Public Administration and Public Sector Reform in Latin
                    America

Nef, Jorge

doi:10.4135/9780857020970.n27

Cited by 12 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…International organizations such as the OECD, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank have been important for diffusing administrative reform ideas. As observed by Nef (2003), administrative reforms externally induced or assisted are nothing new for newly independent and developing states. Transplanted administrative forms from Europe and North America, with their visions of rationality, efficacy, and impersonality, have been the measuring rod of ''modernity by imitation,'' and the supremacy of the bureaucratic model has been followed by reforms inspired by neoliberal ideology (Nef 2003).…”

Section: Democratic Learning?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Bureaucracy

Olsen

2005

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

544

335

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This article questions the fashionable ideas that bureaucratic organization is an obsolescent, undesirable, and non-viable form of administration and that there is an inevitable and irreversible paradigmatic shift towards market-or network-organization. In contrast, the paper argues that contemporary democracies are involved in another round in a perennial debate and ideological struggle over what are desirable forms of administration and government: that is, a struggle over institutional identities and institutional balances. The argument is not that bureaucratic organization is a panacea and the answer to all challenges of public administration. Rather, bureaucratic organization is part of a repertoire of overlapping, supplementary, and competing forms coexisting in contemporary democracies, and so are market-organization and network-organization. Rediscovering Weber's analysis of bureaucratic organization, then, enriches our understanding of public administration. This is in particular true when we (a) include bureaucracy as an institution, not only an instrument; (b) look at the empirical studies in their time and context, not only at Weber's ideal-types and predictions; and (c) take into account the political and normative order bureaucracy is part of, not only the internal characteristics of ''the bureau.'' MAKING SENSE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION Is ''bureaucracy'' an organizational dinosaur helplessly involved in its death struggle? Is it an undesirable and nonviable form of administration developed in a legalistic and authoritarian society and now inevitably withering away because it is incompatible with complex, individualistic, and dynamic societies? Are, therefore, the term bureaucracy and the theoretical ideas and empirical observations associated with it, irrelevant or deceptive when it comes to making sense of public administration and government in contemporary democracies? Or are the mobilization of antibureaucratic sentiments and the claim that it is time to say goodbye to bureaucracies and bureaucrats just another round in a perennial debate and ideological struggle over what desirable forms of administration and government are-that An earlier version of this article was presented as a keynote speech at the Ninth International Congress of Centro Lationoamericano de Administracion Para el Desarrollo (CLAD) on State and Public Administration Reform, Madrid, 4 November 2004. The original version will be printed in Spanish in Revista del CLAD Reforma y Democracia (Caracas). I thank H.

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Section: Democratic Learning?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Bureaucracy

Olsen

2005

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

544

335

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“…The characteristics mentioned above need to be understood within a historical perspective. Nef (2003) points out that public administrations have undergone transformations since the very creation of Latin American States, whose stages could be divided into four: centralized construction of the state apparatus (1810-1850), limited institutionalization , early bureaucratization , and authoritarianism (1970-mid 1980). To these periods, we could add a boom in neoliberal policies and application of models of new public management (NPM) type (1980s-2000s).…”

Section: Some Notes On the Historical Construction Of The Latin Amerimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is not uncommon to find systems of recruitment, promotion, and remuneration of officials outside meritocratic principles, as well as informal administrative practices inspired by secrecy and subjectivity rather than the impartial application of regulation. In general, this means that the presence of legal-formal characteristics is not a sufficient condition to evaluate the degrees of institutionalization of public administration models, and even less their performance (Nef, 2003). This type of bureaucratic "facade" is, moreover, especially frequent at subnational levels of government where the presence of local "caudillos" and weaker controls reinforces the patrimonialism.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Brief Story of Latin American Public Administration: A Particular Model

Ramos¹,

Milanesi²

2021

The Emerald Handbook of Public Administration in Latin America

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Identifying a single model of public administration in Latin America entails a simplification due to the variety of countries with different governance structures, administrative systems, historical legacies, and ways of addressing public sector reforms over time. Nevertheless, an extended feature among Latin American public administrations is the coexistence of Weberian models with patrimonialism and large-scale patronage practices. Although at first sight public administrations can formally contain all or most of the typical characteristics of a modern bureaucratic system, some of their practices are extraneous to everyday management. In this context, the waves of administrative reforms have sought, with different approaches, to strengthen the public machinery. An important point is that administrative reforms in Latin America largely followed a center-periphery pattern. Firstly, through the imitation of practices of the colonialist countries and later by importing reform packages from the central countries. Thus, this chapter goes over the main historical characteristics in the construction of the Latin American public administration, the reforms paradigms that have marked it and their consequences.

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“…Enfocar el análisis de las instituciones en las regulaciones formales supone el riesgo de desatender aspectos que moldean las conductas políticas y burocráticas, generando una foto incompleta del funcionamiento de los servicios civiles. Por ello, se propone centrar el estudio en la eficacia práctica de ese conjunto de reglas oficiales y particularistas (Helmke y Letitsky, 2006;Grindle, 212;Longo, 2006;Ramió y Salvador, 2005;Iacoviello, 2006;Nef, 2003;Heredia, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

Análisis del nivel de institucionalización de los servicios civiles municipales del gran Mendoza

Llano

Bilbao

Belmonte

2019

DAAPGE

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El objetivo del trabajo es analizar el nivel de institucionalización de los servicios civiles de los seis (6) municipios que conforman el Gran Mendoza a partir de la aplicación de una escala bipolar de politización/profesionalización. Las características estructurales presentan una alta variabilidad en términos tamaño de la burocracia, composición, nivel de flexibilización y peso fiscal del empleo público en los casos seleccionados. Asimismo, el cálculo del índice de institucionalización de los servicios civiles municipales (IISCM) en las comunas del área metropolitana mendocina arroja un aún frágil nivel de implantación del mérito en el orden local. El IISCM promedio asciende a 2,7 puntos, posicionándose 5 de los casos de mitad de la escala hacia el extremo que denota mayor politización de las burocracias. Sólo la Ciudad de Mendoza (3,1) alcanzó puntuaciones mínimamente más cercanas al polo que representa niveles más elevados de profesionalización administrativa.

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Public Administration and Public Sector Reform in Latin America

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Bureaucracy

Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Bureaucracy

A Brief Story of Latin American Public Administration: A Particular Model

Análisis del nivel de institucionalización de los servicios civiles municipales del gran Mendoza

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