Passionate Bureaucrat The Lessons For The 21st Century From 4500 Years Of Public Service Reform

Effective and impartial public administration is the foundation of state legitimacy. This was understood 4,500 years ago when Urukagina, the ruler of a small country in Mesopotamia, proclaimed the first known reform of public service. The quality of public administration will be even more important in the 21st century. Successful states will be those that recognise public service as a key determinant of national competitive advantage. That realisation will generate a radical change in the image of the civil servant — from dull, uninspired public official to passionate advocate of the common good.This transformation will be the product of the complex challenges arising from the interweaving of globalisation with the '4th Industrial Revolution.' These and related developments are forcing governments around the world to search for public service that can respond to the unprecedented range of opportunities and threats emerging from a rapidly evolving international context. In an increasingly frenetic world ruled by 'Wicked Ostriches' and 'Black Elephants', governments require a civil service capable of achieving five outcomes: i) unlocking the creativity and collaborative spirit needed to solve complex problems; ii) overcoming the fallacy that the private sector is inherently more innovative and efficient than the public service; iii) developing societies that are perceived by their citizens as fair; iv) fostering the trust of citizens in their governments; and v) bolstering the legitimacy of the state.The author, who is Director of the United Nations Development Programme's Global Centre for Public Service Excellence in Singapore, suggests that these interconnected aims will result in a new phenomenon: the public recognition by political leaders and citizens that future prosperity, political stability, environmental sustainability and social cohesion are dependent on committed and creative civil servants passionate about promoting the long-term national interest.'I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.'Mahatma Gandhi

This book argues that there is nothing inherently stable, persistent or enduring about institutions. By examining the various issues facing the Malaysian bureaucracy and adopting an institutional analysis, this book brings the point that institutions are disposed to change because they are fraught with tension due to the quality of institutions. Using various examples, it explains that such tension and change dynamics can come from institutional resources, the manner in which resources are distributed to different actors, the varying power configurations among institutional actors and the larger political, economic and social environment that institutions operate in.Accordingly, in examining the various concerns of the Malaysian bureaucracy, this book highlights the typologies of institutional change and the inherent tension over resources that exist among actors that makes reform attempts, at times, potentially problematic but not impossible. New concerns in public policy and governance that are yet to be discussed widely in the Malaysian public administration literature are raised, including issues on collaborative governance, public service motivation and representative bureaucracy.

There has been a major revival of interest in State Capitalism: what it is, where it is found, and why it is seemingly becoming more ubiquitous. As a concept, it has evolved from radical critiques of the Soviet Union, to being deployed by neo-liberals to describe market reforms deemed imperfect, to settle into a middle ground, as a pragmatic way to describe the state assuming a role as an active economic agent, in addition to its regulatory, social, and security functions. The latter is the central focus of this book, although due attention is accorded to the origins of state capitalism and how it has changed over the years, as well as contemporary ways in which state capitalism may be theorized. This economic agency may assume direct forms, for example, via state owned enterprises. However, it may also be indirect, for example, actively serving private interests through promoting insider firms, who may occupy monopolistic market positions and perform outsourced state functions. In turn, this leads to raising salient governance questions. The latter may encompass agency tensions between public ownership, and political or even private interest control; it may also include issues of transparency and monitoring. Although state capitalism has often been depicted as the preserve of states in the global south, be they developmental or predatory, many forms of state capitalism are visible in mature economies, be they liberal or coordinated, and this is not always associated with superior governance arrangements; indeed, this is an area where clear and easy divisions between the "developing" or "emerging" world and the "developed" or "mature" world may increasingly be breaking down. This volume brings together the accounts of leading experts from around the world; it is explicitly multi-disciplinary, and both consolidates the existing knowledge base, and provides new, novel, and counter-intuitive insights.

The IOS Annual volume 23: “Drought Will Drive You Even Toward Your Foe” brings forth cutting-edge studies devoted to a wide array fields and disciplines of the Middle East, from the beginning of civilization to modern times.

In Australia and New Zealand, many public projects, programs and services perform well. But these cases are consistently underexposed and understudied. We cannot properly ‘see’—let alone recognise and explain—variations in government performance when media, political and academic discourses are saturated with accounts of their shortcomings and failures, but are next to silent on their achievements. Successful Public Policy: Lessons from Australia and New Zealand helps to turn that tide. It aims to reset the agenda for teaching, research and dialogue on public policy performance. This is done through a series of close-up, in-depth and carefully chosen case study accounts of the genesis and evolution of stand-out public policy achievements, across a range of sectors within Australia and New Zealand. Through these accounts, written by experts from both countries, we engage with the conceptual, methodological and theoretical challenges that have plagued extant research seeking to evaluate, explain and design successful public policy. Studies of public policy successes are rare—not just in Australia and New Zealand, but the world over. This book is embedded in a broader project exploring policy successes globally; its companion volume, Great Policy Successes (edited by Paul ‘t Hart and Mallory Compton), is published by Oxford University Press (2019).

Does leadership affect economic growth and development? Is leadership an exogenous determinant or an endogenous outcome of growth and development processes? Can we differentiate between the two? Do leaders decisions and actions vary in importance over various stages in the process, at least in successful cases? How important is choosing the right economic model? To what extent does leadership affect the explicit or implicit time horizons of policy choices? Is leadership an important determinant of inclusiveness in growth? In what ways do leaders build consensus or institutions to allow time for the economic plan to work? What challenges does economic success generate? How do successful leaders adapt to new problems such as income inequality and a rising middle class? Does the creation of new institutions play any role in solving these problems? Why do leaders often choose second best political economic compromises in economic development? This book has been prepared for the Commission on Growth and Development to evaluate the state of knowledge on the relationship between leadership and economic growth. It does not pretend to provide all the answers, but does review the evidence, identify insights and offers examples of leaders making decisions and acting in ways that enhance economic growth. It examines a variety of topics including leaders roles in: promoting national unity, building good solid institutions, choosing innovative and localized policies, and creating political consensus for long run policy implementation. Written by prominent academics and actual policy makers, Leadership and Growth seeks to create a better understanding of the role of leadership in growth and to encourage further studies of the role of leadership in economic growth.

Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has enjoyed great success and provides a new theory about wealth and inequality. However, there have been major criticisms of his work. Anti-Piketty: Capital for the 21st Century collects key criticisms from 20 specialists—economists, historians, and tax experts—who provide rigorous arguments against Piketty's work while examining the notions of inequality, growth, wealth, and capital.

This book integrates the problem of violence into a larger framework, showing how economic and political behavior are closely linked.

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) play significant roles in developing economies in Asia and SOE performance remains crucial for economy-wide productivity and growth. This book looks at SOEs in Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, the People's Republic of China, and Viet Nam, which together present a panoramic view of SOEs in the region. It also presents insights from the Republic of Korea on the evolving role of the public sector in various stages of development. It explores corporate governance challenges and how governments could reform SOEs to make them efficient drivers of the long-term productivity-induced growth essential to Asia's transition to high-income status.