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Begin New Search Topic Bureaucracy Publication Year within 25 Years

1. Decentralisation: The Search for New Development Solutions in the Arab World’s Peripheries

Author:
Intissar Kherigi
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
An account of the Arab uprisings of the last decade would be incomplete without an understanding of regional inequalities. While each country’s protests were driven by a distinct combination of grievances, a common factor has been the marginalisation of “peripheries”. The Sidi Bouzid region of Tunisia from which the Arab Spring started is a region rich in agricultural resources yet poor in infrastructure and economic opportunities. Its connection rate to running water is half the national average. A similar story can be seen across the flashpoints of unrest in the Arab world, a story of widening urban-rural divides, uneven regional development and political and economic exclusion of entire regions. Can decentralisation address these grievances? Since the 1980s, decentralisation has been championed as a driver for both democratisation and development, promising to empower regions, granting them political representation and enabling them to create their own economic strategies. However, a key fear among many, from politicians and bureaucrats to ordinary citizens, is that decentralisation is a means for the central state to withdraw from its traditional functions and transfer responsibility for service provision to under-resourced and over-burdened local government. Yet, the demands for freedom, dignity and social justice voiced by the Arab uprisings require the central state to be more present in peripheries, not less. Can decentralisation help achieve greater local development in peripheral regions without allowing the central state to withdraw from its obligations to citizens? Is it even possible to envisage new forms of local development within the framework of highly centralised Arab states? How can Arab states reconfigure their relations with local communities in the context of severe political and economic crises? This article explores these questions in the Tunisian context, where a major decentralisation process is taking place in response to demands for inclusion and development. It argues that in order to produce new modes of local development in peripheries, central state institutions need to fundamentally reform the way they function.
Topic:
Inequality, Arab Spring, Decentralization, and Bureaucracy
Political Geography:
Africa, North Africa, Tunisia, and Tunis

2. Evaluating our Evaluations: Recognizing and Countering Performance Evaluation Pitfalls

Author:
Lee Evans and G. Lee Robinson
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Department of Social Sciences at West Point, United States Military Academy
Abstract:
Selecting the right person for the right job at the right time is a persistent challenge faced by organizations. Performance evaluations are a fundamental component of selection processes, and their use in the Army is nearly as old as the service itself. Some early evaluation systems consisted of a list of officers in a regiment with observations noted for each ranging from “a good-natured man” to “merely good—nothing promising” to “a man of whom all unite in speaking ill.” While our current evaluation form adds a bit more science to the art of performance evaluation, a constant in the Army’s performance evaluation system is the reliance on raters to render their judgment on the potential of a subordinate for service at higher levels. The purpose of this article is to better equip raters to exercise these judgments. While we recognize the calls for personnel management reform and the initiatives underway to better manage the Army’s talent, our purpose is not to add another voice to these suggestions for structural changes to the Army’s evaluation system.Instead, we focus on the process of discretionary judgment exercised by raters that is and will continue to be an integral part of performance evaluation. Our aim is to recognize the structural and cognitive biases inherent in our evaluation system and provide recommendations to help senior raters more objectively evaluate their subordinates. While we think the importance of this topic is self-evident, educating raters on the potential for bias in their evaluations is especially important in the type of rating system used by the Army. This system places great emphasis on the person serving as the senior rater. Although the evaluation forms include assessments from raters and sometimes intermediate raters, the senior rater comments are widely acknowledged to carry the most weight for promotion and selection decisions due to the small amount of time available to evaluate a soldier’s file. Most positions involve work that is highly interdependent on other members of the organization, which places a considerable demand on raters to assess and articulate how much an individual contributed to the output of the group. While the performance of an officer is undoubtedly important to his or her chances for promotion or selection, the abilities of the officer’s senior rater to convey the level of this performance through an evaluation is also vital to talent management. Previous studies demonstrate that exposure to a high-quality mentor increases an officer’s likelihood of an early promotion to major by 29 percent, perhaps because high-quality mentors are skilled at communicating their protégé’s potential in their performance evaluations. Equipping raters to make their best possible judgments of subordinates and clearly articulating these judgments is vital to fostering a meritocratic Army talent management system.
Topic:
Military Affairs, Leadership, Bureaucracy, and Performance Evaluation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Local Bureaucracy in Migration Governance: The Case of Istanbul

Author:
Zeynep Balcıoğlu
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV)
Abstract:
According to data provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than half of the refugee population of the world lives in non-camp areas, predominantly in cities or city peripheries. Access of refugees to social and public services in cities is more difficult compared to camps where social services such as health, education and shelter are provided centrally by states or humanitarian aid institutions. The most sustainable way of overcoming this difficulty in non-camp settings is integrating refugees into existing service infrastructures.
Topic:
Migration, United Nations, Infrastructure, Governance, and Bureaucracy
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, Istanbul, and Mediterranean

4. Unintended Consequences of EU Democracy Support in the European Neighbourhood

Author:
Assem Dandashly and Gergana Noutcheva
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
The European Union’s (EU) impact on the political governance of the European neighbourhood is varied and sometimes opposite to the declared objectives of its democracy support policies. The democracy promotion literature has to a large extent neglected the unintended consequences of EU democracy support in Eastern Europe and the Middle East and North Africa. The EU has left multiple imprints on the political trajectories of the countries in the neighbourhood and yet the dominant explanation, highlighting the EU’s security and economic interests in the two regions,cannot fully account for the unintended consequences of its policies. The literature on the ‘pathologies’ of international organisations offers an explanation, emphasizing the failures of the EU bureaucracy to anticipate, prevent or reverse the undesired effects of its democracy support in the neighbourhood.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Democracy, Economy, and Bureaucracy
Political Geography:
Europe, Middle East, Eastern Europe, North Africa, and European Union

5. Insurgent Bureaucracy: How the Taliban Makes Policy

Author:
Ashley Jackson and Rahmatullah Amiri
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
The system of shadow Taliban governance and the experiences of civilians subject to it are well documented. The policies that guide this governance and the factors that contribute to them, however, are not. This report examines how the Taliban make and implement policy. Based on more than a hundred interviews and previously unreleased Taliban documents, this report offers rare insight into Taliban decision-making processes and the factors that influence them.
Topic:
Non State Actors, Governance, Taliban, and Bureaucracy
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, South Asia, and Central Asia

6. What Every Boss Wants: Forecasting

Author:
George Fust
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Department of Social Sciences at West Point, United States Military Academy
Abstract:
It was the first day at my new unit. As a staff officer I wasn’t surprised when the Battalion Executive Officer (XO), my new boss, motioned me into his office for a chat. What he said next left me speechless. I anticipated the normal “welcome to the unit” speech, but instead he offered one sentence worth of guidance and sent me on my way: “forecast my needs and that of the unit and you will succeed here.” What exactly did he mean by this? How does one forecast without additional information? Where should I start? What should the priority be? How far out should I forecast? My new boss clearly didn’t have the time to answer these questions, so I would have to figure it.
Topic:
Military Affairs, Leadership, and Bureaucracy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. Highland Falls is America

Author:
George Fust
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Department of Social Sciences at West Point, United States Military Academy
Abstract:
In 1957 Samuel Huntington published a highly influential book called the Soldier and the State. In the last paragraph he famously wrote “Highland Falls [represents] the American spirit at its most commonplace…today America can learn more from West Point than West Point from America.” This passage was controversial at the time and even cost Huntington tenure at Harvard. The book would go on to influence generations of civil-military relations scholars. While the sentiment may have been accurate in the 1950s, today’s Highland Falls represents everything America should be.
Topic:
Military Affairs, Bureaucracy, and Civil-Military Relations
Political Geography:
United States and North America

8. A Short-Sighted Vision for Global Britain

Author:
Owen Barder, Hannah Timmis, and Arthur Baker
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
here has been a resurgence in calls to reconsider the cross-party consensus in the UK on foreign aid and development. The main political parties are all committed to spending 0.7 percent of gross national income on aid, to using the internationally agreed definition of aid, and to maintaining a separate government department to administer the majority of this aid, led by a Cabinet Minister. In their recent report, Global Britain: A Twenty-first Century Vision, Bob Seely MP and James Rogers lay challenge to these long-established pillars of UK development policy. In this note, we consider some of the questions they raise and suggest alternative answers.
Topic:
Development, Government, Foreign Aid, and Bureaucracy
Political Geography:
Britain and Europe

9. Downsizing Defense in Development: Unpacking DOD’s Development Assistance

Author:
Sarah Rose
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The US Department of Defense (DOD) is not a development agency, but it does manage millions of dollars of development assistance. In the early 2000s, DOD took on a significantly expanded development role, prompting a number of concerns and creating a lingering perception of intensive US military involvement in development activities. In fact, lessons learned from this era drove a reconceptualization of the Pentagon’s role in development. Today, the military controls only a tiny portion of US development funds, most of which go toward health (mainly PEPFAR) and disaster relief activities. This paper provides a brief landscape analysis of DOD’s recent development aid-funded efforts, breaking down its engagement into six key thematic areas. It concludes with five considerations related to DOD’s role in development assistance: (1) DOD has comparative advantages that make it an important actor in US development policy; (2) civilian-military coordination is hard but critical for development policy coherence; (3) adequate resourcing of civilian agencies is critical for effective civilian-military division of labor; (4) increasing the flexibility of civilian agencies’ staffing, programming, and funding could complement the military’s rapid response capabilities; and (5) incomplete transparency and limited focus on results reduces accountability around DOD’s aid investments.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Development, Military Strategy, Bureaucracy, and Civil-Military Relations
Political Geography:
United States and North America

10. PNG in 2017 | An Analysis of Papua New Guinea's Political Condition and Trends Through to 2025

Author:
Bal Kama
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Lowy Institute for International Policy
Abstract:
Papua New Guinea entered its 2017 National Election after a tumultuous period in the country's politics and economy, and there remains much uncertainty about the election process, with significant implications for the country's future. In the last ten years key political, bureaucratic, and regulatory institutions have struggled and in some cases, failed. These struggles have been more profound under the O'Neill government despite some tangible advances in the country's ambitious Vision 2050 roadmap. There is a widespread desire across the country for robust and independent institutions to ensure economic gains are transparently and sustainably managed. The ultimate question for many voters in the 2017 general elections was not who would form the next government, but who would be the most credible leader. [3] With elections now over, and the O'Neill government returning for a second term, what does Papua New Guinea expect of the new government and those in power? This analysis attempts to address how key trends in PNG's politics will impact upon both the bureaucracy and regulatory environment. It will identify some of the key actors and how they are likely to change. It will discuss current political trends, their impact on the regulatory and legislative environments and how likely they are to continue in the future. Finally, it assesses the prospects of continuing dysfunction in PNG politics, the further marginalisation and deterioration of the bureaucracy, and how this destructive course might be avoided.
Topic:
Government, Politics, Elections, Regulation, Economy, Institutions, and Bureaucracy
Political Geography:
AustralAsia and Papua New Guinea