Public Policy, Training, and Civil Service Reform

Identification of Public Policy Implementation Barriers (Health System Reform Plan)

Background & Aims of the Study: One of the main concerns of policymakers is the establishment of health equity and access to health services. Health system reform plan is one of the most important tools of policy makers in the health system. The health system, as any other plan has had some problems during implementation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the obstacles to the ...

Civil Service Reform in Africa: Mixed Results After 10 Years

Slackers and Zealots: Civil Service, Policy Discretion, and Bureaucratic Expertise∗

In this paper we investigate how “civil service” systems of public personnel management interact with bureaucratic discretion to create expert bureaucracies populated by policy-motivated agents. We build a model in which bureaucrats may invest in (relationship specific) policy expertise, and may be either policy-motivated or policy-indifferent. We argue that under specific conditions on the nat...

Public Policy, Price Shocks, and Civil War in Developing Countries

Those who study the role of agriculture in the political economy of development focus on government policy choices on the one hand and the impact of price shocks on the other. We argue that the two should be studied together. We find that civil unrest (Granger) causes government policies, pushing governments in poor and medium income countries to shift relative prices in favor of urban consumer...

Unpacking “Health Reform” and “Policy Capacity”; Comment on “Health Reform Requires Policy Capacity”

Health reform is the outcome of dispersed policy initiatives in different sectors, at different levels and across time. Policy work which can drive coherent health reform needs to operate across the governance structures as well as the institutions that comprise healthcare systems. Building policy capacity to support health reform calls for clarity regarding the nature of such policy work and t...