Effective governance is one of the key challenges for both developing and developed countries. Governments, today, are increasingly encountering complex and cross-cutting issues such as economic and financial volatility, internal and external conflicts, growing social tensions, adverse demographic trends, climate change vulnerabilities, weak regulatory regimes, huge infrastructure and service delivery gaps, state and elite capturing and sustaining rule of law. Faced with growing criticism of ineffectiveness of state institutions undermining country’s economic, social and political development because of weakening capacity of public officials to pace up with emerging challenges, there is a renewed interest in reforming the governance and reforming the civil service.
This book examines public administration in South Asia in the context of rapid changes and modernization of administrative traditions, thoughts, and practices. The existing literature has, however, not given adequate attention to these developments, at least in a single volume. The book describes both the shared administrative traditions of Bhutan, Bangladesh, China, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, and how far they have adapted their administrative systems to respond to contemporary administrative and governance challenges. The book studies how national civil service reforms have been carried out in each member state of South Asia and how the national civil service acts and different regulations are being implemented, as well as what are the critical factors associated with the implementation of national civil service acts and reform measures in the region.
A state-of-the-art, one-stop resource, Public Administration in South Asia: India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan examines public administration issues and advances in the Indian subcontinent. The book fulfills a critical need. These nations have the largest public administration programs in South Asia, yet existing knowledge on them is fragmented at best. Bringing together leading scholars from these countries, this book provides both an insider perspective and a scholarly look at the challenges and accomplishments in the region. Focusing on the machinery of government, the book explores questions such as: What is the history of public administration development? How are major decisions made in the agencies? Why are anti-corruption efforts so much a challenge? What is the significance of intergovernmental relations? What is the success of administrative reform? What are examples of successful social development programs? How successful is e-government, and what are its challenges? Why is civil service reform difficult to achieve? How is freedom of information being used as a means to combat corruption and invoke grassroots activism? What can be learned from the successes and failures? While public administration practice and education have become considerably professionalized in the last decade, a sufficiently in-depth and well-rounded reference on public administration in these countries is sorely lacking. Most available books tackle only aspects of public administration such as administrative reforms, civil service, economic developments, or public policy, and are country specific. None provide the in-depth analysis of the sphere of public action in South Asia found in this book. It supplies an understanding of how public administration can be either the source of, or solution to, so many of the problems and achievements in the Indian subcontinent.
Pakistan, after fifty-nine years of existence, is at a historical crossroads. The country faces an acute crisis of governance. Problems with the administrative set-up include poor planning, waste, mismanagement, inefficiency and the absence of a work ethic. Malfunction was the norm not the exception in the bureaucratic structure of the country. Excessive discretionary powers, overlapping of jurisdictions and the absence of clear-cut demarcations of authority and administrative control had weakened government performance. The gap between policy-making and policy-execution was wide partially due to weaknesses in the bureaucracy and the generally low quality of state personnel. Independent observers agree that the overall performance of the GOP was poor or lacklustre at best. The crisis of governance in Pakistan mainly stems from a deficient federal set-up and over centralisation of power in the national government. The World Bank, among others, believes that Pakistan had suffered due to rampant corruption and weak government that had created serious economic imbalances.
The role and position of the civil service as core actors in the public sector has been seriously questioned in recent years. This volume provides a comparative study of civil service systems in Asia, Western Europe and Africa. The cast of international contributors provide new insights.
This book provides a research-based analysis of public sector reforms in Pakistan. It offers a broad overview of reforms at different levels of government – including federal, provincial and local – and examines decentralization and devolution reforms in various policy sectors. It also reflects on market-oriented reforms and the steps taken to involve the private sector to build a better-governed public sector, and explores new trends in the public sector in the areas of digitalisation and disaster management. Bringing together young researchers, academics, and practitioners, the book sets a new milestone in the movement towards context-specific reform studies in both academia and the professional practice of public administration, particularly in South Asia.
