CONFERENCE ON DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION AND CONSOLIDATION
Working Group 6: The Reform of the State Bureaucracy
Coordinator: Byung-Kook Kim
Guidelines for the Papers on The State: Reform of State Bureaucracy
Byung-Kook Kim
The third wave democracies face a twin challenge of democratic consolidation
and globalization. The danger of illiberal delegative democracy becoming permanently
institutionalized is real, while economic globalization engenders severe societal tensions
and political instability by forcing on radical structural reforms. The bureaucracy is a
key determinant of success in both cases, deciding whether policymaking becomes
transparent, effective as well as accountable. Yet it is also a “vested interest,” frequently
foot dragging and even opposing change.
Consequently, our principal analytic and policy puzzle is: how can reformers
transform state bureaucracy into an instrument of democratic consolidation, as well as a
facilitator of their country’s incorporation into a new rapidly emerging “borderless”
global economy? Because state reformers usually operate on a tight political timetable
and work under a severe resource constraint, we need be strategic in our thinking and
raise highly discriminating questions when solving our analytic and policy puzzle. What
should reformers do and not do? Are there institutional arrangements and practices
which are better or worse than others in assuring a transparent, effective and
accountable state bureaucracy? How should bureaucratic reforms be timed as well as
sequenced?
While solving our puzzle, we shall analyze corruption and economic issues only
when they come up as one aspect of some other problem under discussion — for
example, bureaucratic monitoring, deregulation and privatization — because there are
CONFERENCE ON DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION AND CONSOLIDATION
Working Group 6: The Reform of the State Bureaucracy
Coordinator: Byung-Kook Kim
two other expert groups which work exclusively on corruption and economic
conditions.
Session 1: Coordinate or decentralize?
A-
How can COGs1 enhance their coordinating capacities when political
parties, interest groups, local governments, and/or line state ministries are still too
underdeveloped to organizationally supplement and support COG activities? How
should monetary, budgetary and fiscal authorities relate to each other and to COGs?
Should they be divided up or merged together institutionally?
B-
Why not decentralize state bureaucracy, if coordination is usually an
elusive goal? Are coordination and decentralization incompatible? Or can they be made
complementary?
C-
How should decentralization proceed? Is there a “proper” sequence for
decentralizing bureaucracy?
D-
Does a membership in international organizations strengthen COGs and
promote a prime ministerial style of decisionmaking? Which international organization
place powerful centralizing pressures and what kind of centralizing pressures are they?
E-
Which system of interest intermediation — corporatism, pluralism, and
elite “networks” among others — assure “better” coordination? Should the state try to
build a particular mode of interest intermediation with business associations and labor
federations? Is this feasible?
The Centers of Government (COGs) are “the body or group of bodies that provides
direct support and advice to the head of the government and the council of ministries.”
Consult OECD, “Building Policy Coherence: Tools and Tensions,” Public Management
Occasional Papers No.12 (Paris: OECD, 1996), p.11.
1
CONFERENCE ON DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION AND CONSOLIDATION
Working Group 6: The Reform of the State Bureaucracy
Coordinator: Byung-Kook Kim
Session 2: What is the bureaucratic ethos? Is it compatible with democratic
consolidation and economic globalization?
A-
Which
“model”
serves
more
effectively
democratization
and
globalization, the relatively “open” U.S. civil service or the “closed” French- or
Japanese-style state bureaucracy? Can there be a hybrid civil service with an
intermediate level of openness or closeness?
B-
How can reformers secure bureaucratic support for state reform, which
often threatens bureaucratic interests? Is it more realistic to cultivate political support
from a few pilot agencies rather than the entire bureaucracy to further democratization
and globalization? Who are they? How can they be strengthened?
C-
Can particular institutional designs, such as an autonomous central bank
and an accrual accounting system, maintain the internal pressures for reform within
bureaucracy?
D-
Are there a common training and socialization program for senior public
officials at elite professional schools? Is there a “grand corps” which extends throughout
the central administration and into the local government and the private sector? Is it
desirable to build such a program?
E-
Should state agencies be judged by not only technical competence, but
also political representativeness? Does the state actively recruit and promote socially
discriminated ethnic minorities, women and religious groups to establish a socially
representative upper echelon within state bureaucracy?
CONFERENCE ON DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION AND CONSOLIDATION
Working Group 6: The Reform of the State Bureaucracy
Coordinator: Byung-Kook Kim
Session 3: Who monitors the state?
A-
Which issue areas are relatively easy to measure policy performance,
identify the actors responsible for unsatisfactory results, and draw up appropriate
sanctions and rewards? What can and should be done to improve monitoring, if neither
measuring performance nor identifying the culprits is easy?
B-
Does the legislature have the power to audit the executive? Has
establishing an ombudsman office, a national anticorruption agency, an administrative
court, and a Fair Trade Commission helped make state bureaucracy become more
transparent and accountable?
C-
Is there a “Code of Conduct” for civil servants, with an explicit
enumeration of legally and ethically prohibited acts as well as disciplinary measures in
case of violation? Has it altered how state bureaucracy behaves?
D-
Where civil society is too weak to independently monitor bureaucrats,
how should the state assist the civic groups’ monitoring activities? What kind of
assistance should it give and not give?
Session
4:
Do
“privatization,”
“downsizing,”
“deregulation,”
and
“decentralization” do what they claim to do: raise efficiency, cut down deficits, and
expand the consumer’s choice? Do they further democratic consolidation?
A-
Has privatization simply replaced public monopoly with private
monopoly? What is the value of privatization if it does not strengthen competition?
CONFERENCE ON DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION AND CONSOLIDATION
Working Group 6: The Reform of the State Bureaucracy
Coordinator: Byung-Kook Kim
B-
Do
privatization,
downsizing,
deregulation,
and
decentralization
constitute one indivisible package of state reform? Which sequence of state reform is
more effective in assuring “better” performance of state bureaucracy, if their decoupling
is possible?
C-
What shouldn’t reformers do when reforming state bureaucracy?
D-
Who have gained and who have lost from privatization, downsizing,
deregulation and decentralization? What are the implications for democratization?
E-
Is it possible to create a dense environment of competition, like markets,
among state institutions, so that more capable state structures will develop and replace
suboptimal organizations? In what issue areas is such a dynamic of competition likely to
emerge?
Session 5: What are the limit to which management techniques of the private
sector be used in the public sector?
A-
Should the state hire some employees through a contract, as well as
institute an “accrual accounting” system?
B-
Is it possible to create a dense environment of competition, like markets,
among state institutions, so that more capable state structures will develop and replace
suboptimal organizations? In what issue areas is such a dynamic of competition likely to
emerge?
C-
Where reformers have entrusted the management of a public institution
to a private entrepreneur, without changing the ownership structure, what has been the
result? If the state cannot effectively monitor performance, accurately calculate inputs
CONFERENCE ON DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION AND CONSOLIDATION
Working Group 6: The Reform of the State Bureaucracy
Coordinator: Byung-Kook Kim
and outputs, and exercise the “residual control rights” not explicitly enumerated in the
contract, why not privatize the ownership structure?
D-
Should state bureaucracy be judged by not only professional competence,
but also political “representativeness”? Does the state actively recruit and promote
socially discriminated ethnic minorities, women and religious groups to establish a
socially representative upper echelon within state bureaucracy?