Public Officials and Their Institutional Environment : An Analytical Model for Assessing the Impact of Institutional Change on Public Sector Performance

Manning, Nick ; Mukherjee, Ranjana ; Gokcekus, Omer

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCOUNTABILITY;    ALLOCATION OF GOVERNMENT RESOURCES;    ATTENTION;    AUTHORITY;    BUDGET MANAGEMENT;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-2427
RP-ID  :  WPS2427

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

To perform well, public officials mustbe confident enough about the future, to be able to see arelationship between their efforts, and an eventual outcome.Their expectations are shaped by their institutionalenvironment. If the rules are not credible, or are unlikelyto be enforced, of if they expect policies to becontradicted, or resources to flow unpredictably, resultswill be uncertain, so there is little point in workingpurposefully. The authors present an analytical framework,used to design a series of surveys of public officials'views of their institutional environment, and to analyze theinformation generated in fifteen countries. They describehow survey results help map public sector's strengths,and weaknesses, and offer an approach to identifyingpotential payoffs from reforms. The framework emphasizes howheterogeneous incentives, and institutional arrangements arewithin he public sector. It emphasizes how important it isfor policymakers to base decisions on information (notgeneralizations) that suggests what is most likely to work,and where. In building on the premise that publicofficials' actions - and hence theirorganization's performance - depend on theinstitutional environment in which they find themselves,this framework avoids simplistic anti-government positions,bur doesn't defend poor performance. Some publicofficials perform poorly, and engage in rent seeking, butsome selfless, and determined public officials, work hardunder extremely difficult conditions. This framework offersan approach for understanding both bad performance, andgood, and for presenting the results to policymakers in aformat that leads to more informed choices, about publicsector reform. Types of reforms discussed includestrengthening the credibility of rules for evaluation, forrecord management, for training, and for recruitment;ensuring that staff support government policy; preventingpolitical interference, or micro-management; assuring staffthat they will be treated fairly; and, making governmentpolicies consistent.