Competitiveness Strategies for Small States
Public Sector Efficiency and Effectiveness
Dr E Warrington
Department of Public Policy
University of Malta
edward.warrington@um.edu.mt
A long-standing quest, 1947 – 1997
• Development
Administration:
concerned with the
‘leading role’ of the State
in a supposedly ‘mixed’
economy
• New Public Management:
concerned with cutting
back the State’s role and
applying business
practices in public affairs
The contemporary agenda
• Good governance:
standards of integrity,
efficiency, evidence-based
policy-making,
accountability for conduct
and performance
• Competitiveness: policy
frameworks, service
delivery and human
development to permit
competition in the global
economy
Characteristics of ‘the Competitive State’
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Market liberalisation (to promote ‘choice’)
‘Steering, not rowing’ – hence ...
Privatisation of state enterprise (to create a ‘stakeholder society’)
Separation of policy-making from market regulation (‘the
regulatory state’)
Restriction of state aid to enterprise (no more ‘champions’ to
avoid market-distorting investment decisions)
Divestiture of jurisdiction over monetary policy (to control
inflation)
Fiscal discipline (to avoid market-distorting expenditure)
Marketisation of social services (to promote ‘choice’ and create a
‘welfare society’)
‘Welfare to work’ social programmes (to promote ‘self-reliance’)
League tables – domestic and international, public and private
Consequences – politics & policy-making
Politics
Policy-making
• Absence of profound
political cleavages – ethnic,
religious, ideological, class
• Constitutionalism
• Independent checks on
executive power and
decisions
• The rule of law
• Close relationships between
political and business elites
• ‘Noisy’ stakeholders
• Technical, entrepreneurial,
commercial orientation
• Quick response to market shifts
• Global orientation – effective
representation abroad
• Centralisation
• Evidence-based
• Design of policy instruments
• Ranking and standards
Consequences – public management
Organisation
Human resources
• Configuration of
ministries
• Planning, policy analysis,
horizontal coordination
and project management
capabilities
• Calibrating regulation
• Information management
• Technology platform
• Shift of emphasis from
experience to expertise,
loyalty to performance,
problem-solving to
creativity and innovation
• Decline of trade union
influence ... and of
political patronage?
• Decline of service-wide
classification, rewards
Questions and challenges - 1
• Who benefits?
• What leaders does the
system promote?
• What new risks of
conflicts of interest and
collusion?
• Unhappy trade-offs:
choice at the cost of
equity; competition at the
cost of stability;
consumption at the cost
of liberty?
Questions and challenges - 2
• A real reduction of
administrative burdens?
• What will be lost? What
price change?
• Is the contemporary
approach to
competitiveness another
‘one size fits all’
prescription?
• Taking account of
diversity and
distinctiveness?
Reflections on Malta’s experience - 1
• Membership of the
European Union –
• Integration into Single
Market
• Adoption of Single
Currency
• Participation in a
complex, pan-European
policy-making process
Reflections on Malta’s experience - 2
Politics
• Competition for the centre
• Structural decline of
working class and Labour
movement
• Consensus on EU
membership
• No perceptible effect on
domestic partisanship
• New spheres of governance
• Assertive civil society
• Politics-business nexus
Policy-making
• ‘Competitive orientation’ to
policy
• EU establishes policy
agenda
• Intensification of (a)
contestation and (b)
technical content of policymaking
• Centralization of domestic
decision-making in OPM Presidentialism
Reflections on Malta’s experience - 3
Organisation
• Uneasy re-configuration of
ministries and re-definition
of relationship with nondepartmental bodies
• Multiple accountabilities
• Greatly increased
administrative burden –
standards, reporting,
scrutiny
• Experimentation in service
delivery
Human resources
• A marked shift towards
‘knowledge workers’ in
public service – less
emphasis on career history,
more on expertise and
performance
• A new governing elite
• New networks for civil
servants in core ministries
• Politicisation of higher
grades
Unanswered questions - 1
Unanswered questions - 2