Bureaucracy lies at the heart of state governance. A capable bureaucracy allows for the effective implementation of policies and the judicial use of government resources.

A cross-national analysis of the effects of ‘Weberian’ State Structures on Economic Growth by Peter Evans and James Rauch (1999) highlighted that among the 35 developing countries studied, economies with more competent administrators enjoyed higher prosperity and economic growth levels.

Countries across the developed and developing world are overhauling structures and upskilling their public servants to build a well-functioning bureaucracy, that can help them achieve their economic goals.

The United Kingdom & Australia

Countries like the United Kingdom and Australia opted for the New Public Management (NPM), back in the 1980s, to make public services more ‘business-like’ and improve efficiency by using private sector management models.

The aim was to replace the struggling Traditional Public Management, based on the Weberian model, that followed a staunch hierarchical system guided by regulations and administrative procedures.

Elements

Traditional or Weberian Administration

New Public Management

Government organisation

Service provided as a single aggregate unit operating on a uniform basis

Breaking down of traditional structure into smaller quasi-autonomous units

Control of public organisations

Control from the headquarters through the hierarchy of unbroken supervision and check and balances

Hands-on-professional management with clear statement of goals and performance measurement

Control of output measures

Control on inputs and procedures

Focus on results and output control rather than procedures

Management Practice

Standard established procedures throughout the service

Using private style management

Discipline in resource utilisation

Due process and political intermingling

Efficient use and demand based

Adapted from Araujo (2001)


China

In countries like China, where the state acts as a “helping hand”,a series of bureaucratic transformations were brought in within the existing traditional system. Targeted administrative and fiscal decentralisation, a mandatory retirement program and permission to join private businesses, acted as incentives to support economic development in the country through public administration, within the existing political structure.

Indonesia

The reform roadmap that Indonesia adopted was built around 9 pillars.

   1. Change Management

   2. Legislation Management

   3. Organisation Enhancement

   4. Procedure Management

   5. Structuring of Human Resources Management System

   6. Supervision Enhancement

   7. Performance Accountability Enhancement

  8. Public Service Quality Improvement

   9. Monitoring and Evaluation

According to Indonesia’s Ministry of Finance, they witnessed a 300% rise in government revenue in terms of taxation from the beginning of this bureaucratic reform implementation.

India

Studies in the USA, UK, Pakistan, Bolivia, the Central African Republic, Ghana, Morocco, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania have found that human resource management (including skills like communication, negotiation, flexibility, ethical actions and compassion) has a positive and significant impact on sustainable capacity building in the public sector.

Building on this, India rolled out the National Programme for Civil Services Capacity Building (NPCSCB), Mission Karmayogi, to transform the Indian bureaucracy through institutional and process reforms by partnering with public training institutions, universities, experts, and start-ups.

Read: Rethinking Leadership in The Public Sector

Establishing a participative, responsive, and intelligent governance mechanism is a need for every nation, and more so for an emerging country like India. Examples from across the world also show that bureaucratic reforms are a dynamic need and if implemented correctly, can lead to economic growth and political stability in the country. 

However, implementing such reforms is a challenge. As John Maynard Keynes once said “, The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones." In a titanium framework like the public sector, there lies a tendency to resist change and continue with the status quo.