Innovative approaches: Citizens as Customers?

Neil Collins

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End Point

• Effective government– Clear objectives• Aims not rules

– High compliance• stability

– Low cost• Integration vs. differentiation

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Critique• major shift in many jurisdictions:– from traditional vertically integrated public

bureaucracies to decentralized forms:• executive agencies• partnerships with nonstate partners• network-based organizations

– more indirect steering mechanisms• Conceptualise through NPM narrative but....

3

Public Service Model

• 19th century European legacy - civil service:– organised on hierarchical, bureaucratic principles– provided a limited range of services as a direct provider– adhered to the idea that political and administrative matters

could be separated – saw administrators purely as instruments for carrying out

instructions - matters of policy or strategy being the preserve of political leadership

– considered itself a special form of administration:• requiring a professional Weberian bureaucracy• employed for life, ability to serve all political masters equally

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Soviet Russia

• For several centuries, Russians famous for number of transactions conduct through unofficial channels.– reliance on unofficial "give-and-take"

• bribery and blat– informal contacts and personal networks: characterised Soviet

Russia. » constant shortages » 'economy of favours’ shadowed overcontrolling centre

– puzzle solved:• In the history of authoritarian regimes how people survived in an

economy of shortage, and how the regime survived under similar constraint

5

Post-Soviet society.

• Post-independence Kazakhstan, use of bribes + personal connections = routine– simultaneously victims/beneficiaries– Systemically + constantly = informal norm

• reproduceability of corruption• rhetoric of "mutual help” no longer used.

• Government anti-corruption measures:– E-government services; police interrogation video cameras; unifying

access points - Population Service Centre– reforming the civil service

• working harder to uncover corruption• encouraging whistle blowing through cash rewards

• modicum of success but....– ingenuity rules– same rent seeking in business

6

Transferability• which specific institutions really work?• How are they successfully introduced to work

to the desired effect?– unique cultural and historical characteristics– can government be re-engineered?

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