Role of Civil Services in A Democracy

Role of civil services in a democracy
NAME: RAMAN KATARIA
NUMBER: 16 (Paper III)
SOURCES: (Download + Crack also see)
Convocation Address 2012

Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Wajahat Habibullah
Chairman Mr. Ramadorai, Director Professor Parasuraman, Faculty, distinguished
guests and my young friends
It always gives me great pleasure to visit the vibrant city of Mumbai and it is
particularly rewarding for me to be in the academic environment of this Institute on
your Seventy Second Convocation.
The young people of today are the future of our country. You, young people, who
have congregated today for the Annual Convocation Celebration, are part of the
future not only of India but that of the world as a whole. It is to reflect on the
achievements of our country and the challenges that face our people that I am
amongst you today. And so I will speak to you on a subject that has been close to
my heart not only as a profession, but as the identity of our people as a nation-the
creative expression of what Nobel Prize Laureate Amartya Sen has described as
the Argumentative Indian, if you please
The father of our nation Mahatma Gandhi had this dream of India on winning
freedom: "Independence must begin at the bottom. Thus, every village will be a
republic or Panchayat having full powers. It follows therefore, that every village
has to be self-sustained and capable of managing its affairs even to the extent of
defending itself against the whole world." i On the other hand Dr Ambedkar,
introducing our Draft Constitution for second reading was condemnatory of village
self-government," what is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance,
narrow mindedness and communalism? I am glad that the Draft Constitution has
discarded the village and adopted the individual as its unit."
Today, the Nation as a whole is faced with dramatic change. Governance itself
finds transition accelerated both in concept and form. Governance has of course
always been subject to continuing change, as is the nature of democratic evolution,
and this has been marked from the time of Independence. From a means to
perpetuate imperial rule governance developed into a means of seeking equitable
economic growth. The initial Indian political leadership when we won our freedom,
was westernized in its education, and therefore, even if not in its demeanor,
certainly in its approach to governance. It was hence paternalist. The Civil
Services were therefore an object of respect.
Such service, even though not
legally so, was in practice close to being hereditary.

This civil service oversaw the running of a socialist economy; the State was
omnipresent. The Welfare State was seen as a necessity, but time has shown that
its achievements, although many, were hardly commensurate with such
expectations. Now the state finds itself grappling with transition across the board:
social, economic, political.
Politicisation of the civil services, mainstay of government, in an inevitable offshoot

of democratic rule, commenced in the late 60s, and picked up pace in the early
70s. This was the time when the term committed bureaucracy came to be coined.
The civil service had been trained not to question political decision-making. With
the maturing of the political element in governance that element also realized its
strength. There was therefore a need for these two basic elements of governance
to come together in terms of mutual understanding of functions and demands.
Despite much change however, this coming together has to this day remained
largely elusive.
The social change brought about by a socialist economy has impacted on the
political factor. The earliest dramatic manifestation was in what was then among
the leading states of the country, Tamil Nadu, and then the State of Madras. This
was with the onset of the Dravida Munnetara Kazhagan (DMK), which stood for
separation from the Indian mainstream. That State has largely made the political
adjustments as being part of the diverse nation state of India, while jealously
guarding the identity of the Tamil, which was required. We find several northern
States that have over the past decade been through the process of making such
adjustments.
But an unfortunate ramification of these changes, which these factors of political

and social change have fed, has been the rise of corruption and the dilution of
established ethical norms. This has been compounded, not mitigated by economic
change. That change is signaled by what is described as liberalization. For the
State this meant giving up control. Access to decision-making by those within
government is receding. With the rise of the assertiveness of business houses,
entrenched means of access to ill-gotten gains by the state hierarchy is
increasingly limited, with the erosion of established corruption channels. Collusion
instead of coordination is now increasingly marked between politicians (because of
the need for election funding), business houses, and bureaucrats. There is even
gossip of bureaucrats being on sale, and we have had shocking exposes in the
past years that I must admit to having left me shaken.
Let us evaluate the economic achievement of bureaucrat led governance thus far.
The premier thrust since the 80s has been towards Poverty Alleviation Although
there has been some success, there has also been heavy leakage. Assessments
on reduction in poverty levels vary. Dutts researches indicate that in 1973-74 the
percentage of those below the poverty line (BPL) in the rural sector was 55.72%,
and urban 47.96%. In 1997 the rural BPL level was 35.78%, urban 29.99%.
S.P.Gupta gives the following figures: in 1983 the rural BPL level 45.65%, urban
40.79%; in 1997, rural 38.46%, urban 33.97%. The Planning Commissions India
Human Development Report 2011 focuses on Scheduled Castes, Scheduled
Tribes, and Muslims which have been regarded as the excluded groups. The rate
of decline in poverty has been slowest in the Muslim community: from 1993-4 to
2007-8 urban poverty has declined only 1.7 points, whereas for the Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes community urban poverty has declined by 28.2
points and 19.5 points respectively. The question would naturally arise whether
even the more optimistic levels indicate achievements which could be concluded
to have been commensurate with the costs.
What then are the future prospects? The bureaucrat of the future must then be a
facilitator, and banking on wide ranging field experience, a potentially effective
motivator. For this to actually happen, however an action plan will be required for
an effective & responsive administration.
The 73rd & 74th Amendments of the Constitution can in this regard be seen as an
endeavour to usher in a new era to ensure greater public participation in
governance, so essential for democracy. Much however depended on how the
new institutions were to be used by the public and by the bureaucrats. But today,
with the implementation of the governments ambitious NREGA project, the latest
thrust in Indias quest to eliminate poverty, to which Panchayats are central, the
experience, together with that of the last decade in the operation of Panchayati Raj,
has continued to remain mixed. Are these becoming increasingly conduits for
funding, with all the inevitable ramifications for probity, or are they achieving the
primary objective of involving the common man in governance?
The time has come for change and restructuring. A bureaucracy is by its nature
risk averse, thus change resistant. It instinctively withdraws from being responsive
to new ideas. With an increase in the range of demands on government arising
from decentralization and outsourcing there is actually likely to be an increase, not
reduction in government size. This is borne out by simple statistics which will attest
to the fact that the US, a more open government than ours, and the world leader in
free enterprise, has more government servants per 1,000 inhabitants than does
India. Downsizing is therefore not the answer. The remedy rather lies in rightsizing,
and in allowing the people, with all the skills that have been invested in them as
part of the socialist legacy of independent India, to take responsibility in
governance. This is a need borne out by the fact that many government services
in India like the vital sectors of education and health are, with no public oversight,
lamentably understaffed while staffing at the clerical level of Secretariats is
overweight.
There is of course no need to import structural designs. Our own structure,

centered on local self government in the traditional Panchayat Raj has, despite the
ills so lucidly described by Dr Ambedkar, and what I have described as a mixed
experience thus far, a strong tradition both in its functioning and in its public
interface. This will need to be built upon, not replaced, by greater accountability
through the activation of gram sabhas. If gram sabhas are to function with the full
authority envisaged by the Constitution, this would make every voter a legislator,
something that no other democracy in the world can boast of. But at the same time
it is necessary to study and learn from success stories, benchmarking those that
can be effectively used here.
To start with it is important to identify objectives. For much too long government in
India has spread its net too wide. We can all see the results. We need to
concentrate on fewer areas. NRIs have shown what healthy and educated Indians
can do. Health and education, centered in rural India and therefore an obvious
discipline in the administration of which the people through the institution of
Panchayats can participate, holds much promise. Traditional skills, which we now
describe as handicrafts, mainstay of Indias economy over the centuries must be
harnessed to fulfill present needs This can make villages self sustaining economic
units which they had been through the great days f Indias dominance of world
markets. While we as a people must therefore prioritise, government needs to
identify and then withdraw from areas where it is not required, or where the
citizens can fulfill the task better.
Because the new commercialized environment will make the capacity to make
financial profits a valued skill, there is an overriding necessity to build a viable
code of ethics in society. We must reclaim in todays world the position we once
held of being leaders and models, earning the respect both of our peers and those
more developed.
It is in this context that we might look at The Right to Information Act, 2005. Its
statement of objectives recognises that democracy requires an informed citizenry
and transparency of information, which are vital to its functioning and also to
contain corruption and to hold Governments and their instrumentalities
accountable to the governed.
Freedom of access to information is increasingly regarded as the signature of

democracy. Its evolution as such may be dated from 1766. In that year Sweden,
of which todays Finland was then part, included the freedom of information in
Swedens constitution. Nevertheless it must be remembered that the idea was
born not from Sweden, at that time a relatively backward country to the remote
north of Europe, but emanated from the Confucian tradition of China. And it was
only nearly two centuries after Sweden that the concept began to take hold in what
were then the western democracies. In 1951 Finland enacted a law on the Public
Character of Official Documents. The USA enacted its Freedom of Information Act
in 1966, which by an amendment of 1974 placed the onus of justifying restriction
of access clearly upon government. This law places time limits for responding to
requests and provides for access to all non-secret information disclosable through
a principle of severability, also adopted in our law, by which even otherwise
exempt information can be severed to require disclosure of that part that is not so
exempt. Disciplinary action-though not financial penalty-is mandated against
officials for wrongful non-disclosure.
In South Asia Pakistan, then under military rule but with democratic pretensions,
was the first to enact a Freedom of information Ordinance in 2002. Nepal followed
our initiative in calling theirs a Right to Information Act adopted by a democratic
government in 2007. Indonesia followed with a Freedom of lnformation Act in
2008, with Bangladesh being the most recent entrant with an RTI Ordinance of
October 2008, drawing extensively upon our Act, as that countrys military
government paved the way towards restoration of democratic rule. This is now an
Act
Kofi Annan former UN General Secretary has succinctly described the power of
information:
The great democratizing power of information has given us all the chance
to effect change and alleviate poverty in ways we cannot even imagine
today. Our task your task is to make that change real for those in need,
wherever they may be. With information on our side, with knowledge of a
potential for all, the path to poverty can be reversed.
In our own country, we have over the years moved towards an information
revolution. Indias Constitution, in its Fundamental Rights, carries Article 19(1) (a),
the Freedom of Expression, which Courts have held to include the right to
information, thus accounting for the naming of Indias legislation as right and not
merely freedom which had been the term used in relation to this legislation in
nations across the world hitherto
In the 1970s, under Governments declared policy of garibi hatao, ambitious
poverty alleviation programmes were launched across the country. But, as I have
mentioned, by the early 1980s it had started to become clear that the returns were
not keeping pace and by no means commensurate with the investment made.
Almost in tandem, unnoticed by many in its early years, a revolution in information
technology had begun to gather pace by the late 1980s. This was accompanied by
a withdrawal of Government monopoly over information & broadcasting in
the1990s. These factors opened the ground to the initiatives of civil society, most
notably by the MKSS in Rajasthan led by the Garboesque Aruna Roy, a Tamil and
former civil servant, who threw up the relative comforts of service in government to
give herself wholly to serving the peasantry. With the opening of the free media
came the Freedom of Information Act piloted through Parliament by Arun Jaitley of
the NDA government in 2002, but never enforced. The UPA Government, in its
very infancy then revised the law and today we have the Right to Information Act,
2005.
When presenting the Bill for the Right to Information in Parliament on May 11,
2005, the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh said I believe that the
passage of this Bill will see the dawn of a new era in our processes of government,
an era of performance and efficiency, an era which will ensure that benefits of
growth flow to all sections of our people, an era which will eliminate the scourge of
corruption, an era which will bring the common mans concern to the heart of all
processes of governance, an era which will truly fulfill the hopes of the founding
fathers of our Republic.
The Supreme Court has in repeated judgments described the right to information
as a part of Article 19(1) (a) of Indias Constitution, the most significant in terms of
its consequences being in the State of U.P. vs. Raj Singh 1975, from which all
subsequent decisions of the Supreme Court on the subject have sprung, where
Mathew J. on behalf of the Bench held as follows:
In a government of responsibility like ours, where all agents of the public
must be responsible for their conduct, there can be but few secrets. The
people of this country have a right to know every public act, every thing that
is done in a public way, by their public functionaries. to cover with veil of
secrecy the common routine business, is not in the interest of public.
The key concepts are therefore transparency & accountability in the working of
every public authority, the right of any citizen of India to request access to
information and the corresponding duty of Govt. to meet the request, except the
information exempted under Sec. 8 and Departments excluded from coverage
under Sec 24, listed in the Second Schedule. It is the duty of Govt. to pro-actively
make available key information to all ii . But this Act is not the responsibility of
government alone. It brings a heavy responsibility to bear upon all sections of civil
society, notably the citizenry, NGOs, and the media.
So we can conclude that the freedom of which our forbears dreamt has now come
closer to fruition. But those concerned with national security, the growing Maoist
threat and the North East of India has many such concerns, might well ask: what is
the bearing this has on national security? We need therefore to recognize clearly
what we mean by comprehensive security. Do we mean the security of our
military installations, of our economic infrastructure or of our physical structures?
All these are without doubt essential to what we refer and different constituents
thereof. But in the ultimate analysis it can hardly be denied that national security is
synonymous with the security of the people of our country, which all these
institutions serve. And if that is conceded it needs no argument to state that if the
people are the objective in comprehensively securing the nation, it is the people
who must share responsibility for so ensuring.
It should become clear that what the Right to Information Act aims at is the
flowering of democracy in India. But does this flowering mean that security would
be compromised? Does it imply that India must be a soft State? There have
been observations primarily in the West, even by leading intellectuals, that
democracy is in fact not compatible with security, that to cater to vested interests
with money to spend, elected representatives will inevitably bend, even yielding
national interest to such pressure. In a closely argued essay Us and Them in the
leading international journal Foreign Affairsiii, Jerry Z Muller, Professor of History at
the Catholic University of America has argued that multiethnic states cannot
become nations. In short, Muller argues, ethno nationalism has played a more
profound and lasting role in modern history than is commonly understood, and the
processes that led to the dominance of the ethno national state and the separation
of ethnic groups in Europe are likely to reoccur elsewhere. Increased urbanization,
literacy, and political mobilization; differences in the fertility rates and economic
performance of various ethnic groups; and immigration will challenge the internal
structure of states as well as their borders. Whether politically correct or not, ethno
nationalism will continue to shape the world in the twenty-first century.
Is Indias ethno nationalism such a challenge? Yes indeed. in his monograph Can
Democracies Accommodate Ethnic Nationalism? Atul Kohli, Professor of Politics
and International Affairs at Princeton University, after examining the cases of
Tamilnadu, Punjab and Kashmir answers his own question only with a qualified
yes iv . Yet, any close observer of Indias political evolution through the past
century, with access to greater information than Kohli, will have noted that despite
its bewildering diversity, the practice of democracy has only strengthened Indias
nationhood, while neighboring countries, with an administrative tradition identical
to ours, that had opted for authoritarian military rule and military alliances to bring
political stability and hasten economic progress, have in fact succumbed to
despotism, even disintegrated. Indias diversity has been its strength. It can only
be a weakness if it is perceived as an instrument of dominance of one group over
another, even if the dominant group is the majority leading to what is termed
majoritarianism. Mullers gloomy views stem from what he sees in Europes
history. On this basis he warns the US that, A familiar and influential narrative of
twentieth-century European history argues that nationalism twice led to war, in
1914 and then again in 1939. Thereafter, the story goes, Europeans concluded
that nationalism was a danger and gradually abandoned it. In the postwar
decades, western Europeans enmeshed themselves in a web of transnational
institutions, culminating in the European Union (EU). After the fall of the Soviet
empire, that transnational framework spread eastward to encompass most of the
continent. Europeans entered a post-national era, which was not only a good thing
in itself but also a model for other regions. Nationalism, in this view, had been a
tragic detour on the road to a peaceful liberal democratic order. But he contradicts
this rosy perception by going on to lament that, Far from having been
superannuated in 1945, in many respects ethno nationalism was at its apogee in
the years immediately after World War II. European stability during the Cold War
era was in fact due partly to the widespread fulfillment of the ethno nationalist
10
project. And since the end of the Cold War, ethno nationalism has continued to
reshape European borders.
But in India there is no real majority. We are in fact all minorities in one way or
another. In contrast to India, Europe, about the same size but in many ways less
diverse, the harbinger of the concept of nation state, quested hopelessly for unity
through war and conquest, notably the French expansion though Napoleon,
Bismarcks vision of Europe under German hegemony, and Hitlers Third Reich
only to find what Muller finds a precarious unity through the European Union as
the twentieth century, thanks to that very Europes conflicting interests the most
violent in Indias history, drew to a close. No wonder that in concluding his
arguments Prof Muller considers that Partition may thus be the most humane
lasting solution! At the risk of sounding egotistic, I might say that Europe might do
well to learn from us, who have borne for years the trauma of a misconceived
Partition on religious grounds, brought onto us by a failing European power, rather
than we learn from them the West, as has unfortunately been our wont.
Although there will be disgruntled elements in any society, there will even be
incendiaries and extremists who would love to undermine the country but this is
precisely what democracy is designed to overcome, by giving each citizen a sense
that he is participant in governance through being able to hold not only the political
leadership, but every section of government from the lowest to the highest
accountable to him. Surely then security becomes the concern not of a few, but of
all.
The India Infrastructure Report, 1996, also known as the Rakesh Mohan Report
flagged the importance of infrastructure for India's policy makers, "Availability of
adequate infrastructure facilities is vital for the acceleration of economic
development of the country"
11
It is understood that good governance is the means adopted to deliver services to

government's clientele, in a manner acceptable to the clientele as efficient and to
the provider, which is Government, as cost effective. There is a general consensus
that good governance must be participatory, transparent and accountable v. The
present system in India, however thanks to perceptions enshrined in the Official
Secrets Act remains firmly grounded on mistrust.
If governance is to be
participatory, who are the participants? It is our view that in the current political
and economic environment participants in governance includes the political
leadership, the bureaucracy, business, the media, financial institutions and
decidedly the security apparatus.
The reason for this mistrust can be found in the legacy of governance in India;
stemming directly at the District level from the Mughal vi, adapted and extended
with an archaic Secretariat system of the Colonial. An elitist structure informed
both systems and continues to subsist. The Welfare State strongly influenced by
the wartime licensing legacy for distributing shortages introduced India to
independence! The economy therefore remained rooted in the concept of shortage.
That structure required to be replaced. But whereas change is indeed evolving, as

I have discussed, the most important step must be to develop a consensus on the
objectives to be met. To begin, each participant in governance must be aware of
what is expected of each. But participation in governance is too often seen as a
struggle for sharing power: For example there is the often the perceived conflict of
generalist vs. specialist. This brings us back to the basic proposition that
governance must be distinct from the exercise of power and must comprise
security of life and property, both of which are predicated on security of the nation,
as conceived not by the security forces or the bureaucracy, but by the people of
India, which concept must then be addressed by these. If this is understood, it is
easier to see why perceived needs have not been met by the system, even though
widely understood. At the same time we can also see that we stand at a new
12
threshold in Indias form of governance. This was recognized by none other than
President Barack Hussain Obama of the US who concluded his address to
Parliament during his last visit with these words:
"In the United States, my administration has worked to make government
more open and transparent and accountable to the people. Here in India,
you're harnessing technologies to do the same, as I saw yesterday. Your
landmark Right to Information Act is empowering citizens with the ability to
get the services to which they're entitled and to hold officials accountable.
Voters can get information about candidates by text message. And you're
delivering education and health care services to rural communities, as I saw
yesterday when I joined an e-Panchayat with villagers in Rajasthan.
Now, in a new collaboration on open government, our two countries are

going to share our experience, identify what works, and develop the nextgeneration of tools to empower citizens. And in another example of how
American and Indian partnership can address global challenges, we're
going to share these innovations with civil society groups and countries
around the world. We're going to show that democracy, more than any
other form of government, delivers for the common man - and woman."
i
MK Gandhi: Panchayat Raj, Navjivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, and PP 8-9

Section 4, RTI Act 2005
iii
Foreign Affairs March/April 2008, Council on Foreign Relations, NY
iv
Atul Kohli Can Democracies Accommodate Ethnic Nationalism? Rise and Decline of Self-Determination
Movements in India The Journal of Asian Studies 56 no. 2 (May 1997):325-344 1997 Association for Asian
Studies, Inc.
v
Sebastian Morris: The Challenge to Governance in India; p 19, Ch 2, India Infrastructure Report 2002,
Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2002
vi
The position of Collector, as the name implies was instituted by Raja Todar Mal, head of Mughal imperial
finance in the 16th century to collect land revenue, mainstay of the Empire under the name Amal Guzar
ii
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Role in the Transition to Democracy

The wave of democratization that
swept southern Europe, Latin
America, and Eastern Europe in the
counter
mid-1970s and in the late 1980s

brought to the fore the relationship
between bureaucracy and
democracy. In the democracies that
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have emerged in the last quarter of

the twentieth century, the civil
service may be far from responsive,
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reliable, and responsible. A civil

service may be far from responsive,
civil service (6)
reliable, and responsible. A civil service that has been associated with an authoritarian regime can
Economy (4)
easily be considered illegitimate after the transition to democracy takes place. To prove it legitimate,
Environment (5)
the civil service must submit to the leadership of new democratic governments. Such governments
Gender (5)
often begin their terms in office by "cleansing" the ranks of the civil service of authoritarian
Political environment (4)
elements. Thus the civil service of authoritarian elements. Thus the civil service in a new
Pollution (5)
democracy is vulnerable, more so if it has traditionally proved to be inefficient.
Society and rights (2)
Nevertheless, new democracies put a difficult double task to their civil service: to remain weak and
pose no threat to democratic government and, simultaneously, to help legitimate the democratic
regime by improving its economic performance over that of the previous, authoatarian regime. The
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evaluation of the performance of the civil service in a new democracy is based in a trade-off
2011 (1)
between these two demands.
2010 (31)
May (12)
In fact, additional conflicting pressures may be

exerted on the civil service of a new democracy. The
democratic state needs a civil service that is to a

Change and Reform
certain extent resistant to all governments in order to
The System of Positions
safeguard the well being, the security, and the
The Career System
defense if the people living within its territorial

boundaries. This demand of the people living within its
territorial boundaries. This demand clashes with drive
Patterns of Organization
Role of the Civil Service in Democracy
of the government party (or coalition of parties) to use
Composting
the capacities of the civil service freely to fulfill their
Soil Pollution
election
promises.
For
instance,
nationalist
governments may want to expand the state freely to

fulfill their election promises. For instance, nationalist
governments may want to expand the state beyond its boundaries, socialist ones to reform it,
neoliberal ones to reduce its economic functions to a minimum. Political parties that govern in new
Human Resource Planning For

Productivity
Civil Service
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democracies may use the civil service for any of these purposes, depending on their profile and the
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constraints they face once in power.

The removal of elements of the previous authoritarian regime from political institutions is part of the
tradition to democracy, and its extent is heavily debated in young democracies. Still, if the
River Pollution
April (19)
democratic government dominates political institutions, like the legislature and the judiciary, and also
permeates the civil service, democracy suffers from the reduction of multiple centers of power into a
single one-that is, the governing elite. If, as is often the case after the new democracy is even more
Followers
concentrated. Chances are that the civil service will become responsive only to the needs of the
leadership of the governing party. Democratic consolidation, which followed the initial transition to
democracy, leaves muchn to be desired in such circumstances.
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Members (3)
Yet the permeation of the civil service by the governing Democratic Party (or coalition of parties)
does not necessarily undermine the legitimacy or post authoritarian democracy. In post authoritarian
democracies, civil servants cannot be fired all at once, even if they have been politically socialized
to serve authoritarian governments. The recruitment of new civil service personnel, with records of
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resistance against the depend dictatorship, may serve as an injection of democratic legitimacy into
a suspect body of civil servants. Otherwise, the existence of an intact civil service that is known to
have collaborated with nondemocratic rulers may compromise any efforts to deepen and expand
democracy. It should be kept in mind, however, that the deepening and expansion of democracy is
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often pursed by political elated only to extent that they can control the outcome of opening up
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institutions, such as the civil service, to democratic participation from below.
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In the early phases of the transition to and consolidation of democracy, a state needs a strong
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government aided by a competent civil service for a number of reasons. During that time a
competent civil service is instrumental in keeping at bay military and security forces and countering
pockets of supporters of authoritarian rule in other institutions. Moreover, rarely do new
democracies emerge amidst economic prosperity. New democratic governments often must grapple
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with economic stagnation or decline as they strive to consolidate democratic rule. Again, an
civil service (6)
efficient civil service may play a strategic role in economic recovery and thus contribute indirectly to
Economy (4)
the legitimating of the democratic regime.
Environment (5)
Gender (5)
In conclusion, a civil service, which in a new, unstable democracy must be weak in the face of
alternating democratic governments and strong in the face of undemocratic challenges and
economic adversity, feels strongly the difficulties of democratic consolidation. A young democracy
that counts on competing democratic parties to consolidate life disagreeable and resort to the civil
Political environment (4)

Pollution (5)
Society and rights (2)
service as a pillar of democratic stability. The quest for democracy involves, among other things,
striking a delicate balance between the elected government and the civil service.
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0 COMME N T S
L A B EL S: CI V I L SE R V I CE
Change and Reform

The tasks of civil service have changed over the past two centuries, adapting to the changing role
of the state in the economy and society. In the beginning of the modern era the role of the state was
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limited to waging wars and collecting taxes. Gradually, the state took up more functions, such as
monitoring the national economy and providing welfare services. The expansion of state activity led
to the growth and differentiation of the civil service. For some time now, particularly in developed
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societies of the poet-World War II era, central government institutions have felt the need for more
and increasingly specialized civil servants to deal with increasingly complicated problems that
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require expert knowledge and technology.

IN some developing and underdeveloped societies, however, the growth of the civil service was not
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commensurate with need to adapt to economic development and the complexity of available
technology. Instead, expansions in the civil service were motivated by the need to absurd excess
labor from among internal migrants, the young, and the unemployed and to preserve the leverage
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exercised by political elites through patronage. The more visible presence of the state in the
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economy and society then gave rise to demands for new and better service by the state. The new
demands on the state were nourished by the labor struggles and the wider participation of the
working class in the democratic politics of Western Europe and North America.
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Recent debates on the socioeconomic role of the state concern not only the extent of its
2011 (1)
intervention but also the efficiency with which political and civil service elites steer the economy in
2010 (31)
an antagonistic international environment and the quality of the services offered by civil servants to
the citizens. Whereas some earlier transformations of the civil service were prompted by changes
in the relations between state and society, some recent changes can be increased efficiency and
imposed services.
May (12)
Change and Reform
The call for greater efficiency has often meant that the size of the civil service is trimmed, as
governments-particularly in Europe-privatize services previously offered by large state monopolies
(for example, national airlines and telephone companies). Alternatively, contemporary governments
seek to modernize the organize the organization and methods of public administration. Such
The Career System

modernization involves training civil servants in new technologies, especially the use of computers,
Composting
and teaching new skills related to better planning and evaluation of civil service activities.
Soil Pollution
Governments have resounded to the demand for higher quality service by attempting to change the
attitude prevailing in the civil service from inertia and aloofness to flexibility, attention to quality
work, and sensitivity to the needs of citizens. They are also attempting to inform citizens about the
services to which they are entitled.
Human Resource Planning For

Productivity
Civil Service
Solid Waste management
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The system of positions is an alternative to the career system, but it sometimes applied along with
it. In the position system the needs of ministries and public agencies for new personnel are
April (19)
About Me
HEM
V I EW MY COMPL ET E PR OF I L E
registered. Job openings are outlined, with descriptions of the duties and qualifications of each
position. Public employees are hired on a limited contract when their contract expires, they may be
rehired or let go.
The civil servant in the position system does not have the special relationship with the states that
the career civil servant does. Although the uncertainty of employment and advancement may be
drawback for the position system, there are advantages. The position system is superior to the
career system in that recruited employees have specialized skills, and the government enjoys
flexibility in hiring similar to that of private enterprises (which hire by position). In the position
system, civil servants are recruited not to begin a career period of time, under a contract
comparable to those in the private sector. The position system is found into eh United States and, in
a particular sense, was used in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
A strong anti-elite sentiment has permeated the organization of the civil service in the United States
almost from the country's beginning. In the nineteenth century the American federal bureaucracy
was highly politicized: civil service positions were handed out in exchange for political support, an
allocation system known as the "spoils system". The abolition of the spoils system was
accomplished gradually, beginning with the Pendleton Act of 1883.
In the United States today, job openings are announced in conjunction with job descriptions.
Applicants pass through a selection process, based on merit successful candidates are offered a
contract that binds the administration to keep the employee in the same position. The employee may
be transferred to other posts after the contract expires. Top positions are also open to competition,
but in the late 1970s there was an effort to creator administrative elite, the Senior Executive
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Service, which included approximately the 6000 highest officials into eh civil service. Still, incoming
presidents of the United States layers of the federal administration with temporary advisers. Some
degree of politicization characterizes state and local-level administrations as well.
In Canada civil servants are appointed on the basis of merit they are selected from an inventory of
candidates who have successfully passed examinations and interviews in career areas of their
choice. Having entered the civil service, Canadians may develop their career through promotion and
transfer among several dozen of departments and agencies. Recruitment to new positions is
accomplished through competitions, first within public service and then outside public service.
Compared with the career system, the system of positions, as applied in Canada and the United
States, allows for more personnel mobility and perhaps a better match of person to task. Yet the
position system offers less prestige for the high and middle ranks of the civil service and is
vulnerable to wider politicization of the top echelons of the bureaucracy.
With significant variations the system of positions was also applied in Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union under communism. Officially, employment in the communist public administration did not
entail a special labor relationship, like the relationship, like the relationship between the civil servant
and the state in the West.
In the Society Union, in particular, civil servants did not formally enjoy the guarantee of tenure or the
prospect of a career in the administration. Once hired, civil servants could be fired or transferred,
but in practice they occupied the same position for long periods of time. The content and
development of a civil servants job was not specified in advance, but civil servants who showed
competence and loyalty to the Communist Party were compensated with higher-ranking positions.
On the whole, because of their access to better goods and services, Soviet civil servants enjoyed
higher living standards than the majority of the population, and top bureaucrats had considerable
privilege
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The Career System

The career system is influenced by the
intellectual tradition of German idealism and the
concept of the state of the philosopher
G.W.F.Hegel (1770-1831). Hegel declared that
universal standards should apply to the
selection, training, and promotion of civil
servants. Appointments to state jobs should be
made only on the basis of the objective
evaluation of the candidates' knowledge and
ability.
In the German idealist tradition the state is
conceived as separate from society, which it
overseas with the aims of protecting the general
interest
against
individual
interests.
The
theoretical separating if state and society is

complemented by the division of tasks between
governments, cutes them. The career system,
by establishing a lifelong professional relationship between the civil servant and the state, and by
subordinating the civil servant to legitimate political authorities, satisfies the mission of the Hegelian
state to function as an ideal, impartial arbiter of conflicting societal interests. The civil servant does
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not have the same status as employees in the private sector but has a special relation to the state,
which brings additional duties and fewer freedoms, such as the duty of subordination to the political
will of the government and, commonly, limitations on the freedom to strike. The additional burden of
obligations imposed on civil servants in theoretically, at least- balanced by increased job security
and a respectable salary.
The career system is applied in the public administrations of most Western European states
(including France and the United Kingdom) and many postcolonial, independent civil servants are
recruited on the basis of examinations of hiring graduates of Oxford and Cambridge Universities
with nontechnical education they reach the top echelons of civil service through a "fast stream" of
promotions. Civil servants generally advance in their careers by acquiring experience on the job.
The British career system was 7KH&DUHHU6\VWHP
solidified
after
the
Northolt-
Trevelyan report of 1854, which

helped
to
extinguish
the
particularize and clienteles that

had been evident in the British
administration. Later, the British
civil service developed into a
polymorphous
and
fragmented
set of bodies of civil servants,

known as classes. The Fulton
report,
published
in
1968,
contributed to the reshaping of

the
career
system
by
recommending a decrease in the number of classes, a wider pool of candidates for the top positions
in the civil service hierarchy, and more specialized in-service training through the establishment of
the Civil Service College. However, despite the Fulton committee recommendations, the British civil
service was not thoroughly reformed it remained deficient in openness and accountability.
In
France
servants
civil
are
also
recruited on the basis

of
examinations.
Prospective high level

civil
servants
trained
in
school,
are
an
the
elite
Cole
National
d'Administration.
school,
The
founded
in
1945,
administers
highly
competitive
entrance
examinations,
coerces
offers
leading
specialization,
to
and
ranks the members of the graduating class. Under the ranking system civil servants are assigned to
different grinds corps and to the levels of positions they will occupy in the bureaucracy.
Differentiation along the grade scale provides for greater mobility of civil servants in the hierarchy of
positions.
In Germany civil servants are recruited on the basis of competition initially, they are appointed for a
probationary stage, they become career civil servants. Depending on their formal qualifications and
the type of job, civil servants are classified into several categories, forming a hierarchy. There is a
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long tradition of legal education among German civil servants. Not all public employees have the
same legal status: the German state has a federal structure, and the competent states (Lander) hire
some employees on a contract basis. Civil servants have a special relationship to the state,
regulated by provisions of the public interest.
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The organization of
the civil service
involves the
recruitment, training,
promotion, and
transfer of civil
servants. Basically,
there are two paths
along which civil
services of the
contemporary world
are structured: the
career system and the
system of positions.
In the career system, employees are recruited to the civil service through competitive entrance
examinations. Once accepted in the civil service, new employees enjoy tenure. After an initial
probationary stage, they expect to pass the whole of their professional life in the bureaucracy, more
often than not in particular sector of the bureaucracy where they began. In some cases, they are
trained in schools set up to prepare the newly recruited in service training in new fields of interest,
such as modern public management, public finance, and computers.
In service training is usually a prerequisite for the advancement of civil servants. The career ladder
is a grade scale, consisting of several categories with different entry levels depending on
educational credentials. The career path up this grade scale is closely linked to, but not identical
with, promotion in the hierarchy of supervising positions - typically, head of bureau, head of section,
and head of division of a ministry (or "department" in the United States, "Office" in the United
Kingdom).
In the career system, civil servants who have comparable
formal qualifications and specialties form homogeneous
groups or bodies-known as grinds crops in finance may
populate as a group the often powerful ministry of
financialization. Fr example, specialists in public finance
may populate as a group the often powerful ministry of
finance, these groups are officially recognized by law, and,
in practice, they limit the freedom of the political masters of
the civil service (that is, the elected governments) to
transfer civil servants from one domain puff public administration to another. The crops or cores,
which consist of high-ranking employees, enjoy prestige, constitute the informal networks inside the
bureaucracy, and usually compete among themselves and with political appointees and cabinet
ministries for power in the bureaucracy. The phenomenon has led to strife and fragmentation in
some civil services.
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The role of civil servants in democracy is a long debated question, which was lucidly considered by
Weber in his discussion of the bureaucratization of the contemporary state. On the one hand,
Weber perceived bureaucracy as a correlate of democracy in the sense that the existence of a civil
service, staffed on the basis of merit, contributes to the day-to-day contact between citizens and
the bureaucracy. More specifically, the selection and promotion of civil servants according to
achievement criteria is a guarantee of the application of universal criteria in the distribution of
goods and services by the state to its citizen.
On the other hand, the executive of laws, typically formulated by the government and passed by the
legislature in modern democracies, is left to the civil servants. These individuals' interests, related
to their personal, ideological, and corporate biases, may find their way into the implementation of
the policies of the political elites that have won the confidence of the electorate. In other words, the
strategic position of civil servants in democratic political strategic position of the civil servants in
democratic political systems, and the leeway they enjoy in the interpretation of systems, and the
leeway they enjoy in the integration of laws - particularly in the Nobel situations or when there are
conflicts of interest - may allow them to deflect the import of policies initiated by legitimate
governments. In short, politicians can carry out the will of electorate only with the help of the civil
service, who are not periodically evaluated by the electorate as politicians are, may be able to
circumscribe the options of the electorate.
The civil service, then, can be perceived as a potential threat to democracy. The sources of the
threat can be found in the growing size of the modern state, the accelerating intervention of
government in the economy, and the secrecy and increasing technically of state activities, which
together may remove bureaucratic activities from the reach of democratic control. In particular, the
growth of bureaucracy, evident in the rise of the numbers of civil servants over time, has long and
judicially been considered a factor that can lead a time, has long and justifiably been considered a
factor that can lead to a replace to nondemocratic government. The legislature and the judiciary, let
along individual citizens, have difficulties monitoring decisions made in the silent corridors of the
civil service.
A relevant questions concerns the extent to which the civil service is responsive, reliable, and
responsible, as part of the executive branch of government in a democratic regime. A responsive
civil service caters more to the needs of the citizens than to its own tendencies to reproduce and
grow. A responsive civil service caters more to the needs of the citizens than to its own tendencies
to reproduce and grow. A reliable civil service delivers services that measure up to the standards of
international economic competition and diplomacy and to the expectations of the democratic
government in power as to the thorough implementation of its policies. A responsible civil service is
held accountable by the majority of the electorate through the exercise of the right to vote and other
forms of political participation. Furthermore, a responsible civil service refrains from discriminating
against the parliamentary minority and against social groups who traditionally possess fewer
resources, such as social status (racial or ethnic minorities) or political pull (women or the poor),
than others.
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ISSN 1648-2603 VIEOJI POLITIKA IR ADMINISTRAVIMAS 2004. Nr. 7
Civil Service, Democracy and Economic Development

Francisco Cardona
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
SIGMA, 2 rue Andr-Pascal, 75775 Paris Cedex 16, France
This article examines the links between merit-based civil service, economic development and the robustness
of democracy. It also argues that patterns of public employment prevalent in the past, such as patronage
(including political patronage) and venality of public offices, can no longer be followed if poverty is to be
reduced, economic development sustained and democracy reinforced.
Raktaodiai: vieoji tarnyba, demokratija, ekonomika.
Keywords: civil service, democracy, economic development.
entitlement parameters set down in law. From the
standpoint of public services delivery, the notion of
legal certainty is just as crucial, but this issue is not
the focus of this paper.
The merit system, like any other public administration mechanism, has not developed because it is
intellectually or culturally more appealing than other
systems, but because it has been better able to solve
practical political, social and economic problems in
countries with western-type cultural backgrounds, i.e.
where the individual, and not the social group, is the
cornerstone of society. The merit system has proved
to be an indispensable instrument for producing legal
certainty and predictability in public decisionmaking. Each countrys merit-based civil service has
its own particular historical and cultural roots, but
each country has also borrowed from others1 in such
a way that today several common trends can be
discerned in the civil services of the worlds most
advanced democracies and economies.
Introduction: The Merit System

Most countries feel the necessity to create professional civil services that are aligned with the requireements of democratic states. Political democracy,
modern capitalism and complex states and societies
require professional public administrations. The merit
system is for the moment the only known way of
building up public administrations that attain an
acceptable degree of autonomous professionalism.
The merit system should be understood as a key
instrument for making legal certainty an actual public
good. Legal certainty, or juridical security, has a fundamental value for the economy and for the society.
It is even more valuable as a product of the state than
are such values as efficiency and effectiveness in
conducting public affairs. The reason is quite obvious: legal certainty allows society to be efficient
and effective in itself, and this is an essential precondition for the development of the economy. The state
should be effective and efficient in producing legal
certainty. Legal certainty also requires upstream
good law-drafting, good quality of legislation and
good professional policy advice.
In welfare states, the quality of public services
provided or produced by the state requires managerial
efficiency, but public services must be delivered on
the basis of equity and entitlements of individuals, as
defined and recognised in legislation. Consequently,
efficiency in the management of public services is
legitimate if it falls within the procedural and
Essentials of the Merit System

With national variations and modalities, the main
characteristics of civil service systems in advanced
democracies, be they career-based or position-based,
can be summarised as follows: Civil servants are
recruited and promoted by means of competitive
examinations, which have replaced previous selection
modalities based on patronage and venality; restricttions to arbitrary transfer, demotion or dismissal of
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Francisco Cardona SIGMA, Vieosios tarnybos vadybos vyriausiasis patarjas.

El. patas: francisco.cardona@oecd.org
Straipsnis teiktas redakcijai 2004 m. sausio mn.; recenzuotas;
parengtas spaudai 2004 m. kovo mn.
16
European countries in which the historical evolution of merit

systems played a reference role were the United Kingdom, France
and Prussia. Most European countries built their own merit
systems by borrowing elements from these national frameworks.
civil servants are well established; the political

neutrality and impartiality of civil servants constitute
stringent obligations imposed upon them; civil
service positions are established centrally and
classified by grades or steps; salaries are determined
in legislation and are paid according to grade and
seniority rather than according to the quality and
quantity of work actually performed (although this
feature is currently under revision in some countries
so far with uneven and unclear outcomes so as to
introduce a more performance-related salary
treatment); in certain countries restrictions apply to
lateral entry into the civil service, particularly in
those countries where career systems are prevalent
(the majority of senior positions are filled through
internal promotions, and the majority of civil servants
enter the service at the lower levels of the hierarchy).
The system as a whole is monitored by means of
strong control mechanisms and institutions, including
independent civil service commissions (mainly in
Anglo-Saxon countries) or independent judicial
review of the management of the civil service
(mainly in administrative law countries).
The professionalism and political neutrality of the
civil service postulate its autonomy from politics and
its autonomy as a state institution. This institution is
formed of heterogeneous professions and trades, but
has the capacity to build common practices and rules
of behaviour, as well as its own set of values and
group culture (esprit de corps), which in turn contribute to legitimising its existence and its actions [1].
The professionalisation of the civil service in democracies can only be achieved by means of the merit
system. This system is at the foundation of modern
bureaucracies.
Bureaucracies and by extension key elements of
the merit system have been under attack for the past
two decades or so, accused of strangling the
legitimate power of governments, undermining
efficiency incentives, blurring accountability and
impeding administrative responsiveness, among other
misdeeds. These criticisms, coming mainly from
ultraliberal economic viewpoints, are neither original
nor new. They are reminiscent of other criticisms
voiced by Marx, who branded the state machinery
the dreadful parasite body covering the French
society as a suffocating membrane [2].
If bureaucracy is as bad as it has been depicted
recently, it would be difficult to understand how an
institution that has enabled the development of the
economies of rich countries can be so unfit to
provide real solutions. Criticism of the merit-based
civil service derives perhaps from a lack of
understanding of the real nature of the problems that
the merit system is meant to solve. The remainder of
this paper will focus on this issue.
Patronage was Historically Useful

It is worth remembering that patronage played a
positive role at the dawn of contemporary western
democracies. It was a respected means of popular
participation in public affairs and an invaluable
instrument for laying the social foundations of
political parties, especially in the USA, for the most
part of the 19th century and well into the 20th.
Patronage was even regarded in the USA as an
element for democratisation, as opposed to the
mandarin administration of the former metropole.
Even if patronage was unable to guarantee societal
values, such as professional competence, impartiality
and legal certainty in public affairs, such values were
not fundamental at that time for a number of reasons:
the American internal market was not yet an
integrated market; economic externalities (e.g. legal
certainty) provided for by the state were still limited;
regulatory intervention by the state was rare and
extremely limited; and private and public investment
in large fixed-capital assets was not significant (the
USA railway network is often cited as one of the first
large investments of this kind).
As in the course of time this situation started to
reverse into its opposite, the usefulness of the patronage system in running the state also dwindled. The
system became an unbearable deadweight, particularly when economies developed mainly as a result of
industrial revolutions and the size of administrations expanded. Under these new circumstances, the
personal monitoring of the patronage system by
politicians weakened or became plainly impossible.
Emerging modern capitalism required a different
state. Expanded sources of state revenue became
necessary; modern taxation and budget systems
started to develop; a different, more impersonal, rulebound administration was necessary because the
direct monitoring of recruitment by political masters
(be it through patronage or through venality) became
impracticable.
Certain parallels to the American patronage
pattern can be found in some European countries that
practised the patronage and venality of public office
up until the beginning of the 20th century. Only once
politicians or the European monarchs were no longer
able to monitor the system, and extract sufficient
profit from it, were patronage and venality abandoned
and slowly replaced by merit-based systems. It was
more yielding to extract profits from the incipient
development of the economy, through new taxation
schemes, than from the old patronage and venality
business. However, certain official posts still
remained in the market up until and just after
World War II.
17
mainly means that they have an unprofessional civil

service ruled by patronage, cronyism, corruption and
other such misfortunes. Often this lack of professionnalism is accompanied by insufficient constitutional
and administrative legal arrangements to effectively
constrain the actions of the administration. The end
result is usually a public administration incapable of
producing the minimal legal certainty necessary for
launching economic and social development.
In many developing countries the problem is
often summarised by an assessment that they do not
have the administrative capacity or the necessary
institutional minimum [3]. This institutional minimum includes several elements, ranging from the
very minimal to a more complete threshold, which
the state should guarantee: 1) personal safety of
individuals and families; 2) guarantee of property
rights and contract enforcement; 3) an institutional
framework that guarantees macroeconomic and fiscal
stability and therefore a positive investment climate;
4) democracy and the rule of law. Each of these
elements we could call them public goods subsumes all of the preceding elements.
These public goods can only be ensured on
condition that patronage and political clientele
patterns pervading public administrations are
overcome, or at least reduced. This implies building
up modern bureaucracies that are shaped to merit
system patterns, endowed with professional technical
autonomy, subject to the rule of law, and accountable
to governments and society. This also implies that
political classes need to overcome certain temptations
of political populism and patronising of public
employment, the civil service included. These
preconditions represent the only guarantee that the
so-called commitment problem will be solved, i.e.
that there will be sufficient institutional guarantees
for legislation to be effectively applied and
implemented by the administrative apparatus [4] and
for implementation gaps to be reduced to a minimum.
We would understand the merit system better if it
were analysed from the perspective of the societal
function it is meant to accomplish; we would then see
from that standpoint whether it is an efficient
institution or not. The merit system is justified not by
itself but by the societal function it is meant to
accomplish. Historically it was embraced by countries (that are now rich) only when the patronage
system and the venality of public office became
inoperative deadweights mainly because the state
was in need of massive accumulation of capital,
production means and investments, particularly those
capable of widening the economic base of the state
(such as infrastructure and warfare), i.e. investments
which could ensure sufficient fiscal revenues to
finance the state. The merit system was deemed to be
These developments were coupled with the large

fixed-capital investments of budding capitalism and
the consequential constellation of small firms that
coalesced around them, since the direct participation
of these small firms in the political process was too
costly or impossible. These developments made it
necessary to abandon patronage and venality schemes
and to develop in their place acceptable regulatory
frameworks for the new situation, as well as to ensure
that these norms would be applied to everyone
without arbitrariness and in a predictable way. The
social demand for legal certainty increased
significantly, and as a consequence this shaped the
executive power differently and demanded sound
judicial review of decisions. Patronage and venality
could neither overcome the monitoring problem nor
provide solutions for the new necessity of ensuring
legal certainty and developing and enforcing durable
regulatory frameworks based on negotiated
legislative agreements. This necessity was also at the
origins of the progressive introduction of a public
administration governed by the merit system in the
constitutions of economically advanced countries.
The patronage system has never become totally
inoperative. Patronage is still well alive and wedging
itself between politics and administration in modern
developed economies. However, the patronage
governing contemporary political appointments is
or should be a resource of politics and not of the
merit-based professional administration. This
patronage wedge is tolerable only insofar as it is
political and remains confined to a certain limited
number of posts. It is not tolerable if it becomes, by
encroaching on regular administrative territory, a
nuisance for the proper functioning of the state, as is
often the case. In other words, patronage is legitimate
in modern administrations only insofar as it is not
allowed to manipulate or bias legislation and its
application. Such a situation would go against the
interests of those who negotiated the legislation and
against the interests of socioeconomic groups who
make economic calculations on the basis of existing
legislation and rely on its being applied impartially
and with regularity.
Institution-Building:
The Societal Problems that the Merit
System Can Contribute to Solving
The institutionalisation of the merit system for the
civil service is a fact in all developed countries, but it
is still very weak in, or absent from, countries in
transition from planned economies, and even more
markedly so in developing countries. These countries
are often referred to euphemistically as countries
having a weak institutional environment, which
18
fixed salary, tenure, and stability are required for

the efficient functioning of a modern administrative
machine with the capacity to live up to its societal
function, which is to produce and instil regularity and
legal certainty (Weber would perhaps have preferred
to use the word rationality) into social and political life. These were the societal problems that Weber
had in mind when he analysed the role of the
bureaucracy in the emerging economies of production
en masse at the time.
a better and more efficient instrument than buying

and selling public offices or using voluntary (today
we would say militant) work provided by those
patronised.
Max Weber in the Background

It is useful at this point to turn to Max Weber, one
of the most insightful analysts of modern capitalism
and its instruments. Max Weber considered that the
rational state rests upon an expert civil service and a
rational legal order that is the only within which
modern capitalism can thrive [5]. The preconditions
for the original development of capitalism included: a
predictable legal system, and behind that a state
bureaucracy; and a habit of treating all people as
having rights and as possible partners in law-regulated commercial dealings, which is a requirement for
establishing wider markets intertwined with regular
and frequent commercial exchanges.
The legal order also requires a bureaucratic state
to enforce the law, i.e. professional administrators in
the administration and competent jurists in the
judiciary. Reliable application of legal procedural and
substantive rules is one of the highest values in a well
organised bureaucracy. Another feature is the impersonal application of general rules, both to outsiders
the organisation deals with and to its own staff. This
impartiality is the most important feature of the
bureaucracy for Weber the bureaucracy should act
regularly, in a predictable way, and according to what
is foreseen in law.
Webers ideal bureaucrat is a full-time, lifetime
professional. This requires a sufficient salary and job
security, because otherwise people will not stay in the
job full-time for life. Unless they do, the organisation
will not be efficient. Stability helps keep the institutionnal memory alive and helps render it a source of
organisational learning, thus making the institution
more efficient. It takes time and experience to learn
the job, not so much because it is difficult to perform
a particular task, but because it all has to be coordinated and routines have to be set. Consequently,
promotion should be based mainly on seniority
because seniority is one of the best guarantees for the
efficient functioning of the bureaucracy. Likewise, an
elaborate division of labour requires the stability of
staff. Because of the nature of bureaucratic work, and
also perhaps because of the importance of training
and co-ordination on the job, the bureaucracy is in
need of educated recruits. Their education must be attested by some certificate. Certified education is
necessary not only to prove that recruits have been
educated, but also because a good bureaucracy needs
to work with impersonal criteria. In Webers thinking, all of these elements academic credentials,
Merit System, the Rule of Law

and Democracy
So far we have not made explicit references to the
relationship between the merit system and the development of democracy, except by juxtaposing democracy and the rule of law. Nowadays the association
between democracy and rule of law seems undisputed, but this was not always the case. In the 1960s and
1970s certain international agencies active in the field
of co-operation for development operated under the
assumption that the rule of law and democracy should
not necessarily go hand in hand. The important
element for economic development was the rule of
law, and this could be guaranteed by both democratic
and authoritarian political regimes. It was assumed
that even authoritarian regimes, such as those under
the Soviet influence, were able to ensure economic
development for their populations. The same
assumption concerned authoritarian regimes in Spain
and more recently in Chile. Furthermore, experience
in the development of early capitalism under
economically liberal doctrines in western countries,
in particular the USA experience, showed that it was
possible to launch the economy simply by making
sure that contracts were enforced and commercial
transactions respected, regardless of the more or less
authoritarian character of a political regime. In
summary, the rule of law was deemed possible
outside of fully fledged democratic political regimes.
This assumption has proved to be mistaken. In
fact, mainstream economic theory follows the
direction that democracy is the most effective
guarantor of good governance in the economic
sphere no less than in the political sphere. Civil
liberties, political freedom, and participatory
procedures are the best way to ensure appropriate
labour standards, environment sustainability, and
economic stability. The performance of democracies
in all of these areas has been superior to those of
regimes with restricted political participation [6].
Today the notion of the rule of law has evolved
and its meaning has enlarged. It is no longer solely an
expression of the supremacy of parliament (in its
original British meaning), but includes, in most EU
19
Member States, notions such as the separation of

powers and the principles of legality, accountability,
proportionality and due procedure in the performance
of the administration. It also includes fundamental
rights and democracy as part of the rule of law or tat
de droit. Even certain poverty reduction-related
aspects have been included in the notion of the rule of
law, first by intellectuals and practitioners and then in
some constitutions (Italy, Germany, Spain and
others), in which the state is referred to as a social
and democratic state of law (tat social et democratique de droit). The constitutional association of
democratic and social aspects with the rule of law
was meant to denote the idea of a more active role of
the state in reducing social inequalities, while at the
same time establishing the role of the state as an
enabling state, since society can only develop if all,
or the majority, of its members (political democracy)
can develop themselves (social aspect). Therefore the
state has to create the political and social conditions
enabling such development.
With this shift of perspective, the accepted
assumption is that poverty is one of the main enemies
of the rule of law, the tat de droit. Consequently, a
shift is observable from the old liberal rule of law to a
more modern social rule of law, which is intertwined
with democracy: The societal function of the rule of
law should be not only the guarantee of individual
property rights, but also the guarantee of the personal
development of the majority of individuals in a given
society. The rule of law is meant to free social assets
for the benefit of the society as a whole, and this
effect can only be obtained if the state promotes equal
opportunities for everyone and inclusiveness2 within
an environment of legal certainty. In this way, the
rule of law tends necessarily towards democracy and
becomes the cornerstone of the notion of governance.
In this respect, the merit-based civil service is
also a necessary element for democratic governance,
as long as the relevant constitutional and administrative law frameworks are also in place, i.e. those legal
arrangements that set the foundations and the rules of
the game for the state to operate in a democratic way.
These new notions of the rule of law and good democratic governance have also entered mainstream political discourse. European international organisations,
such as the Council of Europe, recently issued a
recommendation for governments to lay down
fundamental principles for European and national
public officials, such as universal and fair possibility
to access the civil service, equal opportunities for
women, integrity, loyalty, objectivity and probity, in

consideration of the fact that a high-quality civil
service is a vital precondition for strong democracy
and the rule of law [7].
The same spirit inspired the Declaration of the
Summit of Ibero-American Heads of State and
Government in November 2003: The role of the
State is essential for governance, to reduce social
inequality and promote economic development and to
achieve increasing levels of collective welfare. For
this it is an indispensable precondition for the
professionalisation of the civil service. Making the
civil service professional stands for a civil service
characterised by the merit system, professional capacity, service-oriented, performing efficiently, accountttable, ethically scrupulous, and adherent to the
principles and values of democracy because public
administrations that embrace such values contribute
to strengthening the State institutions and to making
democracy more robust [8]. In this political declaration the underlying assumed linkages are manifest
between the merit system, the rule of law and
democracy.
Civil Service Reform

Beyond the Reform Rhetoric:
a Necessity for Countries in Transition
Civil service reform is thus becoming a major
component of democratic institution-building, but it
is also another arena for long-standing conflicts
between traditional elites (either feudal or
communist) and emerging democratic, urban,
enlightened elites. These elites would also include
certain economic actors based more in industry and
services (i.e. more transnationally-oriented) than in
land ownership (i.e. more nationally inward-looking).
Modernising elites in transition countries are in
general strongly supported by the so-called
international community, a conglomerate of
different actors and interests powerful enough to
promote a reformist public opinion and a reformist
political discourse, which emphasises the merit
system as a key instrument for economic
development, as indicated above. This public opinion
includes the production of literature on governance
that establishes the merit system and the rule of law
as the main preconditions for economic growth.
This view constitutes the bandwagon of the
contemporary thinking on governance and
development, and inspires the rhetoric of reform in
many countries, to such an extent that it is difficult
for traditional elites to fight openly against reform.
What is more, traditional elites tend to adopt the
reform rhetoric in the same way as modernising
elites. It is amazing how traditional elites in some
Not surprisingly, the Public Administration Reform Strategy of

Brazil bears the title Public Management Towards a Socially
Inclusive Brazil: Public Management Plan of the Lula
Administration, Publications of the Ministry of Planning,
Budget and Public Management, Brasilia, 2003.
20
If civil service reform is perceived as building or

reforming a fundamental institution of a democratic
state, and if this reform effort is justified insofar as it
is included within a policy framework for economic
development and modernisation, the first important
issue is not how to overcome the laziness and
inefficiency of public employees but how to
overcome political populism and current patronage
patterns affecting public services in several transition
countries and how to replace these ills with a merit
system ruled by law. This challenge also implies the
creation of an appropriate legal administrative
framework for the public administration, which
includes regulating how public staff are managed,
how public decisions are made and how public action
is controlled by independent administrative and
judicial institutions.
This legal administrative framework should be
aimed, among other things, at reinforcing the public
accountability of civil servants and ensuring that legal
means compel public servants to serve the general
public interest and to not be influenced by vested
interests of any kind. The best available means for
ensuring this and encouraging appropriate behaviour
by civil servants is the merit system. The merit
system is likely to limit the capacity of politicians to
meddle disproportionately in the appointment of civil
servants. It is also likely to elicit an active and
positive attitude of civil servants towards their own
professionalisation and to encourage their long-term
service. Such changes in attitude in turn represent an
incentive for civil servants to commit to democratic
constitutional values and to the general public
interest.
central and eastern European countries and

elsewhere in the world have adopted the reformist
political discourse, a discourse that resounds well
and is even convincing at times to international
community ears. Sometimes these old elites with a
new rhetoric gain explicit political support from the
powers that count internationally. However, in most
cases traditional elites pay only lip service to
reformist ideas, as their intentions do not go beyond
diverting internal and international criticism, since
few national leaders in transition countries can afford
to be perceived as reactionaries blocking progress.
Effectively, the political discourse in many countries
is reformist, but effective implementation of reforms
remains very limited or non-existent.
One could argue that what is important is the
political will to pursue reforms, or the so-called
political commitment to reform, including the strong
political leadership of a prime minister or president.
Apart from the fact that political commitment is
difficult to define conceptually and even more
difficult to measure3, it depends on political capacity,
an elusive concept. Another sacred word in reform
literature is national ownership of reform efforts,
which is used to refer to national leadership and
political commitment. Thus political will, political
commitment and ownership are different words
representing aspects of the same idea. As the
President of the World Bank expressed it, ownership
means that countries must be in the drivers seat and
set the course. They must determine goals and the
phasing, timing and sequencing of programs [9].
The European Union has been assessing state reforms
in EU candidate countries since 1997 in terms of
administrative and judicial capacity to apply the
acquis, but very few assessments have been made of
the political capacity of these countries to conduct the
modernisation of their public administrations and
civil services, i.e. to move from the nomenklatura
system to a system that is democratic and merit
based. In certain EU candidate countries the old
political elites have remained in command, although
they have been more or less converted to democracy
and change. In the region it is not unusual to hear
political assertions blaming civil servants for their
laziness and lack of interest in their work as the
rationale for the necessity of reforms, which is
another way or diverting the attention away from the
real issues.
Conclusions
The first conclusion is drawn from the fact that
the institutionalisation of the merit system was historically legitimised by its societal function and that its
role was to provide legal certainty through institutionnal guarantees safeguarding the professional impartiallity of civil servants. To a great extent this impartiality is determined by recruitment, promotion and
remuneration schemes based on professional expertise and rank within the hierarchy, schemes that are
closed to political or otherwise undue bias. This institutionalisation of the merit system represented the
only available means of providing a priori guarantees
of legal certainty, which was in turn essential for
developing the industrial and commercial economy.
The second conclusion is that a merit-based civil
service was not historically imposed against the will
and interests of politicians, but in fact because of
these interests. Under the new economic conditions
created by emerging capitalism, political classes nee-
A model for defining political commitment is proposed by

Willy McCourt, based on a civil service reform case study, that of
Swaziland. See Willy McCourt, Political Commitment to
Reform: Civil Service Reform in Swaziland in: World
Development, Vol. 31, No. 6, pp. 1015-1031, June 2003. At:
www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev (doi:10.1016/S0305-750X(03)00044-5)
21
References
ded a professional bureaucracy that was consistently

less vulnerable to political manipulation and therefore
capable of ensuring the durability of legislative agreements. These early capitalists were aware that the
worst enemies of capitalism were the capitalists
themselves, and to reduce the perils which they represented, a strong state and an impartial public bureaucracy were needed. This view continues to be valid
for contemporary emerging democracies in need of
consolidation. Politicians have an interest in limiting
their own meddling in administrative affairs and
leaving room for the development of a professional
administration.
The third conclusion is that the merit system was
created in the first place to neither produce efficiency
within the state administrative apparatus nor to
improve public services, but to efficiently produce
legal certainty, impartiality and societal trust in the
legal system of the state. In other words, its role was
to produce efficiency in the market through what
Posner referred to as allocated or external efficiency, consisting of making structures and procedures available and capable of promoting private
social and economic efficiency [10]. Social and
economic efficiency is needed for social and
economic development, and this development is in
turn necessary for developing robust democracies.
The merit system in public employment in general,
and in the civil service in particular, has a direct
influence on the strengthening of both economic
development and democracy.
1.
Dreyfus, F. Linvention de la bureaucratie: Servir ltat en

France, en Grande-Bretagne et aux tats-Unis (XVIII-XX
sicles). Paris: Editions La Dcouverte, 2000.
2. Marx, K. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
1852.
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tos/?p=4_0063
4. Banks, J.S., and Hanushek, E.A. (Eds.). Modern Political
Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
5. Weber, M. Economic History (1923). French translation by
Gallimard, Paris, 1991.
6. Rodrik, D. Four Simple Principles for Democratic Governance of Globalisation. Harvard University, May 2001. At:
http://www.demglob.de/rodrikpaper.html
7. Text adopted by the Standing Committee, acting on behalf
of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, on
8 September 2003 on the Doc. 9711, report of the
Committee on Economic Affairs and Development,
(rapporteur: Mr Giovanni Crema, Italy, Socialist Group)
submitted on 19 February 2003 and entitled Civil Service
Reform in Europe. At: http://www.assembly.coe.int
8. Resolution No 11 of the Santa Cruz de la Sierra Declaration: XIII Cumbre Iberoamericana de Jefes de Estado y de
Gobierno, Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia), 14-15 noviembre 2003, in which a Carta Iberoamericana de la Funcin
Pblica (Ibero-American Charter for the Civil Service) was
adopted. At: http://www.cumbresiberoamericanas.com/
9. Wolfensohn, J. A Proposal for a Comprehensive Development Framework: Memorandum to the Board Management
and Staff of the World Bank Group. Washington, 21
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Aspen Law & Business, 2003.
Francisco Cardona
Vieoji tarnyba, demokratija ir ekonomikos raida
Rezium
Straipsnyje nagrinjamos vieosios tarnybos, ekonomikos ir demokratijos raidos ssajos. Akcentuojama, kad anksiau
paplits valstybs tarnautoj parinkimo ir darbinimo bdas, rmsis taking asmen, tarp j politik, globa, taip pat valstybs staig darbuotoj paperkamumas, ateityje turt inykti. Tai slygos skurdo majimas, subalansuota ekonomikos
raida ir demokratijos stiprjimas.
22

Role of Civil Services in A Democracy

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Convocation Address 2012

Such service, even though not

legally so, was in practice close to being hereditary.

Politicisation of the civil services, mainstay of government, in an inevitable offshoot

But an unfortunate ramification of these changes, which these factors of political

There is of course no need to import structural designs. Our own structure,

Freedom of access to information is increasingly regarded as the signature of

It is understood that good governance is the means adopted to deliver services to

That structure required to be replaced. But whereas change is indeed evolving, as

Now, in a new collaboration on open government, our two countries are

MK Gandhi: Panchayat Raj, Navjivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, and PP 8-9

gender,economy,environment, and technology: civil service

gender,economy,environment, and technology

Role in the Transition to Democracy

mid-1970s and in the late 1980s

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have emerged in the last quarter of

reliable, and responsible. A civil

civil service (6)

Political environment (4)

democracy is vulnerable, more so if it has traditionally proved to be inefficient.

Society and rights (2)

between these two demands.

In fact, additional conflicting pressures may be

Role in the Transition to Democracy

certain extent resistant to all governments in order to

The System of Positions

safeguard the well being, the security, and the

The Career System

defense if the people living within its territorial

of the government party (or coalition of parties) to use

the capacities of the civil service freely to fulfill their

governments may want to expand the state freely to

Human Resource Planning For

gender,economy,environment, and technology: civil service

constraints they face once in power.

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institutions, such as the civil service, to democratic participation from below.

civil service (6)

the legitimating of the democratic regime.

Political environment (4)

Change and Reform

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require expert knowledge and technology.

gender,economy,environment, and technology: civil service

The Career System

Human Resource Planning For

The System of Positions

gender,economy,environment, and technology: civil service

The Career System

theoretical separating if state and society is

gender,economy,environment, and technology: civil service

Trevelyan report of 1854, which

particularize and clienteles that

set of bodies of civil servants,

contributed to the reshaping of

recruited on the basis

Prospective high level