JIMMA UNIVERSITY

CONTINUING AND DISTANCE EDUCATION DIVISION

DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION
(GaDs 333)

Jimma
2009

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 Course Writters: Aliyou wudu
Fedlu Muzeyen

Editors: ____________________________

Printed by:-
Jimma University printing press
2009

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
Course Introduction____________________________________________________

Course objective_______________________________________________________

Unit One: General Nature of Administration and Development ______

Unit Introduction____________________________________________________

Section One: Conceptual Definitions_________________________________

1.1Origin of development and its link to Administration____________

1.2 Some Important aspects of Public administration_______________
Section Two: Inter-Disciplinary nature of public administration________
2.1 Politics-Administration Dichotomy______________________________
2.2 Similarity and Difference between Public Administrations
And Development administration_______________________________
2.3 The role of Public Administration and development_________________
Unit Summary__________________________________________________________
Self Assessment questions______________________________________________
Unit Two: Organizational environments: Comparisons, Contrast and
Significance__________________________________________________
Introduction_________________________________________________________
Section One: Making sense of Environment___________________________
1.1 Making sense of Environment________________________________
1.2 Environmental Administration_______________________________
Section Two: Elements of Environment_________________________________
2.1 Economic Factors______________________________________________
2.2 Cultural factors________________________________________________
2.3 Demographic Factors__________________________________________
2.4 Political factors________________________________________________
Section Three: The purpose of Sectors and its Environments____________

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 3.1 Distinctiveness_______________________________________________
3.2 Diversity______________________________________________________
3.3 Turbulence___________________________________________________
3.4 Opportunities and Constraints________________________________
3.5 Competing Perceptions________________________________________
3.6 Cause and Effect___________________________________________
Summary_____________________________________________________________
Review questions______________________________________________________
Unit Three: Bureaucracy: Preventing or facilitating Development?
Introduction__________________________________________________________
Section One: Understanding bureaucracy_____________________________
1.1 Meaning of bureaucracy_____________________________________
1.2 Weberian model of bureaucracy and its criticism_____________
Section Three: Bureaucracy and Development__________________________
3.1 Bureaucracy and Political Development_______________________
3.2 Bureaucracy and Economic Development_____________________
3.3 Bureaucracy and Social Development________________________
3.4 Bureaucracy and Policy Making______________________________
Section four: Factors affecting Bureaucracy____________________________
4.1 Capacity_____________________________________________________
4.2 Culture_______________________________________________________
4.3 Power, Politics and Authority__________________________________
4.4 Bureaucratic Bias_____________________________________________
4.5 Gender and Bureaucracy_____________________________________
Unit Summary__________________________________________________________
Review Questions_______________________________________________________

Unit Four: Development Administration and Management__________________

Unit Introduction_________________________________________________________
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 Section One: Participation and Managerial Approaches to development__
1.1 Participation________________________________________________
1.2 Participation and Involvement________________________________
1.3 Participation and Community________________________________
1.4 Participation and reciprocal influence________________________
1.5 Top-Down and Bottom up Decision making___________________
1.6 Participatory development and Public Administration________
1.7 People- Centered Development______________________________
1.8 The need for participation__________________________________
1.9 Participation: What it is and What it is not_________________
1.10 Emerging Participation Organizations_______________________
1.11 Experience with the participatory programmes in Action______
1.12 A Sociologically designed world bank participatory
Programmes in Mexico______________________________________
Unit Summary_________________________________________________________
Review Questions______________________________________________________
Unit Five Decentralized Governance________________________________________
Introduction__________________________________________________________
Section One: Decentralization_________________________________________
1.1 The meaning of decentralization_____________________________
1.2 Rationales of decentralization_______________________________
1.3 Strategic Planning for decentralization______________________
Unit Summary________________________________________________________
Review questions_____________________________________________________
Unit Six Ethics and Public Administration__________________________________
Introduction__________________________________________________________
Section One: Definitions of Concepts__________________________________
1.1 Ethics and Morality_________________________________________
Unit Summary__________________________________________________
Review Questions________________________________________________

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 Course Introduction

Dear students, welcome to the course of Development Administration. We are

glad to present this module to you. We hope that you are eager to acquire
knowledge in Development Administration and its related concepts. The course
contains six Units each has different sub units which focus on specific topic of
the respective units.

Although public administration is a century old in terms of its history as an

academic field of study, it is recognized as a very wide subject and a
demanding function of the government. Thus, it has been studied as an
independent academic discipline in many higher learning institutions of
different countries. However, in this particular subject an attempt is made to
integrate the new field of study called development administration with the
mainstream public administration. This course is, therefore, designed to
acquaire distance students with the concepts, theories, emerging views,
models, and problems facing public administration and its impact on the
development endeavor of the society. The main themes of the course are the
rise of public administration theory and administrative thoughts and
approaches; Public VS private administration; the need for public
administration and functions of public administration; rise of administrative
state; government budgeting and sources of revenue (financial administration);
personnel administration; development administration; the role of public
administration in stimulating development and issues in development
management.

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 Course objectives
At the end of the course students will be able to:
- Define & describe the concepts of public administrations and development
management;
- Clarify the importance of public and development administration and
distinguish from private business administrations;
- Analyze the historical development and features of new public management
- Explain the environment of public administration and its relations ship with
politics and democracy;
- Define and explain the concepts of public policy, public financing and public
personnel administration

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 UNIT ONE
General Nature of Administration and Development

Unit Introduction
A course in development administration explains the key terms and concepts
of the subject and teaches the areas of knowledge to be integrated if one is to
get the feel and develop the art of administration. It is surely important that a
science of administration should eventually be developed for it would greatly
contribute to the art and philosophy of administration. This unit explains the
importance of studying public and development administration describes the
universal nature of public administration and identifies the various
administrative problems found in developing countries.

Pre test questions

• Can you define concepts like development, development administration,
and public administration?
• What do we mean by universal nature of administration?
• What are the importance of studying public administration?
• What are the differences and similarities of administration and
management?
Unit Objectives
At the end of this unit you will be able to:
• Define the concepts of public administration and development
Administration;
• Explain the importance of studying public administration;
• Describe and appreciate the universality of public administration;
• Identify administrative obstacles found in developing countries.

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 Section One: Conceptual Definitions

Section Overview
This section defines different concepts like development, development
administration, and public administration and so on. You will also learn about
different aspects of public administration and the rationale for studying
development and public administrations. This section will be helpful to
distinguish the multifaceted administrative problems encountered by less
developed countries.

Section Objectives
Up on successful completion of this section, students are able to:
 Define the concepts of development, development administration,
financial administration;
 Analyze different aspects of public administration;
 Identify the rationale for learning public administration;
 Discuss the major problems found in Third World countries;
 Explain models of management.

1.1. Origin of development and its link to Administration

? Can you mention some of the factors attributed to the invention of

development?
Before we try to discuss the major factors attributed for the invention of the
concept of development, let us first define the concept of development.

A. Development: is a very wide, dynamic and multidimensional concept.

Todaro explains as follows:

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 “Development must therefore be conceived as a multidimensional process
involving major changes in social structures, popular attitudes, and national
institutions, as well as the acceleration of economic growth, the reduction of
inequality and the eradication of poverty.”

He further notes that the core values of development as sustenance, self-

esteem, and freedom.

Development began to appear conceptually in scholarly writings in the

immediate post Second World War period. Three factors are commonly
attributed to the invention of the concept of development. First; the devastation
the Second World War caused in Europe necessitated the formulation of
systematic plans to reconstruct the economies and physical infrastructure of
society. The victors of the war met at Breton Woods in the US to workout a new
post-war economic order as well as a West European rehabilitation strategy.
The results of the meeting included the establishment of the International
Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the precursor of the World
Bank.

Second, the rise of the US global hegemony and its foreign economic policy
undertaking to ameliorate socio-economic hardships in less fortunate
developing countries and enables such countries to share in the American
dream contained a heavy development ingredient. The policy was first defined
in the Marshal Plan (1947) for Western Europe.
Third, the proliferation of newly independent countries with common
characteristics of poverty relative to the rich industrialized countries of Western
Europe stimulated concern about rampant poverty in some less developed
countries. The concern, in turn, stimulated thoughts about the possibility that
“backward” countries can “catch-up” with industrialized countries through
development, a view that was expressed more succinctly in the Truman Plan.

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 A second stream in post-war studies, the modernization stream, had a some
what different view of the situation in the newly independent countries;
namely, that they were poor because they were “traditional” whereas
industrialized countries had become [Link]’s stages of Economic
Growth pioneered studies in this category. The remedy for the conditions in the
new states was from this stand point of this category of studies is to modernize.
Modernization became synonymous with development, though this view was
criticized and even discredited in so far as it was believed to be Eurocentric; it
was a particular kind of development that involved acquisition of
characteristics similar to those obtaining in Western industrialized countries in
all aspects of life.

Modernization thought(theory) suggested Westernization and proposed that

society in its traditional stages was static and that development could only be
externally induced.
The Soviet model posed a challenge to the modernization approach. This model
involved development based on state ownership of the means of production
within the framework of what came to be referred to as a centrally –planned
economy (command economy).The two approaches to development –
modernization and the Soviet model-subsequently became part and parcel of
the cold war contest, especially in the Third World arena.

Finally, the development administration school that emerged in the early

1960’s also conceptualized development and became the link between
development per se and public administration. The pioneers of development
administration movement also attempted to account for the rise of a concern in
development. The studies suggested that the post-war proliferation of poor
countries amid their developed, industrialized counterparts in the West and the
rise of American desire to aid the transformation of such countries through
technical assistance prompted the US government to commission studies on
the socio-economic conditions in the new countries.
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 The knowledge so gained was to become the basis for determination of the
appropriate approach for US intervention, for the technical assistance program.
The formation of the Comparative Administrative Group (CAG) of the American
Society of Public Administration (ASPA) was a response to the need to establish
the cause of poverty in the new countries and most importantly, determine
what remedial reform was possible in the organization and process of public
[Link] activities resulted in the rise of the development
administration movement that prompted reorientation of the administrative
apparatus of the state from the conservative, status quo inclined public
administration to development administration –a new, change-oriented variant
of administration.

The literature on development administration attends to development from the

stand point of the transformation of organization, principles, and ethos of
administration away from the now discredited, classical public administration.
The transformation was to occur in two dimensions. The first dimension
involved administrative development, i.e. structural changes intended to
transform the administrative apparatus of the state in to a competent agent to
effect development; changes that include human resources development,
budgetary reform and decentralization of decision-making.

The second dimension involved expansion of the mandate and tasks of the
public bureaucracy to include development, i.e. planning and implementation
of programs to improve the socio-economic conditions of the
[Link], unlike classical public administration which had a
predominantly law and task portfolio and a correspondingly centralized
organizational orientation, the public bureaucracy, under new model of
development administration was to be largely an agent for development.

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 The development administration school clearly assumed that the state was the
main agent for development, and that it acted through the public bureaucracy
upon which the development aspiration of the population was predicated.

However, critics suggested that development administration downplayed the

activities of other development agents; particularly the free market actors and
what are now referred to as community-based organizations (CBOs) and
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).Reform of the development apparatus
of the state was, by that logic, assumed to be a panacea for development. In
practice, however, governments promoted such other development arena that
lay outside the immediate ambit of the state.
B. Development Administration: - is formulation of development plans and
their correct and timely implementation for desirable socio-economic changes.
It calls for innovation in creating and sustaining new administrative structures,
organizations, institutions and revitalizing the existing machinery for socio-
economic uplift of the disadvantaged section of the society living under the
poverty line (marginalized poor, women, and the elderly).
Development administration is primarily concerned with the efficient
management of limited financial and physical resources to ensure the fullest
benefit to the people. It also highlights the decentralization of administration
through strengthening the institutions of local governments and ensuring
people’s participation. It also involves the management of the public sector.

The influence of the invisible actors is determined by the strength of the

visible actors, the nature of the country. E.g. Kenya was influenced to
introduced multiparty system by the IMF&WB.
c) Financial Administration
Public finance is the subject that deals with the economical activities of goods.
As such it covers the study of:
1. how governments determine their level of activities & expenditures
(theory of expenditure)
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 2. how governments raise the funds to carry (out) on their activities (theory
of public revenue)
3. How the expenditure and revenue (measures or policies) affect the
private sector of the economy.
Generally, speaking, public finance deals with the study of the economics of
the public sectors.
Public finance deals with financing the state activities. It deals with the
financial activities of the public sector as an organized group under the
institution of government.

1.2. Some important aspects of public administration

? Dear Learner! Can you list and discuss aspects of public

administration?
Administration can be defined as the activities of groups cooperating to
accomplish common goals.
Administration may be said to involve in varying degrees elements of
governance (policy formulation, analysis, and identification of options),
implementation (putting policies in to practice) and efficient allocation of
resources (the economic use of available resources).
Administration is directed to the analysis of policies, identification of options
and to a substantial degree the implementation of programs as well as constant
search for the efficient allocation of resources (minimizes cost and increase
product).
Public administration is the practical or business end of government because
its objective is to get the public business done as efficiently and effectively as
much in accord with the people’s tests or desires (Widrow Wilson).
It is through administration that government defines or responds to the
interests of the public in which private sector can not provide. Public
administration meant in common usage, the activities of the executive branch

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 of the national state and local governments, independent boards and
commissions setup by congress(parliament)and state legislature in federal
systems, government corporations and certain other agencies(more
comprehensive and general definition).
Administration is the practical productive side of institutional management.
The two largest academic specializations in the field of government are political
science and public administration. To make the national institutions
international, productive, effective, and efficient, governance students should
learn public administration.

The objective of public administration is to satisfy the public at large, while the
objective of business administration is profit maximization. On the other hand,
the objective of church and mosque (religion) is to maintain values and
doctrines of that religion. Education mainly devoted for quality of educational
upgrading. Public administration differs from country to country because the
values, norms, cultures etc of the countries differ. Measurements of
performance standards are also differed. Socioeconomic developments,
historical back grounds of the country are reasons for differences.
Administration differs from period to period within the same nation. The
following are some of the reasons:
1. Difference in ideology; political system is also the source of
differences.
2. The need of the society, norms, cultures etc developed from time
to time and the response of the state differed accordingly.

Universality of Administration
The view of the universality of administration disregards the question of what
kind of administration is in question. i.e. Whether public, church, business. It
focuses on administration. This view is so broad as to include all human efforts
which requires joint human endeavor. Since administration is concerned with

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 all patterns of cooperative behavior, it is obvious that any person engaged in an
activity in cooperation with others is engaged in administration.
Administration is a process common to private, public, small or large
organizations. It illustrates that administration is basically a matter of
cooperation that human beings are always involved. However, the
governmental administrative organizations are more complex than the every
day administration we are familiar with.

Why do we study public administration?

There are four major reasons. These are:-
[Link] students recognize the vast arrays of positions in government and
elsewhere that requires training in public administration and hope that the
courses will provide some of the basic information and skills that will move
them toward careers as public managers.
[Link] students whose interests lie in technical fields and other fields which
do not have direct relationship with public administration recognize that at
some point in their careers their jobs may involve managing the public sector.
Example: the medical doctor can be a medical director of a hospital etc.
[Link] other students may have no expectation whatever of working in public
agency, but recognize that either as a corporate executive or as a business
people they are likely to be called upon and interact with those in public
organizations. (It would make them know the rules and regulations etc of the
government).
[Link] a mere citizen of any country, students should learn public administration
in order to comment on government administration based on an understanding
(knowledge or realities) in public administration.
Thus, administration is not a specialty but a skill that in the modern world is
required almost literally of every individual in every field of profession where
human relations and institutional management are involved. In each case,
knowledge of the operation of public agencies would not only be helpful but
also it would be essential.
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 In general, the objective of public administration is to train people in the
management of public enterprises and this course will try to give the general
understanding of administration.

Administration and management

? Can you mention the difference between Administration and

Management?
Management involves planning, designing, initiating actions, monitoring
activities and demanding results on the basis of allocated resources. It is policy
making, policy control and monitoring. Administration on the other hand
involves implementation of the policies, procedures, rules and regulations as
set up by the management.
Models of management which are relevant to developing economies are:
1. The imposition model: - the manager formulates an order or guideline. The
expectation is that these orders are obeyed carefully executed by his
subordinates.
2. The convincing model:-The manager produces orders and guidelines
accompanied with supporting arguments without inputs from his
subordinates.
3. Participation model: - managers formulate proposals, rather than orders.
Public and private reactions are solicited and taken into account when the
decision is made.
4. The interaction model:-The function of management is to identify the
creative individuals on all levels of the organization; to make these individuals
communicate among themselves; to pour new ideas continuously in to this
communication process, to have decisions taken within the frame of this
communication.

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  Activity – 1
Define the following concepts

1. Public
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________
2. Church Administration
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
3. Administration:
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________
4. Business administration:

______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
5. Educational administration?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________

Section Two: Inter-disciplinary nature of public administration.

Section Overview
The relationship with other social sciences such as psychology, anthropology,
law, Political science, economics, sociology, etc is very strong. These sciences
had contributed a lot to the development of public administration. This section
introduces students with important concepts like political science, economics,

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 sociology and law. In addition, students will be acquainted with the major
similarities and differences between different interrelated concepts.
Section Objectives
Up on successful completion of this section, students will able to:
• Identify the similarities and differences between public
administration and other inter-related disciplines;
• Describe the role of public administration and development in developing
countries;

2.1. Politics –Administration Dichotomy

? Do you know about the dichotomy of politics and administration?

Politics is concerned with government’s use of its legal authority to distribute
benefits and costs among members of society. Politics is concerned with” Who
gets what and when”. It is devoted to the development of laws, policies and
public values.
Administration is devoted to the technical and apolitical process or
implementing those laws, policies and values. By improving technical methods
through scientific refinement, administration should be rendered efficient,
anonymous and mechanistic. In this way, bureaucracy was constructed as a
tool to be utilized by politicians for whatever ends they viewed as worthwhile.

A. Relationship with Political science.

Political science is claimed to be as a father of public administration. Public

administration may be, and in some sense certainly is a part of political
science; because the atmosphere of politics is part of its very nature and
substance. It was for this reason that Widrow Wilson stated that “the science
of administration is the latest fruit of the study of the science of politics which
was began two centuries ago.”

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 B. Relationship with Law.
In earlier times rulers were concentrating on making laws to administer the
nation out of which administrative law emerged. In Europe and other parts of
the world public administration is still taught as a part of the law school
curriculum, especially administrative law. In USA public administration as a
separate field of study is studied by the contribution of Wilson. Nowadays,
Canada, French and others started to study separately based on the experience
of USA.
C. Relationship with Economics
The study of economics and the study of administration touch and even join
together at a number of places. Public finance, budgeting, and fiscal
administration are subjects of proper interest to both disciplines and in each of
them the disciplines can learn from each other. Example, efficiency is the
interest of both economics and administration. Example:
-Taxation (direct and indirect): economists determine the rate of taxation and
deal with inflation and deflation of money.
-Budget; public administration assist economists about administrative
impact of (implication) budget in administration. Budget includes revenue and
expenditure. Preparing the budget is the task of economists and the
administrator is to implement the plan prepared by economists.
In general economics deals with promotion of national wealth that requires
administration and also administration serving large social and national ends,
requires a knowledge of economics and of the principles and measures that
produces and sustains wealth.

D. Relationship with business Administration

Public administration and business administration grew up as a valid
discipline and there is greater mutual borrowings, especially that of public
administration. Public administration was not able to develop as a separate
field of study before business administration. But business administration also
benefits from public administration. Example, the issue of democratic
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 administration (decision making) in business administration is used to promote
the interest of the public. The two disciplines are being taught as one stream in
many universities in the world.
E. Public administration vis-à-vis business administration
The popular perceive public administration as political while business
administration as pure economics. But in reality it is inseparable. In fact,
public administration concerned more on politics because they implement what
was declared by legislature. The other popular belief is that public
administration is bureaucratic while business administration is trade oriented.
It is hardly possible for business organization toconduct its functions without
bureaucracy (institutional arrangement).

2.2. Similarities and Differences between public and business

Administrations

? Can you discuss the similarities and differences between public and
business administration?

1. Skill, methods and techniques applied by both

The skills, methods and techniques applied in both public and private
institutions are the same. Example, no person is trained as governmental
accountant. Any person trained can be transferred from one sector to the
other.

2. End results; the public administration (government) and business

administration (private) are the same in their end results .i.e. goods and
services. But price and quality of goods and services may differ.
3. They use the same resources. Example, human, material and financial
resources

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 4. Legal basis: They are legal persons (natural persons) to sue and be sued in
their own nature. They must work according to the law of the nation .i.e. the
constitution.
What are their differences?

1. Goals and accountability

Goals: The goals of public administration are to satisfy the interests of the
public at large. It is more of social and political in nature. I.e. Most of the
attributes directs to the social and political services. Example: Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Information, etc. but the goal of
business administration is profit maximization of the enterprise.
Accountability: Public managers are accountable to the public at large. How can
they be directly accountable? Public managers are accountable through
legislature because this organ is directly elected by the people. The legislature
should be responsible. On the other hand, the accountability of business
managers are to their owners. They are responsible to produce economically
and socially acceptable goods. I.e. The goods should be acceptable by the
people. Example, news papers

2. Measurability of Objectives
Most of the objectives in government functions are not easily quantifiable. So;
it is hard to measure unquantifiable objectives as efficiently and effectively. On
the other hand, most of the objectives in business administration are easily
quantifiable.

3. Method of Operation (the idea of risk)

In public organizations there is less discretion (freedom to act) or no
discretion in decision making; because one has to make decision according to
the rules and regulations of the public organization. She/he will not use
his/her own discretion to make decision whatever the existing rules and
regulations may not be useful to a particular situation. But in private the
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 sector, there is more discretion because as far as one is using his /her
discretion to help the achievement of organizational objectives.

4. Organization structure (The extent /degree of subject to change)

Government organization structure is changed with the political change in the
government. But the structure of the private sector may not be affected as such
by political changes. But changes occur in private sector by correlated changes
(indirectly) in government. Example; change in capital ceiling.

5. Source of resources: The source of income for public organization is the

public at large, but the source for business administration is the owner of the
organization.

[Link](urgency): In our daily life we need some of the things urgently

with no gap between the supply and consumption(demand).As a result,
activities with this nature are mostly taken by the public sector, such as
security, defense, utility (water, electricity, telephone, etc). In such activities,
government took the monopoly. The main purpose is to avoid negligence and
interruption in satisfying societal needs and wants. In addition to this, there is
no private organization that could run such activities in line with the principles
of equity or fairness to the poor and the rich alike.
7. Breadth, scope and impact
There is no area where government is not involved. Many of the activities in a
given country are carried out and influenced by government. Even in a private
sector government will influence their activities by providing the legal
framework in which they are to operate.
2.3. The Role of Public Administration in less developed countries.

? Dear Learner! Can you list the roles played by public and
development administration in developing countries?

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  Activity -2

1. What are the basis of differences between public and business

administrations?
_______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
2. Some public utilities like water, electricity, telephone and the like are
usually monopolized by states. Discuss for or against the assumptions
behind.
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________

Unit Summary
Development began to appear conceptually in scholarly writings in the
immediate post-war period. Three factors are commonly attributed to the
invention of development. Development Administration: - is formulation of
development plans and their correct and timely implementation for desirable
socio-economic changes. It calls for innovation in creating and sustaining new
administrative structures, organizations, institutions and revitalizing the
existing machinery for socio-economic improvement of the disadvantaged
section of the society living under the poverty line or in an abject poverty.
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 Public administration has a universal nature. It is common to public, church,
business, small or large organizations. It is a multidisciplinary field of study.
Therefore; one can observe similarities and differences between public
administration and other subjects like political science, law, sociology, etc. We
have seen also that there are different administrative problems in developing
[Link], among others, organizational obstacles, excessive
centralization of power and resources, lack of knowledge and skills, widespread
corruption and son on. To mitigate these multifaceted and complex problems,
public administrators have to play their own roles. For instance; they can
promote socio-economic development, build the capacity of the public servants,
and establish efficient administrative system in developing countries.

 Check List
Direction: Dear students this is the section in which you confirm your
understanding of the lessons in this unit. Put a tick mark () in the yes
column for activities that you have clear understanding and in the no
column for activities that you doubt that you have no good
understanding.
I Can: Yes No
. Define the concepts of development and administration
. Identify the similarities and differences between public
And business administration;
. Explain the main managerial models relevant to
Third World countries

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 Self-Assessment Questions
Choose the best answer among the given alternatives
1. All but one is true about models of management
a) In the interaction models of management the major concern of managers is
only to formulate proposals;
b) In the imposition model the manager is responsible to formulate guidelines;
c) In the convincing model the manager is totally free to set orders with out
convincing justifications;
d) A and B f) A and C
2. All are the main administrative problems of Third World countries except
a) The civil servants are highly motivated;
b) Widespread corruption and favoritism;
c) Problems in personnel administration;
d) Duplication of work and lack of coordination
e) None
3. Identify the correct statement about business and public administration
a) Similarities in skills, methods and techniques;
b) Measurability of objectives is the same;
c) They have the same goals and accountability;
d) Their scope and impacts are the same;
e) None
4. All are the criteria of development as structural change except
a) Building democratic self-rules;
b) Foreign entrepreneur and unorganized working class;
c) Development of a reasonable trade relationship
d) All
e) None

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 5. All define what development administration is except
a) It is primarily concerned with efficient administration of scarce resources;
b) It calls for innovation in creating and sustaining new administrative
structure;
c) It supports a centralized administrative system;
d) It involves the management of the public sector;
e) None
6. All of the following are incorrect except one
a) Public finance is interested more with the study of the economics of the
private sector;
b) Public sector deals with financing the state activities;
c) Public sector studies only about how the revenue affects the private sector;
d) All
7. All but one is correct about administration
a) Administration differs from time to time;
b) Administration is similar from country to country;
c) Administration is a process common to both the public and the private
sector
d) None
8. All except one of the following statement is true
a) Administration is the productive side of institutional management;
b) Political science and business administration are the two largest academic
specializations in the field of government;
c) Knowledge of public administration is helpful to make institutions efficient
and effective;
d) Public administration is the business end of government;
e) None
9. All are the major reasons for studying public administration, except
a) To acquire basic information and skills;
b) To know the rules and regulations of the government;
c) Public administration is not essential for citizens to comment on
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 government administrations;
d) None
10. All but one is the role of public administration
a) Developing basic infrastructural facilities;
b) Combating socio-economic inequalities;
c) Building the capacity of the civil service;
d) Affirming that the state have no the sovereign right and responsibility to
decide on policies
e) None

Unit Two
CHARACTERISTICS AND PROBLEMS OF
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Introduction
Countries of the world may be classified on the basis of stages of economic
development (broadly defined in terms of GNP per capita) and by region. World Bank
classifies countries into three categories:

Other analytical groups, based on geographic regions, exports and levels of external
debt, are also used. Low-income and middle-income economies are sometimes
referred to as developing economies. However, it should not be understood that all
economies in the group are experiencing similar development or that other economies
have reached preferred or final stage of development.

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Development has become the most pressing challenge for both developed and
developing countries. Despite the good progress achieved over the past generation,
and the enormous opportunities created by advances in science and technology,
more than one billion people still live in acute poverty (live on less than US $l a day)-
a standard of living that the United States and Western Europe attained two hundred
years ago. Many countries have not yet achieved acceptable living standards for their
people.

In this unit you will have a lesson on characteristics and problems of developing
countries specially constraints and features of administration.

Objectives
 Discuss economic related concept in administration
 Define centralized bureaucracy
 Identify constraints and features of administration
 Explain colonial and western patter of administration
 Discuss the impact of lack of political support to improve administrative system

Pre test questions

 How do you mean by colonial and western pattern of administration?
 What are the constraints of administration in developing countries?
 Can you discuss the impact of unskilled labour in developing countries?
 What do say about corruption and lack of motivation in administration?

Section – I Economic criteria

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Overview
Dear distance learner, this section will provides to you some features of developing
and least developing countries economy. The section deals more about economic
growth variation, agricultural production and industrial backwardness of the
developing countries.

Objectives
After the completion of this section you will be able to;

 Discuss Economic growth variation of the developing countries

 Explain the importance of agricultural production for economic growth in
developing countries.
 Identify the economic impacts of developing countries.

1.1 Economic growth variation

? What do we mean by economic growth variation?

Average incomes in developing countries have doubled over the past three decades-
faster, that is, than in the United Kingdom during the industrial revolution, or in
Japan during its pre-war growth spurt. For example, China doubled its average
income in 10 years (1987-97) and the Republic of Korea in eleven years (1986-97). In
India, where nearly 1000 million people live, average incomes increased by more than
three per cent a year in 1991-1998.

But the pace of economic growth has varied among regions. Asian countries, which
account for sixty-five per cent of the developing world, grew at an average rate of 5.2

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per cent a year in the 1970s and 7.3 per cent in the 1990s while growth in the non-
Asian developing countries decelerated from 5.6 per cent in the 1970s to 2.8 percent
in the 1990s. Thirty-six nations with a combined population of nearly five hundred
million people have also seen low or declining average incomes over the past twenty-
five years. As a whole, the income of the average person worldwide grew more in the
1990s than in the 1980s.

The World Bank assumes that with continued progress in economic reform in
developing countries, GDP growth is likely to increase from 3.4 per cent in the 1980
to about five percent a year for the 1990s as a whole. It is further reported that world
GDP could rise from about $20 trillion in 1990 to $69 trillion in 2030 in real terms.
For the developing countries as a whole, average incomes could more than triple in
real terms, from an average of $750 in 1992 to about $2,500 in 2030. Substantial
regional differences would persist, although in the aggregate the gap between income
levels in developing and industrial countries would narrow.

Agriculture Production Variation

? What are Agriculture production variations?

i) About eighty one percent of the population of LDCs and fifty-eight percent of
the population of developing countries are dependent on agriculture as
compared with eight per cent in the developed countries.
ii) Low capitalizations on the land, small size of land holdings, and low level of
agrarian techniques have resulted in low output in agriculture.
iii) The openings for modernized agriculture production for sale are limited by
difficulties of transport and at absence of an efficient demand in the local
market.
iv) There is a widespread prevalence of high indebtedness among the peasants
and landholders relative to their assets and income.

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There is no doubt that cultivated soils have the potentiality to meet future increases
in world agricultural demand so long as they are well managed. Still, increase in food
production will involve the application of much higher levels of fertilizers and
pesticides. As well as significant improvements in the allocation of water for
agricultural use. The great challenge for the future is to balance intensive and
extensive growth of agriculture in such a way as to avoid the environmental
degradation and constraints on productivity that each can cause.

1.2 Industrial Backwardness and Related Factors

? Would you mention some industrial backwardness and related

factors?
Most developing countries are industrially backward and have not been able to
produce goods of quality that could be exported. The average annual growth of
industry for developing countries was 8.2. per cent for the decade 1990s. The rate of
saving in the developing region is also very low. Some other features of developing
countries are as follows:

i) The developing as well as the least developing countries (LDCs) have not
been able to create an export sector commensurate with their import
demands.
ii) Although the Third World countries have many natural resource reserves
which could bring them substantial income, yet exploitation of them
requires technologies and capital investments which they generally lack.
iii) Most countries of the Third World are heavily dependent on foreign
assistance. But the total amount of foreign currency available to them to
buy the required goods and services for their development is very low in
both absolute and per capita terms. In addition, the artificial borrowing and

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 introduction of scientific knowledge are found unsuited to the needs of
developing countries. The LDCs are, however, mostly dependent on outside
technological know how and their individual bargaining power in the
process of transfer is unimportant.
iv) All of the LDCs and most developing countries are faced with energy,
transport and communication problems. They are unable to reduce the
overall cost of transport and communication and increase their efficiency.
This has further intensified the isolation of the vast majority of the rural
populations.

The debt burden and regressive terms of trade are becoming major global issues for
developing countries. For example, in the case of India, the total external debt comes
to $93,766 million in 1995. This results in the widening of the gap between the
developing and developed countries.

Section – I I HUMAN AND SOCIAL CRITERIA

Overview
Despite the enormous progress made over the past generation, more than one billion
people still live in abject poverty, and do not have adequate access to such resources
as education, health services, infrastructure, land, and credit which are required for
a better life. This section more focuses on the human and social aspects of the
developing countries. The section deals about poverty, population growth,
demography, health, fertility and education.

Objectives
After the completion of this section you will be able to;

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  Discuss the impact of poverty in developing countries
 Define and explain population, demography and fertility
 Identify the human and social criteria

2.1 Poverty

? How you understand about Poverty?

Poverty is by far the most alarming problem in the developing world. It is estimated
that nearly half the rural population of the developing world lives below the official
poverty line. Poverty not only degrades human environment but also obstructs
development. Lack of potable drinking water for over thirteen hundred million people
and of sanitation for over seventeen hundred million is by far the most important
cause of environmental pollution resulting into 25,000 deaths a day and eighty per
cent of world diseases.

New estimates prepared for the world Development report (1998) revealed a negligible
reduction in the incidence of poverty in developing countries in the later part of the
1990s. The numbers of poor had increased from slightly more than one billion in
1985 to more than 1.2 billion by 2000.

Asia, excluding China, with its rapid economic growth, has maintained a steady but
unromantic decline in poverty. The experience in other developing regions, however,
has been markedly different from that in Asia. All poverty alleviation measures
worsened in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and
the Caribbean.

The World Bank assumes on the basis of data that “the number of poor in Asia would
continue to decline, and the adverse poverty trends in Latin America and Eastern
Europe would be reversed with economic recovery in those regions. Sub-Saharan

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Africa is the only region in which the situation is expected it deteriorate; with
increases in the proportion of the population in poverty, the number of poor would
rise by about a million a year, on average. By the end of the decade about one-half of
the world’s poor will live in Asia and one-quarter will live in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

2.2 Population Growth

? What do we mean by population growth?

Rapid population growth and unprecedented annual additions to human numbers
dominate global demographic trends and underling the record migration levels of the
1990s.

The population estimates of the world as presented by the Johns Hopkins University
are given world population is now growing by about 1.7 per cent a year, below its
record of over two per cent in the early 1970s (absolute growth of 100 million a year).
From the 1993’s population of 5.57 billion, these additions are projected to produce a
population of 6.25 billion in 2000 and 8.5 billion in 2050. The report of the United
Nations Population Fund (1993) says that the world population may not stabilize
until 2150 at a projected level of 11.6 billion.

On the other hand, under the World Bank’s projections, world population is likely to
grow by 3.7 billion during the period 1990-2030. Ninety per cent of this increase will
occur in developing countries. Over the next four decades, Sub-Saharan Africa’s
population is expected to rise from 500million to 1.5 billion, Asia’s from 3.1 billion to
5.1 billion, and Latin America’s from 450 million, to 750 million.
In 1995 most people lived in rural areas. By 2030 urban populations will be twice the
size of rural populations. Developing country cities as a group will grow by 160 per
cent over four decades (1990-2030) whereas populations will grow by only ten per
cent. By 2000 there were twenty-one cities in the world with more than ten million
inhabitants, and seventeen of them were in developing countries. The pace of

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urbanization presents huge environmental problems of sanitation, clean water, and
pollution from industry, energy, and transport. A comparative picture of population
trends for selected developed and developing countries is given below.

It would d be seen that in developing countries population doubles in thirty-nine

years in sharp contrast to one forty-eight years for the developed countries. Similarly,
the total fertility rate for the developing world is higher than that for developed world.
As on 1 March 2001 India’s population stood at 1,02,70,15,247.

2.3 Demography, Health and Fertility

? What do you understand about the concept demography, health and

fertility?

Due to the wide gap living standards, especially nutritional status and medical care,
life expectancy for both men and women in the world’s richest countries is almost
twice that in the poorest countries: about eighty years compared to about forth-five
years.

In most highly industrialized countries, except in Eastern Europe, the Population

Crisis Committee (U.S) reports that at least ninety nine out of every hundred girls
born will survive their first five years. In contrast, fewer than eighty out of hundred
girls born in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Mali and Pakistan will survive to age five.

In the world’s poorest countries, women are up to two hundred times more likely to
die as a result of complications of pregnancy, abortion or child-birth as women in the
richest countries. Yet over half a million women still die every year because of
inadequate reproductive health care. In Afghanistan, Benin, Mali, Nepal, Nigeria,
and North Yemen, one in five women will die between age fifteen and age forty-fine

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years. In developing countries which have the majority of girls aged fifteen to
nineteen years, women bear, on an average, six or seven children, three or four times
as many as women in developed countries with late marriage.

In most Western developed countries, women over the age of eighteen years are
legally free to decide when and whom to marry. They also have an equal right with
men to initiate divorce. When divorce or separation occurs, the law favors mothers in
determining custody of children and attempts to provide child support or a fair
disposition of family property.

2.4 Education

? What is the role of education in the alleviation of

poverty in developing countries?

Although the gender gap is beginning to close, unfortunately men still have higher
literacy rates than women, and boys still outnumber girls in school. Nearly all girls of
school age are enrolled in primary or secondary school in North America, Australia,
Japan and much of Western Europe, although in some countries like the United
States, secondary school dropout rates remain a problem. For other regions of the
world, figures vary widely ranging from universal enrolment in Barbados (LDC) to
only nine per cent enrolment in Afghanistan, seventeen per cent in Pakistan and
forty-six percent in oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
Worldwide thirty per cent of the people are unable to read and write. There are
twenty-five to fifty percent more literate men than women in developing countries.

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Table 3.8 presents statistical information on education in select countries. In India
the literacy rate stands at 65.38% (for male it is 75.85% and for female it is 54.16%)

Section – I I I ENVIRONMENTAL CRITERIA

Overview
The environmental problems that world countries face vary with their stage of
development, the structure of their economies, and their environmental policies.
Some problems are associated with poor sanitation and lack of potable drinking
water, indoor air pollution from biomass burning, and many types of land
degradation in developing countries have poverty as their root cause. In this section
we are going to deals more about environmental hazardous.

Objectives
After the completion of this section you will be able to;
 Discuss environmental impact in developing countries
 Define and explain water and air pollution and atmospheric change
 Identify solid and habitat hazardous wastes.

3.1 Water pollution

? What do you understand about water pollution?

The health of hundreds of millions of people is threatened by contaminated drinking
water, and inadequate sanitation. Water pollution from human wastes matters more
in developing countries that cannot afford to treat all water supplies. But water
quality has continued to deteriorate even in some developed countries. In Latin
America as little as two per cent of sewage receives any treatment. The World
Development Report, 1992, points out that despite the expansion of sanitation
services, the absolute number of people in urban areas without access to theses
services is thought to have grown by more tan seventy million in the 1980s, and more
than 1.7 billion people worldwide are without access.

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The report points out that at least one hundred seventy million people in urban areas
still lack a source of potable water near their homes, and in rural areas, although
access has increased rapidly in the past decade, more than 855 million are still
without safe water.

Contaminated water is implicated in many cases of diarrhea diseases which, as a

group, kill more than there million people, mostly children, in developing countries,
and cause about nine hundred million episodes of illness each year.

3.2 Air Pollution

?what do you mean by Air Pollution?

Air pollution is caused by three principal man-made sources energy consumption,
vehicular emissions, and industrial production. The rates of urbanization, the
demand for vehicular transport and electricity are rising rapidly in developing
countries. In developing countries that are now in the throes of industrialization,
city air pollution is far worse than in today’s industrial countries which have
taken measures to manage emissions. In the 1980s, cities such as Bangkok,
Beijing, Kolkata, New Delhi, and Tehran exceeded on more than two hundred days
a year the Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) levels that WHO standards
indicate should not be exceeded more than seven days a year. Rough estimates
indicate that if unhealthy levels of SPM were brought down to the annual average
level that WHO considers safe, between three hundred thousand and seven
hundred thousand premature deaths a year could be averted in developing
countries.

Inadequate collection and unmanaged disposal present a number of problems for

human health and productivity. Uncollected refuse dumped in public areas or into
waterways contributes to the spread of disease. In low-income neighborhoods that

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lack sanitation a facility, trash heaps becomes mixed with human excreta. Municipal
solid waste sites often receive industrial and hazardous wastes, which may then seep
into water supplies.

3.3 Land and Habitat

? Would you mention land and habitat related problems?

i) Soil Degradation
A study sponsored by UNDP shows that 1.2 billion hectares-almost eleven per cent of
the earth’s vegetated surface-have undergone moderated or worse soil degradation
over the past forth-five years because of human activity. As a result of this
deterioration, yields and total harvests of important food crops are declining in a
number of countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
ii) Forests
The forests that occupy more than a quarter of the world’s land area are of three
broad types-tropical moist and dry forests, temperate forests, and degraded forest
land. Net deforestation has stabilized in most industrial countries, and for temperate
areas as a whole, forest area is increasing. Deforestation in developing countries is
more recent, with tropical forests declining by nearly one-fifth so far in this century.

iii) Biodiversity
The complex web of interactions that maintains the vitality of ecosystems can unravel
even if only a small number of key species disappear. Yet studies conducted in the
mid-1980s by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural
Resources and UNEP indicated that sixty-five per cent of original wildlife habitat in
tropical Africa and sixty-eight percent in tropical South and East Asian countries
have been converted to other uses.
Atmospheric Changes
Two examples of atmospheric changes are greenhouse warming and ozone depletion.

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 i) Greenhouse Warming
It is estimated that carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas (GHG) has increased
by more than twelve per cent in the past thirty years. Also, over the past century,
average global temperatures have increased between 0.30 and 0.60 Celsius.

ii) Ozone Depletion

Ozone depletion is mainly the result of increasing atmospheric concentrations of
chlorine. An important consequence of ozone depletion is an increase in solar
ultraviolet radiation received at the earth’s surface. Exposure to increased levels of
ultraviolet radiation can suppress the immune system in people of all skin colours,
and that would have much wider detrimental health effects.

Thus developing countries, just as much as industrial countries, should care about
environmental degradation. Filthy air and contaminated water now harm or kill far
more people in developing countries than were affected when today’s industrial
countries passed through their own period of “Victorian grime”.

Section – IV CONSTRAINTS AND FEATURES OF

ADMINISTRATION

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Overview
The situation of public administration is particularly acute in the least developed
countries because their needs for administrative capabilities have been continuously
changing while the resources and time available to them are limited. This means an
accumulation of demands that remains largely to be met. The administration of
development in the LDCs and developing countries has always had some serious
problems, both during colonial and after-colonial rule.

Objectives
After the completion of this section you will be able to;
 Discuss Colonial and western pattern of administration
 Define and Centralized Bureaucratic structure
 Identify the impact of lack of skilled man power in administration.

4.1 Colonial and Western Pattern of Administration

? What are the features of administration in

developing countries?
One of distinctive features of administration of developing countries is that it is
colonial and imitative rather than indigenous. “All countries, including those which
escaped western colonization” says Ferrel Heady, “have consciously tried to introduce
some version of modern western bureaucratic administration.” In the case of former
colonies, administrative systems generally imitate the administration of their former
metropolitan states. This colonial heritage has meant a carryover of the colonial
bureaucratic tenancies. Appleby affirmed this view and other ford foundation experts,
recalling their field experiences in India, argued that the “inadequacies of Indian
bureaucracy are not due to the fact that it is bureaucracy but due to a considerable
fact that it carries too much baggage from the past.” Kuldeep Mathur also contributes

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to this view” The colonial legacy, carrying its own ethos and culture, was seen as
unsuitable for the tasks of development.”

1. Lack of Skilled Personnel and administrative Staff

There is a general lack of skilled personnel and administrative staff for administering
development programmers and projects. No lasting and significant development can
be achieved in any developing economy unless there are sufficient human skills and
resources present there that can be used to implement and thereby assist in
prolonging the development cycle.
Lack of slilled manpower in the developing countries is the direct result of the
following three factors: (i) lack of human resource development planning including
inadequacies in the educational system, (ii) improper recruitment and training
policies and (iii) brain drain.

One major problem regarding the organization of public services has been the
inability to recruit and retain the right kinds of expertise. “The scarcity of technical
and industrial manpower will become more acute as developing countries try further
to apply science and technology for development.”
The problem of brain drain is acute in the developing world. The loss by public
services of skilled and qualified personnel, particularly of personnel at the higher
levels, is a serious problem in the developing world. Among the causes are inequities
in relation to service conditions, staff changes following change of governments and
other political dynamics.

2. Centralized Bureaucratic Structure

Public services in developing countries are highly centralized in authority and
control. This excessive centralization is reflected in government ministers assuming
overall and total control of their of their respective ministries and departments, in
terms of decision-making, and affording little opportunity to civil servants,
particularly at the lower and middle levels, to participate not only in the decision-
making process, but in the development process as well. This situation continues to
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be perpetrated because the civil service in most developing countries has become an
institution in which personnel matters, such as service scurity, protion which does
not conform to the regulations governing civil service in developed countries.

Besides, there exists a great deal of friction, tension, and mutual suspicion between
government ministers and career officials. Both the ministers and the career officials
have adopted an attitude toward implementation of policy and plans that has
alienated the public and has hampered effective functioning of the government.

In African countries, career officials are in a position of great insecurity due to the
enormous powers of the ministers. Most career officials in Asian countries are well
educated and they regard ministers often as inadequately competent to take
decisions pertaining to administration of development. The ministers, on the
contrary, are anxious to assert their authority and to make it clear beyond doubt as
to who are the masters. Inevitably then, career officials have to adopt a moderate
attitude towards their ministers-not offering administrative advice in an objective
manner but the one that the minister wishes. In India, Mathur says that “the
planned strategy of development has considerably helped the bureaucrats to acquire
administrative and political power, which expanded their role in the economy,
permitting them greater opportunities to satisfy their self-interests.

Thus, the centralized nature of bureaucracy in most developing countries contributes

to destruction of channels of communication in the organization and tends to hamper
development administration. In this context, K.R. Hope says that after attaining
independence, bureaucratic colonial-oriented administration in the least developing
countries was transformed into a bureaucratic organization that emphasized
sovereignty of politics rather than supremacy of administration. But since then
considerable changes have taken place. Senior administrators, now in most
developing countries, have forged alliances with politicians not only to brighten their
own career prospects but also to articulate political views and gain a greater share of
social resources.
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 3. Lack of Political Support to Improve Administrative system
There is a general lack of political leadership’s support for improvement of the
administrative systems of developing countries. Administrative reforms inevitably
involve a challenge to accepted modes of action and traditional vales and
prerogatives.

Administrative reforms for personnel or administrative capabilities must be

supported by the political executive of a country. “Many governments have been
criticized for implementing rural development programmes without a clear and full
political commitment to programme.” Experience show that political leaders in the
developing countries have been primarily concerned with maintaining their own
existence as politicians which has resulted in much confusion between the
administrative and political functions in the policy-making process. An inefficient and
irresponsive bureaucracy cannot achieve the development goals.

In many developing countries, Services are delivered badly or not at all. Politicians
often intervene in the day-to-day operations of public agencies, and managers have
limited flexibility. There is limited accountability for results. In fact, in many
countries the public sector has assumed a monopoly in delivery, eliminating
pressures for better performance.

4. Multiplicity of administrative agencies

The persistence of fractured programme implementation has been attributed in part
to the absence of an integrated organization both at national and sub-national levels.
Many government offices, multi-sectoral committees, boards, councils, agencies, and
the like have been created, but the performances of these authorities have often been
found wanting. The result inevitably is a duplication of functions, and diffusion of
responsibility. The spectacle of sectoral progammes being implemented in parallel
fashion, ignoring the beneficial effects of joint planning and coordinated

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implementation is common and such development programmes have been the
targets, again and again, of critics in many developing countries.

5. Limited Popular Participation

Career officials in most developing countries have not demonstrated patience and
tolerance for the necessarily tedious patterns of public devote and discussion of
development programmes and plans. Many officials have considered community
action to be a waste of time and effort and also an inefficient process. In the plan
documents of the developing countries, there is emphasis on community or people
participation in the development programmers, but in practice, people are rarely
involved in the development programmers and projects which are going to affect
them. Kuldeep Mathur argues that in much of Asia the need for popular participation
in development planning has not been widely recognized.
6. Lack of Motivation
Many public services in developing countries continue to suffer from lack of
motivating incentives. The compensation paid to public employees is often low.
Higher wages for comparable jobs in other areas may prove to be a further
disincentive. The other factor affecting motivation is the work environment. The lack
of amenities in the place of work or hierarchical conflicts is the common features of
public personnel systems of developing countries. Further, the politicization of public
services has affected commitment aims of the government. of public servants to the
poetical and social
The emphasis of bureaucrats is not on personal expediency and on status orientation
on personal expediency and on status orientation on ascriptive grounds. Results of
this tendency are making a mockery of an outwardly merit system in recruitment and
promotion, (ii) semi-institutionalized” and socially sanctioned large scale corruption,
and (iii) over staffing in lower bureaucracy.

7. Corruption
Corruption is a common phenomenon in all countries. Corruption in government has
come to be recognized as a major concern in public management of developing
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countries. However, it is pervasive more at high political levels than in the
bureaucracy. Notwithstanding the diversity of conditions and approaches, national
experiences reflect certain basic common trends. Foremost among these trends is the
awareness of the negative effects of corruption, as well as its serious consequences
on both the developmental processes and the stability of government. Corruption is
assuming new dimensions and is perceived as the abuse of public power and
authority for private or personal gains. In developing countries, forms of corruption
tange from acceptance of money or other rewards for awarding contracts, violations
of procedures to advance personal interests, including kickbacks from development
programmes or multinational corporations, pay-offs fro legislative support, diversion
of public resources for private gain, nepotism, overpricing, bribery, payroll padding
and tax assessment frauds, etc…

Corruption takes place as a result of poverty, greed, inadequacies in existing public

management systems, persistence of traditional values, as well as social, cultural,
political, and economic factors. The contining of corruption leads not only to
perpetuation of social and economic inequalities but jeopardizes administrative
reform and accountability well.

The challenge before the public administrators in developing countries is how to

achieve the developmental objectives of basic human needs. O.P. Dwivedi believes
that such a challenge can be met “only by demonstrating the highest standards of
personal integrity, honesty, fairness, justice, and by considering their work as
vocation, can public officials inspire public confidence and trust, the true hallmarks
of a moral government.”

To sum up, administration of development in the developing countries is in a state of

ineptness. it is centralized, and politics is now the order of the day. However, a
healthy economic system, a strong polity and political leadership, proper human
resource planning and training, and effective decentralization and communication
are essential for improving development administration in developing countries.
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 Unit Summary
The criteria (economic, social, environmental and administrative) have important
consequences on policies oriented towards promoting development in the individual
developing and least developing countries (LDCs). The developing as well as LDCs
themselves will set objectives, plans and policies for their development and adopt
vigorous measures for mobilization of their domestic resources. However, in view of
their low income, low literacy rate, with a high proportion of population living below a
minimum standard of health, nutrition, education and housing, and of mass labour
force concentrated in the agricultural and subsistence sectors, it would be very
difficult for these countries to mobilize adequate domestic resources for the purpose
of implementing their development policies and plans.

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  Check List
Direction: Dear students this is the section in which you confirm your
understanding of the lessons in this unit. Put a tick mark () in the yes
column for activities that you have clear understanding and in the no
column for activities that you doubt that you have no good
understanding.
I Can: Yes No
. Define the concepts of Economic growth variation

. Identify Human and Social Criteria

. Analyze Constraints and features of administration

. Explain Centralized bureaucratic structure

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 UNIT Three
Organizational environments: Comparisons,
Contrasts and Significance.

Introduction
Dear distance learner welcome to this interesting unit of the module. This unit
developed for the purpose of providing a lesson on organizational environment.
Hopefully, at the end of the unit you will expand your horizon on different
aspects of organizational environments. The first section explores the concept
of environment and indicates some of the ways in which organizations interact
with their environment. Then we will describe some of the Components of the
environment which have been identified as important by politicians,
administrators, academics and other development professionals. Finally, we
will draw some general conclusions about developing environments and what
this means for policy-makers, administrators and development.

Objectives
At the end of this unit students will be able to:

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  Discuss the concept of organizational environments
 Define and explain the meaning of organizational Environments
 Identify the different Elements of environment
 Explain the dimensions and elements of organizational Environments

Pre test questions

 What do you understand by Organizational Environments?
 What are these organizational Environments?
 Can you Compare and Contrasts organizational Environments?
 What can you say about the significances of Organizational Environments?

Section one- Making Sense of environment

Overview
Dear distance learner in this section you will learn a lesson on organizational
environment. Taking the vastness and complexity of organizational
environment in to consideration, we focus on the major points of the topic.

Objectives
After the completion of this section you will be able to;

 Knows how organizational environments are vital element for influencing

the nature of policy and administrative reform.
 Discuss different analysis of scholars on organizational environments

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 1.1 Making Sense of environment

? What you understand by the term environment?

The Concept ‘environment’ can, therefore, best be understood as the totality of

all components surrounding human kind. The Environment Pollution Panel of
the United States President’s Science Advisory Committee (1965) referred to
environment as “The sum of all social, biological and physical or chemical
factors which compose the surrounding of man.” Each component of these
surrounding constitute a resource on which man depends for his well-being
and survival. Unlike all forms of life, human being is capable of exerting great
influence upon the environment which in turn affects almost all the life
processes and form of organism.
All Organizations exist in and relate to environments that affect their
operations. The environments in which administrators and policy makers
operate in developing countries are both distinctive and diverse. They are
distinct from those environments encountered by their counterparts in rich
countries of the organization for Economic Cooperation and development
(OECD), even with in between developing Countries there are substantial
differences.
This means that management models which are successful in one place may
be inappropriate in a different environment. Thus, the practice and
prescriptions of administration in industrial countries may be particularly
prone to failure when transplanted to radically different developing country
contexts. Even South- south (between developing countries) transfers must be
treated with great care and consideration.
The organizational environment is a vital element in influencing the nature of
policy, administrative reform or any programme of planned change. Managers
at all levels who have a good appreciation of the environment have a far greater
chance of success than those who choose to underestimate or ignore the
significance of the environment.

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 To appreciate the vastness and complexity of the environment we can follow
Robert miles`s instructions to ‘take the universe, substract from it the subset
that represents the organization, and the remainder is environment’ (Miles,
1980, p.36). There are economic forces, social institutions, demographic
patterns, other organizations, international agencies and many additional
elements which make up this general or macro environment. It may be too
broad a definition of environment as, by incorporating everything, it fails to
distinguish what is of immediate significance for the organization. To do this
we can identify the ‘specific’ or ‘task’ environment as that part of the
environment which is directly relevant to the organization in its specific work
and in achieving its goals. For example, the constituencies which influences
and interact with a department of health will show variation from those
identified for a Department of defense. Delineating the boundary between the
general and task environments is obviously difficult but the broad distinction is
still useful.
While dividing the environment into different parts makes a useful start to
our analysis, the critical question from a management perspective focus on the
degree of uncertainty and Complexity in the environment. Some authors have
suggested that for organizations to remain effective and efficient they must take
steps to ‘fit’ their structures and strategies to the demands of the environment
(Emery and Trist, 1965; Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967). Other has been less
persuaded by such determinism and has employed the distinction between the
‘influence able’ and ‘appreciated’ environments (Smith et al., 1981). While
managers will control certain decision areas in the organization (for example,
deployment of staff, and allocation of resources) they will not have such power
outside the organization. They may, however, be able to influence certain
decisions of organizations and actors operating in the same or related areas.
But there are other factors which are recognized and appreciated but which lie
beyond the control of these managers. Such a view coincides with the
‘resources dependence perspective’ which gets away in which organizations can
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 be proactive in influencing events and decisions in their environment (Preffer
and Salancik, 1978).
Whether managers and policy-makers take a deterministic or proactive view
of the environment they all need to engage in environmental scanning. This
involves monitoring and evaluating changes in the environment so that
appropriate actions can be taken regarding organizational strategies and
structures, national or local government policy. There is a huge range of
scanning techniques, from informal, but astute observation and analysis of
current political trends to sophisticated data collection and computer analysis.
They can adopt a time frame which varies from long-term scenarios of 20 or
more years to those which focus on next year only. Whatever the methods
employed and whether the organizations is in the public or private sectors, it
appears that organizations which pay attention to their environments have a
much greater chance of performing well than those which ignore
environmental scanning.
Furthermore, as developing-country environments are typically uncertain and
growing in complexity, the importance of environmental scanning as an input
to public policy and administration increases. If scant attention is paid to such
data gathering and analysis, decision-making will become entirely ad hoc , and
may simply degenerate into desperate steps by officials to hold on to power.
Such an orientation does nothing to satisfy the developmental needs and
demands of millions of people who live in conditions of poverty and uncertainty
in developing countries.
There is a final complication in dealing with the environment. The environment
is not the same for everybody. Different people perceive it in different ways.
They may ‘enact’ the environment creating the very information to which they
then react (Weick, 1977). Thus, organizations or Policy-makers respond to what
they have constructed- what is influence able and what is appreciated. What
they perceive and how they perceive it may vary. An organizational response
may then be characterized as a ‘strategic choice’ which usually reflects the way
in which the dominant coalition enacts the environment (Child, 1972). The
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 environment is anything but a clear empirical reality. Information can be
ignored or emphasized, institutions overlooked or awarded significance. It is a
zone of contestation where political process and analysis are of great
importance.

1.2 Environmental Administration

? What do you understand by Environmental administration?

The fact that environment is used to cover every activity of human, makes it
difficult to develop a practical, yet comprehensive definition of the concept
‘environment administration’. To begin with, it is beyond the capability of any
environment administrator to master the detailed functioning of each of the
components of environment. Environment pollution, depletion of resources and
socio-economic infrastructure, human population and cultural heritage
constitute vast technical areas and are best left to the specialist concerned.

The job of the administrator is merely to study and exercise control over the
process by which these factors interact with one another and the manner in
which they finally contribute to his particular goals. Edmunds and Lately
define environment administration as a concept of managing human affairs in
such a way that biological health, diversity and ecological balance will be
preserved. Environment administration may be defined as the process of
carrying out activities which are concerned with protection and enhancement
of the quality of the environment.

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 It seeks to achieve equilibrium between man and his environment,
minimization of his assaults on the various eco-systems and maximization of
the survival of all forms of life. Some aspects of environment administration lie
in the premises of economics, sociology, management, politics, law, philosophy,
etc. It concerns human himself and his environment. As such the field of
environment administration concerns human decisions which affect and adapt
the environment.

 Activity – 1
1. Explain why organizational environments are complex in
developing country
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
2. How do you understand organizational environment?
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________

Section Two- Elements of the Environment

Overview
Dear distant learners, in this section we will describe some of the important
elements of the environment which have been consistently appreciated,
influenced and enacted by academic analysis. Although we use convenient

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 categories to package our environmental components remember that this is an
analytical device and that life is not so easily compartmentalized in practice.
There is a complex texture between parts of the environment and in their
engagement with the organization. We should therefore beware of crude
generalization about cause and effect in explaining administrative and policy
behavior. With these considerations in mind we have modified Austin`s (1990)
model and divided the environment into economic, cultural, demographic and
Political components.

Objectives
After the completion of this section you will be able to;

 Identify and discuss different elements of organizational environments

 Analyze the relation between the economic, cultural, demographic and
Political factors of environment.
 Explain elements of environment influences the nature of organization.

2.1 Economic factors

? How do you understand economic factors?

Economic growth and sharing out the result of such growth are fundamental
concerns of governments and societies engaged in development. To pursue this
strategy, it is necessary to know what is happening in the domestic and
international economy. Administrators and policy-makers and information
about such items as growth rates of the gross national product, the availability
of capital, changes in the structures of production and the labour market, and
projections of international debt. They are simultaneously items which the
government is trying to change and elements of the environment which affect

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 those planned changes. They will offer opportunities or place constraints on
policies in the economic and other sectors. They are also interrelated with other
variables in the environment and affect other variables and be affected interm.

Environmental factors for public sector managers

Economic Cultural
Ethinicity
Gross national product
Family and Kinship
Structure of production
Value and norms
Labour
Gender
Domestic capital
History
Foreign aid and debt
Infrastructure
Technology
Poverty and inequality
Informal sector

Demography Political
Population State-society relation
Age structure Legitimacy
Urbanization and migration Regime type
Health Ideology
Elite and classes
International links
Institutions
Source: Modified from Austin, J.E. (1990) Management in Developing
Countries: Strategic Analysis and Operating Techniques (New York: Free Press).

A. Gross national Product

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 ? Can you mention some of the economic factors that influence the

environment of administration?
The most commonly cited stastics in the study of development are the closely
related gross national product (GNP) per capital and gross domestic product
(GDP) per capita. GDP per capita is calculated by ‘estimating the money value
of all good and services produced in a country in a year, plus net factor income
(from labour and capital) from abroad and dividing by the estimated mid-year
population. (Hulme and Turner, 1990, P.18). GDP is GNP minus the net factor
income from abroad.
Both are measurers of production and are utilized to compare levels of
economic development of countries. The major division is between high income
economies found in Western Europe, East Asia, North America and Australia
and the developing economies of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the pacific.

These division is sometimes viewed as that separating rich and poor, North and
south, wealthy OECD Countries and the rest, or First and Third Worlds.
However, these divisions are too crude, as within the developing world there is
considerable differentiation. Since most of the nations of the world and the
global population are classified as developing then such diversity should be no
surprise.
The World Bank divides the developing world into three categories according to
GNP per capita: low income (US $725 or less per capita in 1994), lower-middle
income (US $726-2900 Per capita in 1994) and upper-middle income (US
$2901-8955 in 1994). It is questionable whether some upper-middle income
economies such as Greece or Hungary would be recognized as ‘developing’.
Even excluding such cases the range is enormous- from Rwanda with US $ 80
per capita to Argentina with US $8710 Per capita.
While the GNP measures does reveal a great deal about economic conditions
there are limitations to its use. It says nothing about income distribution. It

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 makes huge assumptions about informal and subsistence production which
are ubiquitous in developing countries, and it is not an accurate guide to
general levels of welfare. A human development Programme (UNDP) is a far
better guide to welfare as it incorporates indicators of life expectancy and
educational attainment with national income to give composite measures of
human progress.
B. Structure of production
Other economic indicators help to elaborate the crude GNP per capiat figure.
Examination of the structure of production, for example, reveals that all
developing countries have a greater reliance on natural resources exploitation
including agriculture, mining, forestry and fisheries than the rich nations. For
most rich countries agriculture accounts less than 5 per cent of the total
[Link] countries stand in marked contrast, particularly the low-
income economies where an average of 28 per cent of GDP is derived from
agriculture as compared to 10 per cent for all middle-income economies. But
the range is considerable among the developing countries with middle-income
economies often possessing substantial industrial sectors and sometimes
revealing production structures nearer to the high-income than to the low-
income economies.
C. Labour
The human resources profile also provides contrasts both within the developing
world and with the OECD nations. The latter invariably posses more educated
populations and more highly skilled labour forces. Literacy rates within the
developing nations vary widely and do not necessarily correlate with the GNP
per capita figure. Some low-income economies such as Sri Lanka, Madagascar
and china have superior adult literacy rates to middle-income economies such
as Tunisia, El Salvador and Saudi Arabia. Skill is often in short supply. In
some places, highly educated persons either do not have the particular skill
need by the economy or they migrate abroad for better opportunities. By 1987,
for example, it was estimated that one-third of Africa’s skilled people had
moved to Europe. Even allowing for remittances this appears to represent a
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 huge loss of investment in the type of skilled human resources required for
national development.
D. Domestic capital
A further distinction between rich and poor countries is implicit in this very
categorization. The latter generally demonstrate scarcity in both public and
private domestic capital. The UNDP (1992, p.63) has identified lack of finance
as ‘the most crippling constraint facing developing nations’. GDPs are low.
Savings rates are also low with a few exceptions such as China and India. This
is to be expected given the many persons who exist in poverty or near to it and
who must attend to current consumption rather than to saving.
Other environmental features and problems relating to capital scarcity in
developing countries include weak financial institutions which are unable to
regulate the economy adequately and to mobilize savings. Inflation rates are
frequently much higher in developing nations than in the OECD countries. In
the 1980-93 periods the annual inflation rates are frequently much higher in
developing nations than in the OECD countries. In the 1980-93 periods the
annual inflation rates of all OECD countries averaged below 10 per cent, a
figure attained by few developing countries. Over 30 developing countries
averaged more than 29 per cent during this time, with some exceeding 50 per
cent or even 100 per cent each year. Such inflationary environments make
planning extremely difficult and demand management techniques in both
public and private sectors which are unfamiliar to those used to operating in
single digit inflation. Finally, capital flight, such as seen in Latin America in the
early 1980, may contribute to the shortage of domestic capital.
Foreign exchange
Foreign exchange is a form of capital which is frequently in short supply in
developing countries and marks another distinctive environmental factor
encountered by policy-makers and administrators in this countries. Foreign
exchange is important because it determines the potential level of external
purchasing power. Whether foreign exchange is used wisely for developmental
purposes is another matter but it should be noted that even when countries
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 enjoy the benefits of a commodity boom the foreign exchange bonanza can be
frittered away in conspicuous consumption, prestige project and inappropriate
development programmes. However, foreign exchange scarcity is the common
condition for developing countries with the poorer countries faring least well.
Austin (1990, p.50) cites a 1987 study which found that the average foreign
exchange reserves were only US $ 17 per capita in low-income countries, US $
128 for middle-income countries, but US $ 1148 for OECD.
E. Foreign aid and debt
Shortage of foreign exchange and scarcity of capital are reflected in the foreign
aid relationship which binds the low and middle-income economies to the rich
nations of the world in a dependent relationship. According to the influential
neo-classical economist, Lord Bauer, developing countries can be defined as
those which ‘demand and receive aid from the West… The Third World is the
creation of foreign aid: With out foreign aid there is no Third world’ (Bauer,
1981, p.87). While this may have some empirical grounding as one possible
classificatory device, Baur`s Explanations of aid in terms of collective Western
guilt certainly do not.
The flow of foreign aid from the governments of rich nations to those in the
developing world has certainly been a leading feature of development in the
post-war years, and the results of such flows, however, have been
disappointing and have contributed to another feature of the economic
environment of developing nations- foreign debt. Two decades ago this not a
major element in the environment of administration and policy making.

F. Infrastructure
According to Austin (1990, p.53) ‘poor infrastructure may be the most visible
distinguishing characteristic of developing countries’. This lack of
infrastructure may be manifested in inadequate port facilities, roads in despair
or unable to handle the increasing volumes of traffic, obsolescent railway
rolling stock, an inability to maintain required electricity output and water
supply systems which fail to satisfy personal and organizational demands.
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 While large cities frequently outgrow and hence place insupportable demands
on their infrastructure, rural areas are all too often characterized by their lack
of infrastructural development. With good reason some authors have alleged a
distinct and persistent urban bias in developing countries (Lipton, 1977).

Information is increasingly regarded as the most important commodity in

advanced capitalist nations. Gathering, processing and disseminating
information has become a leading activity in these countries. To serve the
insatiable demand for information, computers and telecommunication play a
major role utilizing ever more sophisticated electronic machine with large
capacities and faster speeds. In the developing world one finds equivalent
machines but in much smaller quantity, in many fewer places and processing
information which is often less plentiful and less reliable. Only 20 per cent of
the world’s computers are to be found in developing nations. Thus
administrators and policy-makers must face an environment where information
availability and accuracy may leave much to be desired and where the
telecommunications infrastructure and computer availability may be poorly
developed, fragmented or hardly present.

G. Technology
In large part, development is about technology. Whether one is promoting
indigenous agricultural techniques, modifying machinery for small-scale
production, building factories or re-equipping offices there are always
questions about technology. As technology involves both hardware and
techniques, all technological activities have a human aspect. In OECD
countries the speed of technological transformation during the past century
has been unprecedented in human history. Some of what has been achieved is
of dubious value for the present and future health of humanity. However, the
industrial nations posses a massive store of technology and may be increasing
their technological lead over the developing countries. This trend could

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 accelerate as science and technology is increasingly privatized and made
available only to those who can afford to pay.
By contrast, technology in developing countries is often less complex. It may
also be inefficient and ineffective, although one should exercise extreme
caution before making value judgment about ‘backward’ technology in
developing nations as compared to superior advanced technology in the OECD.
‘Simple’ can also be efficient, effective, well-tested and environmentally friendly.
Technological innovation in developing nations is frequently concentrate in
‘modern’ activities such as large-scale manufacturing, the national air line,
agribusiness plantations, and office in the central business district of the
capital city. These technologies are acquired fromoverseas, in large part from
the industrial nations. Third world research and development (R&D) capacity is
highly restricted, constrained by capital shortage, foreign exchange shortfalls
and other environmental factors. The UNDP (1992, p.40) notes that despite
having almost 80 per cent of the world’s population, developing countries are
responsible for only 4 per cent of global Research and development
expenditure.
Administrators and policy-makers face an environment where they must make
continual technological choices. Many items on the shopping list derive from
the industrial nations but what is appropriate in Australia or the UK might be
inappropriate in Nigeria or Pakistan.

H. Poverty and inequality

In 1990, the World Bank identified the reduction of poverty as the most
pressing issue now facing the ‘developing community’. It still is and will remain
that way for the foreseeable future. The poverty statistics make grim reading
and are a shameful indictment of the world community. Over a billion people in
developing countries were living in poverty in 1985, approximately one third of
their total population. Of these, 630 million were classified as extremely poor,
their annual consumption being less than US$275 per person per year (World
Bank, 1990, p.28). Policy-makers and administrators in the OECD nations
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 must also deal with poverty but its incidence is generally much less. Even
among developing countries the amount of poverty can vary considerably while
the degree of deprivation can be staggering when compared to what is defined
as poverty in OECD Countries. Further more, much poverty in rural areas goes
unperceived as those officials concerned with bringing development perpetuate
biases which overlook and misunderstand the nature and extent of poverty
(Chambers, 1983).
In some developing nations there is also massive inequality in the distribution
of resources and in incomes. For example, in Brazil the top 20 per cent of the
population receives 26 times the income of the bottom 20 per cent. Many
people in developing countries, especially in Asia and Latin America, have
access to educational resources, health facilities, food, accommodation and
consumer goods which are similar to people in western countries. Some are
fabulously wealthy but alongside with them exist the million in urban squatter
settlements and those hidden in rural village and remote locations who daily
have to battle with poverty. They have few assets, live in larger households,
have low incomes, have poor access to social services, and live shorter lives
than the middle and upper classes. The details vary from country to country
and from region to region but the bottom line is always the same- an inability
to attain an adequate standard of living.
But poverty should not be recorded simply as a matter of economic statistics.
Vulnerability and powerlessness are two important characteristic which both
define and perpetuate poverty. Chambers (1983) notes that the poor lack
buffers against contingencies such as wedding, funerals, natural disasters,
sickness and accident. This makes them highly vulnerable. Attending to these
contingencies frequently results in the sale or irreversible loss of their already
meager assets. The poor in rural areas have also witnessed the relative ease
with which rural elites intercept benefits intended for the poor who lack the
political resources to bargain. Such powerlessness, says Chambers, is
especially common for women, and the physically weak, disabled and destitute.
H. Informal sector
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 A final and particularly distinctive economic feature of developing countries is
the prevalence of the informal sector; that is, the multitude of unregistered
micro-business that operate outside of state regulation. They typically include
food preparation and sale, petty trade, transport hire, repair activities,
scavenging and manufacture. It has been estimated that such unofficial
economies employ between 35 and 65 per cent of the labour force of most
developing countries and provided between 20 and 40 per cent of GDP
(Chickering and Salahdine, 1991, p.7). De Soto (1989) Estimated that in Peru
the informal sector accounted for 50 per cent of the full-time labour force,
another 10 per cent part-time, 40 per cent of GDP, and 47 per cent of
construction and 95 per cent of public transport in the capital city of Lima.
Such burgeoning informal sector activity provides an environmental challenge
to administrators and policy-makers. They cannot ignore the unofficial
economy as it is ubiquitous, vast and frequently growing.
2.2 Cultural factors

? How do you understand cultural factors? Can you mention them?

Policies and plans may be technically feasible but a group of cultural factors
may place limits on what policy-makers and administrators can actually
achieve and indicates the acceptable direction for policy and administration.
Culture is manifested in beliefs, value, attitude and norms of behavior. It is the
meaning we attach to behavior. These meanings are the products of elements
such as history, tradition and social structure. We have made a broad sweep of
these elements in the group of cultural variable we are going to discuss below.
This complex cluster exercises a major influence on how actors will perceive
the rest of the environment and how organizations and administrators will
operate.

A. Ethnicity

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 Ethnic identity may be defined in various ways by different scholars - according
to race, culture, language, religion or place of origin. A unique combination of
such attributes differentiates an ethnic community from others and provides
the basis for self- consciousness particularly among members of ethnic
minorities. According to modernization and Marxist theorist of development,
ethnic identities would weaken as economic development proceeded. History
has proved this assumption incorrect. In the late twentieth century this has
been most graphically demonstrated in wider spread inter-ethnic strife in the
form of secessionist movement and civil wars. While ethnic differentiation and
political action based on ethnic identity have occurred in the western nations it
is in the developing world that ethnic divisions abound. They are important
environmental features for administrators and policy- makers which must be
taken into account in framing policies, planning and implementation.

Ethnic configurations vary considerably within the developing world. In Latin

America and the Caribbean the indigenous populations were decimated by the
colonizers. Thus, ethnic diversity is not as such a pronounced features of these
societies although relatively small indigenous ethnic communities survived in
marginalized and disadvantaged conditions in some countries. In Africa and
Asia there is considerable ethnic diversity which can sometimes transform into
sometimes violent competition over resources, the allocation of jobs, and
control of the state or can even challenge the existence of the state. For the
administrator and policy-makers there is always the consideration that their
actions can be interpreted by ethnic groups and that such analysis can have
severe repercussions. But rapid economic and social advancement is certainly
possible in conditions of ethnic diversity as the example of Malaysia
demonstrates.

B. Family and kinship

While family and kinship define important human relationships throughout the
world, it is not an exaggeration to say they have greater significance in
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 determining behavior in developing nations than in the western world. There
are a multitude of kinship systems in the developing world. Imagine Papua New
Guinea where there are more than 800 language groups and also an equivalent
number of kinship terminologies, each demonstrating some features which
distinguish it from the next. Whatever the operating system, the affective
relationships of kinship are important determinants of behavior. In some
societies where kinship links do not exist, fictive one will be sanctioned to
cement significant personal relationship. In the Philippines, Sponsors or
godparents at a christening will be linked to the child, to its parents and
perhaps to the wider family and even to the other godparets. One cannot
generalize about the degree of intensity of particular kinship relationships as
difference between societies, individuals and contexts work against uniformity.
The vital matter is that kinship forms an important frame of reference for
individuals operating in society and the language of kinship has a wide
currency in metaphors and analogies.

C. Value and norms

Among the most important components of culture are value and norms. They
serve to determine, explain and legitimate human actions and they show
extraordinary variance between societies and even within them. Their
importance to the administrator and policy- maker is quite obviously profound
although this has not always been appreciated. In the 1970s,Gert Horfstede
(1980) asked the simple question ‘do American theories apply abroad?’
Concerning motivation, leadership and organization? One hundred and sixteen
thousand questionnaires later, Hofstede conclude that national cultures
provided distinct pattern of mental programming which cast severe doubts on
the appropriateness of certain American management practices in different
national cultural contexts.
Administrators and policy-makers derive value from the wider society in which
they live and from other collectivities to which they belong, such as ethnic
groups, religions and classes. They import such values and norms into their
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 work organizations, and perhaps add a few specific items of organizational
culture from that particular office or department. The value and norms guide
and give meaning to what they do and what is acceptable or feasible on their
dealing with the wider society. The wider society also evaluates the actions of
the policy-makers and administrators using value and norms as tools. There is
no third world value system, and even within a national-state value can vary
considerably between groups, or particular groups can operationalize the same
value in different ways.

D. Gender
Women’s issues have become major concerns for administrators and policy-
makers only recently. They were certainly part of the environment before the
1970s but their perception was generally undertaken using patriarchal
instruments which both understated and misconceived the situation of women
in development. The United Nations Decade for Women 1976-85 marked ‘the
acceptance of women’s concerns as legitimate issues for national and
international policy’ (Tinker, 1990, p.4). But this acceptance had been won
through the political struggle of women not as a result of some natural
evolutionary process.
The overriding theme in the study of gender is inequity and its persistence in
relationship between men and women. The nature and degree of inequality
varies between countries and social classes. The inequality between women in
different social classes can in fact be greater than that between men and
women. For example, the lives of middle class and elite women in Latin
America are vastly different than those of poor rural and urban women in
terms of status, power, life chances, education, work, health and conditions of
existence. If we are to understand the status of women in development then it
is important to see it in the context of an ‘interweavening of class relations and
gender relations’. (Beneria and sen, 1979, p.288).Another element of our
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 cultural environment (value) must also be taken into account as they furnish
the ideological setting in which inequalities are generated and maintained.
But it is difficult to generalize about gender relations in the developing world
as diversity is much in evidence. Programmes that work in one place might be
failure in another. In addition to this , the historical experience of the west,
including that of the women’s movement, may be a poor guide for current
developmental action.

E. History
Administrators and policy-makers seldom acknowledge history as a component
of their organizational environments, yet it is one of the most significant
factors. John Toye (1987) has argued persuasively that the third world has
acquired a common identity through anti-colonial and anti-imperialist
struggles. While the details of individuals’ cases may vary, all developing
countries have engaged in theses struggles. Even the relatively few developing
nations which were not formal colonies of western powers have been forced to
fight against imperialism and to be vigilant in dealing with it. There is a
collective psychology wrought in the process of anti-colonial struggles which
leaves a deep and lasting imprint on nations. Whatever the specific experience
the outcome is a sense of shared experience, a common history. And in the
post-colonial era it is expressed in the ideology and practice of development.

This notion should not be taken to extremes as historical diversity is also

evident. The legacies of colonial rule are evident today. For example, national
boundaries established by imperial powers often incorporated different ethnic
groups. Such ethnic diversity may become a principal consideration in policy-
making and even in the survival of the state. Economic structures established
under colonialism which focus on export crop production may be difficult to
dismantle in post-colonial times. Imported colonial values concerning gender
relations may become deeply embedded and survive unscathed long after the
colonial power has departed. While at one level there may be a collective
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 identity among developing nations forged out of broadly similar historical
relations with the west, on another level one sees diversity between say the
details of Hispanic colonialism in Latin America and British imperialism in
South Asia. Have left their mark and are addressed either explicitly or, more
likely, implicitly by administrators and policy-makers engaged in the process of
national development.

2.3 Demographic factors

? How do you understand Demographic factor? Can you mention them?

The changing size, composition and location of population are vital information
for policy-makers and administrators. It enables them to know what services
are need, how fast they should grow, where they should be located and what to
expect in the future. These population dynamics place societal demands on the
state and must be monitored by government if informed decisions are to be
made.
Whether the needs and demands are fulfilled will depend on the interaction of
these demographic factors with other cluster of environmental variables. Health
is also included in this demographic grouping. Good health for the population
is a major objective of development and it is vital to have knowledge of disease
patterns and the availability of health services for the attainment of this
objective. Furthermore, an unhealthy population produces at far below the
optimum level and therefore acts as a constraint on development.

A. Population growth

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 Over three-quarters of the world’s population live in developing countries and
the proportion is increasing. This is because population growth rates in the
developing world are significantly higher than in the rich nations. Growing
rates in Europe and North America have never been more than 1.5 per cent;
Japan’s population grew at only 1.2 per cent per year between 1965 and 1990;
even a migrant society like Australia registered only 1.8 per cent population
growth per cent population growth per year over the same period. By contrast
the average annual growth rate of population for both low-income and middle-
income countries in 1965-90 was 2.3 per cent. The growth rate has been much
higher in many places, with African countries often exceeding 3 per cent. Many
Asian countries have registered 2.5 per cent. The explanation of this growth
lies in health improvements which caused death rates to fall while birth rates
remained high. These percentages do not seem high but closer examination
reveals another story.. For example, a growth rate of 2 per cent entails a
doubling of the population in 25 years, which is a single generation (Hull and
Hull, 1992, p.1). The challenge such growth rates pose for administrators and
policy makers are obvious. Each year they must provide more classrooms,
more teachers, more health facilities and more services of all types to simply
maintain current standards. Rapid population growth makes development
more difficult especially in environment of resources scarcity.
Although population growth rates are slowing in the developing world, either
through economic development, as in East and South East Asia, or state
policy, as in china, the growth in numbers of people will actually increase in
the 1990s. This is because of the huge population, between 90 and 100 million
people per year- the equivalent of another Nigeria or Bangladesh each year.

B. Age Structure
While the rich countries devise strategies to deal with ageing populations, the
developing nations are characterized by young populations. In 1991, 35.4 per
cent of the population of all low and middle –income countries were between 0-
14 years of age as compared to 19.3 per cent for the OECD Countries. For most
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 low-income and over half of the lower- middle income countries the figure was
over 40 per cent. Such age structures have resulted from the rapid growth
rates and the growth in absolute numbers which means that larger numbers of
females are entering the reproductive stage each year. Thus, administrators
and policy-makers must deal with a population whose age creates particular
patterns of demand (for example, on education and health) and where family
sizes and dependency ratios differ markedly from the rich nations. There is
income difference within the developing nations themselves, notably china
where strict population policies have resulted in only 27 per cent of its
population being in the in the 0-14 years category in 1991. But one should
remember that even a 1 per cent growth rate for China means the additional
11.5 million people to its population each year.
C. Urbanization and migration
While developing countries have larger rural populations than OECD Countries
one of the remarkable features of the past four decades has been the huge
growth of urban population in the developing world. In 1970, only 18 per cent
of the population in the low-income countries and 46 per cent of the population
in middle income countries resided in urban areas. By 1994, the figure had
raised to 28% for low income countries and 61 per cent for middle income
countries; and it should be remembered that this has taken place in the
context of overall high population growth rates.

In all countries the urban population has been expanding at a more rapid rate
than the rural population due to natural increase and skilled rural in habitants
are those which comprise the bulk of the rural-urban flow. These are
demographic patterns and processes which must be addressed by
administrators and planners although all too often they appear to be
overwhelmed by them. The poor who make up the vast majority of the
developing world’s urban population are still too evident in squatter
settlements and slums throughout the world, living in cramped, insecure and
often unhealthy conditions and displaying low levels of formal employment. The
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 poor have in large part provided for them through the informal economy and
have built their settlement despite the officeholders of the state rather than
with their assistance.

The degree of urbanization varies considerably between developing countries.

Some Latin American countries such as Argentina and Uruguay have over 75
per cent of their populations in urban settlement. By contrast some low-income
countries such as Malawi and Bangladesh have less than 29 per cent of their
population is urban areas. There has been often a tendency for the largest
urban centers to grow most rapidly creating massive population centers, cities
which carry populations far in excess of their infrastructural capacity and in
which environmental problems such as air pollution have become acute. The
world`s largest cities are now in developing countries urban growth, Mexico
City leads the way with a staggering 20 million population.

In addition to the flow of rural populations to metropolitan centers there is a

smaller but significant migration overseas. This flow is mostly comprised of
skilled workers and has focused on OECD countries and oil-rich/labor Middle
Eastern countries. Some of the migration is temporary, for example in the
construction industry, while many may be making permanent moves in search
of better opportunity. For administers and policy-makers this ‘brain drain’
Comprises a loss of highly trained human capital but it may be offset by
remittances of foreign exchange and easing pressure on domestic labour
markets. In 1989, developing countries received about US$25 billion in official
remittance from OECD and Gulf countries, and quite possibly another US$5
billion or more in unofficial remittances.
D. Health
One of the success stories of the development process has been improvement
in health. However, there is still enormous scope for further improvement as
the health status of populations in developing countries lags far behind than
that of the OECD countries. The life expectancy at birth for female and males
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 in low income countries has increased from 50 and 48 years in 1965 to 63
years and 61 years respectively in 1993. Female in middle income countries
now have life expectancies at birth of 71 years as against 60 years in 1965
while for men the 1993 figure in 65 years.

Despite these overall improvements some countries still have appalling health
profile while all have disease patterns and health problems which are both
different and have a higher human toll than those in the OECD countries. A
few examples will demonstrate this. In 1992, 1.2 billion people still remain
without access to portable water; 1.7 billion people have no sanitary means of
disposing of human waste, while water-borne diseases killed more than 3
million children in 1991. Ninety per cent of the world’s blind people live in
developing countries. Most of these blinds could have been prevented by the
right diet, immunization against measles and other low cost preservative health
measures. In Burkina Faso in 1990, there were 57183 persons for every doctor,
and infant morality stood at 134 infant deaths per 1000 live births in 1990. By
contrast, in Malaysia there were 1270 persons for every physician and an
infant mortality rate per 1000.
Some diseases such as malaria are making a comeback. In the 1950s and
1960s, it was thought malaria had been brought under control by the lethal
insecticide DDT and the drug chloroquine. Malaria has outsmarted this
western technology and is spreading. It is now present in over 100 countries
infecting an estimated 267 million people and claiming 2 million lives each year
(Dube, 1992). On the other hand, Challenged lifestyle can introduce new health
problems. The spread of diabetes in certain south pacific island nations
following the westernization of dietary habits is a case in point. New diseases,
such as AIDS, emerged with devastating effect. In India, by the year 2000 it is
estimated that there will be 1 million AIDS cases and 5 million HIV-positive
persons. The health situation is ever –changing and provides yet another series
of considerations and contextual conditions within which and with which
administrators and policy-makers must work.
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 2.4 Political Factors

? What are political factors in the organizations? Can you mention

them?

A message that we keep reiterating is that development administration is an

intensely political affair. Thus, special importance is attached to the cluster of
political factors that we are going to discuss in this section.
Political scientists used to search for explanatory models which could
encompass the entire developing world. Their demise was an acknowledgement
of diversity and ‘that peculiar open-endedness of history that is the despair of
the paradigm-obsessed social scientist’ (Hirschman, 1971, p.356). There was
no ideal-type third world state and no ubiquitous third world political
processes. But equality we should not advocate anarchic exceptionally where
dissimilarity makes conventionalization and the comparative method
redundant. It is still possible to identify regularity in diversity. For example,
states in sub-Saharan Africa may share some (never all) experiences and
features. The histories of East Asian states may also reveal commonalities.
Even then, certain historical patters such as the nature of leadership or the
origins of institutions can transcend such classifications. The items discussed
in this section reveal these paradoxical themes of similarity and diversity.
A. Social class
One of the most fundamental divisions in society is that of social class.
Although there are competing definitions, a social classes are ‘large-scale
groups of people who share common economic resources which strongly
influence the types of life-style they are able to lead’ (Giddens, 1989,
p.209).While there has generally been a weaker development of classes in the
third world as compared to the industrial nations, the class structures of

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 developing nations display far greater diversity and complexity than found in
the first World.
Developing countries have large populations and a variety of class
arrangements which not only distinguish third world from first world but also
differ between countries of the third world and even within countries. The
‘peasant’ is ubiquitous in the literature and is found in different relationships
with landlords, other peasants and landless labourers. There are often upper,
middle and lower peasantries in addition to the landless who have only their
labour to sell. Some peasants own their land, other enter a variety of rental
agreements with landlords- a direct payment, a share of the crop, a set
proportion of the production expenditures. In Latin America there are large
landowners known as latifundistas who control vast armies of landless laborers
either on ‘traditional’ farmers or modern agribusiness estate. Especially in
middle-income economies, rural class structures are often more complex as
rural non-farm employment in marketing, transport, repair and other services.
The level of development may also affect the size and nature of the middle
class. In the rapidly expanding Asian economics there has been substantial
growth and rising affluence among the middle class. In many of the poor
countries it is the meager development of anything resembling a middle class
which is most noticeable. At the upper ends of the class system other
complexities may arise as different fractions of a dominant class complete for
policy supremacy: landed interests, industrial exporters, manufacturers for the
domestic market and technocrats of the state machinery.
The critical political issue relating to social class is whether people belonging
to social classes or fractions of them move beyond a simple awareness of their
similar class position to taking action based on their class interests. This class
consciousness is expresses in class conflict where particular classes or class
fractions pursue political strategies to promote their own interests. Revolution
is the most extreme expression of class action, and while it was regularly
pursued by armed insurgency in earlier decades, its appeal has waned
considerably. Institutions are sometimes interpreted as being established
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 considerably. Institutions are sometimes interpreted as being established to
articulate class interests in the political arena- labour unions for the urban
working class and peasant farmers, business organizations for the bourgeoisie
and consumed groups for the middle class. Political parties may have a class
character and adopt policies which benefit their membership and supporters.
Leaders can mobilize support from particular classes and use it in opposition
to other groups, institutions or classes. Finally, classes may engage in strategic
alliance with other classes in the furtherance of mutual interests.
B. Legitimacy
Concern over regime legitimacy is something which affects developing countries
far more than OECD states. Military juntas, democratically elected parties and
self-appointed presidents-for-life all share an interest in attempting ‘to justify
their holding of power in terms other than those of the mere fact of power-
holding’ (Lewis, 1982, p.125). Policy is one mechanism by which claims to
power can be legitimated.
In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, ‘regime uncertainty has been the norm’,
making the research for ‘workable political arrangements’ a leading issue
(Chazan, 1989, p.325). Multi-party democracies had short lifespan and were
replaced by one-party states, tyrants, military rulers and other authoritarian
variants. But they too were often overthrown as their legitimacy was tenuous.
In the late 1980s, in line with international trends, many African countries,
such as Zambia and Nigeria, began to plan the reintroduction of democratic
rule. Regime type was a leading issue and the arrangements for a transition
were central policy concerns.
C. Policy concerns and capacity
The history of the modern Western state has been one of bureaucratization and
of the encroachment of the state via the policy process into almost all aspects
of everyday life. Rules, regulations, policies and officials determine much of
what is done and the manner in which it is done. Even the recent market
orientations of some western governments the policy coverage of the state is
enormous as are the resources gathered by the state for this purpose. Quite
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 obviously the third world state cannot hope to have the same scale of policy
coverage especially in the area of social welfare. It simply does not have the
same resources at its disposal.
Developing country policy-makers and implementers are frequently hamstrung
by lack of knowledge. Their actions are more likely to be guided by guesswork
rather than systematic analysis. Their environments are necessarily and
undeniably ‘enacted’. The cost of generating information is high and the
logistical difficulties are numerous while the immediate political returns are
minimal. Furthermore, governments and bureaucrats have frequently had a
western or technocratic orientation and have ignored the contributions that
indigenous knowledge can make to the policy process. What farmers know, for
instance, has often been treated as inferior knowledge when in reality it can be
of great use and can be gathered by cheap innovative methods.
Generic labels such as economic policy or agricultural policy apply to all types
of country but conceal major differences and orientations. While the European
Union policy personnel may focus on the level of agricultural price subsidy and
wonder what to do about butter mountains and milk lakes, in the third world
the policy personnel are analyzing how to increase food production and how to
reach the poor tenant farmer with low-cost technologies.

 Activity – 2
1. Can you mention some of economic factors in organizational
environments?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
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2. Mention some of Political and cultural factors in
organizational environment.
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
 Unit summery
Dear distant learners, we expect that you grasp and develop your horizon on
organizational environments. There are topics that lead you to compare and
contrast the different organizations environments.
In the first section of the unit you learn sense of environments. Here we said
organizational environment is a vital element in influencing the nature of
policy, administrative reform or any programme of planned change. In the
second section of the unit we are more focus on elements environment. In this
section we discuss, economic, cultural, and demographic and political factors
of the organization. The last section of the unit we stick on the purpose of
different sectors and its environment in the organization. We are saying that
there are distinctive, diversity, turbulence, opportunities and constraint
elements for sectarian purposes. We also develop the idea that competing
perception and cause and effects are some sectarian elements.

 Check List

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 Direction: Dear students this is the section in which you confirm your understanding of
the lessons in this unit. Put a tick mark () in the yes column for activities that you have clear
understanding and in the no column for activities that you doubt that you have good
understanding.
I Can: Yes No
• Define organizational environment
• Identify elements of the environmet

• Identify different economic factors of the

organization

Review Questions

1. Among the following elements of the organizational environment,

Which one is not related with the other?
A. Domestic Capital C. Structure of Production
B. Informal Sector D. Value and Norms
2. Estimating the money value of all goods and services produced in a
country in a year, plus net factor income from abroad, and divided
By the estimating mid-year production called?
A. Foreign Exchange
B. Domestic capital
C. Cross nation product
D. Foreign aid and debt
E.
3. Which one of the following different from the other?
A. Population growth
B. Elite and classes

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 C. Legitimacy
D. State- Society relation.
4. Which one of the following is necessarily true?
A. All organization exists in and relate to environments that
affect their operations.
B. The organizational environment is a vital element in influencing the
nature of policy, administrative reform or any programme of planned change.
C. The practice and prescriptions of administration in industrial countries
may be particularly prone to failure when transplanted to radically different
developing country contexts.
D. All
5. Among the following, which one is better use policy on the eyes of
the people?
A. As a label for a field of activity.
B. As an expression of purpose or desired state of affairs.
C. As Process
D. All

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 Unit Four
Bureaucracy: Preventing or facilitating development?

Introduction

The growth of bureaucracy has been a leading feature of twentieth century

history. Whether one looks at OECD Countries, former and present communist
countries or the nations of the Third World bureaucratization is ubiquitous. In
developing countries the organizations of the state have high visibility and
assume great importance but interpretations of what they do and how they do
it vary considerably. In many cases the public service is blamed for poor
developmental performance. Bureaucracy is, nevertheless, an essential and
vital important instrument of development. Even the most ardent proponents of
the virtues of the market now admit this. In some instances bureaucracies
have made a considerable contribution to development. Such desirable
outcomes are possible and with appropriate action can become more frequent.

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 In this unit we will briefly examine some of the voluminous literature on
bureaucracy in the developing world, investigate the leading issue and
controversies, and even expose a few myths. We commence with a conceptual
warning about the multiple meanings attaching to the term ‘bureaucracy’ and
then describe the origin of these vast organizations. In the main section of the
chapter we will look at major issues relating to bureaucracy and development.
The unit has three section, the first section deals with the meaning of
bureaucracy. The origin of third world bureaucracies will be dealt in the second
section of the unit. Finally in the third section we will focus on bureaucracy
and development.

Objectives
Dear students, after successful completion of the lesson in this unit, you will
be able to:
 Analyze knowledge on the concept of bureaucracy
 Explain the origin of bureaucracy in the third world countries
 Identify and analyze Different views towards bureaucracy
 Identify and explain bureaucracy and development broadly

Pre test questions

 Do you know what bureaucracy is?
 Can you mention the origin of bureaucracy?
 Could you identify and describe the different type of bureaucracy?
 Would you the role of bureaucracy in development?
 May you mention some functions of bureaucracy?

Section One: Understanding bureaucracy

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Overview
Dear students, in this section you will have a lesson on the meaning of
bureaucracy. enhance your knowledge on the issue we will see the different
perspectives that focus on bureaucracy.

Objectives
After the completion of this section you will be able to;
 Discuss how bureaucracy is defined in different views.
 Compare and contrasts of views on bureaucracy
 Define bureaucracy
 Appreciate the different definition given by scholars
 Compare and Contrast Competing views on bureaucracy

1.1 Meanings of bureaucracy

? Could you define Bureaucracy?

Scholars give different terms for the definitions. Jan-Erik Lane (1987), for
example, identifies ten different usage of the term. We will, however, confine
ourselves to four leading meanings of bureaucracy which are found in popular
sentiments and academic literature on bureaucracy in the developing world.

The bureau or public offices, in some form or other, were always adjuncts of
organized governments all over the world. For instance, in China even in the
period of 186 BC public offices were in existence and persons for those offices
used to be recruited through competitive examinations even then. History is
replete with instances and reasons to show that individuals appointed to
government offices acquire some special characteristics some of which were
even universal.

It was M De Gourney, a French economist who used the word for the first time
during the 18th century. Thus emerged the word 'bureaucracy'. Weber never

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 defined bureaucracy. He described its characteristics. To him bureaucracy is
administrative body of appointed officials. Thus bureaucracy explicitly implied
appointed officials only leaving out the elected ones. He categorized
bureaucracy into

• Patrimonial bureaucracy found in traditional and charismatic types of

authorities

• Legal-rational bureaucracy found only in legal type of authority.

The characteristics of legal-rational bureaucracy popularly known as Weberian

model of bureaucracy are analyzed further. Weber believed that legitimacy was
basic to nearly all systems of authority and legitimacy of authority depends on
the following five important beliefs:

A. That a legal code can be established which can claim obedience from
members of the organization.
B. That law is a system of abstract rules which are applied to specific
cases, and that administration looks after the interest of the
organization within the limits of law.
C. That the individual exercising authority also obeys this impersonal
order.
D. That only qua member does the member obey the law.
E. That obedience falls due not to the person who holds authority but
to the impersonal order which grants him the position.
There are different meanings for bureaucracy. Let see it now
Rule by the bureau
This was the original nineteenth century use of the term that indicates ‘a
system in which ministerial positions was occupied by career officials, usually
answerable to a hereditary monarchy’ (Beetham, 1987, p.3). It should be
contrasted with representative forms of government. In the contemporary third
world, it can be employed to describe military dictatorship, one-party
authoritarian states and neo-patrimonial.

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 Professional administration
This is a sociological approach which looks at bureaucracy as a particular type
or organization. Its principal reference point is the ideal-type bureaucracy
constructed by Max Weber (Gerth and mills, 1948). This is characterized by a
clearly defined division of labour, an impersonal authority structure, a
hierarchy of office, dependence on formal rules, employment based on merit,
the availability of a career and the distinct separation of members`
organizational and personal lives. Such a form of organization represented,
Weber argued, the ‘rationalization of collective activities’ and was ‘capable of
attaining the highest degree of efficiency’. It was increasingly found in the
professionalization of administration in the modernizing societies of the late;
19th century both in the public and private sectors, but Weber’s model is still
widely employed today as a comparative tool by which we can assess the degree
and form of bureaucratization in a society or organization.

Public administration
In this usage bureaucracy is another way of saying public administration.
Private organization because of its location in the state. Beetham (1987, p.3)
identifies some of the characteristics as ‘its compulsory character, its particular
relation to the law (and) the public accountability of its operations’. While
managerialism in many countries has led to attempts to incorporate private
sector management techniques into the public sector, the public
administration view of bureaucracy is still strong both in the popular
imagination and within the organizations of the state. When people say ‘the
bureaucracy ‘, more often than not they mean the public sector.
Negative characteristics
This meaning focuses on popular perceptions of the working of bureaucracy,
and is most often associated with the organizations of the state rather than the
private sector. It encompasses a range of negative assessment of all that is
wrong with these organizations. Crozier provided a concise summary in 1964,
and his observations are still valid today:
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 [Bureaucracy] evokes the slowness, the ponderousness, the routine, the
complication of procedures, and the maladapted responses of ‘bureaucratic’
organizations to the needs which they should satisfy, and the frustrations which
their members, clients, or subjects consequently endure. (Crozier, 1964, p.3)

Bureaucracy thus means different things to different people and sometimes

different things to the same people depending on their situation. The above
meanings are not mutually exclusive but can be used together in analysis
provided the reader is made aware of which meaning is being employed. For
simplicity’s sake and to eliminate western cultural bias embodied in weberian
notions of rationality one could opt for a minimalist definition as advocated by
Brown (1989). Such a definition makes a few assumptions about how
bureaucracies should work but looks at how they actually work. Brow cites
Jacques`s (1976) definition of bureaucracy as a leading example of the
minimalist genre: ‘ a hierarcally stratified managerial employment system in
which people are employed to work for a wage or salary’.

1.2 Weberian Model of Bureaucracy and its criticism

Characteristics of this model are:

The term ‘bureaucracy’ may be traced to the French word ‘bureau’ meaning a
writing table or desk. Although the image of the bureaucrat has been gradually
deteriorating in recent decades, it is interesting to recall that the German
sociologist Max Weber hailed bureaucracy as an administrative organization for
promotion clean, healthy and efficient public administration. Weber gave a ten-
point description of bureaucracy.
1. They are personally free and subject to authority only in respect of
their impersonal official obligations.
2. They are organized in a clearly defined hierarchy of offices.
3. Each office has a clearly defined sphere of competence in a legal
sense.

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 4. The office is filled by a free contractual relationship. Thus, in
principle, there is free selection.
5. Candidates for position are selected on the basis of technical
qualifications. In the most rational case, this is established by
means of an entrance examination or possession of a diploma.
Candidates are appointed to the position and not elected.
6. Officials are remunerated by fixed monthly salaries, most often
with pension right, and such salary scales are graded according to
rank.
7. Official work is treated as the sole, or, at the very least, the
primary occupation of the incumbent of a position.
8. The work constitutes a career, with a system of promotion based
on seniority, or merit or a combination of both, based on the
judgment of superiors.
9. Officials work entirely separated from ownership of the means of
administration and without appropriation of positions.
10. Officials are subject to strict and systematic discipline and control
in the conduct of their offices.

Criticism

The Weberian model of bureaucracy has been attracted criticism mainly on

three points:

1. The concept of rationality in his model;

2. To what extent does Weberian model suit the administrative

requirements of different places and changing times and

3. Whether the model can attain a maximum efficiency as visualized by

Weber?

Robert Merton and other sociologists have questioned the rationality of the
legal rationality model of Weber for it also processes certain dysfunctional
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 consequences. According to Merton, the structure -especially its hierarchy and
rules, which is rational in Weber's sense can easily generate consequences
which is rational in Weber's sense can easily generate consequences which are
unexpected and detrimental to the attainment of objectives of an organization.
In stressing this point Merton is only providing a more sophisticated
vindication of the view that bureaucracy means inefficiency.

Philip Sleznick pointing to the division of functions in an organization, shows

sub-units set up goals of their own which may conflict with the purposes of the
organization as a whole. Merton and Selznick have shown that the formal
specification of organizational structure outlined by Weber is insufficient as a
description of how bureaucrats will in fact behave. Because the officials have
their own characteristics as social beings beyond those which the
administrative code specifies. These criticisms reflect the major insights
achieved during 1930s on the behavioral side of the industrial sociology.

Talcott Parsons questions the internal consistency of Weber's ideal types of

bureaucracy. Parsons draws attention to the fact that Weber expects the
administrative staff to be technically superior as well as possess the right to
give orders. But this itself gives rise to conflicts within bureaucracy since it not
always possible to ensure that high position in hierarchy of authority will be
matched by equivalent professional skill. In such case the individuals working
in an organization will face the problem of whom to obey, the person with the
right to command or the man with greater expertise.

 Activity – 1
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1. What do you understand about bureaucracy?
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
 Section Two: The origin of third world Bureaucracies

Overview
Dear students, in this section you will have a lesson on the origin of the third
world bureaucracy. To develop your scope on the issue, we briefly discuss the
nature of third world bureaucracy and its origins.

Objectives
After the completion of this section you will be able to;
 Discuss how bureaucracy originated in the third world countries.
 Discuss the relation between colonialism and bureaucracy.

2.1 Bureaucracy in the third world countries

? When did the practice of bureaucracy begin third world countries?

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 There are numerous books, movies, television series and other forms of
remembrance devoted to European explorers, conquistadors and pioneers who
discovered and exploited the colonial possessions which now form the third
world. However, one major legacy of European colonialism in the third world
which is of greater significance but seldom if ever celebrated is bureaucracy.
The African example is instructive:
Colonial state created an administrative hierarchy through the concentration of
political and administrative functions in the hands of the colonial civil service.
[The colonizers] went about the task of governance by establishing a
bureaucratic network staffed by officers who had charge of specific duties ( such
as revenue, collection, public order, medicine, education, infrastructural
organization, adjudication, social services, and even in the later colonial period,
development projects). (Chazzan et al., 1988, p.40)
Public Administration undertaken by organizations with bureaucratic features
was, how ever, in evidence in some ancient civilizations of what is now the
third world centuries before Max Weber observed their emergence in Europe.
Heady (1984, 00.150-1) Comments on the ‘impressive’ bureaucracy of the Old
Kingdom Egypt where before 2180 BC complex patterns of delegation,
specialization and institutional longevity were evident. By the time of
Confucius’s death in 478 BC, the Chinese army ‘already had the character of a
disciplined bureaucracy’ while state officials were developing a penchant for
‘Bureaucratic meddling in everything’ (Weber, 1948, p. 421).Other ancient
civilizations such as the Incas and Aztecs in the Americas also developed
complex and effective systems of public administration which carved out and
maintained vast empires.
The ancient bureaucracies were frequently patrimonial displaying only some
of the ideal Weberial characteristics. If one takes the long view of history, then
such characteristics may have survived European colonialism and be in
evidence today albeit in relying on traditional institutions as ‘carriers of order’.
Offices were awarded on the basis of some combination of merit and personal

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 ties. The idea of state officials as an elite caste was universal while
centralization was a common theme in administrative structure.
The post-independence period has normally seen the expansion of late
bureaucracies as new governmental moved beyond the restricted regulatory
focus of colonial administration and took new responsibilities (for example,
foreign affairs) and embarked on ambitious schemes of planned development.
This necessitated the creation of new institutions and the expansion of existing
ones. For example, within a decade of India’s independence the government
had created the central Legal Service and the Central Information Service. Then
came the Indian Economic service and the Indian statistical service
(Maheshwari, 1990). In 1951, there were 1.529 million central government
employees. By 1960, there were 2.025 million and in 1980 there were 3.678
million. The story at state level is similar with figures revealing the numbers of
state functionaries growing from 1.202 million in 1985 to 4.414 million in the
1980s.

 Activity – 2
1. When did bureaucracy begun in the third world countries?
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
2. Can you mention some of the positive and negative aspects of
bureaucracy in third world country?
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________

Section Three: Bureaucracy and development

Overview
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 Dear students, in this section you will have a lesson on the relation between
bureaucracy and development. To develop your scope on the issue, we briefly
discuss determinants of development in bureaucracy

Objectives
After the completion of this section you will be able to;
 Discuss the relation between bureaucracy and development.
 Analyze determinants of development in bureaucracy.

After the attainment of independence, the bureaucracy as the instrument of the

state has been expected to play a curative, positive and creative role in the
processes of economic and social change and undertake a large range of
developmental activities.
Bureaucracy and Political Development
The civil service or public bureaucracy is regarded as a sub-system of the
political system in which it functions. Therefore, the behavior of the
bureaucrats is bound to be shaped by the nature of the political system.
However, in a developing polity, the development bureaucracy has to playa
decisive role in its political development. Before an attempt is made to analyze
the role of bureaucracy in the political development of a developing country, it
is desirable to understand the meaning of political development.
Political development may be defined as improving the political status of the
people. Ensuring political and civil rights, equality of opportunity in the
exercise of political power, and political stability are all essential components of
political development.
Eisenstadt identified political development with economic development as the
economist uses ‘self-sustained’ growth. He argued: “within the political sphere,
the equivalent of such self-sustained growth is the ability to absorb varieties
and changing types of political demands and organizations. his view has two
implications. First, it has close bearing on the political system ‘which
emphasizes authorizes authoritative decisions.’ Second, it is related to ‘an

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 approach which stresses the articulation of many interests’. Fred [Link]
refers to political development as “the process of politicization: increasing
participation or involvement of the citizen in state activities, in power
calculations, and consequences.”
The bureaucracy also plays a very important role in establishing democracy.
The socio-economic goals which developing countries have set as the index of
achievement are, in fact, translated into realities by the bureaucrats. Laws
passed by the legislature are implemented by the civil service which operates
under the general guidance of the executive. To ensure successful working of
democracy, there is a for an efficient and effective civil service which will carry
out the legislation passed by parliament or measures taken by the political
executive. In the words of Edward Shils, “It must be sufficiently detached in its
own political orientations, and sufficient loyal to any constitutional
government, to make the effort to carry out the policy decided by the political
elite, and sufficiently independent to be capable of offering to its political
superior detailed, matter-of-fact assessments of the measures which the
government is proposing. Essential to the success of political democracy,
therefore, is an adequate machinery of authority which implements the policies
of government.
In brief, political development cannot be achieved without sufficient
involvement of the bureaucracy. As S.N. Eisenstadt appropriately remarks. “It
[bureaucracy] plays a part in setting up, determining, and implementing goals
as well as in establishing major policy directives. Modernization of education,
agriculture, transportation and communication, defense, and a score of other
aspects of national importance, largely depends upon the involvement of the
bureaucracy in political development.

3.2. Bureaucracy and Economic Development

Economic development is an important dimension of development. It broadly
means an increase in real income per capita of the population of a country. It is
a means as well as an end for accelerating the development of a country. The
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 emphasis in this definition is on reduction in the level of poverty,
unemployment and income disparity, and on improving the economic status of
the common man. In the light of this definition, what is the role of the
bureaucracy in economic development?
The role that the bureaucracy can play in the process of economic
development is varied and significant. First, it can help to establish conditions
under which economic development can take place. These conditions relate to
legal and constitutional norms, financial implications and law and order
situation. Second, since the bureaucracy plays a significance role in policy-
making, it can shape the resource structure of the country together with its
exploitation as to make it more favorable to economic development. Third, the
bureaucracy can devise variables and dynamic strategies for implementation of
economic development programmes assigned to it. Successful execution of
these programmes depends on the bureaucracy. Fourth, the bureaucracy can
assess and evaluate the result of its efforts, watch their consequences and
ensure evaluation of its mechanism.
Indeed, the Bureaucracy is so essential that it would be a mistake to think of
economic progress without it. Public sector enterprises and their relationships
with government are so structured that senior administrators have had a
considerable say in actual decision-making. Management of these enterprises
has been a big administrative challenge.

3.3 Bureaucracy and Social development

Social development is a broad concept which is quite close to economic
development. In fact, in the societal transformation of a country, both economic
and societal developments have to go hand in hand. Social development has
come to mean bringing about improvement in the societal being of the people.
Social development lays stress on provision of health service, education,
housing, cultural amenities, protection of children, a change in the status of
women, regulation of labor and improved status for workers and reduction in
the levels of disease, poverty and social illness.
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 Contributions that the bureaucracy can make to the process of social change
are significant. First, the acceptance of social goal as enumerated above
required government to create a new social goal as enumerated above required
government to a new social environment for development administration.
Development bureaucracy helps government in programming, planning and
policy-making in the social development area. The bureaucracy is a reliable
apparatus available to government for popularizing its social welfare scheme
and programmes.
In brief it may be stated that the three dimensions of development- political,
economic and social- are interrelated in the context of development
administration. The political context emphasizes the need to raise national
income per capita and social context demands improvement in the well being of
the masses, which is the ultimate goal of development.
3.4 Bureaucracy and Policy-making
Although civil servants are in theory recruited to serve political leaders by
carrying out their decisions, in reality they exercise much more power in the
formulation of public policies than the formal description of their
responsibilities suggests. Presthus shows that the bureaucracy plays a
predominant role in the policy making function in a parliamentary system than
in a presidential system. Among the reasons, he notes, are the relative
importance of backbenchers, the weakness of legislative committees, and the
extra-functional criteria for recruitment of cabinet leaders. In a presidential
system the bureaucracy, according to him, cannot play a dominant role since
its power can be challenged by various legislative committees, and by
experienced members of the legislature.
The role of higher civil servants in policy formation is important because they
are concerned with ends and not merely with means. It is now widely accepted
that the old politics-administration dichotomy was an artificial one and that
higher civil servants exercise a great deal of influence on policy in its formative
stage through active campaigning, selective interpretation of data and through
their own programmes, designs and strategies. Often they are able to change,
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 rearrange and modify the intent of legislative enactments. They are
“responsible for formulating or advising in the formulation of policies,
organizing and managing the resources necessary to carry out theses policies.
They mainly perform two types of function: rendering technical advice to the
political leaders on policy issues and implementing policies.

065 6 9 Factor affecting development Bureaucracy

Overview
Dear students, in this section you will have a lesson on factors that affect the
implementation of bureaucracy in administration. To develop your scope on the
issue, we briefly discuss determinants of bureaucracy

Objectives
After the completion of this section you will be able to;
 Discuss the determinants of bureaucracy in the role of developmen.
 Analyze determinants of development in bureaucracy.

4.1 Capacity

? How the Capacity of bureaucracy does affect its role in

development?
In the ideal Weberian model, bureaucracy is an efficient instrument of policy
implementation. But in many developing countries the practice of
implementation has been disappointing. The leading explanation for this state
of affair has been poor administrative capacity.
Administrative capacity is a broad concept which refers to the managerial
abilities of organizations- whether they are equipped to do what they are
supposed to do: Hence

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 Capacity in government is the process of identifying and developing the
management skills necessary to address policy problems; attracting, absorbing
and managing financial, human and information resources; and operating
programs effectively; including evaluating program outcomes to guide future
activities. (Umeh, 1992, p.58)
There are frequent report of inadequate management skills and qualifications.
At 1984 survey in Papua New Guinea estimated 40 per cent of public servats
lacked the appropriate qualifications for their positions (Turner, 1991). Regular
suspensions of provincial governments for financial irregularities in the same
country may be less to do with corruption than with a shortage of the whole
range of accounting and financial management skills. In assessing programmes
for providing service to the urban poor, Cheema (1986, P. 12) has note that in
some Third World cities the availability of professionals for such public service
work has not kept pace with demand. In rapidly expanding economies such as
Thailand there may be acute shortage in some professional areas of the public
service ( for example, engineering, computer systems management) as the
private sector provides superior terms and conditions of employment to the
holders of such skills.
But skill shortage may not simply be a matter of supply failing to keep pace
with demand. In Latin America, attempts to introduce merit reforms into the
personnel practices of public services over three decades have met with
considerable difficulties (Ruffing –Hilliard, 1991). Political responsiveness has
often been maintained against professional competence and a spoils system
has frequently been able to hold out against a merit system despite
administrative reforms. Qualified personnel may exist but this does not
necessarily mean that they will be the ones employed.
The human resource profile is only one aspect of capacity. The nature of
administrative structures and procedures provides another focus. The concern
has been with the dysfunctions of development bureaucracies. Criticism has
targeted red-tape, poor communication, centralization of decision-making,
delays in operation, and distance of public servants from their clients. It is
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 argued that the bureaucratic structures generate dysfunctional which
adversely affect efficiency and effectiveness. Far from being responsive
organizations which react flexibly to the turbulent environments which they are
set, bureaucracies, in this conceptualization, are seen to be rigid and suffering
from a bad case of goal displacement. The operating goals of these
organizations are about system maintenance not developmental outcomes.
Thus, Umeh (1992) found that in Southern Africa the least reported
management skills were ‘adaptation’ and ‘community relations’. Such
shortcomings mean that bureaucracies are not well equipped to implemented
change. In fact, they display a close affinity to the regulatory orientation of
their colonial forebears- and they may not even efficient at that.
So far we have looked at administrative capacity from an intra-organizational
perspective. But inter-organizational links are also important: For instance,
A local project staff is related to regional coordinating bodies, a national
planning bureau to international donor agencies, and a private voluntary agency
in a poor country to its funding ministry. (Van Ufford, 1988, p.13)
A Vital management skill for development concerns shaping the relationship
between organizations. Any bureaucracy’s environment is increasingly
populated with other organizations. Agreements need to be forged with such
organizations, coordination arranged, resources distributed, action jointly
planned and, more recently, performance jointly assessed. Such activities have
frequently been neglected by bureaucracies which are intent on maintaining
their traditional areas of functional responsibility rather than sharing an
orientation to outcomes and efficient patterns or resources utilization. The
neglect can lead to the obvious gap which so often emerges between policy
intention and implementation outcome.

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 4.2 Culture

? How cultures determine development of bureaucracy in the organization?

The administrative capacity frame tends to portray development bureaucracies

in terms of ‘instrumental rationality’. They are tools which can be designed to
perform particular tasks but which currently have some components missing.
In some hands a rather narrow view is taken in which the effects of the
environment on the organization is underestimated or ignored. But for those
writers who focus on culture the reverse is true. They look at the way in which
a nation’s culture (that is, non- bureaucratic elements from the environment).
Penetrates the ‘rational instrumentalities’ to create deviant bureaucratic
patters.
Explanations of bureaucratic behaviour in terms of culture date back to the
seminal work of Fred Riggs ( For example, 1964 and 1966) while Hyden (1983),
writing on Africa, has been a particularly influential recent exponent. He has
identified an ‘economy of affection’ penetrating state organizations. He is
referring to such particularistic relationships as kinship, tribe, ethnicity and
religion. Officials` commitment to these non-bureaucratic structure. The
economy of affection finds expression in favoritism, the importance of personal
ties of patronage within bureaucracy, promotion based on who you are and not
qualifications or experience, resource allocation to one’s own group or region,
and the appropriation of public resources for private purposes. Such behavior
takes place in the context of the soft state ( Myrdal, 1968) or the weak state
(Migdal, 1988) where state and society are engaged in conflict over who will

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 make and impose the rule which actually govern the routines of everyday life-
and strong societies often win over weak states.
Culture is generally portrayed as a problem of management although such an
approach has been strongly criticized as a ‘form of ethnic stereotyping that
moves blame for failure off the shoulders of donors and reformers and onto the
backs of Third World people’ (Hanadle and Rosengard, 1983, p.5). The ‘culture
as problem’ view sometimes carries an echo from scientific management with
the implicit assumption of a universal technical rationality which characterizes
the efficient and effective organization. I practice there may be multiple
rationalities which differ between nations. For example, Bjur and Zomorrodian
(1986) advocate a ‘context-based’ approach to administration in which cultural
values influence the success or failure of administrative techniques. There can
be no doubt that the bureaucracies of East Asia, particularly Japan, are
heavily influenced by endogenous cultural factors. In terms of development
performance, such factors. In terms of development performance, such factors
must be interpreted as strengths rather than as problems.

4.3 Power, politics and Authority

? What are the relations between bureaucracy, power and its related concept
for development?

There has been a tendency to view bureaucracies as technical instruments of

administration. In such a model, inefficiency and ineffectiveness are organized
but are ascribed to rational capacity problems such as lack of skilled human
resources or to the existence of irrational elements grouped under the residual
category of culture. But such a picture is incomplete. We believe that a useful
addition is to perceive bureaucracies in a political context – as political systems
in which coalitions form to pursue particular policy options and where there
are relations to wider political structures within society.

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 Anybody who works in a bureaucracy must be aware that personnel in their
organization are engaged in multiple political interactions. Some are highly
visible such as lobbying by one division for a particular approach on a policy
issue or for a larger share of budget. There may be difference of opinion within
a ministry and major stakeholders will seek to form a dominant coalition to
determine what the official ministry line might be. Some expressions of power
are less visible. For example, experts within a ministry may recommend
particular policy options and exclude others, thus determining what actually
comes onto the decision-making agenda has been described as non—decision-
making, an apparent non-action which in fact may be just as effective as overt
bargaining.

Regime- Bureaucracy interaction

Power Distribution Power Distribution in

In the society Government
Executive ascendant Executive sublated
Democracy Democratic political regime Bureaucracy
Controls Bureaucracy dominates Democratic
Political regime

Authoritarianism Bureaucratic Authoritarian political

Subordination to regime shares
Authoritarian Political power with
Regime Shares Power bureaucracy

Source: Modified from Carino, L.V (1992) Bureaucracy for Democracy (Quezon
City: University of the Philippines Press).

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 But the critical political concern is the interaction of political leadership and
the public service. This is of great importance in developing countries where
regimes and governments often change more rapidly than in OECD countries
and are always more concerned with demonstrating legitimacy or simply
maintaining a hold on office. Ledivian Carino (1991 and 1992) has facilitated
our understanding of this matter by constructing a matrix of possible regime-
bureaucracy interactions.
Carino stresses that there are tensions and struggles in the regime-
bureaucracy nexus. Regimes try to dominate bureaucracies. Bureaucracies
fight back. Sometimes bureaucracy persist largely unchanged through differing
political regimes while in other cases new political leadership may obtain
bureaucracy commitment to change especially if other civil institutions and
social forces are involved in such a movement. This is an arena of ‘public
action’.

4.4 Bureaucratic bias

? What do we mean by Bureaucratic bias?
Development bureaucracies are biased against the rural poor argues Robert
Chambers (1983). These huge groups which are most in need of development
receive the attention of ‘rural development tourists’ from government
ministries, aid agencies, academic researchers, civic delegations and other
urban-based groups with an interest or stake in rural development. Chambers
has identified six manifestations of bias against the rural poor by the ‘rural
development tourists’
Chambers (1992) has continued his bureaucratic critique in the notion of ‘the
self-deceiving state’. He uses India to illustrate his thesis and, while giving
maintains that developmental progress for the poor is held back by a
combination of culture, conservatism and corruption in bureaucracy. He
claims that the state misrepresents the reality of what is actually happening in
rural areas and because of such self-deception continue to apply inappropriate

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 models of rural development. The ‘false positive feedback’ which fuels the self-
deception occurs through misreporting especially in the exaggeration of
government performance; selected perception using unrepresentative sources
of information; methods such as the questionnaires survey which mislead,
diplomatic prudence by the researcher, monitors and evaluators, and evidence
is simply ignored.
The important constructive task, says Chambers, is to get the development
professionals and administrators in closer touch with reality.

Rural Poverty unobserved: the six biases

• Special biases
A preference for tarmac roads and travel close to urban centers where
the more favored rural population live. Even in villages the poorer people
may be hidden from the main streets.
• Project bias
Visitors are directed to see projects which are ‘typical islands.
• Person biases
These are the persons with whom the officials, visitors and researchers
have most contact and by doing so acquire impressions and information
which is biased against the poor. They include local elite rather than
representatives from the poorer social classes; men rather than women;
the users of services and the adopters of innovations rather than non-
users and no-adopters and those who are active such as fit and happy
children rather than the sick or inactive.
• Dry season bias
Many of the world’s rural poor live in climatic regimes marked by
distinct wet and dry seasons. Rural visits by the urban-based
concentrated in the dry season when socioeconomic conditions are
relatively good rather than in the wet season when roads are difficult to

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 negotiate and rural welfare is at its worst.
• Diplomatic biases
Urban visitors deterred by combination of politeness and timidity from
approaching, meeting and listening to and learning from the poorer
people.
• Professional biases
Professional specializations make it hard for visitors and practitioners to
understand the web of deprivation linkages which cause and constitute
rural poverty.

Source: Adapted from Robert Chambers (19830 Rural Development:

Putting
the Last First (Longman: Burnt Mill).

4.5 Gender and bureaucracy

? What is the relation between gender and bureaucracy?
In 1981, the UN Assistance Secretary stated that women would not make a full
contribution to development ‘until there were more women involved in the
planning process, in the administration at all levels, and in all sectors’ (Col,
1991, p.711). This would increase women’s participation in decision-making in
public bureaucracies leading to ‘increasing in overall productivity, it increases
public sector responsiveness to women’s needs, and to provide opportunities
for women’s advancement’.
Women often make up a significant and increasing proportion f the staff of
public sector bureaucracies. However, there are still major impediments to
women’s advancement in many public services. They are frequently
concentrated in the lower bureaucratic ranks. For example, in Indonesia
women constitute only 0.1 per cent of the top ‘echelon’ of the public service,
while according to the official Islamic authorities in Iran ‘a woman’s
participation in social activities does not necessitate her continuous and

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 physical daily presence at the office’ ( BRIVAS, 1992, p.73). It was in 1988 that
Kenya appointed its first woman permanent secretary, whilst in China, despite
growing female participation at high levels, there were still only 6 per cent of
cadres at the ministerial and director levels in 1990 who were women (Peiqing,
1992).
In order to enter and then progress through the pipeline women must
negotiate the restrictions that dimensions will vary quite widely between
countries. For example, in the Philippines women have made remarkable
advancement in public bureaucracies (Domingo-Tapales, 1992). Women
dominate the ‘professional/technical level’ (59 per cent) although the
incorporation of the female-dominated teaching profession into this category
should be acknowledged.
But even if women do again increasing representation in public bureaucracies
does this necessarily mean than women’s issue and perspectives are awarded
greater prominence? Even in the Philippines, Domingo- Tapales (1992, p.5)
notes that the female bureaucrats do not have feminist orientations and ‘do not
look at public policy in terms of both class and gender’. This gives some
support to Goetz’s argument that:
Public administration is in itself a gendered and gendering process, such that the
outcomes, internal organization and culture reflect and promote the interests of
men. (Goetz, 1992, p.6)
In this conceptualization, bureaucracy is not the Weberian domain of rational
value-free activities. Men have shaped bureaucracies- their decision on the
granting of an import license; ‘tips’ after a decision has been made on the
allocation of land; the use of public resources such as labour, vehicles, travel
and accommodation for personal consumption; providing unqualified family,
friends and co-ethics with public sectors jobs; selling state property such as
construction materials or weapons and pocketing the income, payment of
salaries of ‘ghost’ staff into one’s own bank account; or hiring a middleman to
‘grease’ appropriate personnel to speed up the issuance of a passport. The
detail of what is seen as polite and culturally necessary gift-giving in one place
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 may be deemed as unfair attempts to win favour in another. But culture it self
can be manipulated and mobilized by the corrupt to legitimate their corrupt
practices; for example, by labeling them as ‘traditional’.

 Activity – 3
1. What is the relation between bureaucracy and development?
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
2. Can you some of the relation between bureaucracy and power related
concepts?
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________

Unit summery
Bureaucracy is ubiquitous in developing countries. It is important and will
remain so. We commenced our excursion into Third World bureaucracy by
examining the concept of bureaucracy and discovering that there is several
meaning for the term. We have mainly employed the idea of bureaucracy as the
public service, the most common identification in developing countries.
However, this has not prevented us-nor should it stop you-from using other
definitions such as particular organizational features to assist in analysis. We
have also traced the evolution of developing country bureaucracies and
emphasized their important colonial heritage and variations which exist
between countries and regions. Contemporary bureaucratic structure and
practice cannot be understood without Knowledge of history. This observation

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 is also important for our discussion of leading issues in development
bureaucracies.
Our list of issues is far from exhaustive but the items discussed appear to be
those which assume importance in developing country discourses and in the
thinking of international agencies concerned with the development process. In
presenting these issues we have indicated that all is not well with the
bureaucracies in developing countries. They should be providing better
performance for their clients, especially the poor and powerless. Remedial
actions are required.

 Check List
Direction: Dear students this is the section in which you confirm your understanding of
the lessons in this unit. Put a tick mark () in the yes column for activities that you have clear
understanding and in the no column for activities that you doubt that you have good
understanding.
I Can: Yes No
• Define bureaucracy
• Identify Bureaucracy and developmet

• Identify different aspects of bureaucracy

• Identify the relation between bureaucracy and

Power and its related concepts

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 Review Question
1. Which one of the following better describes the meaning of bureaucracy?
A. Bureaucracy is a rule by the bureau.
B. Bureaucracy is professional administration.
C. Bureaucracy is Public administration
D. All.
2. Choose the correct statements among the following?
A. Colonial states all created an administrative hierarchy through the
Concentration of Political and administrative functions in the hands of
colonial civil services.
B. The ancient bureaucracies were frequently patrimonial displaying only
some of the ideal weberian Characteristics.
C. One major legacy of European colonialism in the third world which is
greater influence but seldom if ever celebrated is bureaucracy.
D. All
3. Which one of the following not true regarding the concept of administrative
capacity?
A. Administrative Capacity refers to managerial abilities of organizations.
B. Administrative Capacity in government is the process of identifying and
developing the management skills necessarily to address policy problems, attracting,
absorbing and managing financial, human and information resources.
C. The human resource profile is only one aspect of Administrative Capacity.
D. None
5. Which one of the following are the Characteristics of democratic society with
Executive sub late Government?
A. Democratic Political regime Controls bureaucracy.
B. Bureaucracy dominates democratic Political regime
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 C. Bureaucratic subordination to authoritarian political regime.
D. Authoritarian political regimes shares power with bureaucracy.
6. Among the following, which one is the best characteristics authoritarians
power with executive ascendant?
A. Authoritarian political regime shares power bureaucracy.
B. Bureaucratic subordination to authoritarian political regime.
C. Democratic political regime controls bureaucracy.
D. Bureaucracy dominates democratic political regime.

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 Unit Four
Development Administration and Management

Unit Introduction
This unit defines and clarifies the concepts and describes the different types of
participatory organizations. It also discusses the benefits, axioms of
participation, obstacles that hinder popular participation and the mechanisms
of empowering the poor.

Unit Objectives

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 At the end of this unit you will be able to:
 Define concepts like development. people-centered development, and
participatory development etc;
 Explain the features of people-centered development;
 Describe rural and participatory organizations;
 Analyze the benefits of participation;
 Discuss different axioms of participation.

Pre test questions

• What do we mean by participation?
• What is participatory development?
• What people-centered development?
• Can you mention some of the constraints on participation?

Section One: Participation and Managerial

Approaches to Development

Section Overview
This section is devoted to define some related concepts like participation, participatory
development, and people-centered development. The detailed discussion and analysis
of the benefits of participation, problems faced by the public for meaningful
participation and some unique features of people centered development will be part of
the discussion

Section Objectives
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 Upon completion of this section, you are able to:
 Define the concept of participation, participatory development and
people-centered development;
 Discuss the benefits of participation;
 Identify the constraints that hinder participation;
 Explain the features of people-centered development.

[Link] and Approaches to decision making

? Could you define the concept of participation?

According to United Nations Research Institute for Social Development
(UNRISD), participation is a process that involves organized efforts to increase
control over resources and regulative institutions in given social situations, on
the part of groups and movements of those hitherto excluded from such
control. The poor have not participated in sharing in the benefits from the
massive development efforts of the past decades, neither in proportion to their
numbers nor their needs.

Participation by the people in the institutions and systems which govern their
lives is a basic human right and also essential for realignment of political
power in favor of disadvantaged groups and for social and economic
development. The World Bank defined participation as “ a process through
which stakeholders influence and have control over development initiatives,
decisions, and resources which affect them.” According to the Bank, there are
two forms of participation: ‘low intensity’ forms of participation (information-
sharing, consultation) and ‘higher intensity’ forms of participation (i.e.
empowering mechanisms for joint decision-making, and control by
beneficiaries over initiatives).

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 Participation is an essential part of human growth. It is important for the
development of self-confidence, pride, initiative, creativity, responsibility, and
cooperation. Without such a development within the people themselves all
efforts to alleviate their poverty will be more difficult, if not impossible. This
process, whereby people learn to take charge of their own lives and solve their
own problems, is the essence of development. Participatory development
emphasizes the partnership between the public and private sector, with non-
government and private voluntary organizations playing a much greater role in
stimulating and implementing development projects.

? What does participation imply?

Participation includes:-
1) Facilitating the release and development of local capacities and resources;
2) Partnership between development agencies and people;
3) Learning from mistakes;
4) People’s empowerment;
5) Supporting local communities to take rational decisions in the context of
their own environment and field of experience.
The nature and content of the concept of participation can not be reduced to a
single description or definition. The concept may, however, be discussed
referring to the following aspects:-
a) Participation implies involvement;
b) Communication must be established;
c) a new attitude on the part of government officials is required;
d) Participation must lead to reciprocal influence between developments
agencies and people.

a) Participation and involvement

? Can you discuss the similarities and differences among participation,

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 involvement, communication, and reciprocal influence?

Participation implies “to share in”, while involvement implies that there is a
feeling of belonging and that people become involved on the basis of this
feeling. In development, such a feeling of belonging follows when people can
identify with development efforts. They, therefore, feel that they “belong” to
various projects or programs. To be involved with and belong to development
programs means that participation is not enforced.

It may be argued that development can only take place with the preparedness
of the local people and their desire to “posses” the development plans and to be
permitted to make their own physical and economic inputs in implementing the
plans.
To be involved means that they are able to influence the organization and
structures whereby development takes place. The local people can be either
allies or else they can use their collective strength to resistance.

b) Participation and Communication

Participation is an important way to counteract the isolation of people. If
participation is put into effect, communication is created and a situation is
achieved in which the local communities are in a position to identify and
analyze development problems for themselves. As they have a superior
knowledge of local problems, they should be involved in all the typical phases
of development projects and programs.

c) Participation and Reciprocal influence

People’s participation may to a certain extent be regarded as a political process,

since their participation could be both technical and political. Participation,
therefore, is not a passive participation in good will, but an active influencing of
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 the behavior and output of development agencies. This implies willingness on
behalf of the people to adapt, share experience, and learn from mistakes and
past experiences.

4.1.2. Top-down and bottom-up decision-making

Interaction between centers, field administration, other development agencies
and local populations take place according to a particular pattern in which the
decision making system is a key element. This is also true when needs are
determined, during planning and implantation of development strategies and
plans, and even in day-to-day development activities. Thus, different kinds of
decision-making systems are found. A particular kind of decision-making
system will be used according to the needs of the development strategy applied,
and this emphasis will determined the character of the system as whole. What
are commonly referred to as bottom-up and top-down approaches are
essentially descriptions of the way in which decisions are made.
The kind of decision-making system that applies goes hand in hand with the
kind of planning that is done. For example, blueprint (top-down) planning is
inconsistent with bottom-up decision-making system. One can therefore say
that the planning and the decision-making systems must be mutually
supportive. In this way, blueprint planning forexample, will be the natural
result of top-down decision-making and will also help to strengthen it.
To down decision-making is highly centralized and requires coordination especially at
the central level, while bottom-up decision-making, partnership action, and the
learning process approach are highly decentralized and require coordination at all
levels.

A. Top-down Decision-Making
Top-down decision-making is characteristic of (a) a highly centralized system,
and (b) a development strategy proceeding from the view that the lack of capital
and the lack of manpower are the main obstacles to development. Planning,
financing, and professionalism are seen the solution to these ills.

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 In the Third World countries the government remains the single most
important source of expertise and finance for development, and communities
and interest groups remain dependent on the government for variety of inputs
and services. These circumstances almost inevitably produce a strong, all
encompassing bureaucracy and top-down decision making and control.
B. Bottom-up Decision-making
Bottom-up decision making is mainly concerned with promoting local participation.
However, people do not cooperate unless they have a good reason for doing so. The
specialist’s role should be changed from that of some one who tells people what to do,
to that of some one who acts as a facilitator by cooperating with people, analyzing
problems and working out solutions. Bottom-up decision-making is associated with
people-centered development which, at the same time, does not entail a disregard for
production or economic considerations. It still strives for better production
Bottom-up decision-making actually can not exist with out top-down decision making
because on its own it would be slow and ill informed, and it would probably not take
account of the wider regional and national interests. In practice, a balance must be
struck between bottom-up and to-down decision-making.

4.1.3. Participatory Development and Public Administration

[Link]. Participatory Development

? What do we mean by participatory development?

Popular participation in the development process first appeared in more
developed societies. Its emergence coincided with the growth in education, the
rise of democratic institutions, and the speed of communications. The opening
sentence of an important study focused on political dimensions of the
participation process in developing countries reads: ‘Broadening political
participation is a hallmark of political modernization.’ Evidence, longitudinal as
well as cross-national, in support of this proposition is abundant.’ Traditional
society,’ wrote Daniel Lerner quarter of a century ago ‘is non participant…
Modern society is participant. It is a well established fact that in developed
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 countries more people become involved in decision-making through citizen
action groups and many other ways than is the case in countries which are
less developed. On the other hand, government in traditional societies tends to
remain the concern of a small elite group.

However, the present day Third World scene does not seem to be conforming to
this pattern. In fact, the entire process of development in the Third World is
now perceived as dependent on participation. Poona Wignaraja emphatically
states that ‘It is a pretence to think that the crisis the Third World is facing can
be overcome and that the reshaping of its societies and the development of its
rural areas can be undertaken without the participation of the people,
particularly the large numbers who are poor
There is growing consensuses that people every where have a basic human
right to take part in decisions that affect their lives. Consequently,
participation in Third World countries is being promoted by the United Nations
agencies and the governments themselves.

China, Tanzania and Guyana are among the developing countries where
participation has proceeded quite far. This experience suggests-and encourages
the hope-that participation is possible even in societies that are not yet part of
the developed world. Following the success of these efforts, participation in
some form or the other is being included as an important element in
development strategies of most Third World countries.

[Link]. People-Centred Development

? Dear Learner! What is people-centered development mean?

People usually did not count for much in the past. Consequently, the planning
methods is vogue and were unambiguously top-down: Central Government
agencies decided on projects which in their view were best suited for people

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 living in far-off villages, and notified the community concerned later only in
case manual labour was needed to carry out the project work. It is little wonder
that such development efforts failed to inspire and empower the poor, and
extend the intended benefits to them.

Planners are now beginning to perceive their task differently. ‘Putting people
first’ in development projects has emerged as a major concern of planners in
recent years. There is a growing awareness of the fact that people cannot be
ignored any more if their development is what the plans aim to promote. On
the goals of development, the consensus which is emerging favours for the
people a central place in the whole scheme of things. Statements such as the
one which Cocoyoc participants adopted are readily evoking acceptance almost
universally. ‘The goal of development should be not to develop things, but to
develop man’ beautifully sums up what planners now think should be the real
aim of development.

In the changed situation, the development task cannot be carried on as before:

it acquires a new orientation. Several factors have conspired to generate the
current concern with the participation of target groups in their own
development. Rogers et al. list three main reasons for this change in
development thinking:

First, and foremost, there is a growing awareness among many developing

nations that their greatest resource in the development process is their own
people. A second reason is the increasing realisation by those responsible for
the varied government delivery systems-agricultural extension, health and
family planning field workers, among others-that the ready consumption of
delivered entities is dependent upon actual demand. Third, centralized
patterns of development decision-making have generally been unable to
accommodate local socio-cultural variations or to mobilize needed local
resources.
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 People-Centered Development shifts the emphasis in development action to
people, rather than to objects and production, and to the enhancement of their
capacity to participate in the development process.
People and their environment are primary considerations in people-centered
development action, but production objectives are not thrown overboard. It
accepts that people in less developed areas are vulnerable because they have
not had the opportunity to achieve the capacities required by industrialized
and commercialized societies.
It is characteristic in people –centered development that the bureaucracy
moves from resource management and service delivery to capacity building and
support. The creative initiative of people is regarded as a primary development
resource and the mental and material welfare of people is seen as the final
objective of development. Attempts by the poor to address their own needs are
therefore encouraged. People –centered development is, therefore, characterized
by:-
1) The optimal use of human resources;
2) The conservation of environmental and natural resources;
3) Small-scale production units that would benefit the individual;
4) The spread of ownership of productive assets;
5) Acceptance of the responsibility for the social support of those members of
society who may need it;
6) Acceptance of mental and physical welfare as an indicator of success;
7) Establishing an adaptive and responsive administration within which both
officials and participating groups may learn and adapt;
8) Taking human and individual values into consideration in the decision-
making process;
9) Integrated rather than fragmented development practices.
[Link]. The need for Participation

? Dear Learner! Could you mention some advantages of participation?

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 Even more than the people affected, it is the development planners who now
favour participation. They want people to participate not only in sharing the
fruits of development, but also in contributing to the process of development at
every stage from planning to evaluation through implementation and
monitoring. Experience suggests that development plans have a greater chance
of success with the involvement of target groups. On the contrary, planners are
quite certain in their minds that without the cooperation of the people, there is
very likelihood of projects not proceeding along their planned course. The
reasons why planners seek participation are thus purely of a practical kind,
and they have made no secret of their real intentions, In the context of a
pioneering World Bank participatory programme (PIDER) in Mexico, Michael M
Cernea recently noted that ‘Participation of beneficiaries was the only avenue to
pursue-not for just political or ideological reasons, but primarily for more
efficiency and the reasons, of an economic and technical nature.

What specific advantages do planners see in the participatory approach to

development? First, many development projects will just not get off the ground
if people do not come forward. The canal irrigation system is one such example.
If farmers do not cooperate among themselves, and with the project staff, there
is no way to make irrigation schemes functional. Again, plans to increase
agricultural production will not be effective if farmers are unwilling to use new
agricultural technology and other inputs which the government extension
agencies propagate. How critical participation is to agricultural production will
be clear from the following observation, ‘In many South-East Asian countries,
an increase of 1 million tons in rice production requires the active participation
of about 2 million farming families. Hence, attention to their problems is vital
for success in increasing production.

Second, participation at the planning stage provides planners with information

which is otherwise hard to come by. People in rural areas may be illiterate and
ill-equipped to draw up blueprints for development, but they surely know (and
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 often far more than the outside experts) what their real needs are, and also
what should be done to meet those needs. Often farmers’ perspective ‘sees’
aspects of the situation which experts from outside are apt to overlook.
However, there is a tendency to treat their knowledge of local things as of no
avail. “Those with formal education and training believe that their knowledge
and skills are superior and that uneducated and untrained people must, by
definition, be ignorant and unskilled.

Third, people accept change more willingly if they are involved in programmes
designed to produce change in their lifestyle. A World Bank paper highlights
this point, ‘Community participation in the selection, design, construction and
implementation of rural development programmes has often been the first step
in the acceptance of change leading to the adoption of new techniques of
production. Promoted without a proper understanding of socio-cultural aspects
of rural life, many projects in the past have produced results just the opposite
of what was intended.

It is not uncommon that facilities and services are created and offered to the
people, who then fail to use them satisfactorily. Many drinking water supply
schemes have been set up, but the women, the traditional water-carriers, do
not use the costly pumps installed by the programme agency. Rural housing is
often built which people refuse to live in… This happens when decision making
processes exclude the participation of those affected…

Participative decision-making produces better ‘fit’ between what people want

and what the development agencies offer, and is thus more effective in
accomplishing the project goals.

Fourth, studies have brought forth data which clearly suggest that
participation reduces cost by mobilizing unused labour and other local
resources. Sylviane Fresson has documented the experience of a participatory
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 scheme in small irrigation from Senegal. This contradicts the opinion which
regards development schemes based on participation of the local people as
uneconomic, although politically necessary, and at best only marginal in their
impact on development. A major contribution of this study lies in
demonstrating that participation resulted in lower capital cost outlays than in
usual irrigation schemes and succeeded in achieving both larger and more
equitably distributed increases in agricultural incomes for people in the Matam
region of Senegal. Cost considerations thus further contribute to the
acceptability of participation.

Fifth, the involvement of people is known to have led to timely completion of

many projects. Once people accept the project as their own and willingly come
forward to implement it they naturally become concerned to see that their
labour starts bearing fruit as early as possible.

Sixth, a related advantage is that once the project is ready people willingly
come forward to ensure that it operates efficiently and delivers the intended
services. On the other hand, projects which are set up by external agencies
without involving local participation do not inspire the people. Regardless of
their technical soundness, such projects are looked on as mere intrusions from
outside. As there is no commitment of the local population, problems quickly
arise even about their normal maintenance and operation.

Seventh, the monitoring job which requires presence on the spot can be
performed in a more effective manner by involving the local people. In fact, a
view which is increasingly gaining ground is that the best monitoring system is
one in which beneficiaries do some checking themselves. Since nobody can be
more interested than the concerned people in seeing that projects are executed
on time, use quality components etc… their involvement is easily the most
efficient way to curb the waste.

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 Lastly, people learn how to promote their development by actually participating
in the processes of planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Thus
participation is and educative process. It contributes to human resource
development. Participation instils in the people a new confidence in their ability
to mould their present as well as future through self-help efforts. One observer
recently noted: ‘The main justifying function of participation is development of
man’s essential powers-inducing human dignity and respect and making men
responsible for developing their powers of deliberate action. It is important that
people develop a spirit of self-reliance.’

External agencies can aid the development process only up to a point.

Eventually it is the people themselves who have to shoulder responsibility for
their development. The process must become part of the community ethos.
Such gains cannot be measured in purely mathematical terms, but for this
reason the advantages from participation cannot be dismissed as negligible.
The intangible advantages are quite substantial.

Summing up, Rogers et al. list the following as among the specific benefits
which accrue from involving people in their development.

1. Villagers and the urban poor can be sources of useful ideas, such as those
from indigenous technical knowledge.
[Link] can help tailor technical ideas imported from the out-side, so that these
innovations are more workable under local conditions.
3. The users can act as experimenters and educators by testing new
technologies or organisational arrangements.
[Link] can also participate in decisions as to what development activities are
conducted, so that their needs are more closely reflected in development
programmes and commitment to implementation is reinforced.

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 Micheal M Cernea quotes the following to support his conclusion that the total
development impact of enormous investments can simply be lost if there is no
sufficient farmer participation:

The World Bank participatory program experience shows that without active
participation of beneficiaries, projects in the communities do not achieve
planned objectives and targets and, in the best of cases operate poorly. In
addition to being a waste of available resources such poor results cause the
communities to become discouraged and to lose interest and confidence in the
efforts of government agencies to benefit them. Community passivity also
compromises the objectives of World Bank in empowering the poor if
beneficiaries are not involved in projects, the programme will do no more than
build works and will make no contribution to promoting the self-sustaining
development required to ensure that community members attain a more decent
standard of living.

[Link]. Participation: What it is and what it is not

Not everybody is agreed on what participation means. The fact is that

participation has come to mean different things to different people. A Philippine
study identifies six modes of participation:

The first mode involved only the educated and moneyed people in the
community without the participation of the ‘grassroots’ or the beneficiaries. The
second mode is one in which the people or beneficiaries are asked to legitimise
or ratify projects identified as formulated by the government. In the third mode
of participation, the people are consulted about the project but they do not
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 actually participate in the planning and management of project. In the forth
mode, the people are consulted from the very start and they actively participate
in the planning and management of projects. In the fifth mode, the people or
the beneficiaries are represented in the highest policy making body of the
agency. Finally, in the sixth mode, the representatives of the people control the
highest policy making body of the agency.

Political aspects are often considered basic to participation. However,

participation is a much wider concept. Politically, the elections held from time
to time provide a mechanism to exercise control over institutions and
resources, but such controls may prove to be very elusive. Unless there are real
opportunities for people to have a say in planning and implementation of their
development, the adult franchise alone may mean nothing at all. The real
purpose of participation is to develop human capabilities for development
decision-making and action. Participation means a king of local autonomy in
which people discover the possibilities of exercising choice and, thereby,
becoming capable of managing their own development.

Planners and people have their own reasons to regard participation desirable.
Participation is sought by planners chiefly for the untapped human resources
it releases to help the development process along. For the people, participation
is a means to gain easier access to public services and a greater degree of
control over the delivery mechanisms. Sometimes the way planners and the
people perceive participation differently can lead to situations that cannot be
termed participatory. In most Third World countries, it is the elites who tend to
acquire command of the development apparatus. On the other hand, in this
kind of state-led development the common man increasingly finds himself
caught up powerless to do any thing concerning his own welfare. The
participation of the masses in development is somewhat akin to the
participation of the bullocks in ploughing done by the farmer. There is never
any doubt as to whose design and decision is involved in this work. So,
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 unequal relationship between planners and the poor can eliminate all chances
of a real participatory experience.

Many situations which are taken for granted as constituting participation are
in fact, not so. Discussing farmer’s involvement in the context of irrigation
projects, Lowdermilk and Lattimore define farmer involvement as ‘having
farmers participate in decision making when planning, implementing and
evaluating projects and programmes to improve the productivity and
effectiveness of irrigation projects.’ and have indicated several ways farmers
can be involved in the improvement of irrigation projects:
• In identifying major problems.
• In developing and testing solutions.
• In planning activities for implementation of improvements.
• Committing time, labour, cash and personal resources while
implementing a project.
• By being responsible for the operation and maintenance of improved
systems.
• By leading the rehabilitation of farm systems.i.e settling disputes,
organizing community labour, supervision of participation in
construction.

Further, comparing involvement with non-involvement, they spell out the

following situations as not constituting farmer involvement:

 Manipulating farmers for political purposes;

 Involving only the elite farmers;
 Using farmers to make a short-term project look good;
 Using farmers by issuing orders or telling them what to do;
 Using tricks to gain farmers’ cooperation;
 Using farmers to please outside agencies;

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  Arranging to give the impression that farmers are involved when in
reality they are not involved directly;
 Using farmers to benefit projects that do not benefit the farmer.

Suggesting that participative policies cannot be simply ‘added’ to present

policies, but must be part of a radically different overall approach, Emrich
clarifies the meaning of participation through his six axioms. The axioms of
participation are:

First, participation must begin at the very lowest level. There must be real
opportunities for participative decision-making for the poorest, and those
decisions must relate to the aspirations of the poor more than to those who will
not identify with them. Second, participation must take place at all stages of
the development process, from the earliest pre-planning exercises, to the
development of plans, the design of implementing mechanisms, and the actual
implementation. Third, it must be recognised that a solitary vote is not
participation. If people do not participate as members of relatively powerful
groups which serve their interests, then they participate only for the benefits of
their masters. Fourth, participation must have substance and usually political
clubs and cooperatives do not have substance. Participative processes must
deal with the allocation and control of goods and services related to the
production process. Fifth, participation must somehow deal with existing
loyalties. If the result is merely to strengthen existing inter-class groupings it
will just strengthen existing leadership. Sixth, it must be accepted that the
development of effective participation will cause conflict in some form.

Participation, as defined in a UNESCO documents is ‘collective sustained

activity for the purpose of achieving some common objectives, especially a more
equitable distribution of the benefits of development, Although participation is
defined in different ways, the dominant view is to regard it as a strategy to
improve the development process. There seems to be general consensus that
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 participation helps successful completion of projects, and that the impact of
such development on people should be beneficial.

Two more points need to be stressed. First, discussion on participation largely

centres round its uses in promoting rural development. This is understandable
as a majority of people in Third World countries is still rural, and their
development which was neglected all these years has now emerged as a matter
of top priority. However, participatory processes are relevant to all sectors of
development. Second, discussion on participation is mostly focused on
participation at the local level. Actually it is there that participation can take
place in the most direct manner possible. This is the level closest to people in
their own little communities. However, participation can as well take place at
higher levels-the district, the state and the centre.

It is important to understand the true meaning of participation, since failure to

do so can lead to distortions in the processes and the end-products of
development. This danger is real as participation is now emerging as a
development idea acquiesced in by all, everywhere. … Participation is often
endorsed unambiguously on normative grounds even if the empirical basis is
not clear. A real danger is that with growing fatigue and a lot of lip service,
participation could become drained of substance and its relevance to
development programs disputable. Another cautionary note is that ‘while
participation can take the form of widespread rural mobilization to support and
implement government policy, it can also serve as an effective tool for
government control of the rural population. Used without properly
understanding all the implications, participation can work both ways. It can
well turn out to be the proverbial double-edged sword.

Section Two: Emerging Participatory Organisations

Section Overview
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 This section is explains why the rural poor do not join standard rural
organizations,discuss and analysis different experiences in participatory programms,
problems faced by administrators in the areas of people-centered projects and some
unique constraints on participation.

Section Objectives
Upon completion of this section, you are able to:
 Listdown the names of participatory and standard organizations;
 Discuss the dilemmas confronted by administrators in people-centered
projects;
 Identify the constraints that hinder participation;
 Explain different experiences with participatory programs in different
countries.

? Dear Learner! Could you list the names of participatory

organizations?
Organisations that seek involvement of the poor from rural areas in
programmes designed to further their development have now sprung up in
many Third World countries. Their forms range from cooperatives to water
users’ associations to women’s organisations. Functions which these
organisations perform can change the direction as well as the pace of
development. Wanasinghe has identified five functions for such organisations:
(a) identification of development goals, (b) agitation for the achievement of
identified goals, (c) formulation of action programmes, (d) mobilisation of
resources, and (e) Organisation for the implementation of the action
performance.
Uphoff and Easman have also identified six functions for local organisations :(
a) planning and goal setting, (b) resource mobilisation. (c) Provision of services,
(d) integration of services. (e) Control of administration, and (f) making claims.

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 In practice, the role which participatory organisations play depends on how
participatory they really are.

Broadly speaking, rural organisations are of two kinds. One kind is that which
the government generally sets up to elicit participation of the people in its
development programmes, Panchayati Raj institutions in India fall in this
category. Such governmental organisations are sometimes referred to as
standard rural organisation.
The other kind of organisation arises primarily from the initiative of the people
themselves. Mutual aid societies, workers’ associations, etc… are organisations
that fall in this broad category. Such rural organisations are commonly referred
to as non-governmental organisations (NGO). In order to distinguish these
organisations from standard rural organisations, they are often referred to as
participatory rural organisations. Another common name for them is voluntary
organisations. Table 1 lists organisations of both the standard and the
participatory kind which commonly exist in rural areas of Third World
countries.

Table 1. Standard and Participatory Rural Organisations

Standard Organisations Participatory Organisations

1. Cooperatives 1. Special organisations of rural
2. Village development disadvantaged groups such as tenants’
Committees associations and organisations of
3. Government sponsored agricultural labourers and landless
farmers’ organisations workers.
4. Trade unions 2. Village-based ad hoc organisations
5. Women’s organisations formed for a specific and immediate
6. Youth clubs local need.
7. Political party branches [Link] welfare associations

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 8. Development committees in new
settlements
4. Village funeral societies

[Link] voluntary organisations 5. Kinship associations

represented by the government 6. Caste associations
7. Ethnic associations
8. Irrigation associations
9. Mutual aid work groups
10. Rotating credit associations
11. Religious associations
Source: Adapted from G Shabbir Cheema. 1983. The Role of voluntary
Organisations. In G Shabbir Cheema and Dennis A Rondinelli (eds.) 1983.
Decentralization and Development. Beverly llills: Sage. P. 210.

Based on studies of rural organisations in Asia, the Near East and Africa, a
Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report classifies rural organisations in
to two categories, namely, standard and participatory and describes
characteristics of these organisations.

A. STANDARD ORGANISATIONS
[Link] are funded and sponsored by an outside, mostly government agency
with a top-bottom approach to development for the people, rather than a
bottom-up approach. The idea is that benefits will trickle-down from above.
[Link] are more formal and official.
[Link] set-up is often inspired by alien concepts, principles and policies
frequently imported from abroad.
[Link] are mostly elite-oriented and /or dominated with the result that the
elite benefit more than others.

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 B. PARTICIPATORY ORGANISATIONS

1. They are started by the people themselves and not by a government or other
outside agency.
2. They are more informal and unofficial
3. They are more flexible in their objectives and in set-up
4. Their leaders and their members are mainly the poor who reach decisions in
face-to- face relationships (the term group or grouping often is more
appropriate than the term organisation).
5. Their activities are related to the day-to-day situation and needs of the rural
poor. The latter, understandably, are more attracted to join and participate
actively in these groups than the official ones.

Admittedly, no classificatory scheme can hope to cover fully the various types
of rural organisations that have come into being in diverse settings.
Classification of rural organisations into standard and participatory which the
FAO study has suggested is a good attempt indeed. Cheema believes that with
some modifications, this categorisation gets closest to the reality.

Government-supported organisations easily dominate the rural scene. Their

dominance is not due to numbers alone. On the other hand, the non-
governmental organisations are not only few in number, but have also not
grown to their full stature yet. By themselves the people in villages are unable
to form and manage organisations of their own. Resources and skills required
for the job are scarce. Although the poor are everywhere exhorted to organise,
the rise of their organisations is often looked on with suspicion by most
governments in Third World countries.

However, studies have demonstrated that people prefer to join organisations

launched by their own groups rather than those which are set up by the
government. The popularity of participatory organisations is explainable by the
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 fact that these are better placed to serve the poor. Their area of operation is
usually limited to a village, or a cluster of villages. This helps them to
understand better the needs of the rural population. They are not bound by
cumbersome rules and procedures. They are able to monitor progress of
projects right on the spot. Further, their proximity to the people helps them
secure their involvement in development more easily. These advantages more
than offset the lack of resources and other limitations. A study in Philippines
conducted for the FAO clearly highlights why people prefer to join community
organisation (CO) style rural organisations and not the standard type rural
organisations. Table 2 summarises the findings of this study.

Many governments in the Third World have attempted to introduce new

organisational structures at the grassroots level in the expectation that these
will stimulate participation of the people in local developmental activities.
Realisation that the process of decentralisation is fundamental for securing
involvement of the people has led them in this direction.

In the 1950s the Panchayati Raj in India was established with very similar
objectives: to involve the people in decisions about government initiated
programmes, to facilitate the implementation of development projects, and to
inculcate democratic values among the people. The establishment of
Panchayati Raj bodies at local levels followed devolution of decision-making
authority, transfer of funds, personnel and other resources to local levels from
higher levels in government, primarily from the state government. In most
cases the Panchayati Raj institutions could not function in the manner
envisaged, and by the late 1960s the original ideal lost many of its adherents.
The reasons for decline are related to the fact that the local levels lacked
expertise which was needed to cope with the growing complexities of
development. To carry forward the new development activities, several other
official agencies have been inducted, some of which are area-based and others
focused on disadvantaged groups.
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Table 2 A Comparisons of reasons why the rural poor join CO style rural organisations
and do not join standard Rural Organisations.

No. Reasons why poor join the CO Reasons why poor Do not
Style Organizations join standard Rural
Organizations
1 Members themselves make Elite leaders make most of
the major decisions and carry the decisions and the
them out. Incentives to join members carry them out.
are high when participation is Little incentive for
real. participation.
2 Members have a personal As members are not involved
stake in the out comes of an much, their stake in the final
activities because of outcome is limited
involvement at all stages.
3 Leaders and members are Leaders are from higher
from similar background. socio-Economic background
Commonality of interests than the members. Their
enhances group solidarity. interests can’t be the same. If
the clash of interests does
not lead to open hostilities it
is because the poor are not
prepared for a show down.
4 Activities are informal. Formal character requires
Election of leaders takes place that election be held first.
later after they have proved When leaders do not perform
their worth. well, they lose popular
support.
5 Leaders and members pool There is no such

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 their efforts to achiev involvement. Leaders and
objectives they all considerate members are asked to
worth pursuing. respond to projects designed
elsewhere.
6 Both leadership and Outside agencies concentrate
membership are sought on training the
to be developed through leadership alone. Members
training. All people feel alienated when leaders
know what the issues fail to communicate newly
confronting them are, learnt skills to the people.
and leaders remain
accountable.
7 Mass actions give people the Being passive recipients of
confidence, and enhance their institutions, members rarely
dignity and self-respect. gain the experience of
meaningful participation.
8 Participation is broad-based Categories of participants are
and –old and young, men and specified, such as women
women, big or small farmers with young children in
all join. They respond to all nutrition program.
concerns that matter to them. Participation is fragmented.
9 From modest beginning as an Members enter a full blown
informed group, the organization even before they
organization through understand what it is. Not
experience matures into an knowing what to do, they feel
organization ready to face lost and only participate
more challenging tasks. passively, if not drop out.
10 Through various activities the There is no attempt to
organization gives evidence of change the local power
attempting to shift the local structure. The vertical

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 power structure to a more hierarchy of patron-client
egalitarian one. This presents dependency offers to the poor
a vision for which the peasant best alternative to survive or
is willing to follow an improve his life.
attractive mode of
development.

Source: Adapted from Mary llollnsteiner et at. 1978. As quoted in Bernard

vanllech,1979. pp.35-37.

However, the idea of decentralisation has not been abandoned. The present
emphasis on district planning and block-level planning is essentially an effort
to decentralise the planning process. There is a growing awareness that
capability to envisage local level plans needs to be built up as a first step. It is
hoped that block-level planning will lead to establishment of appropriate
organisations of the poor to protect them from exploitation and secure their
active involvement in planning decisions.

4.11 Experiences with the Participatory Programmes in Action

Even when participation has gained wide recognition as a basic human right,
and its practical value in promoting development well established, the actual
cases of participation do not add up to very much. On the basis of her African
experience, Uma [Link] concludes: ‘Even where development of local
participation is an important objective of rural development and where political
education in mass participation is a key element of the development strategy,
as in Tanzania, programmes have not developed genuine participation and
responsibility among the rural people. Equally pessimistic is the conclusion of
some other observers of development scene in the Third World.

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 A survey of the development scene, especially in the Third World countries,
however, points to a disturbing tendency on the part of the national
governments to push the people in the background. They are no more the
subjects of development; they have become objects of development and in many
cases even resources for development.

In country after country, popular institutions have gone in to nothingness.

Governments have extended their bureaucratic tentacles down to the village
level. It is the official agencies which now initiate and carry out development on
behalf of the people. The people themselves have become recipients of
development as if development is something outside their realm of experience.
Of course, there are rays of hope here and there, but the general scene is that
of retrogression and despair.

Participatory approaches are new to development practitioners, hence they lack

experience in this area. Partly due to this reason, participatory programmes do
not seem to be proceeding as well as they should. Often participatory schemes
are launched without sufficient prior preparation. In a hurry to produce quick
results, the tasks of anticipating problems in the field and making provisions
for dealing with unexpected situations are simply side-tracked.

Those concerned with the making of development plans tend to forget that
participation cannot be achieved by plans formulated in isolation in central
offices away from the people concerned. As one observer noted, the
development agencies now Regularly incorporate its rhetoric in their
development project Plans- the reality seldom resembles the rhetoric. A growing
body of evidence suggests that one explanation for the gap between rhetoric
and reality can be found in the operating structures of organizations
responsible for the implementation of development projects. Participation
requires more than planning mandates and/or good will. It requires basic new
skills and a reorientation of operating structures which plans alone cannot
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 [Link] this point on the basis of his own involvement in designing
a participatory approach in Mexico, Jorge Echenique rightly observed:

There is a tendency for rural development programs… to emphasize farmer

participation, organisation, and self-management… But these goals are never
actually defined or explained in detail… As result, this approach often goes no
further than the pronouncement stage, and is not reflected or put into practice
during the course of the program. The official agencies, whose inertia is
evident, mostly act along their old hidebound traditional lines, defining what is
to be done, how it is to be done, and who is to benefit, without having any
specific knowledge of the real social and cultural context in which they are
operating. Limited to a superficial view of the natural environment and
resources, they entertain the native conviction that the aspirations and needs
of the rural population match their own institutional priorities, and continue to
dwell in the blissful certainty that the peasants know nothing of technology,
projects, and serious things of that kind.

However, many new participatory programmes are currently under way. This is
a hopeful trend. Full accounts of projects from fields as diverse as irrigation
systems, eco-system development, social, forestry, water distribution, farm
technology are now available. Participation of women is emerging as a separate
field of action.

4.12 A Sociologically Designed World Bank Participatory Program in

Mexico.

One large-scale programme designed to involve the participation of

beneficiaries in their development is the World Bank-assisted rural
development programme in Mexico called PIDER (PIDER is an acronym in
Spanish for Integrated Programmes of Rural Development). This merits some
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 discussion here for a novel sociological approach it has followed. The history
and experiences involved in building up the rural development programme
have been outlined in a paper which the World Bank has recently published.

The PIDER programme was established in 1973 to transfer substantial

resources for the implementation of small-scale, local projects in poor rural
areas of Mexico. In about 10 years, this programme spent some US $ 2 billion
to benefit 139 PIDER micro-regions, including over 9,000 communities with a
population of about 12 million.

One distinguishing feature of PIDER is that its enormous resources are not
being invested in a handful of large, visible and costly projects, but in
numerous small projects, tailored to the specific needs of small villages and of
sub-groups living in them. Projects for which investments have been made
include small-scale irrigation schemes, soil conservation projects, fruit and tree
plantations, rural roads, fishponds, livestock units, rural health centres,
schools, potable water systems, village electrification, etc.

In the beginning very little was known about planning investments for
communities with the active participation of the local population. However,
these new approaches were preferred to the older ones, since very early it
became obvious that traditional, top down bureaucratic planning methods had
some serious shortcomings, and those conventional planners lacking requisite
local knowledge could not be expected to do justice to the job. Participation was
accepted as PIDER’s aim not for any higher, philosophical considerations but
solely for reasons of efficient project implementation.

A methodology of participatory planning was worked out methodically. The

approach adopted for the purpose was sociological in the sense that is was
based on a comprehensive, step-by-step analysis of all the relevant social

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 factors. The approach involved a sequence of designing, testing, learning, and
revising the participatory procedures,

The farmer participation was seen as of critical importance in all the stages of
planning, execution, supervision etc… but particular stress was laid on
ensuring participation in the initial stage involving programming of
investments. Components of the programming work include: (a) establishing
the priorities, (b) identifying the project beneficiaries, location and technology
and (c) determining the possible community contributions in cash or kind.

Social research (by a group of professionals from social anthropology, sociology,

economics and agronomy) which developed the methodology for participation
was based on the premise that the farmers’ perspective is a critical input for
successful development planning and implementation. Expert knowledge is
indispensable to the development process, but it was recognised that
development cannot be planned exclusively on the basis of opinions of or
studies by experts from outside. The officials do not necessarily have a better
understanding of problems faced by the farmer. Participation helps peasants
develop a definition of their interests and wants, without which they can not be
expected to act.
Social scientists who developed the participatory methodology were well aware
that understanding the sociology of the community concerned was important,
but was not enough. They did not regard techno-economic factors and financial
feasibility considerations as of no consequence. On the contrary, it was
accepted that sociological knowledge was complementary to, and not a
substitute for, technical and other expertise. The linkage between the
sociological and technical aspects of planning was consistently emphasized in
the sociological participatory methodology.

PIDER experience not only validates soundness of the sociological approach in

planning implementation and monitoring of participatory development projects,
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 specially programming of investments, but also highlights an aspect of this
approach which is of great significance. The sociological approach developed for
Mexico has transfer potential to other places, wherever participatory
methodology is to be practiced.

Constraints on participation

Obstacles to participation abound; people encounter problems at every step all

the way. However, it is still not uncommon to blame the poor for their failure to
participate in government sponsored development activities. Those who do so
probably are not aware of obstacles the poor face in efforts for their
development. Not all the obstacles stem from reluctance of the poor.

Studies of the factors that help or hinder participation have revealed how
strong the anti-participatory forces can be, compared to the participatory ones.
In her study on participation. Frances F Korten discovered several powerful
obstacles to participation by the poor. She has classified these into three
broad categories, (a) obstacles within the agency, (b) obstacles within the
community, and (c) obstacles within the society.

There are some constraints which arise locally. These constraints have to do
mainly with the people themselves, their lifestyle and the communities they live
in. These factors are primarily socio-cultural, and can be called internal
constraints. There are others which are external to the individual and the
community he lives in. These constraints have to do mainly with the
administrators; their values and attitudes, and the way they are organized for
development work in villages. Being essentially bureaucratic, these factors can
be called external constraints.

SOCIO-CULTURAL CONSTRAINTS (INTERNAL)

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 Until recently, it was widely assumed that the deeply ingrained attitudes of
fatalism among village people hinder the participatory process. It was assumed
that peasants were happy with the things around them, and that they had no
aspirations to change their ways. Now substantial evidence from
anthropological and other studies has come in which makes such assumptions
completely untenable.

Admittedly, participation still does not fascinate many rural poor. However,
this lack of interest in their own development has nothing to do with the
attitudes of fatalism, the innate conservatism and other such traits which have
been attributed to them for too long. As a matter of fact, it is their past
experience with governmental agencies which holds them back Participation
appears quite irrelevant to the poor in their circumstances. Rather they prefer
to seek help from their families, landlords, money-lenders, shop keepers, and
from their families. Landlords, money-lenders, shop keepers, and from anyone
who may be a friend in need.

A significant factor restricting participation by the poor is their low level of

awareness. Governmental assistance seems irrelevant because many people
are simply not aware of public services which exist for them right in their own
village. The elite groups tend to monopolies all contacts with the outside
agents. Often the poorer groups see no point in competing with the more
affluent for services and benefits which the contacts bring. Explaining why the
poor regard participation as of no particular concern to them, Huntington and
Nelson have outlined three basic reasons for this situation.

There are several reasons for this low efficacy. First, the poor lack resources
for effective participation- adequate information, appropriate contacts, money,
and often time. Second, in low income strata, people are often divided by race,
tribe, religions or language; even where the cleavages are not obvious,
distinctions may be drawn on the basis of differences in sect, income, status,
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 or place of origin that outsiders can barely perceive. More privileged groups
may draw similar distinctions, but they are often better able to cooperate
across such lines when joint economic or political interests are at stake. Third,
the poor tend to expect requests or pressures on their part whether individual
or collective, to be ignored or refused by the authorities and these expectations
are often justified. Worse, their attempts may provoke governmental repression
or prompt reprisals from the private interests threatened by the self-assertion
of the poor. Those on the margin of subsistence are particularly vulnerable to
threats from employers, landlords or creditors.

If participation is to be meaningful, there should be participatory local

organizations of the poor. By linking with development agencies of the
government at the village level, the local organizations can provide to the
members a forum to participate in the designing and implementation of
development programmes. However, the number of villages without local
organizations is much larger than the number of villages with local
organizations. Even where organizations of the poor have been in existence for
some time, they do not seem to be functioning very well in projecting their
demands and otherwise helping their cause. The poor simply lack necessary
skills in organizing and managing their affairs collectively. Electing capable
leaders, calling meetings, making decisions, keeping records, raising
subscriptions, and handling funds are some of the tasks that require for their
performance a certain degree of managerial ability. Generally the poor in
villages lack these skills and thus are not in a position to establish
organizations of their own to promote development. This factor severely limits
the emergence of participatory processes.

BUREAUCRATIC CONSTRAINTS (EXTERNAL)

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 A major external constraint on participation is the bureaucracy itself.
Constraints are inherent in the very body politic and routines of the
bureaucratic machinery. Most government administered development agencies
came into existence long before participation became part of the current
development philosophy. They were designed with a centralized service-delivery
approach in view where flexibility and responsiveness to needs in the field have
no place. Therefore, these programme agencies lack development orientation.
Participation and such innovative ideas are in fact an anathema to it.
Observers of bureaucratic behavior all agree that finding ways of inculcating
the spirit of experimentation and creativity into hierarchical and control-
oriented bureaucracies has eluded most administrative reformers.

Bureaucrats seriously believe that they alone have answers to all problems
faced by the poor and that they are the only ones who have a right to this
knowledge. In their scheme of things, the only role people can and should play
is to act as mere recipients of the delivery system. Bureaucratic processes in
large organizations have instilled in most government employees a respect for
technocratic knowledge and expertise and a disdain for their clients’
capabilities in conceptualizing, designing and implementing programs. How
ever, to be effective the participatory approach requires that there be a sense of
partnership between administrators and the people. If this condition is not
fulfilled, there will hardly be any scope for people to participate in the
development process. The bureaucratic paternalism turns the rural poor into
passive recipients of governmental services.

Disdain for capabilities of the poor is not the only reason why administrators
discourage participation. As a matter of fact, they feel uncomfortable with
working methods that involve consultation. Participatory methodology entails
frequent visits to villages instead of working in the comfort of their offices in the
capital. If this approach is followed, the job of activating the village community
cannot be left to extension agents as was the case before. On the other hand, it
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 is far easier for bureaucrats to decide what the people should want, relate that
to government objectives and draw up plans accordingly, than to consult the
millions who are supposed to benefit from those plans.

One fear that commonly grips the bureaucracies are that, if lower level officials
are delegated more functions and responsibility; things are bound to go wrong.
Decision-making authorities at the higher level invariably view the officials
lower down the hierarchy as lacking in competence, and hence untrustworthy.
Decentralization is impossible to practice in such circumstances.

Often communication between different hierarchical levels breaks down for very
similar reasons. In order to show off their superior status, the higher level
administrators begin to maintain more and more distance from the lower level
officials in the field. As a result, they only end up denying to themselves
feedback which can be critical to programme implementation. Confronted with
aloofness on the part of their superiors, the staff in the field also begins to
withdraw into its own shell, leaving the people to their own devices. It has been
rightly observed: ‘In an environment where project staff cannot meaningfully
participate, it is highly unlikely that they will encourage participation on the
part of those they are supposedly trying to help.’

The highly centralized character of bureaucracies does not allow the field staff
any discretion to act. Their inability to act when the local situation demands
that certain things be done promptly discourages the people to come forth.
Rather than act and as a result get into trouble, the field staff prefers to sit
back, and await orders from above. Often it is safer not to act than to act. ‘Just
as the small farmer wishes to minimize risk, so does the bureaucrat.’

Even as things presently stand, opportunities for promotion and other

incentives, especially for the staff in the field, are virtually non-existent. Rather
than concentrate on work in villages, many find it more rewarding to just keep
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 their immediate superiors in good humor, pandering to the bureaucratic
emphasis on meeting targets somehow or the other.

Using money spent as the criterion to evaluate performance has led to shifts in
favor of larger projects. Participation is not a requirement of such projects.
Work is contracted to outside agencies, and this is justified on grounds of
quality, savings in time as well as money.

In recent years, the government-run development agencies have rapidly

proliferated. However, there is very little effective coordination in their working
even when the goals they pursue are similar. The result of their failure to
harmonize operations at the field level means that the farmer must run from
agency to agency. A simple thing like getting seed on credit involves visits to
several agencies, not once but several times. Often the farmer must run around
at a time when he is rather busy performing agricultural operations.
Disheartened, there are many who simply give up the effort to get help from
governmental agencies ostensibly established to involve them in development
programmes.

Promoting Participation in Development

Occasional exhortations will not help produce participation. People must be

empowered to take the necessary steps. Simultaneously, bureaucracy needs to
be reoriented as the government has a major responsibility for furthering
development.

The way to actualize participation is to first consider the nuts-and bolts

question in a thorough-going manner. Such a discussion is often restricted by
the fact that enough is still not known about how participation actually occurs
in different settings. The kind of questions which are relevant to development
agencies and administrators were raised in a symposium on World Bank-
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 assisted participation projects. These questions were summed up by Gloria
Davis:

How do we increase participation? What are the costs? What are the contextual
factors which make success more or less probable? How do we address
problems such as class stratification and different class interests within
villages? How do we link village demands with vertically integrated
implementing agencies with a divergence of budgets and policies? And how do
we deal with the development objectives, ideologies, and vested interests of
borrower Governments? These questions are not an argument against a
participatory approach, but suggest that what is needed is not only the
willingness to do participatory projects, but a tool kit of concepts and examples
on how to proceed…

The obstacles look formidable, but attempts to involve people in recent years
have been fairly productive. Encouraged by these results, development
agencies and experts are now trying to formulate guiding principles for
participatory projects.

EMPOWERING THE RURAL POOR

The people must be helped to help themselves. At the present stage of their
development they certainly need considerable support. Without help from
outside, they would not be in a position to benefit from development
programmes specially designed for them. If they are not assisted properly, new
programmes will lead to further dependency. The local capacity needs to be
built up first.

If people have to be active partners in designing projects and later have to work
closely with government agencies in implementation, monitoring and
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 evaluation, they must make a resource commitment which could be in either
cash or kind. This is considered desirable for several reasons:

First, governments do not have the resources to support all worthwhile

development initiatives. Requiring an initial resource commitment indicates
that this is not going to be another government ‘giveaway’ program. Many
activities would probably function better without the involvement of
government at all. Second, the act of making a resource commitment will make
the contributors more concerned for the success of the development initiative
than they otherwise might be. Finally, such a commitment will provide a
concrete indication of how interested the community members are in a new
initiative. Findings from an earlier study demonstrated the positive correlation
between such resource commitment and the overall project success.

Even the attitudes of development personnel undergo some change when they
discover that the people are making contributions. Cernea writes:

In fact, the official requirement that local communities contribute a fraction of

investment costs turns out to affect not only communities, but the technicians’
behavior as well: it makes the planners and engineers more concerned with
consulting the peasants than before with getting the peasants’ assent and
contribution, and with actually involving them in the works.

If participation is to be a self-sustained process, one that will not wither away

once the development teams depart, the people have to be taught certain skills.
Knowledge and information are crucial to make participation a continuing
activity and to give the people an idea of what their rights and responsibilities
are. Therefore, training can be extremely useful to the people in villages.
Recently the following were identified as major skills which can help build up
the local capacity for participation: (a) managerial skills; (b) internal
organizational management skills c) economic resource management skills; (d)
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 technical skills; and (e) political skills. This list is only illustrative; it is not
exhaustive.

Local organizations of the poor do not exist everywhere. Even where they do,
they are not in a very good shape. This situation does not help the participatory
processes. Very little is known about these organizations and their capability
for interaction with official implementation agencies in rural areas. There is a
tendency to set up new organizations to promote development, and to dismiss
the existing traditional organizations and networks as of no particular
relevance to development work. Experience indicates that indigenous
organizations can prove to be far more dynamic in mobilizing people to join
hands with official agencies in the promotion of various development
programmes.

All these years, the farmer’s behavior has been seen as irrational, opposed to
anything new coming from outside his immediate environment. The truth is
that his reactions, including rejections of outside interventions, are completely
sensible in the very adverse circumstances that surround him. If anything,
there is a need to understand his viewpoint and things that interest him. Often
technology is sought to be introduced which is appropriate, not from his angle
but, from the perspective of its promoters. An evaluation study by UNDP
recently concluded that one major constraint affecting achievement of project
objectives is the transfer of technologies without local adaptation. These often
show no advantage over local technologies. Even if there is an advantage, it is
often nullified by lack of understanding or by resentment of a new idea
‘parachuted’ into an area without previous consultation with the users. There
have also been attempts to alter local conditions to suit the new technology,
instead of the reverse.

Many mistakes can be easily avoided if attention is paid to understanding the

lifestyle of the poor in villages. Unfortunately, planners do not seem to attach
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 due importance to this knowledge. In the context of the PIDER project in
Mexico for which a social methodology of participation was specially designed it
was rightly observed:

While many technologies are available for the ‘hardware’ components of

development projects, this is not the case for the institutional components and
the socio-cultural parts of these projects, which in no way are less important
for the project’s ultimate success. Yet methodologies for software development
are generally not available in a conceptualized and operationalized form;
development agencies have not joined efforts with the social science
communities for elaborating them.

However, the importance of sociological and anthropological studies is now

being readily accepted. A World Bank Task Force on Poverty recently noted:

To support and selectively finance rural development activities that benefit poor
people, the Bank should increase its understanding of patterns of social
organization in project areas. This requires more reliance on local socio-
anthropological expertise than is usually the case. Successes and failures in
participatory activity with the rural poor should be reviewed and this learning
incorporated in future projects.

ADAPTING ADMINISTRATION TO PARTICIPATORY DEVELOPMENT

Working in the field on people-centered projects, administrators confront some

very specific dilemmas.

Access: Which groups or members of the public should be included?

Responsiveness: To whom should administrators be responsive, to the

organized public or the unorganized and less visible public?
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 Professionalism: What is the best way to evaluate citizen preferences when
they contradict professional training and judgment?
Effectiveness: What can an administrator do if organized publics either veto or
dilute a project so that little is done?

Like administrators, the people also face certain dilemmas. They know that
administrators may not always be responsive to their needs. People are quite
certain that they can be easily bypassed by administrators whose
accountability is not to them but to their agencies and their superiors.
Therefore, the people look at the same problems differently:

Access:Assuming that bureaucrats are trying to build coalitions with

supporters, what voice or access can non-supporters have?
Responsiveness: administrators often benefit from the participatory process.
But what about the instances when this is not the case and opposition
threatens them? How can the concept of loyal opposition be instilled? What
recourse do the poor, the peasants- have to be taken seriously?

Professionalism: Based on their professionalism, administrators may readily

assume they know what is best for project beneficiaries and others in the
community; this presupposition is particularly popular in the Third World,
where there is of then a great social distance between bureaucrats and the
public. At the same time it is easy for the public to be intimidated by the
expertise and training of administrators. The problem for citizens is therefore,
to develop an independent source of authority.

Effectiveness: The public may define effectiveness very differently than

administrators; peasants for example, may have other goals they are seeking
quite separate from those of the experts.

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 Thus administrators and the people do not view the participatory process alike.
Differences in their perceptions are quite significant. One way to incorporate
their divergent viewpoints is to view participation as a learning process, as
mutual interaction. In the development community there is a growing
consensus that creating effective participation is a gradual, evolutionary
process in which both project staff and potential beneficiaries are willing to try
various alternatives, discard them when they prove unworkable and try others.

The ‘blueprint’ approach which assumes that solutions to problems are all
known and that predetermined intervention techniques are certain to produce
expected results in a given situation, is unlikely to be as successful as the
‘process’ approach. By contrast, the process approach assumes that there are
many imponderables in life and, therefore, it is marked by constant openness
to redesign and adaptation to changing situations. Studies of problems on the
ground and an interactive style of problem solving are preferred to remote
expertise. Honadale et al. sum up the strength and potential of the process
approach:

It is rooted in dialogue with the rural population and thus is more responsive
to local potential and needs than the more technically oriented blueprint.

It allows variation in bureaucratic structures and thus is more likely to adapt

to political, social, economic, and physical changes that occur during
implementation.

It is based on learning and capacity building and it is well fitted to the

promotion of self-sustaining development dynamics. It transfers ‘ownership’ of
the programme to implementers and thus creates an environment supportive of
innovative problem solving rather than routine application of predetermined
solutions. It avoids negative side effects by eliminating design components that
are deemed inappropriate.
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 Adapting administration to make it effective in coping with the complexities of
participatory development is a task that must be tackled at all levels of the
government. Improvements will not come about by concentrating efforts only at
the top. Reorientation is most needed at grassroots level where officials come in
direct, face-to face contact with the people. One reason for the overall poor
administrative performance is that administrative reform is seen more relevant
to operations at higher levels alone and, therefore, improvement efforts are
mostly concentrated at the centre rather than at the periphery. On the basis of
a study in south-east Asian countries, Milton Easman concluded:

One of the main findings of this paper, however, is that governments have been
concentrating to much on administrative improvement and reform at the
ministerial and regional levels often through elaborate planning and
coordinating structures. Too little attention is being devoted to the local level
where government staff and programmes actually reach or fail to reach their
rural publics. The greatest weakness of rural development administration is in
the underdevelopment of administrative capabilities and of local institutions on
the ground. It is to the correction of these limitations and imbalances that the
main efforts of governments and international donors should be directed.

Experience suggests that concentration improvement efforts only at the higher

levels can prove counterproductive. In Liberia considerable resources were
expended on strengthening a marketing project management unit. However,
the overall impact was not favorable. The staff in the newly equipped unit
became even more reluctant to delegate marketing functions to the local units.
Their excuse was that the local units were not capable enough to perform well,
whereas the project management unit now was.

The direction in which the administration must move to become more

responsive is a subject that has lately evoked great interest. No formula which
can be applicable to all situations can possibly emerge. Yet it might be
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 worthwhile to recapitulate here suggestions for improvement emanating from
various studies. Decision-making powers must move from the centre to the
periphery. Beneficiary participation is unlikely to go far in situations where
field level officials themselves have no say in any matter. Coordination
mechanisms must pursue the single aim of making public services easily
accessible to the people. More objective criteria to evaluate performance of
development personnel must be devised, so that the staff concentrates on their
actual task of serving the poor. The field staff is accountable only to its
superiors, and to no one else. There must be some accountability to the people
as well whom alone it is supposed to serve. The field workers must get the
feeling that they really are involved in a challenging task. More incentives are
needed to motivate them for work in arduous conditions of rural areas.

Above all, attitudes of the field staff should change. They must recognize that
the new task cannot be handled with the old attitudes of the predevelopment
era. The workers must view their role as responding to needs of the people
rather than simply expecting the people to respond in a sheep-like manner to
governmental initiatives.

The potential of training in equipping the field personnel for participatory

projects has not been fully realized yet. Most training programmes continue to
emphasize technical aspects of the job. Skills for working with the people are
usually not included in the curricula design. Emphasizing the urgency of
developing skills for participatory development, Norman Uphoff noted:
‘Orienting the technical staff toward fruitful collaboration with rural
communities is not easy, but it is absolutely necessary.’

Even in the best of circumstances, the administration of programmes in which

people are expected to play a significant role cannot be an easy task. The World
Development Report 1983, focused on problems of management in
development, noted:
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 People-centered programmes are particularly hard to manage because of the
degree of uncertainty. First, goals can be abstract (‘community self-reliance’,
for example) and performance not quantifiable in terms of construction time
and costs or profits and losses. Second, there is little knowledge of how to
design suitable programmes, because they involve changing human behavior
patterns that vary among cultures and localities. Third, the success of a
project depends on whether people want the services it offers. Project managers
therefore often have to create demand. The task of management is thus more
one of experimenting and learning than of implementing known procedures….

No wonder, the job of adapting administration to the requirements of a

participatory development has defied many past attempts. At the same time,
some of the successes achieved are quite remarkable. Successes have been
reported from wide geographic areas for a variety of programmes. One key
lesson from the development experience, as the world Development Report
1980 notes, is that it takes a long time to build up effective institutions.
Persistence counts here the most. Governments and the concerned
international agencies should neither expect magical results, nor give up too
easily.

 Activity – 1
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1. Could you mention some of the obstacles to participation?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
 Unit Summary
We may define participation as a process that involves organized efforts to
increase control over resources and regulative institutions in given social

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 situations, on the part of groups and movements of those hitherto excluded
from such control. According to the Bank, there are two forms of participation:
‘low intensity’ forms of participation (information-sharing, consultation) and
‘higher intensity’ forms of participation (i.e. empowering mechanisms for joint
decision-making, and control by beneficiaries over initiatives).
The nature and content of the concept of participation can not be reduced to a
single description or definition. The concept may, however, be discussed
referring to the following aspects:-
--articipation implies involvement;
--Communication must be established;
--A new attitude on the part of government officials is required;
--Participation must lead to reciprocal influence between developments
agencies and people.

Organisations that seek involvement of the poor from rural areas in

programmes designed to further their development have now sprung up in
many Third World countries. Their forms range from cooperatives to water
users’ associations to women’s organisations. Functions which these
organisations perform can change the direction as well as the pace of
development. Wanasinghe has identified five functions for such organisations:
(a) identification of development goals, (b) agitation for the achievement of
identified goals, (c) formulation of action programmes, (d) mobilisation of
resources, and (e) Organisation for the implementation of the action
performance. “Uphoff and Easman have also identified six functions for local
organisations :( a) planning and goal setting, (b) resource mobilisation. (c)
Provision of services, (d) integration of services. (e) Control of administration,
and (f) making claims. In practice, the role which participatory organisations
play depends on how participatory they really are.

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  Check List
Direction: Dear students this is the section in which you confirm your
understanding of the lessons in this unit. Put a tick mark () in the yes
column for activities that you have clear understanding and in the no
column for activities that you doubt that you have no good
understanding.
I Can: Yes No
Define the concept of development;
List the names of standard and participatory
organizations ;
Discuss the obstacle to participation;

Analyze the advantages of participation;

Self-Assessment Questions
Choose among the following given alternatives.
1. Identify the incorrect statement about participation

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 a) Participation is a process that organized efforts by marginalized groups;
b) Participation increases control over resources ;
c) In the past decades the poor have benefited from the massive
development efforts;
d) Participation is a basic human right;
e) None

2. All but one is correct about the importance of participation

a) It is essential to realign political power in favor of the poor;
b) It is an essential part of human growth;
c) It is essential to alleviate poverty;
d) All
3. Participation imply the following except
a) It releases local capacities and resources;
b) It implies partnership between people and agencies;
c) It implies elite’s empowerment;
d) It is learning from mistakes;
e) None of the above
4. All but one is incorrect about participation
a) The nature and scope of the concept of participation can be
reduced to a single definition;
b) Participation implies involvement;
c) A new attitude on the part of government officials is required;
d) Participation must lead to reciprocal influence;
e) All

5. Identify the correct statement about participation

a) Participation implies ‘to share in’;
b) Involvement implies that there is a feeling of belonging;
c) Participation is an important way to counteract the isolation of
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 people;
d) A passive participation is better than an active influence of behavior;
e) Participation influences the organizational structure.
6. Which one is not true about participation?
a) Popular participation first appeared in more developed societies;
b) Its emergence coincides with education;
c) Participation is not an important element in development strategies of
most Third World countries;
d) All
7. All but one is correct about features of people-centered development
a) The optimal use of human resources;
b) The spread of ownership of productive assets;
c) Acceptance of mental and physical welfare as an indicator of success;
d) The conservation of natural resources;
e) Fragmented development practices

8. Identify the wrong statement about advantages of participation

a) Many projects will not get off the ground if people do not come forward;
b) Participation provides necessary information;
c) People involved more willingly if they involved in programs designed to
produce change in their life style;
d) Participation may double costs of programs;
e) None of the above
9. The following statements are correct about mode of participation except
a) The first mode involved only the educated with out the beneficiaries;
b) The second mode is one in which the people are asked to ratify projects;
c) In the third mode the people are consulted about the projects;
d) In the fourth mode the people are both consulted and actively participate
in the planning and management of projects
e) None
10. The following constitute farmers involvement except
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 a) Manipulating farmers for political purposes;
b) Involving only the elite farmers;
c) Using tricks to obtain farmers’ cooperation;
d) Using farmers to please outside agencies;
e) None
11. Which one is not true about functions of rural organizations by Uphoof and
Easman
a) Planning and goal setting;
b) Integration of services;
c) Mobilization of resources;
d) None
12. The following belongs to standard organizations except
a) Village-based and ad hoc organizations;
b) Youth clubs;
c) Political party branches;
d) Cooperatives;
e) None
13. working in the field on people-centered projects administrators confront
the following dilemmas except
a) Professionalism;
b) Access;
c) Responsiveness;
d) Effectiveness
e) None
14. Like administrators the people face the following dilemmas except
a) Access;
b) Responsiveness;
c) Professionalism;
d) Effectiveness
e) All
15. All but one is not true about obstacles on participation
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 a) Obstacles to participation can be grouped in to three;
b) Bureaucratic constraints can be called external constraints;
c) Innate conservativism is one problem to participation in rural areas;
d) Low level of awareness of the rural poor can hinder participation.
e) None of the above
Say true or false
1. The development administration school assumed the state as the main agent of
development.
2. Participation is one of the constituting elements of good governance.
3. Participation is a basic human right.
4. Participation is a potential tool to increase state responsiveness and
[Link].

[Link] administration is concerned with the socio-economic conditions of

the disadvantaged groups of the society who live under the poverty line.
6. A politically and socially stable environment is best suited to decentralization.

Unit five
Decentralized Governance

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Unit Introduction
The decentralization of government can improve governance by fostering
accountability, participation, and transparency. Throughout the world,
governments of developing nations have turned to decentralization and
institutional capacity. But decentralization in itself does not guarantee better
governance. Indeed, ineffective or improper decentralization creates more
problems than it [Link], it is vital that decentralization efforts be
carefully crafted to ensure effective local institutions. This unit has only one
section. In this unit, the concepts of decentralization and decentralized
governance will be thoroughly defined and discussed. In addition, the different
typologies of decentralization, the justifications for decentralization and the
major policy concerns faced by governments before the implementation of
decentralization policy will be the scope of this section.

Unit Objectives
At the end of this unit you will be able to:
 Define the concept of decentralization;
 Explain the different types of decentralization;
 Understand the role and functions of government in economic
development;
 Discuss the justifications/reasons for decentralization;
 Analyze the main policy concerns before decentralization took place.

Pre test questions

• Can you define the term decentralization?

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 • What do you think will be the role of government in economic
development?
• What are the rationales behind decentralization?
• What do you think are the major policy concerns of governments before
decentralization?

Section One: Decentralization?

Section Overview
The concept of decentralization refers to the general process of transferring
political authority and operations to sub-national government bodies. This
section is devoted for discussing the concepts of decentralization and
decentralized governance. This section also discusses different factors that
should be taken into account before implementation of decentralization policy
by governments, the rationales of decentralization and major policy alternatives
which will be useful to mitigate economic inequalities among regional states.

Section Objectives
Upon completion of this section, you are able to:
 Define the concepts of decentralization and decentralized governance;
 Mention some of the factors that should be taken into account before
decentralization policy is effected;
 Discuss the rationales of decentralization;
 Analyze the major policy options/tools used to mitigate economic disparities
among regional states.

1.1 The meaning of Decentralization

? Dear Learner! Can you define the concept of decentralization?

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 To assure the success of economic growth, many researchers of economic
development recognize the importance of an efficient and ethical public
management system in developing and implementing sound development
policies and programs as well as the need to reform the public sector to
overcome many unethical and inefficient bureaucratic dysfunctions
(malpractices) and problems. To achieve these goals, recent reform policies
have emphasized not only reforms or changes of the civil service system, public
budgetary system, and state-owned enterprises, but also restructuring and
adjustment policies in market liberalization, privatization, deregulation, and
decentralization.

The policy measures emphasized in recent government reforms have broadened

the traditional concern of improving management and operational issues in
public organizations to a new focus on good governance for successful
development. The policy reform of decentralization is explained further as
follows.

Decentralization Policy: The last major change in governance is the

importance of decentralization policies in many developed and developing
countries. In the United States, decentralization policies were emphasized as a
result of the huge federal budget deficit, the cutback of federal aid, and the
Reagan federalism philosophy. In many developing countries, decentralization
policies were adopted because of the emphasis on structural adjustment
policies by international assistance organizations (the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund). The Structural Adjustment Policies call for,
among other things, decentralization of national government administration
and reduction of the central government’s control over or intervention in the
economy.

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 Decentralization has been defined as “the transfer of responsibility for
planning, management, and the raising and allocation of resources from the
central government and its agencies to field units of government agencies,
subordinate units or levels of government, semi-autonomous public authorities
or corporations, area-wide, regional or functional authorities, or non-
governmental private or voluntary organizations. Researchers have debated
about the advantages and problems of decentralization policy. On the one
hand, they recognize that advantages of decentralization policy include
emphasizing administrative responsiveness, increasing political participation,
and promoting democratic principles. On the other hand, they notice that
decentralization policy may generate such problems as increasing disparities
among regions, jeopardizing economic and social stability, affecting
administrative efficiency. They maintain that these problems may result from
the lack of resources and information at the local level, and the low
administrative skills, training, and educations among local public employees.

To implement decentralization policy, it is important for policy makers to

consider the decentralization from a comprehensive strategic planning
perspective. Professor Shin indicates some important policy components such
as: understanding political, social, economic, and institutional environments of
central and local governments; analyzing constraints and opportunities of
these governments; considering policy scope and nature; developing action
plan of decentralization; and focusing on capacity building is especially
important as it includes such as institutional, personnel, fiscal and information
capacity building.

There have been many debates in recent years about the role of the government
in economic development. Studies of many developing countries suggest that
government intervention in the economic marketplace is costly and inefficient,
and recommended that deregulation or privatization should be used to enhance
the efficiency of resource allocation. For many policy makers, the pubic, and
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 academics, a policy concern is how to make the dominating public sector more
accountable to the citizens, and more efficient and effective in policy making
and service delivery.

One policy option is to search for decentralization and deconcentration of

authority to sub national governments. While decentralization itself does not
mean democratization, it is often associated with the political reforms that
push for democratization and grass-root participation in developing countries.
The major policy questions related to decentralization are:
1. What are the proper roles of sub national governments?
2. What policy areas can be decentralized?
3. How should the government plan for decentralization?

Policy makers should realize that not all functions should be performed by the
central government. Decentralization may provide a feasible solution to many
problems of inefficiency faced by developing countries. Nonetheless, there
should be economic and political rationales for decentralization.

1.2 Rationales of Decentralization

A) Economic rationales
1) Policy and Administrative Responsiveness: The most commonly used
rationale for decentralization is the responsiveness argument. Since local
governments are closer to the users of public services, they have access to
more information about the quantity and quality demand for public services
than the national government does. Given this advantage, they can provide
public services which meet the specific needs of local constituents, and avoid
wasteful provisions that are not needed. From the perspective of welfare
economics, then, decentralization helps improve social efficiency.

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 The responsiveness argument is further reinforced by a consideration of the
transaction cost problems in developing countries. Centralized provisions of
public services usually require extensive information exchange and a complex
organizational structure through which to implement national policies. By
decentralizing service provision to regions and localities, the central
government can reduce red tape and simplify organizational hierarchies.

Much of the decision-making and policy implementation can be delegated. For

example, fire and police protection, sewage and sanitation, the design,
construction, and maintenance of local infrastructure, as well as the regulation
of local land use can all be decentralized from the central government to
regional or local authorities. If this is done, the central government can reduce
many administrative responsibilities.

2. Collective Action Problems and Decentralization: The term “collective

action problem” refers to the problems of coordinating rational individuals who
try to maximize individual net benefits regardless of social benefits. Collective
action problems are particularly serious in allocative policy areas, such as the
provision of public goods and the management of common pool resources. If
the collective action problem exists, a certain problems are particularly serious
in allocative policy areas, such as the provision of public goods and the
management of common pool resources. If the collective action problem exists,
a certain degree of centralization at the policy-making and implementation level
is desirable because it can help prevent rapid depletion of resources by self-
interested opportunistic behavior, reduce the costs of coordination and
monitoring, and enforce social or political agreements that benefit various local
jurisdictions.

Some studies have suggested that collective problem can be overcome by

institutional arrangements which allow for local participation and
collaboration. One successful example of this can be found in the management
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 of common-pool resources. A similar logic can be applied to stabilization
policies. For any stabilization policy to be effective and to have real impact to
the national economy, regional cooperation is essential. To decentralize the
implementation policy to various local units may cause considerable difficulties
in administration and policy planning. So the design and implementation of
stabilization policies are usually in the hands of the central government.

3. Externality Arguments : Externality effects are the costs or benefits or

costs incurred by other parties that are not internalized in the policy
calculations by the policymakers. According to economic theories, the scope of
externalities should define the appropriate responsibilities of governments. If
the externality effects of a given policy are widely distributed across
jurisdictions, the national government should be responsible for such policy
because it has a wide scope of jurisdiction and can therefore internalize all the
benefits and costs of the policy in its policy making process.

4. Scale Economies: The final economic criterion for decentralization is that

the extent of scale economies is limited. Some public services should be
centralized (or co-produced by provincial and /local governments) at the
regional level because they yield economies of scale. These services usually
require fixed or quasi-fixed capital inputs, give increasing returns from
technological inputs, and have limited congestion costs for provision. From the
managerial efficiency perspective, to decentralize and have the supply of these
services duplicated by different provincial and local governments is wasting
social resources. An appropriate example is the provision of electricity.
Wirstschafter and shih find that the decentralization of China’s electricity
sector has led to the use of small plants which are inefficient, environmentally
unclean, and more costly. The study shows how poorly-planned
decentralization may inadvertently lead to the sacrifices of the benefits of scale
economies and expertise.

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 B. Non-Economic Consideration in Decentralization

1. Capacity Concerns :While economic rationales provide a normative

guideline for decentralization policies, many developing countries can not
follow them because of practical constraints. Capacity constraints are
obviously one of them. The capacity of local governments depends on many
factors, such as the quantity and quality of local officials, the knowledge and
data base required for effective policy making, technology available to policy
planners and implementers, and the revenue available. For this reason, it is
not feasible to have local provision of public services, for example, while the
central government still controls the tax base and revenue decisions. With out
sufficient capacity in these areas, the central governments will still the agenda
of local policy making and the administration of the policies and local
governments will remain powerless and dependent.

2. Political Constraints: Political factors also constitute one of the main

concerns of decentralization. While countries with a tradition of centralized and
authoritarian governments may want to devolve certain national
responsibilities to the local level in order to attain efficiency benefits, resistance
from the central bureaucracy often hinders the progress of decentralization.
Officials and politicians in the central government may see decentralization as
a threat to their career stability, political security, and economic interests. They
have little incentives to support local officials and help implement
decentralization policies. As a result, resources may be withheld and
information and expertise may not be shared with local officials. One example
is the experience of many Latin American countries in the 1970’s and the
19680’s .Although many of them had decentralization policies or a federalist
political system, the central government played a dominant role because the
central ruling party enjoyed the privilege of concentrated political, economic,
and military power and had little incentive to implement the decentralization
policies as designed.
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 3. Regional Differences: The issue here is how to achieve balanced regional
development with the introduction of decentralization, given the fact that
political schisms based on regional conflicts have often brought about severe
regional disparities in many countries. When regional differences become a
potential source of conflict and stability, the scope of decentralization is usually
curbed by the central government because of the fear that these regions attain
more autonomous power, they can eventually demand independence, this
jeopardize the national integrity. Many developing countries for instance, China
and Indonesia are caught in such a policy dilemma. Therefore, even though
apparent regional differences are present; the political reality may limit the
possible scope of decentralization.

1.3 Strategic Planning for Decentralization

A. Analysis of the Environmental factors

Before any decentralization reform takes place, policy makers at central level,
should conduct an environmental survey of regional and local governments, in
consultation with regional and local officials and community organization. The
scan should consider the following factors as:

• What are the financial and administrative capacities of regional and local
governments?
• Who are the politically dominant groups in the regional and local
governments?
• Who will benefit from decentralization, and who will lose?

At the same time, the central government has to examine its own political,
socio-economic, and institutional environments and find out what constraints

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 and opportunities it faces. A politically and socially stable environment is best
suited to decentralization, yet ironically, it also gives the least incentive for an
authoritarian government to decentralize its power. Therefore, decentralization
usually requires a “fluid” or dynamic stability in the political environment. The
willingness to cooperate among various levels of government and political
interests is essential to the ultimate success of decentralization policies. Major
factors that the central government should examine include:

• What is the existing organizational culture of the central bureaucracy?

Will it be supportive of decentralization?
• How will different political parties and interest groups respond to
decentralization?
• What are the existing linkages between central, regional, and local
administrations/ are they effective and efficient?
• What is the current allocation of the revenue base and tools among
different levels of the government? How much financial support can the central
government give to regional and local governments after decentralization?

After assessing the constraints and opportunities, policy-makers can devolve

administrative and policy responsibilities to sub-national governments. The
decision should not be driven solely by political considerations. The economic
rationales should be an integral part of the process.

A. Institutional arrangements: Rondinelli and Cheema suggest three possible

ways that sub- national governments can assume more responsibilities. I.e.
Devolution, delegation, and deconcentration.

B. Timing: Timing is important in implementing decentralization. Sometimes,

political crisis of the country, such as the fall of the ruling party or the
authoritarian leader, may create an opportunity for decentralization,

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 Nevertheless, there are times when waiting may be necessary before a
decentralization program is introduced. Both central and local officials may
need some time to adjust to the new organizational culture and institutional
setting.
C. Capacity Building: The final stage of the strategic planning for
decentralization is to empower local officials to fulfill the decentralized
tasks. Several areas of empowerment are especially important.

Institutional Capacity Building

Institutional capacity building is the capacity of an administration to fulfill the

assigned tasks by formal organizations, rules, and procedures. Institutional
capacity building is intended to enhance such capacity, given the external and
internal environment of the local administration. In the wake of
decentralization, local governments may need to establish new organizations,
rules, and procedures to handle the decentralized responsibilities. Regular
linkages and exchanges between local and central agencies may also be
necessary to facilitate planning and coordination among different levels of the
government.

Personnel Capacity building

In the initial stage of decentralization, the central government may need to

provide training and technical assistance for local officials. In the log-run,
however, the personnel capacity building of local governments should be
strengthen by higher recruitment, a more effective performance monitoring
system, a better pay and incentive systems, and diverse training and retraining
programs tailored to the administrative needs and skill requirements of the
local government.

Fiscal capacity Building

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 A major need of local governments after decentralization is stronger fiscal
capacity. Without their own independent sources of revenue, local governments
become nothing other than spending agents of the central government. A
mismatch between local governments’ revenue and their expenditure is
prevalent in almost all countries. In general, this fiscal gap is exacerbated
because the degree of decentralization of expenditures is often much higher
than the degree of decentralization of revenues and as a result, local
governments are more dependent on the financial support of the national
government to balance their budgets. To mitigate a serious of fiscal gap, several
policy options can be considered:

A)An intergovernmental grant system- The central government should devise

various grant mechanisms, such as categorical grant, block grant, and
matching grant systems to help finance some local services that have national
externality and/or equity effects. However, past experience shows that an
excessive reliance on intergovernmental grants from central to local
governments can reduce local autonomy in policy-making because the central
government tends to use the grant system to displace local initiatives and
policy preferences driven by the national policy agenda.
B) Independent sources of autonomous local revenues-local revenue resources
in developing countries tend to over concentrate on non-tax revenues, such as
user charges, and property taxes. While these revenue tools have the
advantages of stability and collect ability, and are justifiable on the benefit
principle, they tend to grow very slowly overtime and can not keep pace with
the expenditure needs of local governments as the economy advances. Local
governments need to broaden their revenue tax base and develop new revenue
tools. With a more diversified tax base, local governments not only generate
more revenue, but also reduce the tax evasion opportunities of different social
groups.

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 C)A mechanism of tax sharing with the central and regional governments-Tax
sharing is especially applicable to developing countries, because it reduces the
administrative complexity and duplication in tax collection. Also, it allows
regional and local governments to tap into some income-elastic sources, such
as income and sales taxes, and reduces the problem of inter-jurisdictional
inequity in revenue capacity.

D)Strengthening the local tax administration- The efficiency of the local tax
administration should be improved to reduce tax evasion and collection costs.
Subsidies from the central government to local tax administration should also
be reduced gradually through improved cost recovery of the local tax
administration. This would require more professional training of tax
administrators and improvements in information collection and processing.

E)Information Capacity Building

Speed and information are just as indispensable to sub national
governments. The central governments need to share information through the
establishment of a central data bank and computerized networks. The
computerized data network system enable information accessibility on a
timely basis and allow government at all levels to capitalize on economies of
scale by reducing information costs.

 Activity – 1
1. Could you define the term decentralization?
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_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
3. What are the major types of decentralization?
_____________________________________________________________
 UNIT SUMMARY
The term decentralization embraces a variety of concepts which must be
carefully analyzed in any particular country. Decentralization-the transfer of
authority and responsibility for public functions from the central government o
subordinate or quasi-independent government organizations and/or the private
sector –is a complex multi-faceted concept. Different types of decentralization
should be distinguished because they have different characteristics, policy
implications, and conditions for success.
Before the implementation of decentralization plicy, governments should take
into consideration. The economic and non-economic rationales for successful
decentralization should be identified and analyzed.
Before any decentralization reform takes place, policy makers at central level,
should conduct an environmental survey of regional and local governments, in

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 consultation with regional and local officials and community organization. At
the same time, the central government has to examine its own political, socio-
economic, and institutional environments and find out what constraints and
opportunities it faces.

 Check List
Direction: Dear students this is the section in which you confirm your
understanding of the lessons in this unit. Put a tick mark () in the yes
column for activities that you have clear understanding and in the no
column for activities that you doubt that you have no good
understanding.
I Can: Yes No
. Define the concept of decentralization;
. List the names of standard and participatory organizations ;
. Discuss the roles of governments in economic development;
. Analyze the rationales behind decentralization ;

Self-Assessment Questions
Choose the best answer among the given alternatives
1. All but one is true about decentralization
a) It increases administrative responsiveness;
b) It widens political participation;
c) Reduces regional disparities ;
d) Promote democratic principles.
2. Identify the incorrect reason about problems of decentralization
a) Lack of resources and information
b) Low administrative skills;
c) Resistance from certain groups
d) None

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 3. Strategic planning perspective includes the following except
a) Analyzing constraints and opportunities;
b) Focusing on capacity building;
c) Developing action plan for centralization;
d) Considering policy scope and nature
e) None
4. All but one is an element of capacity building
a) Institutional capacity building;
b) Personnel capacity building;
c) Information capacity building
d) None
5. One of the following is not true about government intervention in the economy,
which one?
a) It is less costly and efficient;
b) Deregulation enhances resource allocation;
c) Public sector accountability is very important;
d) None
6. Which one is wrong about economic rationale of decentralization?
a) The responsiveness argument;
b) Collective action problem;
c) Scale economies;
d) Regional differences
e) None
7. Environmental scanning before decentralization include the following except
a) Analyzing financial and administrative capacity of local governments;
b) Identifying and empowering politically dominant groups at the local level;
c) Identifying the losers and beneficiaries from decentralization policy;
d) None
8. Strategic planning for decentralization include the following except
a) Analysis of the environmental factors;
b) Capacity building;
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 c) Timing;
d) Empowering central authorities
e) All
9. The following policy instruments may be implemented to address fiscal gap
among local governments except
a) An intergovernmental grant system;
b) Broadening the revenue tax base of local governments;
c) Centralization of the tax administration
d) Tax sharing
e) All
10. Identify the incorrect statement about tax sharing
a) It increases duplication in tax collection;
b) Reduce inter-jurisdictional inequality in revenue capacity;
c) Income inelastic sources will be taped by local governments
d) None

Answer Keys
Unit One Unit Four
1) F 1.C 9.E
2) A 2.D 10.E
3) A 3.C 11.D
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 4) B 4.A 12.A
5) C 5. D 13.E
6) B 6.C 14.E
7) B 7.E 15.E
8) B 8.D
9) C
10) E

Unit Six Unit Seven

1. E 1.C 6. D
2. D 2. D 7. B
3. D 3. C 8.D
4. D 4. E 9. C
5. D 5. A 10.C

Bibliography
.Marker Turner and Hulme(1997), Governance, Administration and Development.
(1997) PALGRAVE. New York.
Bhattachrya,Mohit(2007),New Horizons of Public [Link]
Publisher,New Delhi.
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