Institutions and governance: public staff management in Tanzania

Bana, Benson; McCourt, Willy

doi:10.1002/pad.423

Cited by 24 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…The traditional civil services systems have remain largely in place, and the central government has even continued to enforce this approach, sometimes through legislation (see Public Service Management and Employment Policy, 1999). This policy, although developed at a time when policy makers in Tanzania were already aware of the basics of NPM, has further centralised and placed the management of Civil Service in the hands of PO‐PSM (Bana and McCourt, 2006). The PO‐PSM (the Civil Service Department) has retained its power to formulate, review and evaluate human resources policies in the entire public service, leaving line ministries with very little freedom ( ibid ).…”

Section: Explaining the Autonomy And Control Of Agencies In Tanzaniamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Permanent Secretaries are reluctant to ‘let go’ parts of the ministries and deliberate efforts were made to retain both power and resources at the centre. In their recent work, Bana and McCourt (2006) note that as a result of socialism, the legal and constitutional framework in Tanzania conferred excessive power at the centre (in the president's office and in the ministries), and the recent reforms have not altered this governance arrangement. Agencification was supposed to be an ‘escape’ or a break away from a centralised management system, but for that to happen in Tanzania, public sector requires institutional and cultural change than a mere structural change.…”

Section: Explaining the Autonomy And Control Of Agencies In Tanzaniamentioning

confidence: 99%

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The application of new public management doctrines in the developing world: An exploratory study of the autonomy and control of executive agencies in Tanzania

Sulle

2010

Public Admin & Development

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SUMMARYThis article examines the agencification of public service in Tanzania. This is discussed with reference to the New Public Management (NPM)-inspired reforms of which the creation of executive agencies is one of its core features. The article attempts to understand the extent to which executive agencies in Tanzania display characteristic features of an ideal-agency model as propagated by the NPM reform doctrines. Key features of the ideal-agency model have been described as structural disaggregation, autonomy and contractualisation. It questions views held by many NPM-minded reformers, such as the EU and World Bank that this model is universally applicable and can be emulated in different parts of the world. The article's assumption is that the NPMagency model is based on a weak empirical foundation and its universal applicability is questionable. To illustrate our arguments we confront the NPM-agency model with the empirical data drawn from the agencification of public services in Tanzania. Findings indicate that agencies in Tanzania display hybrid characteristics in terms of their autonomy and control. Our conclusion is that the universality of NPM-agency model is illusive.

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Section: Explaining the Autonomy And Control Of Agencies In Tanzaniamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Explaining the Autonomy And Control Of Agencies In Tanzaniamentioning

confidence: 99%

The application of new public management doctrines in the developing world: An exploratory study of the autonomy and control of executive agencies in Tanzania

Sulle

2010

Public Admin & Development

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“…19 More notably, ethnic, religious, and regional parties are barred. Multi-partyism is still not prevalent in practice (Bana and McCourt, 2006). Currently half of all councils have no opposition members and only three local governments have a non-CCM majority of local councilors.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Decentralization in Tanzania: An assessment of local government discretion and accountability

Venugopal

Ebel

2010

Public Admin & Development

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A large part of the decentralization literature is fragmented along political, fiscal, or administrative lines. In this article we employ a diagnostic framework to draw these dimensions together in a coherent manner to focus on analyzing local government discretion and accountability in Tanzania. Tanzania seems to have a deconcentrated local government system with central appointees having large powers at the local level. Centrally-funded mandates-such as constructing secondary schoolsdominate local government plans and budgets. Central control over administrative functions has ensured that administrative decentralization is yet to occur. In the fiscal sphere, progress has been made in transparency and harmonization of transfers in the last 5 years but local governments still have some way to go in raising own revenues, being less reliant on transfers, and ensuring downward accountability.

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“…The generally disappointing history of post-independence civil service reform (McCourt, 2001a) has left two legacies that are relevant to us. The first was de jure politicisation of the Public Service Commission (PSC) in 1972, when the Cabinet brought it under its control, an instance of a Third World trend of the time (Pinto, 1996;Bana and McCourt, 2006). Its ostensible aim was to break down the elitism of the civil service and harness it to national developmental objectives, but it resulted in the political capture of civil service appointments (De Silva, 1993b;ADB, 2004).…”

Section: The Sri Lanka Study: Patronage and The Failure Of Civil Servmentioning

confidence: 97%

Impartiality through bureaucracy? A Sri Lankan approach to managing values

McCourt

2007

J of Intl Development

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This article starts from a crux in Alan Thomas's model of development management: that values-based development management may require the coercion of employees whose values are different. It uses a case study of Sri Lanka's attempt to inculcate the value of impartiality in staffing, focusing on the restoration of the independence of the Service Commissions. The article concludes that values-based management is likeliest to succeed in the public sector, whose democratic legitimacy allows politicians to impose values in the form of behavioural norms. Ironically, such management is more complicated in the NGO sector, whose uncertain legitimacy means that managers must negotiate values with staff who may have competing values of their own. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Institutions and governance: public staff management in Tanzania

Cited by 24 publications

References 9 publications

The application of new public management doctrines in the developing world: An exploratory study of the autonomy and control of executive agencies in Tanzania

The application of new public management doctrines in the developing world: An exploratory study of the autonomy and control of executive agencies in Tanzania

Decentralization in Tanzania: An assessment of local government discretion and accountability

Impartiality through bureaucracy? A Sri Lankan approach to managing values

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