Political Commitment to Reform: Civil Service Reform in Swaziland

McCourt, Willy

doi:10.1016/s0305-750x(03)00044-5

Cited by 30 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…The global report of UNAIDS [12] calls for 'strong leadership and concrete commitment from all sectors of government and society', and it may be equally significant that a whole section is devoted to the same topic in Namibia's AIDS Strategy document. If we apply the model of political commitment developed by McCourt [40], we can see that the 'antecedents' of commitment in the form of political and administrative capacity are present, but that the 'elements' are defective in one important way. While Namibia's commitment to tackling the pandemics is voluntary, explicit and public, it is not sufficiently challenging in that, as we saw, no target has been set for reducing the scale of infection.…”

Section: Discussion: Hr and The Health Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

Addressing the human resources crisis: a case study of the Namibian health service

McCourt

Awases

2007

Hum Resour Health

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BackgroundThis paper addresses an important practical challenge to staff management. In 2000 the United Nations committed themselves to the ambitious targets embodied in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Only five years later, it was clear that poor countries were not on track to achieve them. It was also clear that achieving the three out of the eight MDGs that concern health would only be possible if the appropriate human resources (HR) were in place.MethodsWe use a case study based on semi-structured interview data to explore the steps that Namibia, a country facing severe health problems that include an alarmingly high AIDS infection rate, has taken to manage its health workers.ResultsIn the fifteen years since independence, Namibia has patiently built up a relatively good strategic framework for health policy in the context of government policy as a whole, including strong training arrangements at every level of health staffing, and it has brought HIV/AIDS under the strategic umbrella through its National Strategic Plan for HIV/AIDS. Its major weakness is that it has not kept pace with the rise in HIV/AIDS and TB infection: the community counselling service, still at the pilot stage at the time of this study, was the only specific response. That has created a tension between building long-term capacity in a strategic context and responding to the short-term demands of the AIDS and TB crisis, which in turn affects the ability of HR to contribute to improving health outcomes.ConclusionIt is suggested that countries like Namibia need a new paradigm for staffing their health services. Building on the existing strategic framework, it should target the training of 'mid-level cadres'. Higher-level cadres should take on the role of supporting and monitoring the mid-level cadres. To do that, they will need management training and a performance management framework for staff support and monitoring.

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Section: Discussion: Hr and The Health Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

Addressing the human resources crisis: a case study of the Namibian health service

McCourt

Awases

2007

Hum Resour Health

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“…While the IMF and the World Bank have been critical of Swaziland for what some describe as a form of employment 'clientelism', King Mswati is all too aware that major cuts to the wage bill could threaten his hold on power, since those most affected by any reductions are concentrated in the country's two main urban areas. After all, as McCourt (2003McCourt ( : 1024 reported in a detailed analysis of failed civil service reform in the past, 'jobs are the medium of exchange in the government, just as land is the medium of exchange in the countryside, and a traditional "patron" is as likely to try to exercise patronage over one as over the other'.…”

Section: Exogenous Shocksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monarchical Rule in Swaziland: Power is Absolute but Patronage is (for) Relative(s)

Woods

2015

Journal of Asian and African Studies

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This article adopts a non-formalized decision−theoretic model to examine patronage strategies by the monarchy in Swaziland as a means to stave off threats to its hold on power. The article's main argument is that the logic of patronage is largely about controlling and monitoring local chiefs and placating royal princes with administrative positions and sources of revenue and limiting the insurrectionary potential of nontraditionalist urban groups to absolute monarchical power in Swaziland.

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“…However, in developing country contexts, political agency is said to be especially important in shaping developing outcomes because there is generally a dearth of strong institutions and governance systems (Leftwich and Hogg, 2007: 4; Centre for the Future State, 2010). Under these circumstances, informal mechanisms play a prominent role, as does by implication the political priorities of elites (see McCourt, 2003).…”

Section: Political Agencymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hence, Alex Duncan and Gareth Williams (2012: 136) advocate 'looking creatively for ways to promote change that shifts political incentives in a prodevelopmental direction'. The idea is to reconcile or align the interests of power-holders towards public good reform through changes to the incentives they are responding to (McCourt, 2003).…”

Section: Incentivesmentioning

confidence: 99%