What does it take to build and sustain effective government institutions? What have we learnt about the attempts to design and redesign public sector institutions in different countries? What works and what doesn't, and why? This book intends to answer these questions and presents analytical tools essential in planning for institutional reform,

This publication sets out a framework for analysing the performance of governments in developing countries, looking at the government as a whole and at local and municipal levels, and focusing on individual sectors that form the core of essential government services, such as health, education, welfare, waste disposal, and infrastructure. It draws lessons from performance measurement systems in a range of industrial countries to identify good practice around the world in improving public sector governance, combating corruption and making services work for poor people.

The critical importance of well-performing public institutions and good governance for development and poverty reduction has come to the forefront in the 1990s. Reforming public institutions is a complex and difficult task. This publication is primarily intended as a guide for World Bank staff but it is also intended to serve the broader development community. It outlines a strategy which envisions significant changes in the focus of the Bank's work in this area. Some of these changes such as an enhanced focus on governance, capacity building and anticorruption, are already underway. The agenda for the next three years is to continue to foster these changes through a the advancement of analytical tools, new approaches t the design of lending operations, expanded emphasis on partnership with clients and other donors and progressive shifts in staffing, incentives and evaluation techniques. Included as an annex is an inventory of the Bank's governance and institutional reform programs which are in place.

Developing countries commonly adopt reforms to improve their governments yet they usually fail to produce more functional and effective governments. Andrews argues that reforms often fail to make governments better because they are introduced as signals to gain short-term support. These signals introduce unrealistic best practices that do not fit developing country contexts and are not considered relevant by implementing agents. The result is a set of new forms that do not function. However, there are realistic solutions emerging from institutional reforms in some developing countries. Lessons from these experiences suggest that reform limits, although challenging to adopt, can be overcome by focusing change on problem solving through an incremental process that involves multiple agents.

Key Principles of Public Sector Reforms contains case studies from Cameroon, Ghana, Grenada, India, Kenya, Rwanda, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania and Trinidad and Tobago on the policy reforms, strategies and methodologies that support national priorities and greater policy coherence for sustained development and growth.

The effectiveness and efficiency of a country's public sector is vital to the success of development activities, including those the World Bank supports. Sound financial management, an efficient civil service and administrative policy, efficient and fair collection of taxes, and transparent operations that are relatively free of corruption all contribute to good delivery of public services. The Bank has devoted an increasing share of its lending and advisory support to the reform of central governments, so it is important to understand what is working, what needs improvement, and what is missing. IEG has examined lending and other kinds of Bank support in 1999-2006 for public sector reform in four areas: public financial management, administrative and civil service, revenue administration, and anticorruption and transparency. Although a majority of countries that borrowed to support public sector reform experienced improved performance in some dimensions, there were shortcomings in important areas and in overall coordination. - The frequency of improvement was higher among IBRD borrowers than among IDA borrowers. - Performance usually improved for public financial management, tax administration, and transparency, but did not usually with respect to civil service. - Direct measures to reduce corruption-- such as anticorruption laws and commissions-- rarely succeeded.

Focuses on the public sector in developing countries. Provides tools of analysis for discovering equity in tax burdens as well as in public spending and judging government performance in its role in safeguarding the interests of the poor and disadvantaged. Outlines a framework for a rights-based approach to citizen empowerment - in other words, creating an institutional design with appropriate rules, restraints, and incentives to make the public sector responsive and accountable to an average voter.

Critical examinations of efforts to make governments more efficient and responsive Political upheavals and civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have obscured efforts by many countries in the region to reform their public sectors. Unwieldy, unresponsive—and often corrupt—governments across the region have faced new pressure, not least from their publics, to improve the quality of public services and open up their decisionmaking processes. Some of these reform efforts were under way and at least partly successful before the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2010. Reform efforts have continued in some countries despite the many upheavals since then. This book offers a comprehensive assessment of a wide range of reform efforts in nine countries. In six cases the reforms targeted core systems of government: Jordan's restructuring of cabinet operations, the Palestinian Authority's revision of public financial management, Morocco's voluntary retirement program, human resource management reforms in Lebanon, an e-governance initiative in Dubai, and attempts to improve transparency in Tunisia. Five other reform efforts tackled line departments of government, among them Egypt's attempt to improve tax collection and Saudi Arabia's work to improve service delivery and bill collection. Some of these reform efforts were more successful than others. This book examines both the good and the bad, looking not only at what each reform accomplished but at how it was implemented. The result is a series of useful lessons on how public sector reforms can be adopted in MENA.

In this major new contribution to a rapidly expanding field, the authors offer an integrated analysis of the wave of management reforms which have swept through so many countries in the last twenty years. The reform trajectories of ten countries are compared, and key differences of approach discussed. Unlike some previous works, this volume affords balanced coverage to the 'New Public Management' (NPM) and the 'non-NPM' or 'reluctant NPM' countries, since it covers Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, the UK and the USA. Unusually, it also includes a preliminary analysis of attempts to improve management within the European Commission.

This report seeks to assess the progress to date in implementing the World Bank's strategy for governance and public sector reform. It also highlights specific challenges and approaches of individual regions, the Development Research Group and the World Bank Institute.