and practitioners alike will find Consolidating Developmental Local Government a useful, thoughtful contribution to making local government and other spheres of government work better together to overcome poverty and inequality."

    - Solomon Lechesa Tsenoli, MP, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Provincial and Local Government

"Consolidating Developmental Local Government should be required reading for scholars and practitioners everywhere who care about inclusive and poverty-oriented development and are alert to the complexities and rewards of achieving democratic local government in cosmopolitan societies and complex institutional arenas."

    - Professor Jo Beall, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics

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Creating Adaptive Policies was written to help policy-makers navigate today’s complex, dynamic and uncertain terrain—to help policies help people. Contained in the chapters of this book are seven tools that have helped policy-makers design and implement policies that perform in highly dynamic and uncertain settings. Adaptive policies anticipate the array of conditions that lie ahead through robust design using: (1) integrated and forward-looking analysis, including scenario planning; (2) multi-stakeholder deliberation to illuminate potential pitfalls and unintended consequences and (3) by monitoring key performance indicators to trigger automatic policy adjustments. But not all situations can be anticipated in advance through diligent use of analytical and deliberative tools. Adaptive policies are also able to navigate towards successful outcomes in settings that cannot be anticipated in advance. The book describes how this can be done by working in concert with certain characteristics of complex adaptive systems, including: (1) enabling self-organizing and social networking in communities (2) decentralizing decision-making to the lowest, and most effective and accountable unit of governance; (3) promoting variation in policy responses; and through (4) regular and systematic policy review and improvement—always examining whether assumptions about intended outcomes are accurate. 

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For developing countries, decentralising power from central government to local authorities holds the promise of deepening democracy, empowering citizens, improving public services and boosting economic growth. But the evidence on when and how decentralisation can bring these benefits has been mixed. Under the wrong conditions, decentralised power can be captured by unrepresentative elites or undermined by corruption and the clientelistic distribution of public resources. The picture is complex, and we still do not understand enough about what factors can contribute to creating better local government, and to what effect.

Decentralised Governance brings together a new generation of political economy studies that explore these questions analytically, blending theoretical insights with empirical innovation. Individual chapters provide fresh evidence from around the world, including broad cross-country data as well as detailed studies of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Ghana, Kenya and Colombia. They investigate the pros and cons of decentralisation in both democratic and autocratic regimes, and the effects of critical factors such as advances in technology, citizen-based data systems, political entrepreneurship in ethnically diverse societies, and reforms aimed at improving transparency and monitoring.

This wide-ranging volume examines the conditions under which devolving power can intensify democratic competition, boost transparency, and improve local governance, providing examples of good and bad practice in both. It is essential reading for researchers investigating decentralised governance, development and democratisation, and for policymakers and practitioners drawing lessons for future reforms.

Contents page:

1. Decentralised governance: crafting effective democracies around the world

2. Understanding decentralisation: theory, evidence, and practice

3. Decentralised targeting of transfer programmes: a reassessment

4. Realising the promise of partial decentralisation

5. Devolution under autocracy: evidence from Pakistan

6. Social fragmentation, public goods, and local elections: evidence from China

7. How does fiscal decentralisation affect local polities? Evidence from local communities in Indonesia

8. Can parliamentary sanctions strengthen local political accountability? Evidence from Kenya

9. Centralised versus decentralised monitoring in developing countries: a survey of recent research

10. Subnational governance in Ghana: a comparative assessment of data and performance

11. Birth registration, child rights, and local governance in Bangladesh

12. Administrative decentralisation and its impacts on educational expenditure and student outcomes: evidence from Colombia

Reviews:

"Decentralisation has often been hailed as a panacea for development. However, if not implemented effectively, it can fail to deliver on its promise. This book edited by Faguet and Pal provides —using a wealth of cases covering many parts of the emerging world— the necessary guidance to harness the potential of decentralisation while sidestepping its drawbacks. A must read."

- Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, Princesa de Asturias Chair, London School of Economics

"Decentralization as a way of improving quality of governance and delivery of public services is widely recognised. Yet the experience in its actual performance has been mixed particularly in developing countries. ... This book provides a major step in our understanding the nuances and complexities of the subject, utilises both political and mechanism design insights, and guides us to valuable tools in reforming our beleaguered systems of political accountability."

- Pranab Bardhan, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of California, Berkeley 

"An essential and long-awaited book on the effects of decentralisation in developing countries from a comparative perspective. Its reading will help to understand the complexity of decentralised governance and the importance of the role of political, social and cultural variables. It is a must-read for researchers, practitioners and anyone interested in the complexity of policy-making around the world."

- José M. Ruano, Director of the Complutense School of Government, Complutense University of Madrid and Editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Decentralisation in Europe

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Local government is at the forefront of development. In South Africa the ambitious policy objectives of post-apartheid reconstruction and development hinge on the successful creation of a democratic tier of government close to the people. An entirely new system of ‘developmental local government’ has thus been introduced.

 As is the case in many developing countries, the responsibilities of municipalities in South Africa have been extended dramatically, often without adequate resources. Managing municipalities for development therefore requires political will and strategic intervention. Democratising Local Government : the South African Experiment will assist officials, politicians and communities who wish to optimise their development ambitions within the new local governance framework. The book will be of use in many other countries, especially in Africa, where decentralisation is a major emphasis of development theory and practice.

The book provides a comprehensive introduction to developmental local government. It includes:

• the design of the new local government system and the issues posed by decentralisation

• an overview of specific challenges of urban and rural municipalities

• a discussion of special issues facing local government including poverty, gender and environment

• new tools for local government, including budgeting, indicators, municipal partnerships and capacity building.

About the authors:

The authors have extensive experience in policy formulation, municipal management and research on local government. They are activists, civil servants, NGO workers, consultants and academics. Their authoritative views are brought together in this important test to provide a solid foundation for working with and understanding local government in the developing world.

    [The book is edited by Susan Parnell; Edgar Pieterse; Mark Swilling and Dominique Wooldridge.]

Contents page:

Foreword

Acknowledgements  

SECTION 1 Participatory Local Governance in the Making

• 1 Participatory Local Governance in the Making: Opportunities, Constraints and Prospects

• 2 The Role of Local Government

• 3 International Trends in Local Government Transformation

• 4 Local Government in the Emerging National Planning Context

SECTION 2 Origins and Principles of Developmental Local Government

• 5 A Developmental Role for Local Government

• 6 Developmental Local Government

• 7 'Embedded Autonomy' and the Challenges of Developmental Local Government

SECTION 3 Differential Challenges

• 8 Addressing Rural Poverty: Restructuring Rural Local Government

• 9 Introducing Metropolitan Local Government in South Africa

• 10 Infrastructure and Service Delivery in South Africa, 1994-99

SECTION 4 Policy Perspectives

• 11 Local Government and Poverty in South Africa

• 12 Integrating Environmental Sustainability Issues into Local Government Planning and Decision-Making Processes

• 13 Local Government's Role in Realising Gender Equality: From Policy to Practice

• 14 Social Capital and Local Government

SECTION 5 Policy Tools

• 15 Local Government Finance Reform

• 16 The Value of Indicators as a Tool for Local Government

• 17 Municipal-Community Partnerships

• 18 Capacity-Building for Sustainable Local Governance in South Africa

• 19 The Dilemmas of Informality for African Urban Governance

• 20 'My Soul I Can See': The Limits of Governing African Cities in a Context of Globalisation and Complexity

Index  

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More about this e-Book:

This book brings out current research and practice concepts, articulating the research agenda for e-Government. When e-Government was first conceived, it was designed upon basic technologies where the emphasis was only on the simple display of government information for citizens to read. Nowadays, e-Government design comprises many complicated modules such as upload and download consoles, two-way interaction consoles between citizens and government agents, integrated government business processes presenting the whole of government, and it does not depend solely on technology. The complexity of e-Government has now evolved to include political, cultural, economic, social and technical dimensions. Bringing all these difficult aspects together is so complicated that it needs carefully planned strategies informed by local contextual characteristics.  

[See Download link for more book details]

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Governments across the world make thousands of personnel management decisions, procure millions of goods and services, and execute billions of processes each day. They are data rich.  And yet, there is little systematic practice to-date which capitalizes on this data to make public administrations work better. This means that governments are missing out on data insights to save billions in procurement expenditures, recruit better talent into government, and identify sources of corruption, to name just a few.

The Government Analytics Handbook seeks to change that. It presents frontier evidence and practitioner insights on how to leverage data to make governments work better. Covering a range of microdata sources—such as administrative data and public servant surveys—as well as tools and resources for undertaking the analytics, it transforms the ability of governments to take a data-informed approach to diagnose and improve how public organizations work.

Main Messages:

Firms are capitalizing on innovations in data science at an unprecedented scale to improve their internal operations, but many governments are lacking behind. This book introduces government analytics – how governments can repurpose their data and records to diagnose public administration and boost public sector productivity.

A wealth of approaches and data sources are available to governments for analytics to identify evidence-based improvements. Many of these approaches rely on data that governments already collect as part of their day-to-day operations.

Government analytics can be undertaken with at least three types of data: 

• administrative data from government entities (such as procurement data); 

• surveys of public servants; and 

• external assessments (such as household surveys or anthropological assessments).

Which data source is appropriate for analytics depends on what aspect of public administration an organization is seeking to diagnose and improve. Some data sources are better suited to assessing inputs into public administration, such as payroll data assessing the costs of different personnel. Some data sources are better suited to assessing the processes, practices, and cultures that convert inputs into outputs, such as surveys of public servants assessing perceptions of management in government. And some data sources are better suited to assessing the outputs and outcomes of public administration, such as citizen satisfaction surveys.

Frontier government analytics integrates different data sources and makes insights accessible to managers across government organizations. For instance, dashboards integrating data sources and updating in real time can provide managers with insights into staffing issues, quality of management, task completion rates and case productivity, among many. Comparative data can allow benchmarking with other government organizations, or where appropriate, other countries. The result is a transformational change, with managers integrating analytic insights with their tacit understanding of their organization to drive continuous public administration improvement.

Governments can advance government analytics by creating government analytics units at the center of government and within each major organization. Centralized units enable economies of scale in analytics, a common data architecture and government-wide benchmarking. Units within organizations can complement central analytics by helping interpret analytics for their organization, and adapting analytics tools to particular organizational needs.

Reviews:

"This pioneering handbook shows how microdata can be used to give ... granular and real insights into how states work."

- Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University, author of State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century

"The most comprehensive work on practically building government administration I have ever seen."

- Francisco Gaetani, Special Secretary for State Transformation, Government of Brazil 

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This introductory guide has been developed by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) with the support of the World Bank to explain to public sector leaders and their teams how integrated thinking and reporting can help the sector consider how make the most of resources, encourage the right behaviors and demonstrate to stakeholders how they are achieving the strategy and creating value over the short and longer term.

See Also: 

• Preparing an integrated report: A Starter's Guide

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The International Framework: Good Governance in the Public Sector was jointly developed by IFAC and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) to help improve and encourage effective public sector governance. The Framework encourages better governed and managed public sector organizations by improving decision making and the efficient use of resources. Enhanced stakeholder engagement, robust scrutiny, and oversight of those charged with primary responsibility for determining an entity’s strategic direction, operations, and accountability leads to more effective interventions and better outcomes for the public at large.

IFAC and CIPFA also released an Executive Summary, Supplement of additional materials and a Comparison of Principles, available as free downloads.

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This open access book focuses on theoretical and empirical intersections between governance, knowledge and space from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributions elucidate how knowledge is a prerequisite as well as a driver of governance efficacy, and conversely, how governance affects the creation and use of knowledge and innovation in geographical context. Scholars from the fields of anthropology, economics, geography, public administration, political science, sociology, and organization studies provide original theoretical discussions along these interdependencies. 

Moreover, a variety of empirical chapters on governance issues, ranging from regional and national to global scales and covering case studies in Australia, Europe, Latina America, North America and South Africa demonstrate that geography and space are not only important contexts for governance that affect the contingent outcomes of governance blueprints -- governance also creates spaces. It affects the geographical confines as well as the quality of opportunities and constraints that actors enjoy to establish legitimate and sustainable ways of social and environmental co-existence.

Contents page:

On the Reflexive Relations Between Knowledge, Governance, and Space

How Knowledge Enables Governance

• Lessons from Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) for Governance in Conditions of Environmental Uncertainty

• Knowledge of Governance as Knowledge for Governance: Spatialized Techniques of Neutralization

• The Atmosphere of Democracy: Knowledge and Political Action

• Risk Governance: From Knowledge to Regulatory Action

• Knowledge and Governance: Can Systemic Risk in Financial Markets Be Managed? The Case of the Euro Crisis

How Knowledge Drives the Effectiveness of Governance

• Explaining Subnational Governance: The Role of Governors’ Codified and Uncodified Knowledge

• The (De-)Contextualization of Geographical Knowledge in Forest Fire Risk Management in Chile as a Challenge for Governance

• Carbon Markets, Values, and Modes of Governance

• The Fight Against Corruption in Brazil: A Case of Good Governance?

• Lateral Network Governance

How Governance Affects Learning and Innovation

• Knowledge and the Deliberative Stance in Democratic Systems: Harnessing Scepticism of the Self in Governing Global Environmental Change

• Nurturing Adaptive Governance Through Environmental Monitoring: People, Practices, Politics in the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere Region, South Africa

• Ex Ante Knowledge for Infectious Disease Outbreaks: Introducing the Organizational Network Governance Approach

• Collective Learning and Institutional Collective Action in Fragmented Governance

• The Remapping of Forest Governance: From Shareholder to Stakeholder

• The Governance of Global Innovation Systems: Putting Knowledge in Context

• Experimentalist Systems in Manufacturing Multinationals: Recursivity and Continuous Learning Through Destabilization

• Networks as Facilitators of Innovation in Technology-Based Industries: The Case of Flat Glass

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This report emphasizes building an autonomous administration based on merit to avoid corruption and promote democracy in South Africa’s public service. It highlights the urgent need for an impartial and effective administration to serve people’s needs without political interference.

South Africa’s struggle with corruption, nepotism and lack of accountability in the public service is hampering its ability to build a non-racial, non-sexist society based on democratic values and respect for human rights. The report emphasises the need to build an autonomous civil service, which is fundamental to strengthening the functioning of democratic institutions and preventing the abuse of power. It contextualises the appointment of public officials in South Africa against the legacy of apartheid, which denied civil and political rights to the majority. The Constitution grants broad powers to transform the state apparatus and build a non-racial, non-sexist society, but the separation between the political and administrative spheres is not clearly defined, allowing political criteria to dominate public appointments.

While recognising and welcoming the legislative and jurisprudential move to strengthen the policy conditions for the appointment of public officials, the report emphasises the need for further action. It recommends the institutionalisation of policy conditions that promote the assessment of managerial competencies as a precondition for the appointment of executive officers in the public service. This is crucial to ensure that limits on political discretion translate into better public service delivery.

Ivor Chipkin, Michelle Le Roux and Rafael Leite’s report ‘Personalising and Depersonalising Power’ is a crucial call to action for anyone interested in promoting good governance in South Africa and strengthening the capacity of the state to deliver what citizens need, thereby fostering trust in democracy. The fact that nearly five hundred people were in attendance at the report’s launch is a reflection of the high level of interest in this issue. The report underscores the need for South Africa to build a professional civil service that operates on merit, serves the needs of the people, and takes bold steps to build an impartial and effective administration free from excessive political interference. Policy makers, civil society organisations and citizens who want to promote transparency, accountability and good governance in South Africa’s public service must read this report.

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"Human history is in reality a history of corrupt governments". In this book, Vladimir Gel’man considers bad governance as a distinctive politico-economic order that is based on a set of formal and informal rules, norms, and practices quite different from those of good governance. Some countries are governed badly intentionally because the political leaders of these countries establish and maintain rules, norms, and practices that serve their own self-interests. Gel’man considers bad governance as a primarily agency-driven rather than structure-induced phenomenon.

He addresses the issue of causes and mechanisms of bad governance in Russia and beyond from a different scholarly optics, which is based on a more general rationale of state-building, political regime dynamics, and policy-making. He argues that although these days, bad governance is almost universally perceived as an anomaly, at least in developed countries, in fact human history is largely a history of ineffective and corrupt governments, while the rule of law and decent state regulatory quality are relatively recent matters of modern history, when they emerged as side effects of state-building. Indeed, the picture is quite the opposite: bad governance is the norm, while good governance is an exception. The problem is that most rulers, especially if their time horizons are short and the external constraints on their behavior are not especially binding, tend to govern their domains in a predatory way because of the prevalence of short-term over long-term incentives. Contemporary Russia may be considered as a prime example of this phenomenon. Using an analysis of case studies of political and policy changes in Russia after the Soviet collapse, Gel’man discusses the logic of building and maintaining the politico-economic order of bad governance in Russia and paths of its possible transformation in a theoretical and comparative perspective.

Contents page:

• Preface and Acknowledgments 

• The Politics of Bad Governance: A Framework for Analysis  

• Post-Soviet Bad Governance: A Vicious Circle?  

• Authoritarian Modernization: Illusions and Temptations  

• Opportunities and Constraints: Policy Reforms in the 2000s  

• The Technocratic Traps of Policy Reforms  

• Success Stories amid Bad Governance  

• The Politics of Bad Governance: Russia in Comparative Perspective

• Notes  

Reviews:

“This powerful new book persuasively explains why contemporary Russia, like many other countries in the world, suffers from bad governance. For Gel’man, bad governance is neither an inevitable consequence of problematic institutional legacies nor a regrettable failure of elite attempts to govern well. Instead, bad governance represents a purposeful, self-serving, and perverse success story for Russia’s authoritarian elites.” 

—Juliet Johnson, McGill University

“In this engaging work, Gel'man challenges long-standing ideas about good governance, why Russia has bad governance, and the assumption that governance in Russia may improve. In doing so, he presents us with an enormously valuable and timely perspective about how we should think about Russian politics today.” 

—Sarah Wilson Sokhey, University of Colorado Boulder

“An original contribution to the study of Russian governance, rent-seeking, state building, and regime change. This is a serious piece of scholarship assessing the development of Russia’s political system in the post-Communist era, offering valuable insights into how and why Russia, despite its high level of economic development, exhibits so many features of bad governance, such as weak rule of law, near-universal rent-seeking, corruption, poor regulation, and government ineffectiveness.”

—Hilary Appel, Claremont McKenna College

“Gel’man has long been one of the most original voices on Russian politics and his lively prose and vivid analogies are on full display in The Politics of Bad Governance in Contemporary Russia. By reframing the study of governance, Gel’man helps us understand why the Russian state usually, but not always, underperforms. An important work that will be required reading for anyone interested in governance or Russian politics.”

—Timothy M. Frye, Columbia University

“Vladimir Gel’man’s new book provides a brilliant analysis of the evolution of Russian political institutions in the last thirty years as well as a rigorous discussion of the scenarios for escaping the authoritarian trap. While the book is based on recent research in political science, it is written for a general audience who wants to understand the past, the present, and the future of Russian politics.”

—Sergei Guriev, Sciences Po, Paris

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At the 2011 meeting of the UN General Assembly, the governments of eight nations—Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States—launched the Open Government Partnership, a multilateral initiative aimed at promoting transparency, empowering citizens, fighting corruption, and harnessing new technologies to strengthen governance. At the time, many were concerned that the Open Government Partnership would end up toothless, offering only lip service to vague ideals and misguided cyber-optimism. 

The Power of Partnership in Open Government offers a close look, and a surprising affirmation, of the Open Government Partnership as an example of a successful transnational multistakeholder initiative that has indeed impacted policy and helped to produce progressive reform. By 2019 the Open Government Partnership had grown to 78 member countries and 20 subnational governments. Through a variety of methods—document analysis, interviews, process tracing, and quantitative analysis of secondary data—Suzanne J. Piotrowski, Daniel Berliner, and Alex Ingrams chart the Open Government Partnership's effectiveness and evaluate what this reveals about the potential of international reform initiatives in general. Their work calls upon scholars and policymakers to reconsider the role of international institutions and, in doing so, to differentiate between direct and indirect pathways to transnational impact on domestic policy. The more nuanced and complex processes of the indirect pathway, they suggest, have considerable but often overlooked potential to shape policy norms and models, alter resources and opportunities, and forge new linkages and coalitions—in short, to drive the substantial changes that inspire initiatives like the Open Government Partnership.

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This book brings together original contributions from leading scholars and practitioners with expertise in various academic disciplines, including economics, philosophy, physics, political science, public policy and theology. The volume addresses three main issues: fist, the ethical considerations that should inform the conduct of public officials and the task of policy analysis; second, the ethics of climate change; and third, ethics and economic policy. While the contributors have varying views on these important issues, they share a common conviction that the ethical dimensions of public policy need to be better understood and given proper attention in the policy-making process. 

Contents page:

1. Ethics and public policy 

Part I: Ethical foundations of public policy

2. Justice, humanity, and prudence 

3. Doing ethical policy analysis 

4. The public servant as analyst, adviser, and advocate 

5. Be careful what you wish for 

Part II: Ethics of climate change

6. The most important thing about climate change 

7. Recognising ethics to help a constructive climate change debate 

8. Sharing the responsibility of dealing with climate change: Interpreting the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities 

9. Virtue and the commons 

Part III: Perspectives on ethics and the economy

10. Tackling economic inequality 

11. Is ethics important for economic growth? 

12. Regulation of financial markets: Panics, moral hazard, and the long-term good 

13. An alternative reply to the free-rider objection against unconditional citizenship grants 

References 

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This upper-level open access textbook uses an interdisciplinary perspective to discuss the ‘what and why’ of public procurement, providing insight into the ‘how’ of contemporary procurement in the public sector. The authors use theories and exemplary practices to show the next generation of public procurement professionals how public value can be created via the acquisition of works, supplies, or services by organizations operating in the public domain. 

Perfectly tailored to university students in public administration, law, economics, or management and those in executive education, the book first describes and explains the public procurement process, the concept of public value, the legal context of procurement and how the procurement function is organized in public organizations. The book subsequently explains how a procurement policy can be developed and translated into a procurement strategy, how tenders can be organized, suppliers selected, and contracts designed and evaluated. A final discussion chapter addresses the changes and developments in public procurement and how public procurement is moving forward. The reader of this innovative and accessible book will therefore not only learn what public procurement entails, but also how they can become a professional change agent in the field of public procurement. 

Forward-thinking and comprehensive, this book offers ideal reading for anyone interested in public procurement.

Contents page:

• Introducing Public Procurement

• Public Values in Procurement

• Public Procurement Law in the European Union

• Organizing Public Procurement

• Public Procurement Policy and Purchasing Strategy

• Tendering and Supplier Selection

• Public Sector Contracting

• Ways Forward in Public Procurement

Reviews:

"Those of us who concentrate on public management and organizational analysis need to be well-informed about public procurement, a crucially important topic in contemporary government. Jolien Grandia’s and Leentje Volker’s and their colleagues’ Public Procurement – Theories, Practices and Tools provides a valuable resource for those of us who want to enhance our understanding of the topic. It can serve as an effective supplemental reading in courses on public management and many related topics. The authors provide multidisciplinary expertise, including specific practical guidance along with concepts and frameworks that support broader systematic and strategic thinking about procurement."

- Hal G. Rainey, Alumni Foundation Distinguished Professor Emeritus, The University of Georgia

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That digital technologies can be tools for better governance is widely accepted - the degree to which they can meet their potential in Africa in the near future is an open question. Are the countries in Africa caught in a trap with digital progress limited by the very governance problems that such technologies could address? Or have they already progressed with large leaps forward? What are the factors that limit progress from being even faster? 

This study examines the progress and challenges in establishing the analog foundations for the use of digital technologies for better governance in Africa, and the degree of implementation of those GovTech tools. It covers the use of digital tools for providing information to the public, for streamlining the provision of government services including those related to taxation and business and land registration, courts and one-stop shops, digital identification systems, and interoperability between systems. The report similarly covers the use of digital tools for strengthening participation in policy making, accountability systems including grievance redress, and anticorruption. Finally, the report examines the adoption of electronic government procurement (eGP), as well as the procurement of IT systems by governments. The report concludes with recommendations for reaching the potential for the use of digital tools for better governance in Africa. 

[SEE ALSO: Regulating the Digital Economy in Africa:  Managing Old and New Risks to Economic Governance for Inclusive Opportunities.]

Contents page:

1. Introduction

•    Africa’s governance challenge   

•    Can digitization help?   

•    Data and stories 

•    Roadmap for the report   

2. Progress in the adoption of digital tools and complements for better governance

•    Digital adoption by government and its impact on good governance  

•    Laying the foundation of digital infrastructure, institutions, and other analog complements

•    Chapter summary: Progress in digital adoption shows results, but they are hampered by weaknesses in analog complements and institutions

3. Governance risks in public procurement of ICT solutions 

•    Understanding the governance risks in ICT procurement 

•    Minimizing governance risks in ICT procurement 

•    Chapter summary: Governance risks are large but manageable

4. Digital tools for providing information to the public  

•    Online provision of information by government 

•    Online publication of budget documents  

•    Online publication of laws and regulations 

•    Chapter summary: Digital tools are often used to provide information, but details and institutional foundations are lacking

5. Digital tools for streamlining the provision of government services and supporting efficiency

•    E-government procurement 

•    Digital tools for filing and paying taxes

•    Digital land registration systems  

•    E-services for business registration  

•    E-court systems 

•    One-stop-shops for digital services and payments 

•    Digital identification systems 

•    Interoperable government systems and data infrastructure  

•    Chapter summary: Basic functions can be found, but transactional features are rare

6. Digital tools for strengthening participation, accountability, and anticorruption

•    Digital tools for public participation in policy making  

•    Digital tools for citizen feedback on services and projects 

•    Digital tools for reporting and detecting corruption 

•    Chapter summary: Countries are just scratching the surface on digital tools for participation, accountability, and anticorruption

7. Summary of main findings  

Index 

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This short book analyses three distinct and key features of the state: 

• the system of appointment and removal in the public service and municipalities, 

• high-level appointments and removals within the criminal justice sector, and 

• public procurement. 

A state’s politics and its capacities are constituted in important ways by how it fills its public administrative offices (including its prosecution service) and purchases its necessities. The book, considering outcomes in South Africa, advocates for specific reforms in each area. It argues that the timely consideration and adoption of reforms along these lines is an urgent task. 

With that in mind, the book has been written chiefly for two audiences: both for activists keen to build a state which can play its role in advancing the progressive transformation of South African society, and for scholars who are interested in understanding the character and possibilities of the evolving South African public administration.

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The electricity supply crisis that gripped South Africa in 2007 impacted heavily on economic productivity, political stability, and every citizen.

To date, all attempts to understand how the country’s Electricity Supply Industry (ESI) has evolved focus narrowly on Eskom. This approach has become increasingly limited over the last 15 years as the national utility continues to spiral deeper into operational failure. Yet, commentators and analysts have paid little attention to Municipal Electricity Undertakings (MEUs) – the utilities responsible for distributing electricity at municipal level – which started operating two decades before Eskom was formed in 1923.

Through a detailed historical account, Running to Stand Still shows how MEUs have contributed to the country’s broader ESI. The book disentangles the complex linkages that have developed between Eskom, MEUs, and the three spheres of government. In doing so, it examines two fundamental but diametrically opposed government objectives. First, the ideal of having financially self-sufficient municipalities that in reality are over-burdened and have to rely heavily on revenue from electricity distribution to cross-subsidise their operations. And second, to have a national utility that generates electricity at the lowest cost to provide the country’s energy-intensive economy with a competitive advantage.

These path-dependent practices have endured for more than a century and have cemented institutional lock-in that blocks much-needed sectoral reform. This is aptly demonstrated through the case study of the country’s most powerful financial centre and largest MEU, Johannesburg, which is currently in a state of crisis.

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The inspiration for this book was a Summer School on State, Governance and Development presented by distinguished academics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Written by young African scholars, the chapters here focus on state, governance and development in Africa as seen from the authors’ vantage points and positions in different sectors of society.

The book opens with three forewords by eminent African scholars – Ben Turok, Johan Burger and Mohamed Halfani. The chapters that follow examine rent-seeking, patronage, neopatrimonialism and bad governance. They engage with statehood, state-building and statecraft and challenge the mainstream opinions of donors, funders, development banks, international non-governmental organisations and development organisations. They include the role of China in Africa, Kenya’s changing demographics, state accountability in South Africa’s dominant party system, Somalia’s prospects for state-building, urban development and routine violence, and resource mobilisation.

At a time in which core institutions are being tested – the market, the rule of law, democracy, civil society and representative democracy – this book offers a much-needed multi- and inter-disciplinary perspective, and a different narrative on what is unfolding, while also exposing dynamics that are often overlooked.

Summary of Contents page:

pt. 1. Contemporary statecraft and state engineering. 

• Overview. 

• The state, governance and the political settlement: To walk questioningly and to make the road while walking

• China in Africa: Quo vadis governance?

• Governance, aid and institutional traps

pt. 2. Government, governance and party systems in Africa. 

• Overview. 

• Changing demographics: Is Kenya's political stability guaranteed?

• Public participation in South Africa: Strengthening state accountability in a dominant party system

pt. 3. Governance, policy reform and institution-building. 

• Overview. 

• The Somali question and prospects for state-building

• Landscapes of terror: Cityness, routine violence and urban development

pt. 4. Governance, resource mobilisation and financing. 

• Overview. 

• Mining in Malawi: Another missed opportunity?

• Green economy, realpolitik and resource mobilisation in Rwanda, Mozambique and South Africa

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Public administration in developing countries is administration in transformation. The main concepts that guide this transformation are universal. Yet those concepts are most often presented in Western literature, embedded in Western administrative practice. This book provides an overview of these main concepts seen from a different angle: an African perspective. The general concepts of the study of public administration and public management are illustrated with sub-Saharan African stories, written by Tanzanian scholars. This introductory book can be used to learn and to teach the basic concepts of public administration and public management and aims to prepare the students for the administrative realities they face in their society.

Contents:

1. Theories & Stories in African Public Administration: Introduction

PART I THE ESSENCE OF PUBLIC POLICY

2. Collective Action  

3. Good Governance  

4. Developing Public Policy  

5. Implementation of Policy  

6. Community Participation  

7. Symbolic Legislation  

PART II INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

8. Dynamics of Stakeholders Perspective  

9. Professionalism  

10. Intergovernmental Relations  

PART III PUBLIC MANAGEMENT AND PUBLIC ORGANISATIONS

11. Staffing  

12. Leadership  

13. E-Government and E-Governance  

PART IV NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

14. Public-Private Partnership in Social Service Provision  

15. Rent-Seeking Behaviour and the Organisation of Utilities

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This book asks how governments in Africa can use evidence to improve their policies and programmes, and ultimately, to achieve positive change for their citizens. Looking at different evidence sources across a range of contexts, the book brings policy makers and researchers together to uncover what does and doesn’t work and why.

Case studies are drawn from five countries and the ECOWAS (west African) region, and a range of sectors from education, wildlife, sanitation, through to government procurement processes. The book is supported by a range of policy briefs and videos intended to be both practical and critically rigorous. It uses evidence sources such as evaluations, research synthesis and citizen engagement to show how these cases succeeded in informing policy and practice. The voices of policy makers are key to the book, ensuring that the examples deployed are useful to practitioners and researchers alike.

This innovative book will be perfect for policy makers, practitioners in government and civil society, and researchers and academics with an interest in how evidence can be used to support policy making in Africa. 

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This book offers the first overview of the ‘wicked problems’ literature, often seen as complex, open-ended, and intractable, with both the nature of the ‘problem’ and the preferred ‘solution’ being strongly contested. It contextualises the debate using a wide range of relevant policy examples, explaining why these issues attract so much attention.

There is an increasing interest in the conceptual and practical aspects of how ‘wicked problems’ are identified, understood and managed by policy practitioners. The standard public management responses to complexity and uncertainty (including traditional regulation and market-based solutions) are insufficient. Leaders often advocate and implement ideological ‘quick fixes’, but integrative and inclusive responses are increasingly being utilised to recognise the multiple interests and complex causes of these problems. This book uses examples from a wide range of social, economic and environmental fields in order to develop new insights about better solutions, and thus gain broad stakeholder acceptance for shared strategies for tackling ‘wicked problems’.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction

• Debates in Public Policy—Problem Framing, Knowledge and Interests

• The Rise of ‘Wicked Problems’—Uncertainty, Complexity and Divergence

• Political Governance of Wicked Problems

• Complexity, Crises and Coping Strategies

• Managing Environmental and Sustainability Challenges

• Improving Social Well-Being and Social Equity

• Policy Innovation in Turbulent Times

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