Civil Service Reform and the World Bank Book

TThis paper surveys the World Bank ' s experience in supporting developing country civil service reforms and begins to assess the progress made. Between 1981 and 1991, civil service reform was a prominent feature of ninety World Bank lending operations. These operations focused on two separate but related dimensions: one, shorter-term, emergency steps to reform public pay and employment policies, usually centering on measures to contain the cost and the size of the civil service; and two, longer-range civil service strengthening efforts, some of which may support various of the nearer-term cost containment measures, but most of which are directed toward ongoing, sustained management improvements. Cost-containment efforts have taken a variety of forms - ranging from the removal of " ghost " workers from the government payroll, to the freezing of recruitment or the retrenchment of civil servants - which differ in political difficulty and practical effect. In addition, reform programs have increasingly been addressing specific pay conditions for civil servants in an attempt to remove demotivating distortions in government renumeration structures. The paper concludes that the impact of programs to contain the cost and size of civil services through emergency pay and employment reforms has so far been small. Efforts in most countries to reduce the wage bill and to decrease the number of civil service employees have yuielded only modest results. The authors argue that the political costs of implementing pay and employment reforms have been lower than most governments or donors anticipated. Organized opposition to reforms has not resulted in regime destabilization, and social upheaval as aresult of dismissals has not occurred. This suggests that regimes can, on political grounds, and should, on economic grounds, make deeper cuts.