Building State Capacity for Good Governance in Africa Requires a Paradigm Shift

Here is another article, reviewing the book from the World Bank, entitled, Building State Capacity in Africa: New Approaches, Emerging Lessons. It is worth reading and as it incorporates newer or recent approaches to governance are the main focus of the analysis.

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Building State Capacity for Good Governance in Africa Requires a Paradigm Shift

If Africa is to have a well-functioning public sector, there needs to be a paradigm shift in how to analyze and build state capacity. Specifically, African governments and their partners should move from a narrow focus on organizational, technocratic, and public management approaches to a broader perspective that incorporates both the political dynamics and the institutional rules of the game within which public organizations operate. This is the core message in a new book from the World Bank, Building State Capacity in Africa: New Approaches, Emerging Lessons. Launching the book in Washington, Frannie Leautier, World Bank Institute Vice President, said: "Where countries have a workable baseline of civil service capabilities and a visionary leadership, possibilities exist for a comprehensive program of capacity building. The administrative reforms in Tanzania and the extensive decentralized capacity building in Uganda are good examples.'

The book draws from the experience of a new generation of initiatives started in the 1990s in more than a dozen countries after decades of failed efforts. It provides pointers on how to align a capacity building strategy with country-specific realities, pointing to the need for a hopeful realism: recognizing that although building effective and accountable states is a centuries-long process, small beginnings can set in motion progressively more profound consequences. Some key lessons: * In reforming state institutions, get the right fit-It probably won't work unless you face the realities on the ground. Institutions that underpin systems of accountability are country specific, so that undifferentiated, "best practice," cookie-cutter approaches are doomed to failure. Any efforts to strengthen administrative and accountability systems will have to fit country-specific constitutional structures and patterns of political, social and economic interests.

* Align a capacity building strategy with country-specific realities. Building states that are both effective and accountable to their citizens is a centuries-long process. But small beginnings can set in motion progressively more profound consequences.

* If the country does not have bureaucratic and institutional capabilities, comprehensive reforms may not be the answer. It may be preferable to focus on more modest, viable initiatives, especially those for which results are observable. For example, if you can't fix the whole government, getting community schools to work may spearhead more reforms down the road.

* Public administrations operate in complex and interdependent systems of bureaucratic, political, social, and economic interests, so that approaches to building state capacity must take into account the underlying drivers of political and institutional change. These approaches complement the earlier and narrower technocratic view that problems are due to poor management and can be fixed by reorganizations, providing technical training, and installing hardware.

* In Africa, the record of reforms has been mixed. A survey of World Bank operations in twenty-one African countries showed far-reaching gains in public administrative capacity only in countries with a strongly pro-development political environment.

* Lessons from the last six years also show that the roots of corruption lie in dysfunctional state institutions. Anticorruption campaigns can play a valuable role but only when used in tandem with institutional interventions.

It is now generally agreed that poor governance and corruption are major factors that undermine a country's economic and social progress. Corruption not only stifles economic growth in society as a whole but also tends to affect the poor disproportionately by increasing the price for public services and restricting poor people's access to essential services such as water, education and health care. The editors, Brian Levy and Sahr Kpundeh note that: "We need to find a middle ground between the bipolar moods that have for decades plagued developmental theory and practice: exuberant optimism that some magic form u/a for development has been found, followed inevitably by deep disappointment over its limitations. This book describes a hopeful realism: recognizing that although only a few African countries will achieve major gains in the short term, irrespective of a country's initial circumstance, some way forward for building state capacity is there to be tapped. The book presents and analyzes recent experiences with supply side efforts to build administrative capacity (administrative reform, pay policies, budget formulation), and demand-side efforts to strengthen government accountability to citizens (role and impact of national parliaments, dedicated anti-corruption agencies, political dynamics of decentralization, education decentralization).

AllAfrica.com, Africa, Book Review by Brian Levy & Sahel Kp of Ghanaian Chronicle, 19 November 2004