Public sector management components of structural adjustment loans (SALs) progressed unevenly, and the outcomes varied with different political, administrative and economic conditions. Change was often incremental and sometimes unsustainable. Reforms linked to specific, actionable steps were more successfully implemented.

This study analyzes the World Bank's experience with fiscal management in 250 adjustment operations in 86 countries. It examines the fiscal records in a sample of 26 countries grouped by region, portfolio characteristics, and economic traits. The study confirms that fiscal deficit reduction is associated with improved external balances and economic growth and that it takes sustained, long-term effort, and continual vigilance against reversals. Fiscal mismanagement, not exogenous shocks, was the principal cause of persistent budget deficits. The study offers the following recommendations for the Bank and its borrowers:1) Estimate the level of the sustainable deficit and provide guidelines for achieving it in Bank economic and sector work and adjustment lending. 2) Improve sequencing of tax reform. 3) Consider explicitly the role of the state and the appropriate mix of public/private provision of services in recommending public expenditure reform. 4) Include poverty alleviation and equity objectives in public expenditure reform. 5) Build adequate monitoring and performance indicators for both tax and expenditure reforms. 6) Enhance Bank-Fund coordination, in support of the Fund's lead role in giving fiscal advice, by strengthening the Bank's ability to analyze taxes and expenditures.

In the 1990s the World Bank changed its policy to take the position that the problems of poverty and governance are inextricably linked, and improving the governance of its borrower countries became increasingly accepted as a legitimate and important part of the World Bank’s development activities. This book examines why the World Bank came to see good governance as important and evaluate what the World Bank is doing to improve the governance of its borrower countries. David Williams examines changing World Bank policy since the late 1970s to show how a concern with good governance grew out of the problems the World Bank was experiencing with structural adjustment lending, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The book provides an account of the early years of the World Bank and traces the increasing acceptance of the idea of good governance within the Bank through the 1990s, while systematically relating the policies of good governance to liberalism. The author provides a detailed case study of World Bank lending to Ghana to demonstrate what the attempt to improve ‘governance’ looks like in practice. Williams assesses whether the World Bank has been successful in its attempts to improve governance, and draws out some of the implications of the argument for how we should think about sovereignty, for how we should understand the connections between liberalism and international politics. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, politics, economics, development and African studies.

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A new lens on development is changing the world of international aid. The overdue recognition that development in all sectors is an inherently political process is driving aid providers to try to learn how to think and act politically. Major donors are pursuing explicitly political goals alongside their traditional socioeconomic aims and introducing more politically informed methods throughout their work. Yet these changes face an array of external and internal obstacles, from heightened sensitivity on the part of many aid-receiving governments about foreign political interventionism to inflexible aid delivery mechanisms and entrenched technocratic preferences within many aid organizations. This pathbreaking book assesses the progress and pitfalls of the attempted politics revolution in development aid and charts a constructive way forward. Contents: Introduction 1. The New Politics Agenda The Original Framework: 1960s-1980s 2. Apolitical Roots Breaking the Political Taboo: 1990s-2000s 3. The Door Opens to Politics 4. Advancing Political Goals 5. Toward Politically Informed Methods The Way Forward 6. Politically Smart Development Aid 7. The Unresolved Debate on Political Goals 8. The Integration Frontier Conclusion 9. The Long Road to Politics

This encyclopedic reference/text provides an analysis of the basic issues and major aspects of bureaucracy, bureaucratic politics and administrative theory, public policy, and public administration in historical and contemporary perspectives. Examining theoretical, philosophical, and empirical interpretations, as well as the intricate position of b

This paper reviews efforts to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of urban services delivery in developing countries. It argues that failures in urban service delivery are not merely the result of a lack of technical knowledge on the part of local government staff, but also reflect constraints and perverse incentives confronting local personnel and their political leadership, and these, in turn, are often the inadverten result of problems in the relationship between central and local government. The report views the spread of decentralization as a potentially fortuitous phenomenon. The decentralization now occurring is not a carefully designed sequence of reforms aimed at improving the efficiency of public service delivery ; it appears to be a reluctant and disorderly series of concessions by central governments attempting to maintain political stability. (Adapté du résumé de l'auteur).