This article investigates the impacts on, and responses of, third world bureaucracies (more speci®cally those operating in the poorer parts of the third world), in the context of the changing demands of development management. These include eorts at debureaucratization, by calling for a radically dierent kind of civil service; at localization and training; at circumvention, through relying on semi-autonomous public enterprises; at re-orientation, by altering civil servants' attitudes and incentives; at decentralization; and at privatization and pressure. For these governments, this last mentioned approach proved more demanding and demoralizing than any of the previous notions they had confronted. Today, under the rubric of governance, there appears to be some acknowledgement that the anti-state emphasis of the structural adjustment era may have gone too far, and the call is for the more eective bureaucracies to be accountable. The danger in many poor countries, however, is that the real and relative salaries, the morale and ethics of the bureaucracy, and public trust in the bureaucracy, have all plummeted so far, that it may be too late to turn these trends around. The daunting challenge today is how to break out of this box' of bureaucratic decline, the four corners of which are formed and connected by lack of resources, incentives, public service and legitimacy.
The dominating view in the literature is that renewable electricity production increases the price variance on spot markets for electricity. In this paper, we critically review this hypothesis. Using a static market model, we identify the variance of the infeed from intermittent electricity sources (IES) and the shape of the industry supply curve as two pivotal factors influencing the electricity price variance. The model predicts that the overall effect of IES infeed depends on the produced amount: while small to moderate quantities of IES tend to decrease the price variance, large quantities have the opposite effect. In the second part of the paper, we test these predictions using data from Germany, where investments in IES have been massive in the recent years. The results of this econometric analysis largely conform to the predictions from the theoretical model. Our findings suggest that subsidy schemes for IES capacities should be complemented by policy measures supporting variance absorbing technologies such as smart-grids, energy storage, or grid interconnections to ensure the build-up of sufficient capacities in time.
The article argues that the essence of economic policy reform programmes-both their substance and their pace-runs counter to the central notions of sound institutional development. Attention is first given to some fundamental concerns about the relationship between the two processes, in particular focusing on questions of culture, speed of change and the political environment. The article then provides some illustrations from Malawi, looking in turn at collateral institutional damage, the new generation of semiautonomous organizations, confusing incentives systems in the areas of salaries, housing and training, and lack of serious concern for the sustainability of the reforms. The conclusion calls for returning 'part-ownership' of the reform programme to the local officials, and trying to reduce some of the institutional unreality, which seems to adhere to the implementation of the reforms.
This article demonstrates how aid dependence operates in very concrete terms in the process of consultancy and technical assistance. It draws on the author's experiences in preparing a monitoring and evaluation system for Tanzania's Local Government Reform Program. It illustrates how a comprehensive system of aid dependence, such as prevails in Tanzania, has meant that concern with local ownership, institutional development, affordability and sustainability appeared to find limited support among Tanzanian professionals and in-country donors. The article illustrates how the contradiction between the critically poor data collection system, which seems to demand realism and low cost as priorities and the comprehensive nature of foreign aid operates in four M&E design issues, namely institution building, ambition of performance indicators, pressures for rapid computerization and participatory methods. Finally the article draws a few concluding thoughts about the experience and its relationship to the debates on aid dependency and local ownership.
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