28 Innovations in Public Service Delivery for Ordinary Citizens
Innovations in Public Service Delivery for Ordinary
Citizens
Amita Singh
Abstract
Innovations have become key players in defining pro-poor governance. While this
provides visibility to a good work of an administrator it also raises many perplexing
questions. Their need, appropriateness and impact has challenged traditional
bureaucracy and by doing so has brought a refreshing change in society. Interestingly,
they are reified as something existing outside the bureaucracy and beyond administrative
capacities. They have become the fly wheel of governance even though they tend to do
what bureaucracy should be doing but fails to do. The instrumentalist state relies on
innovations in service delivery and democratization of society becomes inadvertent
fallout of its implementation process. New partnerships and private networks come to
occupy the space where bureaucracy withdraws but their interaction is largely guided
and premeditated by the state politics. The paper attempts to understand and analyze the
nature and role of innovations in pro-poor governance.
Introduction:
All citizens have a right to food, health,
education, water, sanitation and also
justice delivery. Ironically, most states
have not been able to guarantee these
services to their people. Despite the
Monterrey (Mexico) partnership of 2002
in which nations pledged for mutual
support and financial assistance for
improving access to basic services, these
services are failing poor people in many
ways. The issue of access and
unaffordability has been debated several
times by the multilateral financial bodies
like
the
World
Bank,
Asian
Development Bank as well as the
UNDP. The poor in most countries are
forced to use expensive services by
private providers such as expensive
schools and private hospitals.
As the 2004 WDR says that even though
governments devote a third of their
budgets to health and education, much
of the benefit is taken away by the richi.
Governments are not pro-poor hence
their framework of governance is
especially designed to exclude the poor
in many ways. Bureaucracy has no
incentive to be pro-poor. Some
communities have tried innovative
means to bypass state failure in
providing to the poor. Using information
and communication technology (ICT)
along with social partnerships and
private networking many communities
have risen out of poverty. At least two
examples can be mentioned here; Mahiti
Shati in Gujarat and Tara Haat in
Bundelkhandii region of India have
brought forth several initiatives through
many such partnerships to transform a
compulsively and aggressively pro-
Nepalese Journal of Public Policy and Governance, Vol. xxiv, No.1, June, 2009
propertied class government into propoor governance. Most of these
initiatives are captured as innovations.
However, this paper should not divert a
reader to the role of ICT in bringing
innovations but explores the necessity,
nature and normative links of
innovations in service delivery to the
bureaucracy. This paper also attempts to
amplify the bonding which exists
between the innovation and pro-poor
governance as the degree of their
bonding depends much upon the
dimensions of state politics.
When politics is not pro-poor
State is neither benign nor altruisticiii
hence public spending in pro-poor
programmes is diverted to serve the rich.
A Poverty Alleviation Programme in
Mexico called PRONASOL ( Programa
Nacional de Solidaridad)iv was spending
1.2% of GDP annually on water,
electricity, nutrition and education.
When this six year programme was
assessed it was found that the drop in
poverty was a meager 3 % only. It was
observed that if the budget was
distributed properly the drop in poverty
would have been around 64 percent. The
reason for this wrongful distribution was
that some communities which were
politically powerful got most of the
funds but the poor communities which
needed them got very little.
Rise of an instrumentalistv state has
been a direct culmination of the process
which began with the Arkansas election
campaign of Bill Clinton for the US
Presidency in 1991. He believed like
many other leaders of his times in the
third way or the centrist idea of
governance. The refreshing rigor and a
29 national mission was attached to a preexisting idea studied by the scientific
management theorists in the 1920s.
However
the
threatening
ungovernabilityvi which swept through
the globe with the beginning of the
nineties it became imperative for the
governments and people to welcome and
also adjust to the idea of an efficient
state. Clinton was found ‘progressive
and innovative’ when he adopted the
idea from Osborne and Gaeblervii about
the ‘Reinventing State’. The idea of
governance was witnessing a major shift
when Al Gore as the Vice President and
Head of the National Performance
Review prepared a report in September
1993, ‘Creating a Government that
Works Better and Costs Less’. The
Report
promised
to
‘resuscitate
government’ by bringing about a
savings of US$ 108 billion within 5
years and this would be through a
reduction of bureaucracy by 12 percent
during this period.
This idea re-generatedviii enormous
interest in the concept of an efficient
state which could bring down
corruption,
economize
public
transactions, streamline regulations and
create new partnerships with business
and peoples’ organizations. The reforms
were designed to be bottom up and
affect the multi-level governance
systems from the local and state to the
federal. This was followed by a Report
to the Club of Rome and prepared by the
legendary Yehezkel Dror, The Capacity
to Govern (2001) which created urgency
for a radical redesign of governance to
meet many complex challenges in the
changing times.
30 Innovations in Public Service Delivery for Ordinary Citizens
The Millennium Development Goals
brought further pressures of meeting
deadline based transformation of
governance. Most important of all was
the Declaration signed by 180 nations in
2000 for meeting these goals by 2015.
All these nations agreed that this was
not to be done by accumulating wealth,
increasing investments or achieving
numerical targets but by reigniting the
reach of basic services such as food,
water, shelter, health and education to
ordinary people. This was a more
comprehensive view of development as
capacities
are
enhanced
and
participation becomes better ensured.
However these basic services do not
work through old institutions infested
with syndicates of corruption, apathy
and opaqueness but through institutional
restructuring. To use the metaphor of
Mancur Olsonix, state is a ‘stationary
bandit’
which
is
occupied
in
legitimizing the steal through taxation
,is also limiting the reach of services to
ordinary people through a strong
kleptocracyx which works for those who
can pay.
This
massive
‘restructuring’,
‘reinvention’ or ‘redesigning’ raised
scientific standards of accrediting
welfare strategies and measurement of
performance. These two requirements of
performance
measurement
and
evaluation of implementation which had
always been kept in the waiting within
the public policy domains now become
the fly wheel of governance.Governance
was inadvertently split into innovations
and best practices so that a clarity of
measurement standards could be
highlighted but in most cases the larger
picture of governance was getting
diluted to the new demands of ‘an
accounting state’.
This paper argues that innovations and
evaluation of best practices are
imperative to meet the demands of
poverty reduction but in may not
provide a complete landscape of
reforms. Administrative reforms are
linked to the nature of the state hence a
neo-liberal centrist state model may
apparently be transforming sloppy and
unfair
welfare
services
through
decentralizing public spending yet in
reality may remain the same.xi An
advancing research on implementation
has piled up evidence about the not so
benign and altruistic nature of the
welfare state which is also a significant
reason for its failure. Thus public
service delivery requires to be lifted out
of the instrumentalist state and be firmly
placed within the participatory model
backed by remedies against information
asymmetry and kleptocracy. Many
examples have been analyzed to
understand the multidimensional nature
of public service delivery rather than a
state centric dissemination of a privilege
to ordinary citizens.
A porous instrumentalist state
Once it is accepted that the public
service delivery provisions are affected
and influenced by the nature of the state,
it becomes necessary to exemplify the
factors which contribute, facilitate or
retard the process of state building.
Massive demonstrations and mass
upsurge of people across the world
exposed the control of states by interest
groups rather than people. States had
become unproductive and ineffective.(
Buchanan 1975). Most of the countries
Nepalese Journal of Public Policy and Governance, Vol. xxiv, No.1, June, 2009
in transition witnessed historically
excluded people on streets refusing to
remain marginalized anymore. This put
before governments a need for
governance reform which on one hand
gave people access to markets it also
had to arrange for transparent and
accountable
administrative
arrangements which people could
approach without fear or obstruction.
Another important reason for reform and
strengthening of the state was the
pressure from international donors on
debt servicing. Most of these states had
dwindling reserves. This brought the
World Bank and IMF close to
restructuring governance in these
countries as a matter of necessity to
resuscitate backfiring programmes of
development due to a lax and corrupt
bureaucracy. This whole process of
reform apparently is based in the
constitution of the country so that the
rights of people do not become confined
to selective rule making. Trubek and
Gallanter (1974, pp.1062-1102) linked
efficiency in governance to a rule
making process which is not dominated
by a person or a group. Thus people
have to be participatory in this process.
Francis Fukuyama in State Building,
Governance and World Order in the
Twenty First Century,(2004) suggests
strengthening the state rather than
limiting or opposing it. The emphasis is
on training and capacity building. This
form of Citizens engagement includes
all measures and/or institutional
arrangements that link citizens more
directly into the decision-making
process of a State as to enable them to
influence the public policies and
programmes in a manner that impact
31 positively on their economic and social
lives (UNDESA, 2007). US history has
given ample evidence about the
consistent effort to build administrative
capacities through elimination of
patronage but as Fukuyama finds that
most of these American efforts were
devoid of local knowledge. Public
service delivery reforms could be
harnessed as composite outreach
programmes for people with a strong
embedded ness into local ethnographic
and sociological understanding by the
implementer. Till this is realized there
would be an accountability gap in the
service dissemination process making it
ineffective and mundane.
An instrumentalist state can be
differentiated on grounds of citizen’s
engagement.
Citizen
engagement
includes
all
measures
and/or
institutional arrangements that link
citizens more directly into the decisionmaking process of a State as to enable
them to influence public policies and
programmes in a manner that impact
positively on their economic and social
lives (UNDESA, 2007)
While the former looks at it subordinate
to technical experts who contribute to
development, the latter treats this as an
indispensable factor in service delivery
provisions. Public service delivery
reforms have raised a renewed debate on
the nature of the state. Nicos Paulantzas
(1969) has expressed that the
coordinated
directorates,
planning
groups and policy reforms are suspect
since they believe that social groups and
classes are reducible to inter-personal
relations between individuals rather than
being constituted as objective relations
of production. Thus an instrumentalist
32 Innovations in Public Service Delivery for Ordinary Citizens
state is driven by individual choices
rather than collective and democratic
choices. Most factors which govern the
instrumentalist state are ruled by
external factors which are not generated
within the state . Paulantzas refers to a
disequilibria or ‘unstable equilibria’
between the economic, political and
ideological positions.
Innovations as catalysts in service
delivery
‘Innovations’ are some kind of rhetoric
to describe a good effort made by the
bureaucracy.
Administrative
organizations are always expected to
serve people through a constant effort
towards
a
democratization
of
governance but instead of being creative
and inspirational the machinery sinks
into
‘orthodoxy’xii
to
become
dysfunctional
and
unproductive.
Innovations tend to retrieve many of the
lost characteristics of administration. A
voluminous study of innovations and
best practices is being carried out in the
Government Innovators Network at the
Ash Institute of Democratic Governance
at the KSG in Harvard University and
also at the Governance knowledge
Centre at Jawaharlal Nehru University
in New Delhi. An analysis of these
efforts exemplify the fact that most
innovations are simply outreach drives
of bureaucracy or social partnerships
and standardization of accountability
patterns which never existed before.
Considering the vast expanse of the
unchallenged rule of orthodoxy in public
administration these are bold efforts and
the rhetoric of ‘innovations’ raises them
to a level of visibility leading to their
replication in other areas also.
Innovations have also found to be
porous and elastic as far as interaction
with people is concerned. Hence are
open and liberal in absorbing or
sometimes transcending the limitations
and demands of macro cultures and
subcultures which are becoming more
robust in contemporary times but also
intransigent for regular bureaucracy.
Fox and Miller (1996) provide a very
important argument which has been able
to explain the suspected demise or
irrelevance
of
bureaucracy
in
postmodern public administration which
focuses
upon
reinvention
and
downsizing. Starting with a basic
premise that theoretical presuppositions
condition how things are perceived (p.8)
they move on to explain that the rational
utility maximizing individuals created a
rational-legal model of bureaucracy.
Reality is constructed by human beings
and is never objective or concrete. Thus
Fox and Miller suggest that many of
these categories that we uncritically
employ in daily discourse are
reifications , that is, socially constructed
categories that are mistaken for things
that exist “out there” in the world of
“objective reality”.(p.8) Such reified
categories are thought to exist
independent of human social interaction.
Bureaucracy is one such reified
category. Actually it is not since it is an
extension of the society, bureaucrats are
under the same constitution and live in
the society which is ruled, pushed or
ignored by bureaucracy of which he/she
is a part. Thus, notwithstanding
reification, all such institutions and
others as well are part of the social
processes and thus need not alienate
themselves from them. This explains
Nepalese Journal of Public Policy and Governance, Vol. xxiv, No.1, June, 2009
how bureaucracies are victims of
repeated rule orientation and patterns of
social practices which construct a reified
image of the machinery. In reality
bureaucracies are not the ‘dominant
theme’xiii of public administration as this
space is now shared with new
partnerships,
collaborations
and
associations called by Fox and Miller
(p.9) as ‘an indeterminate collection of
phenomenological moments’ or ‘a
public energy field’. A field is always
open for a discourse hence innovations
are important since they can drive
refreshing discourses in public policy
implementation.
Some fundamental questions can
be raised as a prelude to the
discourse on Innovations.
Besides the absence of a universally
accepted definition of ‘Innovations’,
there questions look for answers in this
new discourse on innovations and in
their ability to strengthen governance.
These are questions about implementing
governance programmes and tend to
create
some
anxiety
for
the
implementer. First, why are innovations
needed for public service delivery to
ordinary people in recent times?
Secondly,
how
can
the
same
bureaucracy be trusted with epochal
changes when the machinery has been
targeted for obstructing them all these
years? Third, what is the nature of
innovations for ordinary people?
This paper admits about keeping the
understanding about ordinary citizens
confined to those which cluster around
the poverty line even if many of them do
not fall below it. They are people with
sufficient reason to participate in the
33 mainstream governance but find no
incentive or institutional support to do
so. For analytical convenience ordinary
people are the ones which fall under all
of the following categories;
1) Exclusively Rural-BPL (Below
Poverty Line) ratings to be done
under fifty cents segregation
2) Rural poor –b/w 50 cents and $ one.
3) Urban Poor right under $ one
category
4) Middle class category in urban areas
who are clustered not very far away
from the poverty line due to
economic slump and market
unpredictability.
However
a
more
appropriate
understanding of ordinary citizens
which transcends the developeddeveloping dichotomies uses the term to
describe all those teeming millions who
wait to receive state services without
much ability to influence it. Ian
O’Flynn’s (2006) suggests that the rise
of ordinary citizens is as an outcome of
increased deliberativeness in democratic
systems in recent times. This is in
recognition of the fact that due to
prevailing elitism in democratic
functioning a majority of citizens have
become politically marginalized. This
also resonated with campaigns of
feminists,
environmentalists
and
multiculturalists around the globe. Flynn
(2006:1) highlights the increased
visibility of ordinary citizen due to ‘the
growing levels of political disaffection
among ordinary citizens and the
concomitant atrophying of civic life.’
The elitist model of democracy which
obstructed the moral and social benefits
accruing out of the participation of
34 Innovations in Public Service Delivery for Ordinary Citizens
ordinary citizens was being replaced but
the new model which aspired for
sustainable innovations in an otherwise
loathsome, apathetic and immobile
public domain.
Understanding what people want?
There have been some extremely
disconcerting facts about governance
which have paved the way for
innovations based reforms in public
service delivery. There is a deepening
disbelief
and
distrust
against
governments in developing countries
especially countries of South Asia
because of which ordinary people have
alienated from governments.xivThis has
enabled or encouraged military dictators
to control the seat of power and weaken
achievements of democratic governance
with ease. Thus the requirement of
accountability and the need for
transparent administration is now
distressing
many
non-performing
governments which are detested and
hated by their citizens. The recent mass
upsurge
in
Iran
against
the
fundamentalist President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad and in support of Mir
Hussein Maussavi, second was the
people’s uprising against land grabbing
in Central China indicate that ordinary
people cannot be ignored anymore.
A situation such as this if allowed to
happen will detract much of the
developmental task including funding
for innovative projects by scaring away
foreign investors. This in turn also raises
social
issues
which
undermine
institutional stability and loss of trust
from ordinary citizens in society. To
prevent any undermining of democratic
governments it is important that faith is
restored in ordinary citizensxv so that
they are attracted to participate in the
democratic processes which respects
rule of law, access to justice and human
rights. In figure 1 given below it is
clearly demonstrated that people in all
countries aspire for an expression of
their will and a democratic government.
In all 19 nations polled, majorities agree
with the democratic principle that “the
will of the people should be the basis for
the authority of government”—a
principle enunciated in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, whose
60th anniversary is being celebrated this
year. On average 85 percent agree—52
percent strongly. Across the 19 nations,
74 percent say that the “will of the
people” should have more influence
than it currently does. The poll of
17,525 respondents was conducted
between January 10 and March 20, 2008
by
WorldPublicOpinion.org,
a
collaborative research project involving
research centers from around the world
and managed by the Program on
International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at
the University of Maryland. Interviews
were conducted in 19 nations, though in
three of them not all questions were
asked.
Those nations interviewed include most
of the world's largest nations—China,
India, the United States, Indonesia,
Nigeria, and Russia—as well as
Argentina, Azerbaijan, Britain, Egypt,
France, Iran, Jordan, Mexico, Poland,
South Korea, Turkey, Ukraine, and the
Palestinian Territories. These nations
represent 59 percent of the world
population.
Nepalese Journal of Public Policy and Governance, Vol. xxiv, No.1, June, 2009
Figure 1
35 Just as it was not possible to export
‘democracy packages’ to less developed
countries as part of the foreign direct
investments in the globalization times,
it has been impossible to export propoor training packages from successful
states to failed states. As Rizvi suggests,
these should be ‘home grown’
(2008:192). If due to some compulsions
this requirement is bypassed there
occurs a gulf between the elites who
control governments and ordinary
citizens who cluster around the poverty
line. A restoration of trust requires a
delivery of services with speed,
transparency and in full confidence of
participating civil society. Every society
has need to regain its own ethnographic
profile to design their own systems to
deliver in the best possible manner.
Innovations for bridging the gulf:
(World Public Opinion on Governance and
Democracy, Steven Kull, Clay Ramsay, Stephen
Weber et al. May 2008, [email protected])
However, the failure of democracy in
most states in recent times is due to its
lack of capacity to innovate. The neoliberal state has, in reaction to its
agenda, consolidated ordinary people. It
has raised a bogey of basic services for
ordinary people on one hand and
renewed expectations from governments
to meet heightened aspirations of
people. Yet it fails to realize capacity
building required to deliver.
There has been a growing gulf between
the rich and the poor in both developed
as well as developing countries. This is
leading to extreme marginalization and
distancing of ordinary people from
some of the basic requirements of
leading a normal life, such as food,
health,
education,
water
and
employment. Situation is worsening to
such an extent that just a view of some
of the major research reports from
across the world would reveal the extent
of catastrophe.
A Reportxvi by the Paris-based
Organization
for
Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD)
revealed that income inequality and the
gulf between the rich and the poor has
been
widening
and
deepening.
Shockingly, the United Statesxvii has the
third worst level of income inequality
36 Innovations in Public Service Delivery for Ordinary Citizens
and poverty among the group’s 30
member states. Some 691,000 children
went hungry in America in 2007, a rise
of 50 percent over the previous year,
while one in eight Americans overall
struggled to feed themselves. James
Weill, president of the Food Research
and Action Center in USA, predicted the
2008 numbers would show even more
hunger. The figures are reported in a
study on food security conducted
annually by the US Department of
Agriculture (USDA).
OECD states in Western Europe, along
with Japan, South Korea, Canada and
Australia, all recorded better figures
than the US, as did Central and Eastern
European states, including Poland and
Hungary. The 300-page report, entitled
“Growing
Unequal?
Income
Distribution and Poverty in OECD
countries,”
concluded
that
“the
economic growth of recent decades has
benefitted the rich more than the poor.”
Wealth inequality is far higher than
reported income disparities. A very thin
layer of population which is less than 1
% of population has amassed
unprecedented affluence and capital
accumulation in a manner of twisting
and subverting state institutional and
regulatory measures. The report cited
estimates that average income inequality
across the OECD was 7 to 8 percent
higher in the mid-2000s than in the mid1980s as the poor man’s income
gradually was being transferred to the
rich as market advanced.
The World Development Report 2008
(World Bank) focusing on ‘Agriculture
for Development’ suggests the need for
immediate action in rural regions.
‘Three out of four poor people in
developing countries—883 million
people—lived in rural areas in 2002.
Most depend on agriculture for their
livelihoods, directly or indirectly. So a
more dynamic and inclusive agriculture
could dramatically reduce rural poverty,
helping to meet the Millennium
Development Goal on poverty and
hunger.’ The process of economic
development is one of continuous
restructuring of roles of both the
government and people especially when
600 millions of rural population or three
out of every four people in developing
countries would show no decline till
2025 in South Asia. While agriculture
need to be promoted to reach the
Millennium Development Goal of
halving poverty by 2015 it is important
to look at the three levels at which this
task would have to be operated upon.
‘One
agriculture
based,
one
transforming and one urbanized’.(2008:
pp.1-2). Several forms and structures of
innovative policy initiatives would be
required to increasingly decentralize,
broaden and address the shifts which
institutions and communities would be
forced to undertake in the process of
change. Services would be forced to
deviate from the regular run of the mill
kind of processes to newer arrangements
which bring speed, cost-effectiveness,
transparency along with the ability to
replicate and sustain the innovative
service delivery mechanism. These
services have become the only means
towards capacity building of ordinary
people.
There are other reasons to search for
innovative strategies for development.
Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright
(2003:4) relates the loss of democratic
Nepalese Journal of Public Policy and Governance, Vol. xxiv, No.1, June, 2009
vitality not just to poverty and
powerlessness of ordinary people but
also specifically to the size and
complexity of public services and the
State activities. Fung and Wright
suggest that the ‘problem has more to do
with the specific design of our
institutions than with the tasks they face
as
such.’(Ibid).
Therefore
the
fundamental challenge becomes to
devise innovative transformative and
democratic strategies which advance
egalitarianism, social justice, collective
decision making, and community
solidarity
besides
flourishing
of
individuals in a way that they realize
their own potentials too.
To summarize;
1) Innovations fill the gap created by
the limited ability of representative
democracy and impermeable steel
frame of bureaucracy. Gaps define
the gulf between functionality and
dysfunctionality
and
between
formulation and implementation
processes. It also shrinks the gap
created through public choice and
distribution of public funding to
appropriate communities which
have the capacities to deliver
welfare policies.
2) Innovations require a knowledge
based
administration
and
administrators who are keen to
learn. These administrators do not
have to wait for experimentation but
have to develop an intuitive base
through interaction with people so
that policies may be prevented from
backfiring. This would require a
tech savvy decision maker who is
exposed to the global currents of
37 thinking as innovations transcend
time and physical limitations of
implementation and capital.
Critique of innovations
There
are
various
titles
to
‘administrative innovation’ such as
‘New Public Management’ (Hoods and
Jackson
1991),
‘Reinventing
Government’ (Osborne and Gaebler),
‘Administrative Reforms’ ( B.Guy
Peters) to a ‘Global Management
Revolution’ (Donald Kettl). It has taken
to many terms for expressing service
delivery
systems
such
as
an
‘entrepreneurial
government’,
‘accountable governance’, ‘publicprivate partnership’ and ‘participatory
governance’.
Innovations
are
part
of
the
instrumentalist state hence not all
scholars of public administration have
been comfortable with the innovation
based reforms. Scholars such as Lynn Jr
(1996) and Overman Boyd (1994) have
criticized it as a ‘hostage to best
practices tradition’, with all its
associated
limitations
of
being
unreliable, unstable and insufficiently
analyzed as possible models. As
Stanford Borins in Innovations in
Governance
(2008)
a
research
publication of the Ash Institute of
Democratic Governance at the Kennedy
School of Government at the Harvard
University suggests; there are three main
critiques of ‘best practice or innovation
based research’ in governance,
1) It rarely attempts to verify selfreported claims,
2) Organizations lauded for best
practices today may without
warning fail tomorrow
38 Innovations in Public Service Delivery for Ordinary Citizens
3) Best practices research focuses
solely upon the characteristics of
successful organizations rather than
comparing the mediocre and the
failing.
However, research studies undertaken
by institutions of governance across the
world have tried to overcome this
handicap of ‘best practice research’. The
Ford Foundation funding has helped
besides the Kennedy School of
Government many other institutions in
China, Brazil, Chile, East Africa,
Mexico, Peru, the Philippines and South
Africa. Its anchoring at the Ash Institute
under the group called Government
Innovators Network has emerged to help
administrators share their experiences
and concerns.
In the end innovations also emerge out
of failed practices and therefore the lone
focus on them may create a perverted
proclivity to success stories only and
governance may not be able to set
performance standards for reaching
services to ordinary people.
End Notes
i
WDR 2004 writes, ‘In Nepal 46 percent of education spending accrues to the richest fifth, only 11 percent to
the poorest. In India the richest fifth receives three times the curative health care subsidy of the poorest fifth.’
(p.3)
ii
Check GKC literature at [email protected]
iii
Buchana and Tullock 1962
iv
WDR 2004, p.7.
v A state which exists only as an instrument to manage affairs of the government.
vi
Dror p.9
vii
Osborne and Gaebler 1992
viii
After 90 years of the Scientific Management revolution in administration and management and
experimenting with the welfare state.
ix
The Rise and Decline of Nations, 1982
x
The idea of Kleptocracy has emerged with the growing understanding about the self-aggrandizing nature of
the welfare state. Kleptocracy fulfils its own personal agenda rather than opening access to public goods for
all ordinary citizens in the state. Mancur Olson in his latest work , Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing
Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships’ has elaborated on this idea of Kleptocracy.
xi
The idea of the state as a ‘stationary bandit’ in The Rise and Decline of Nations explains the
symptomatic methodological individualism embedded in the nature of the state.
xii
xiii
xiv
Waldo,D 1948
Fox and Miller ,1996, p.9
‘While a degree of wariness and skepticism about the government may be healthy,the erosion of
trust is clearly a danger signal in a democracy.The erosion of popular confidence in the
government has important societal consequences that are not always fully grasped. It denudes the
government of its legitimacy,hinders its ability to govern, and paves the way for demogogues and
authoritarian rule.’Rizvi 2008: 189.
xv
"The perception that governments are not responsive to the popular will appears to be
contributing to the low levels of confidence in government found around the world," noted Steven
Kull, who directs both the WPO and its parent organization, the University of Maryland's Program
on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
xvi
Michael Förster and Mark Pearson eds.Oct 2008, Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in
OECD Countries, OECD Publishing, Look into for details of the Report in:
Nepalese Journal of Public Policy and Governance, Vol. xxiv, No.1, June, 2009
39 http://www.oecd.org/document/45/0,3343,en_2649_201185_41502445_1_1_1_1,00.html
xvii
The average income of the richest 10 percent is US$93,000 in purchasing power parities, the highest level
in the OECD. However, the poorest 10% of the US citizens have an income of US$5,800 per year—about
20% lower than the average for OECD countries.” The report noted, however, that available statistics showed
that wealth inequality was substantially higher than income distribution in every country. In the US, it was
estimated that the top 10 percent hold 71 percent of the national wealth (compared to 28 percent of total
income), while the top 1 percent control between 25 to 33 percent of total net worth.
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