Influence of Public Administrator Training & Education Governance in a State Discuss the influence of public administrator training and education on the ov

Influence of Public Administrator Training & Education Governance in a State Discuss the influence of public administrator training and education on the overall quality of governance in a state. Is this training and education of public administrators necessary to achieve good governance? Is the importance of this training accepted, or is there disagreement about the need to train public officials? Finally, discuss how you think training of public officials may improve governance in developing states. Eva M. Witesman
Indiana University, Bloomington
Charles R. Wise
The Ohio State University
Civil Service
Reform Abroad
The Centralization/Decentralization Paradox in Civil Service
Reform: How Government Structure A?ects Democratic
Training of Civil Servants
Eva M. Witesman is an assistant
professor of public management at the
Romney Institute of Public Management,
Brigham Young University. Her primary
research interest is the impact of structural
arrangements on democratic outcomes.
E-mail: evawitesman@byu.edu
favors democracy (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer
We hypothesize that the structural characteristics (i.e.,
and Rowan 1977).
centralization versus decentralization) of government
a?ect the availability of training in values and skills that
are fundamental to democratization. We test our hypoth- Two components of democratic reform have been of
particular interest to the European Union and other
esis in statistical models predicting anticorruption traininternational proponents of democratization: strucing and policy skills training, using a model of technical
tural decentralization and institutional democratizaskills training for comparison. We ?nd that centralized
tion. Structural decentralization
government structure signi?cantly
refers to devolution in the orgaincreases the odds of receiving both
anticorruption training and policy
Two components of democratic nization and relationship of
skills training. In contrast, we ?nd
reform have been of particular government units in relation to
no statistical correlation between
interest to the European Union one another, including a shift
of production and provision
government structure and receipt
and other international
functions to more localized
of technical skills training. In
proponents of democratization: government units (Hicks and
light of these empirical results, we
structural decentralization and Kaminski 1995; Rainey 1997).
describe a theoretical paradox in
Structural decentralization
civil service reform associated with
institutional democratization.
involves the reorganization of
democratization: While the end
government structures and
goal of such reform is decentralized
alters the balance of power among levels of governgovernment with local services and a professionalized
civil service, reform itself may best supported by a central- ment, generally favoring more localized levels of
government. Values associated with previous reized environment to achieve the democratic value and
gimes or institutional arrangements do not always
skills training needed to support transition to democracy.
change because of decentralization associated with
democratic reform (Ryan 2004), and e?ort must be
ation-states around the world have been
facing increasing pressure from international made to actively retrain civil servants to understand
the new values associated with democratization
organizations and foreign forces to move
(Klingner 1996).
toward democratization (Brinkerho? and Coston
1999). The goal of European Union accession in
Institutional democratization refers to this shift in
particular has been a key driving force for shaping the
patterns of reform in neighboring former Soviet states values, rules, skills, and interactions, favoring transparency, equity, responsiveness, accountability, and
(Connaughton and Verheijen 1999; Nunberg 2000),
other traditional democratic values (Hodgson 2006;
though other pressures to engage in democratic reMcGill 1997; OECD 1996). Institutional democform also exist (Corkery 1998). The coercive and
ratization occurs independently of structural decennormative pressures for structural and institutional
tralization and could take place even in a strong
change toward this particular government form have
centralized government structure, thus rendering it
been less than subtle (Frederickson and Smith 2003).
fundamentally distinct from structural decentralizaWhile some have faced overt diplomatic or even milition. Evidence of institutional democratization
tary pressures to democratize, many nations have
can be found through functioning oversight and
chosen democratic models based on pressure from
accountability mechanisms and the systematic
within. Overall, reforming nations have clear incenincorporation of public input into government
tives to democratize in order to enhance government
decision making (Coston 1998; Klingner 1996).
legitimacy in a world environment that increasingly
Charles R. Wise is Founding Director
of the John Glenn School of Public Affairs
at The Ohio State University and Director of
the Parliamentary Development Project for
Ukraine. He is a three-time recipient of the
William E. Mosher and Frederick C. Mosher
Award for the best academic article
published in PAR.
E-mail: wise.983@osu.edu
N
116
Public Administration Review • January | February 2009
The predominant approach to assistance in democratic reform has focused primarily on structural
decentralization of government and devolution of
power, with little focus on the provision of training in
the institutional skills and values necessary to sustain
decentralized, self-governing government units
(OECD 1997; Ryan 2004). While the prevalent approaches have been to focus either on decentralization
exclusively or on promoting decentralization and
democratic values simultaneously, some have called
for a more nuanced approach, explicitly considering
decentralization and democratization as separate and
unique components of democratic reform (Polidano
2001; Rice 1992; Tõnnisson and Paabusk 2004).
While the practice and rhetoric of democratic reform
have recognized no con?ict between structural decentralization and institutional democratization, simultaneous implementation of the two actually presents a
signi?cant management paradox (Hood and Peters
2004; Long and Franklin 2004; Simon 1946). The
operating assumption of democratic reform has been
that if structural decentralization and institutional
democratization are distinguishable, issues of institutional democratization are subsidiary concerns, intended only for the support of the greater structural
decentralization e?ort. Top-down government reform
e?orts often operate with the aim of identifying,
targeting, and repairing de?ciencies in bureaucratic
function and typically assume a highly centralized
model (Kolisnichenko 2005; Lucking 2003). Some
research suggests that centralization provides signi?cant bene?ts to various aspects of public sector training and development (Coggburn 2005). Ryan (2004)
suggests that in some cases, decentralization may
actually undermine democratization, particularly if
contextual variables are not considered. Herein lies the
paradox: It is possible that decentralization of government structures prior to shifts in institutional reform
may actually limit government’s capacity to provide
the training necessary to achieve institutional democratization e?ectively, if at all. This clash of structural
interests—democratic structural reform requiring
decentralization and democratic institutional reform
requiring centralization—may be the underlying
saboteur of democratization e?orts in reforming
nations.
We posit that the primary and overriding focus on
structural decentralization in reforming nations
threatens their capacity to achieve institutional
democratization.
Context
Reform e?orts in post-Soviet nations have been of
particular interest to scholars since the fall of the
Soviet Union in 1991 (see, e.g., Hale 2005; Newland
1996; Rice 1992). The transition from highly centralized government forms to more democratic forms has
been less smooth for some nations than might have
been expected (Coston 1998; Keraudren and van
Mierlo 1998; Newland 1996). Some nations, after
experimenting with decentralized forms of government, have begun to recentralize in hopes of creating
a more stable government (Fish 2001; Roeder 1994).
One of the primary aims of civil service reform in the
post-Soviet context is a change from previously existing institutions to arrangements that are more responsive to citizens and that adhere to the rule of law. In
addition, democratization enjoins public servants to
serve not merely as passive implementers of their
superiors’ orders, but also as actors who involve citizens in policy making and provide expert policy
analysis to both citizens and policy makers. The
institutions governing the ?ow of power and resources
in the Soviet system included prevalent systems of
patronage and corruption; therefore, any civil service
training or reform system in post-Soviet nations must
enhance not only e?ciency and technical capacity but
also legitimacy, transparency, and equity (Kotchegura
1998). Also vital to reform in the post-Soviet context
is the policy-making capacity of government o?cials
who may be newly responsible for independent, autonomous decision making (Rice 1992).
Ukraine is a democratizing former Soviet nation in
the midst of transition from a centralized structure to
a decentralized structure. Ukraine, like other postSoviet nations, inherited a bureaucratic structure that
was highly centralized and characterized by a topdown management system. Concomitantly, the public management imperative for public servants was
unquestioning execution of their superiors’ task
orders, no matter how corrupt, ill-conceived, or
unresponsive to citizens. Further, no analyses of
policy options were prepared or presented to political
superiors or to citizens. Technocratic execution was
the sole mandate. Since independence, remnants of
the former Soviet regime’s top-down bureaucratic
style has largely dominated at the central government
in Ukraine and in a sizable share of regional and
local governments, especially in the eastern and
southern portions of the country. However, with the
coming of the “orange revolution” (Åslund and
McFaul 2006; Christensen, Rakhimkulov, and Wise
2005) and the installation of Viktor Yushchenko as
president, a new central presence in the presidential
administration has pressed for democratic reform of
the bureaucracy.
The Ukrainian constitution passed in 1996 promised
devolution of power and a future of local selfgovernment, with an eye to the standards of the
European Union. Though the Ukrainian central
government retains primary control over the ?ow of
all government resources, the 1997 Law on Local
Self-Government established autonomy for local
The Centralization/Decentralization Paradox 117
cities, towns and villages, so
tration education and training in
The data used in this paper are Ukraine for the Eurasia Foundathat local governments are now
the primary providers of public
tion (Wise et al. 2007). The data
derived primarily from the
goods and services and “serve as
used in this paper are derived
Public Administration
the primary interface between
Education and Training Needs primarily from the Public Adthe state and the citizenry”
ministration Education and
Assessment Survey administered Training Needs Assessment Sur(Wise et al. 2007, 29). The
to government o?cials in
central government of Ukraine,
vey, which was administered to
Ukraine as part of the public
however, still maintains public
government o?cials in Ukraine
employees at the local level in
as part of the public administraadministration education and
addition to regional and
tion education and training
training e?ort.
national civil servants. Though
e?ort. This survey evaluates curlocally stationed and “derent Ukrainian civil service trainconcentrated” administrative units (Verheijen 1998), ing practices and identi?es areas of training need. The
these employees of the Ukrainian national governsurvey was conducted in two waves, one surveying key
ment maintain ties to the central government in an
administrative institutions in all 24 Ukrainian oblasts
explicitly hierarchical arrangement.
(provinces) as well as the Autonomous Republic of
Crimea, and the second surveying local self-government
A major reform being pushed in the Main Civil Sergovernments in all the oblast center cities throughout
vice Department and the National Academy of Public the country. The response rate for the oblast survey
Administration is now focused on establishing new
was 80 percent, while the response rate the local selftraining e?orts. This approach requires as a ?rst step
government survey was 56 percent.1
training in (1) methods to prevent and ?ght corruption and (2) policy analysis in support of public delib- Logistic analysis of each binary dependent variable
eration. The presence of new, decentralized units
was completed using logit models based on the default
functioning in parallel with locally operating units of
settings in the Stata 9 statistical package. Analysis was
the central government provides a rare opportunity to aided by use of the supplemental Stata Spost comobserve the e?ects of each government structure on
mand package (Long and Freese 2005).
civil service reform training e?orts within a single
cultural context (Tõnnisson and Paabusk 2004).
Research Design
The current structure of the Ukrainian government
While the outcomes of the Ukrainian training e?orts
provides a unique opportunity to observe the civil
are not yet observable, their e?ort is a?ecting two
service of a decentralized government structure and
locally operating government models—one centralthe civil service of a centralized government structure
ized and one decentralized. We are particularly interwithin the same cultural context.
ested in the points of access to the Ukrainian civil
service and whether (and to what extent) training in
The observational units in this study are o?ces, agendemocratic values and institutions is available to civil
cies, or departments of the Ukrainian civil service as
servants in each government model.
represented by department, agency, or o?ce heads
responding to a survey about Ukrainian training
It should be noted that a full structural decentralizapractices. Of the 260 survey respondents in our samtion has not occurred even in the agencies that operate ple,2 100 are o?cials of local self-government and 160
under localized, self-governing units. Ukrainian agenare central government o?cials operating in local
cies in the centralized and decentralized government
o?ces throughout Ukraine.
structures access central funds and are at times subject
to centralized policy mandates. Even if the decentralLocally stationed employees of the central government
ization in e?ect in local self-governing units is merely
and employees of local self-governments share a sura decentralization of implementation decisions, howprising array of common characteristics that make
ever, this devolution of power nonetheless suggests a
comparisons between them particularly vivid. The
marked shift toward a decentralized structure and the
most important of these characteristics, for the purrise of greater local autonomy. The question remains
pose of our analysis, is the similar access to and expecas to which structure is more successful at promoting
tation of training by the public administration
civil service training in the democratic skills and valeducation and training system for all Ukrainian public
ues necessary for transparent and responsive function- employees. Wise et al. describe the similarity: “In
ing at any level of government.
many respects the PA ET [public administration
education and training] system operates in essentially
Data and Methods
the same fashion for local self-government employees
From July to December of 2006, Indiana University
as it does for central government employees. . . . There
conducted an intensive assessment of public adminisis also little di?erence between central government
118
Public Administration Review • January | February 2009
units and local self-government bodies in the degree
to which they identify training needs of various categories of employees . . . Local self-government employees share similar training needs with central
government employees” (2007, 32–34).
Descriptive statistics and qualitative analysis suggest
that the two public employee structures are strikingly
comparable. They function in the same geographic
units, access the same training structures, share the
same job classi?cation structure, utilize the same
central resources, and identify the same training
needs. Though regional and national members of the
Ukrainian civil service access the public administration education and training system much more frequently, the civil servants in our sample—local employees
of the central government and self-government
employees—have relatively similar access rates, at
15.4 percent and 18.2 percent, respectively (Wise
et al. 2007, 20–21).
While some residual di?erences between access to
funding and training sources may remain, we argue
that the parallel operating centralized and decentralized government structures are essentially similar in
these respects. We nonetheless statistically control for
di?erences in access and capacity with a variety of
measures including agency size, sources of funding,
sources of training, and others.
We are interested in the e?ect of government structure (centralized or decentralized) on access to
training in the skills and values of democratic
reform. By comparing locally situated central
government employees and employees of local selfgoverning units, we can isolate the variable of
government structure—hereafter referred to as
centralization—and ascertain its impact on two
speci?c types of training related to democratic
institutional reform: anticorruption training and
policy skills training. It bears repeating that by
centralization, we refer not to the centralization of
resources and training decisions but rather to which
of the two types of government structure an operating agency belongs. We use statistical controls to
account for variation in more traditional measures
of centralization.
Variables
Our analysis explores the impact of decentralization
on the likelihood that civil servants will receive access
to training in each of two areas of civil service training
necessary for democratic reform: anticorruption training and training in policy skills. A third dependent
variable, availability of technical skills training, will
allow us to determine the extent to which our conclusions are general to all civil service training and to
what extent they are limited speci?cally to training in
democratic skills and values.
Anticorruption e?orts have become the litmus test for
the presence of democratic values in developing nations (Rauch and Evans 2000). One facet of reform
that has been of particular interest to scholars in developing and post-Soviet nations is the eradication of
corrupt and subversive patterns in public agencies.3
Corruption prevents the development of democratic,
responsive institutions and inhibits the ability and
willingness of public servants to adhere to the ?rst
principles of equity, justice, and transparency, which
are necessary for e?ective democratic government.
In 2003, the National Academy of Internal A?airs of
Ukraine instituted a monthly advanced training program on preventing corruption, a centralized e?ort
intended to reach civil servants at all levels of Ukrainian
national government. The penetration of this program
into both centralized and decentralized government
structures in Ukraine provides insight into the
centralization/decentralization paradox in civil service
reform. The anticorruption variable used in this
model is a dichotomous response to the question,
“Did civil servants of your Department pass the
monthly advanced training program on preventing
corruption, implemented by the National Academy of
Internal A?airs of Ukraine in 2003?”4 A positive
response to this question is coded as 1.
Policy skills training is a dependent variable of inter…
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