DRAFTUN Lessons Learned Review on support

to Core Public Administration Functions in the immediate aftermath of conflict

New York, July 2012

Table of Contents

Preface.................................................................................................................................... 3Chapter 1: Objectives and methodology.................................................................................4

1.1 What is public administration and why does it matter?.............................................41.2 Methodology, definitions, and approach....................................................................6

Chapter 2: Lessons from the wider context.............................................................................92.1 Lessons from Peace Building and State-building.......................................................92.2 Lessons from Public Administration Reform............................................................112.3 Lessons from research on governance and institutional change.............................132.4 The ‘proper’ relationship between politics and public administration......................13

Chapter 3: Main findings and recommendations...................................................................163.1 The development of UN capacity for support to public administration after conflict

163.2 The UN’s current approach to support to CPAF........................................................193.3 The proposed approach...........................................................................................213.4 The importance of context......................................................................................24

Chapter 4: Deepening the political settlement......................................................................264.1 Include consideration of CPAF in peace agreements...............................................264.2 Promote discussion and negotiation on the character and function of public administration...................................................................................................................274.3 Assist politicians, parties and other political actors to understand CPAF.................284.4 Assist governments to generate ‘process legitimacy’.............................................294.5 Monitor labour disputes between government and state employees......................304.6 Promote inclusion in PA...........................................................................................30

Chapter 5: Restoring basic functionality................................................................................325.1 First things first.......................................................................................................325.2 Resist the urge to make big plans...........................................................................355.3 Speed up grievance redressal.................................................................................385.4 Promote ‘South-South’ links and inclusion in regional PA initiatives........................385.5 Support the restoration of local governance............................................................405.6 Focus on outcomes..................................................................................................41

1

Chapter 6: Prioritising UN support to core public administration functions..........................446.1 Develop UN-wide policy on support to CPAF............................................................446.2 Bring a ‘state-building’ framework into the UN’s approach.....................................466.3 Improve planning for CPAF in UN operations and mandates....................................476.4 Improve analysis for planning and programming....................................................486.6 Enhance the role of CPAF in the PCNA process........................................................516.7 Deepen the UN’s human resource base on CPAF.....................................................526.8 Invest in learning and training on CPAF...................................................................526.9 Increase and speed up funding for CPAF.................................................................54

6.9.1 The ‘Early Recovery’ Funding Window..............................................................546.9.2 CPAF Needs Assessment in the Immediate Aftermath of Conflict.....................556.9.3 Drawing on Transitional and Developmental Financing for CPAF Support........56

6.10 Develop co-operation with other organisations.......................................................59Chapter 7: Conclusions and next steps.................................................................................61

Annex xx Summary of Recommendations........................................................................62Annex xx Inventory of UN-affiliated websites of relevance to public administration and local governance in post-conflict situations.......................................................................63Annex xx Note on governance data.................................................................................64Annex xx Illustrative sequencing table.............................................................................66Annex xx CPAF in UN mission mandates..........................................................................67Annex xx Resources.........................................................................................................68Annex xx Suggestions for training by UN staff type and function.....................................69Annex xx List of CPAF projects in the case study countries..............................................71Annex xx Key organisations that have developed work on CPAF post-conflict.................81Bibliography.......................................................................................................................89

2

PrefaceThis report is submitted in partial fulfilment of Policy Committee decision 2009/27 which commissioned a ‘lessons learned review of country experiences in post-conflict public administration’. That decision was in turn based on the issues raised in the ‘Report of the Secretary-General on peace building in the immediate aftermath of conflict’ (A/63/881 – S/2009/304) in which ‘Support to restoring core government functions, in particular basic public administration and public finance, at the national and subnational levels’ was identified as ‘recurring areas where international assistance is frequently requested as a priority in the immediate aftermath of conflict’.1

The objectives of this report, as specified in the ToR, are to ‘capture the experiences gained over the years on how the UN System has addressed public administration capacity development in the early years of the post-conflict environments’; and to provide ‘recommendations to ensure the UN system is capable of providing effective, cohesive, integrated and strategic support to improve the capacities of post-conflict public administration at the national and sub-national levels.’ Seven case studies were commissioned for the report. Five countries were visited by the team (Liberia, Burundi, Timor-Lest, Guinea-Bissau and Kosovo), two countries (Sierra Leone and Afghanistan) were covered through desk reviews.2

As per the Policy Committee decision, this report will lay the groundwork for a series of more detailed and specific ‘how to’ guidance notes on a range of technical areas that this overall report will not have the space to go into in sufficient depth.

The primary audience of the report is SRSGs, DSRSGs, UN Resident Coordinators, members of the UN Country Team, UN mission political officers and civil affairs officers, and staff from all UN agencies working on support to public administration and local government. The report is also intended to provoke debate amongst a wider group of interested member states, policy experts and donors.

The production of the report was supervised by the UN Working Group on Public Administration. The Working Group is chaired by UNDP3 and comprises representatives of all New York-based UN agencies interested in and mandated to support various aspects of PA.4 Many agencies and missions in the case study countries generously gave of their time and support.

1 The other four were: support to basic safety and security, demobilization and reintegration, strengthening the rule of law and initiation of security sector reform; support to political processes, and developing conflict-management capacity at national and subnational levels; support to the provision of basic services and the safe and sustainable return and reintegration of internally displaced persons and refugees; and support to economic revitalization, and rehabilitation of basic infrastructure. 2 The case studies have not been formally published as part of the review, but are available from UNDP on request. 3 UNDP funded the consultants, who contributed to the research and drafting of the report, and coordinated the initiative, the editing of the mission reports and the drafting of the final report.4 DPA, DPKO, OCHA, OHCHR, PBSO, UNCDF, UNDESA, UNDP, UNICEF, UNV and UN Women.

3

In Chapter 1, public administration will be defined and the report’s methodology will be described. In Chapter 2 the lessons from the wider policy and practice context within which this report is situated will be laid out. Chapter 3 will lay out the core argument of report and main lessons and recommendations. Chapters 4 to 6 will describe these in more detail. Chapter 7 will then draw some conclusions and lay out next steps. Annex xx contains all the recommendations.

4

Chapter 1: Objectives and methodology

1.1 What is public administration and why does it matter?

1. The evolution of public administration is closely linked to the development of the state; the ability to administer territory5 is perhaps second in importance only to the ability to enforce a monopoly of legitimate violence in the history of state-building. Service delivery as the primary function of public administration is a comparatively recent development.6 The evolution of norms and approaches to public administration has closely followed wider debates and developments in the role of the state, the market and democracy.7 (Indeed, public administration is often seen as a poor relation of political science, and of political matters more generally.8) These wider conceptual debates are reflected in the use of a range of different but similar terms, this report will continue with the term ‘public administration’.9

2. In terms of its function public administration can be seen as a key mechanism for the delivery of public goods to citizens, notably economic growth and social services, or, depending on your point of view, as a key mechanism through which state authority is extended and exercised over subjects. Not surprisingly, inter-governmental bodies such as the UN and the OECD tend to regard public administration favourably, and see some kind of basic administrative capacity as a necessary condition for peace and development. According to the OECD, for example:

‘A state does not exist without a minimum of administrative capacity. The key elements of an administrative structure are a reasonably well functioning civil service and public financial management system and the ability to raise funds, particularly through taxation. Strengthening the capacity of central and sub-national administrative structures across all levels of government is thus essential to establishing government presence. It is also fundamental for successful state building, in particular in new or re-emerging states.’ (OECD, 2008)

5 Commonly thought of as having the unchallenged ability to both tax and impose rules on a population. 6 Van de Walle and Scott (2009)7 See, for example, the ‘Guidance Note of the Secretary General on Democracy’ for a contemporary interpretation.8 ‘There is a feeling among political scientists … that academicians who profess public administration spend their time fooling with trifles’, Martin, 1952.9 The term ‘Public administration’ is widely used, but for many has overtones of the modernist, technical approach to development favoured in the 1950s-70s, with alternative terms such as ‘public sector’ often favoured. ‘Public management’ is preferred by adherents of the ‘New Public Management (NPM)’ movement of the 1990s, and more recently terms such as ‘public service’ and ‘public value’ have emerged in reaction to that movement. The term ‘New Public management’ covers a range of the public sector reforms aimed at improving outcomes and efficiency by introducing commercial approaches that were pursued in a number of Anglophone OECD countries from the 1980s onwards, such as introducing greater internal competition, the creation of executive agencies, economic incentives for improved performance, greater measurement of outputs, etc. The idea of ‘public value’ is the analogue of the desire to maximise shareholder value in the private sector. The argument is that public services are distinctive because they are characterised by claims of rights by citizens to services that have been authorised and funded through some democratic process.

5

3. One of the UN’s earliest texts on public administration, from 1951, puts it thus:

‘…in practically every attempt to solve technical and economic problems, there are a number of fundamental requirements of an administrative nature, requirements of organization, staff, budget, planning and procedure. Moreover it has been discovered in one technical assistance project after another, in fields such as agriculture, industry, mining or power, that a prior need is to provide those basic communications and utilities which are usually considered to be government functions, those domestic administrative measures which are most likely to originate or stimulate economic development in individual fields, and those governmental programmes of social amelioration which will assist the people of the nation in undertaking the arduous tasks which lie ahead. By definition this is the role of public administration.’ (UN, 1951)

4. However, as shall be discussed later, public administration can fulfil less obvious and more political functions. It can provide a large source of patronage to shore up support for political leaders, through employment it can be a form of ‘second best welfare policy’ (Shepard, 2003), and, in a number of countries it has also been a tool for exclusion, repression, and abuse, a fact of great importance for the UN system’s deliberations as to how best to provide support to public administration post-conflict.

5. Two key distinctions often get lost in discussions on public administration, and it is important to clarify them for this report:

The first is the distinction made in the public administration literature, between what the Policy Committee refers to as the ‘core’ or ‘basic’ public administration on the one hand, and line ministry, or service delivery, functions on the other. The World Bank describes this distinction as ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ functions.10 The ‘basic’ or ‘upstream’ functions – usually raising revenue, budgeting, planning, managing human resources, etc - are a necessary ‘precursor’ to policy implementation.11 Of particular importance for this report, the ‘core’ PA functions are essential for government ownership of the political and development process, in particular the budgeting function; whereas government can contract out some aspects of service delivery, it cannot do so with planning and budgeting;12

The second distinction, often confused with the first, is a distinction commonly made in the state-building literature between the set of ‘core’ or ‘survival’ functions that any state needs to exercise just in order to survive, and the usually much wider suite of functions and services provided by the public administration as a whole.13

10 ‘The public sector can be envisaged mechanically as comprising two broad parts – the upstream core ministries and central agencies including the Ministry of Finance and the offices that support the head of government in the centre of government; and downstream sector agencies such as education, agriculture, transport or health providers which deliver, fund and regulate services.’ (World Bank, 2011 pp1). 11 See also: ‘Governments are composed of two complementary sets of organisational structures, procedures and technology: those related to administrative function and those related to policy implementation. The former are a precursor to the latter. The administrative functions and their associated infrastructure involve generic staff activities such as financial management, human resources management, capital management, and information technology management. These functions support the other managerial work of government more directly related to running programs (functions typically referred to as policy implementation).’ (Ingraham and Donahue, 2000)12 See e.g. ‘Getting better results from assistance to fragile states’ (ODI, 2011)

6

6. The ambiguity induced by blurring these distinctions is evident in a number of UN policy documents and mission mandates where a variety of phrases are used with often unclear and overlapping meanings:

‘public administration’, ‘core government functions’, ‘basic public administration’, ‘key government institutions’ (Secretary General’s report on Peace-Building ):

‘core public administration capacities’, ‘basic public administration’ (UN Policy Committee):

‘essential administrative services' (Peace Building Fund):

‘core administrative structures‘ (UNMISET):

‘core government functionality’ (CivCap)

‘civil and social services’ (UNAMI, UNTAET):

‘critical state institutions’ (UNOTIL):

‘state authority’, ‘public institutions’ (UNAMSIL):

7. This lack of clarity is not surprising - states are complex - but is it a significant element in the overall challenge for the UN when providing support to public administration post-conflict. This report is focused on the ‘plumbing and wiring’ aspects of government, the ‘basic’ or ‘core’ public administration functions (henceforth CPAF), in other words the ‘fundamental requirements of an administrative nature, requirements of organization, staff, budget, planning and procedure’, as the UN put it in 1951, and which are a ‘precursor’14 to policy implementation. What these are is elaborated below in the description of the methodology of this review.

1.2 Methodology, definitions, and approach

8. The concept note provided the detailed methodology for the study,15 this section will give a brief summary. Overall, the following issues were drawn from the SG's report to frame the review:

The need to focus on the challenges in the immediate aftermath of conflict (defined as within the first two years);

The importance of seizing windows of opportunity in the early post-conflict phase;

The need for an early strategy with defined and sequenced priorities;13 Different authors give different interpretations of what are ‘core’ or ‘survival’ functions and what are not, but some variation on: a monopoly over the legitimate use of force; revenue generation; safety, security and justice; basic service delivery; and economic governance, is common. 14 Ingraham and Donahue (2000)15 Available from UNDP.

7

Core state capacities as a foundation for legitimacy and efficiency;

The need for visible peace dividends, attributable to the national authorities;

The critical role of early priority-setting grounded on a broad range of local voices; and

Concerns about systemic challenges within the UN.

9. As discussed above, the term 'public administration’ is broad and as per the Policy Committee decision, the team focussed on ‘core’, ‘basic’ or ‘upstream’ public administration capacities that are a ‘precursor’16 to policy implementation. The team took the February 2011 Report on ‘Civilian capacity in the aftermath of conflict’ (henceforth CivCap) as an initial guide as it builds directly on the five key areas of international support identified in the Secretary-General’s 2009 Peace building Report. The CivCap report defines what it calls ‘core government functionalities’ as: aid policy and coordination, anti-corruption, executive branch, legislative branch, local governance and decentralization, public administrative reform, public financial management, and urban planning.17 However, even this list is very broad, and the team excluded support to the legislative branch and urban planning as not falling within the Policy Committee’s meaning of the phrase ‘core public administration capacities’ in that they are not a necessary ‘precursor’ or ‘prior need’ to policy implementation.

10. The working definition for ‘core government capacities’ we have adopted is twofold:

the systems and processes through which the state at national and subnational levels collects and manages its resources (both fiscal, i.e. tax, aid, resource rents and human, i.e. the civil service) to deliver, including internal and external administrative controls that ensure both their integrity and performance’; and

the rules, systems and processes through which the executive at national and sub-national levels communicates and interacts with the citizens, the private sector and the donor community to ensure citizen participation. 

11. From this definition, and from the distinctions noted in paragraph 5 above, we have distilled the following as being ‘core’ public administration functions:

Policy formulation and public financial management (PFM), in particular planning, budgets, and spending; The ability to set out some kind of vision, make a plan to reach it, and raise and spend money in executing that plan, is probably the most fundamental administrative capacity, and one which underlies much else in government. It is of course highly political, and impossible to ‘outsource’. This in turn requires a working PFM system.

Managing the centre of government (i.e. a president’s office, or cabinet); in many post-c0nflict contexts, good leadership from the centre of government is key to

16 Ingraham and Donahue (2000)17 UN (2011) pp21 Table 1.

8

driving change and ensuring coherence, often as many other parts of government are weak, and operating in isolation.

Civil service management; clearly, an administration needs at least key staff in place, paid regularly, and following instructions and procedures. In many post-conflict contexts staff will not have been paid for months or even years, recruitment controls will often have broken down.

Local governance; often neglected by the international community, local government is often the level of government most citizens come into contact with most of the time. It is important not only for basic services but for many essential administrative functions such as land management.

Aid coordination; in many post-conflict contexts aid is a major part of the budget, and thus aid coordination becomes an essential part of wider PFM, even if with unique challenges.

12. It should be noted that this is a heterogeneous collection of activities, having little in common except for being essential pre-conditions for policy implementation. They are but one part (albeit an important part) of the whole of public administration, which would also involve the provision of basic safety and security, political processes, and the delivery of basic services. They are necessary, but not sufficient, for state-building, they are essential, but indirect, instruments for fostering legitimacy and resilience.

13. Given these five areas, the overall research questions were defined as follows: (1) In terms of core public administration, what can be done to support public administration and local governance functionalities in the immediate aftermath of conflict? And (2) how did the UN achieve this, i.e. how did it respond to the needs expressed in different contexts and attempt to plan, program and support rebuilding of public administration capability.

14. It is important to bear in mind what the review is not covering. In particular it did not cover the linkages between ‘core public administration’ and service delivery, important as this is, as that would have expanded the scale and complexity of the review much beyond the resources available and is covered by other processes. Thus, the UN’s approach to security and the rule of law, economic development, for example, and health and education service delivery, are not explicitly examined within the confines of this report. It is hoped however that these some of issues may be addressed in the follow-up ‘how to’ notes.

15. With these five topics and the two research questions, the team first developed a conceptual framework, and then conducted seven case studies: two were desk studies (Afghanistan and Sierra Leone) and five were visited by various members of the team and other members of the PA Working Group (Burundi, Liberia Kosovo, Guinea-Bissau, Timor-Leste). The team also drew on lessons from a wide literature (see Chapter 2). The listing of projects at the country-level is at Annexe xx.

16. A final methodological note of this study concerns the time frame. This study notes that whilst rebuilding public administration is a crucial aspect of post-conflict reconstruction,

9

it is also one of the most ‘complex and difficult aspects of restoring governance and rebuilding war-torn societies’.18 Progress, where achieved, has been moved by fits and starts, achieving some objectives and falling short at others.

17. As a result, it has been useful to think about public administration reforms in post-conflict societies in distinct but related stages, from an immediate post-conflict reconstruction period, lasting from five to ten years, where the government must address urgent issues of maintaining peace and security, re-establishing governance, redeveloping society, and reintegrating society, to a transition period of an additional five to ten years, in which the government stabilises the economy and governance structures, and the civil service moves towards performing functions carried out in more stable political systems and societies.19

18. This report mostly considers issues related to the immediate post-conflict reconstruction period, however, as every context is different these observations have direct relevance to the longer time frame.

18 Rondinelli, Dennis. (2006). 19 Ibid.

10

Chapter 2: Lessons from the wider context

19. This chapter will briefly lay out some important lessons from the wider policy context within which this current review is situated. This is important to ensure the review builds on lessons already learned as well as the case studies.

20. Lessons from three broad areas of current policy and practice are relevant;

Firstly, the relatively recent but ever-growing work on peace and state-building;

Secondly, the much more established work on public administration reform (PAR) and organisational capacity development; and,

Thirdly, the broadly similar findings from much recent research on governance and institutional change.

2.1 Lessons from Peace Building and State-building

21. In the last decade fragile states and their policy counterpart - peace-building and state-building20 - have assumed ever-greater attention from actors in development, diplomacy and defence. This has been a fairly rapid development; policy is far from ‘mature’ and there are still many disagreements in the literature. However, there are some broad areas of consensus, and many elements of contemporary state-building and peace-building have a direct bearing on UN support to PA. A number of recent publications draw together many of these themes and are particularly important for this review - the CivCap report,21 the New Deal,22 the World Bank’s World Development Review 2011, 23 and UNDP’s ‘Governance for Peace’.24

22. Six areas of consensus important for this review are highlighted below:

23. Firstly, there is a growing appreciation that the process of peace and state building is riddled with conflict, violence and uncertainty over institutional structures as groups compete to establish positions of power and legitimacy and that this uncertainty can

20 It should be noted that the political organs of the UN (GA/SC/PBC) continue to consider peace-building to be the overarching policy frame-work and have not formally embraced state-building as a key objective. By contrast, the BWI, UNDP and other UN funds and programmes view state-building as an important endogenous aspect of peace-building and – like DAC and G7+ -- make regular use of both the terminology and the concept of state-building.21 UN (2011)22 International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (2011)23 World Bank (2011)24 UNDP (2012)

11

Box: xx The Political Settlement

‘The key elements of a political settlement are actors, interests, and institutions. In most cases, it is a coalition of powerful elite factions that make up the key actors in a political settlement. The critical element that holds a political settlement together is the alignment of interests within the dominant elite coalition, and the dynamic relationship between elite interests and the broader array of interests in the society. Institutions are viewed as malleable – as the product of on-going conflict, negotiation, and compromise among powerful groups, with the ruling coalition shaping and controlling this process. In most cases, power relations are fluid and dynamic, and political settlements are constantly adapting and subject to renegotiation and contestation. As a result, political settlements should not be interpreted as one-time events, but rather as rolling agreements between powerful

continue well past a formal peace agreement that ends violent conflict.25 Thus the ‘political settlement’ is key to the wider state and peace-building process.26 The opportunities, and pathways, for organisational reform, including PA, will be heavily dependent on the nature and evolution of the wider political settlement.

24. Secondly, lack of capacity to carry out ‘core’ state functions is a key element in fragility. Building the capacity of the state to manage, or at least oversee, the delivery of essential public goods, especially security and justice, is thus a key element in contemporary peace and state-building. The capacity of the state to deliver, or oversee, basic social services is also widely seen to be essential not only for development and the MDGs, but also for legitimacy and so resilience.27 CivCap stresses the primacy of developing local capacity. The New Deal also emphasises the need to use government systems and build capacity.28 Building capacity for basic ‘administrative control’ is commonly seen as essential to wider state capacity.29

25. Thirdly, there is also a growing appreciation of the length of time it takes to establish functioning institutions and the unrealistic time-fames of much work supporting organisations post-conflict. The WDR, for example, states that ‘Creating the legitimate institutions that can prevent repeated violence is, in plain language, slow. It takes a generation. Even the fastest-transforming countries have taken between 15 and 30 years to raise their institutional performance from that of a fragile state today—Haiti, say—to that of a functioning institutionalized state, such as Ghana.’30 Reform of PA needs to be undertaken with much longer-time frames in mind than hitherto.

26. Fourthly, there is a growing recognition of the importance of national ownership in the peace and state-building process. The focus on ownership has developed in part due to the growing recognition that state-building is an endogenous process, the correspondingly modest role external actors can play and the dangers of imposing outside 25 Di john and Putzel (2009) and OECD (2011)26 ‘The prospects for state building ultimately depend on the terms of the political settlement upon which the state is founded.’ OECD (2011) pp 31. DFID (2010)27 OECD (2011)28 The New Deal commits that ‘Recipient governments, with support from international partners, will take all reasonable measures to strengthen their public financial management systems from the ground up and be transparent in this process. In doing so, we will build related fiduciary and administrative capacity within country institutions at the national and local level.’29 Ghani and Lockhart (2008)30 World Bank (2011) pp10

12

solutions. The G7+, for example, has stated that ‘aid delivery, interventions and programs… are often inapplicable, unsustainable, and incompatible with our in-country national agendas… [they are] often not conducive to addressing the immediate or long-term needs of our countries and regions.’ Further to this, they note that ‘external mandates and ideas can no longer be imposed on our countries or regions and our peoples.’31 In terms of PA CivCap argues that structures for policy management and prioritization and aid coordination and public financial management are especially important for national ownership and require particular attention.32

27. Fifthly, the importance of inclusion across many dimensions of peace and state-building post-conflict. In terms of the political settlement, for example, recent research has highlighted the importance of inclusive political processes if settlements are to last.33 Given the time it can take for state capacity to be built to deliver services, what is known as ‘process legitimacy’34 is also very important, and thus ensuring that PA, in particular local government, where most citizens engage with the state, is representative of the population and responsive to citizen concerns is important..

28. And finally, it is widely recognised that the source of state’s revenue can have an enormous impact on state and institutional formation. Simply put, development assistance, and natural resources in particular, shift accountability relationships away from political actors and their local constituents, toward donors, and external commercial interests, making the challenge of rebuilding the state-society compact that much more difficult.35

2.2 Lessons from Public Administration Reform

29. The work and literature on what is variously called Public Administration Reform (PAR), Public Sector Governance, Public Sector Reform or Civil Service Reform, has a much older lineage. In developing countries it started in earnest in the 1950s and 60s as newly independent states established new organisations for promoting development and self-government. This period was the heyday of the view that development required strong government leadership, and thus ‘Development Administration’ emerged as a specialist and important field of development policy.36 Many public administrations in developing countries 31 G7+ Heads of State Consensus Statement (New York, 20 September 2010). The G7+ is an open group of countries experiencing or emerging from conflict established in 2008 and currently comprising Afghanistan, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Timor-Leste, and Togo.32 UN (2011) pp 1033 OECD (2011) pp 1134 An OECD report on legitimacy in fragile situations identifies four main sources of legitimacy: input or process legitimacy, which is tied to agreed rules of procedure; output or performance legitimacy, defined in relation to the effectiveness and quality of public goods and services (in fragile situations, security will play a central role); shared beliefs, including a sense of political community, and beliefs shaped by religion, traditions and “charismatic” leaders; and international legitimacy, i.e. recognition of the state’s external sovereignty and legitimacy. OECD (????)35 IDS (2010)36 E.g. ‘The 1950’s was a wonderful period. The ’American dream’ was the ‘World dream’ and the best quickest way to bring that dream into reality was through the mechanism of public administration…the net result of all this

13

expanded considerably in size and function during this period. From the 1970s on, however, after the oil price shock and the shift in a number of countries to more neo-patrimonial 37 and authoritarian political systems, many PA systems deteriorated.38 By the 1980’s much PAR was driven by the demands of structural adjustment, in particular demands for retrenchment and scaling back the role of administration and the state in line with the prevailing wisdom. ‘Development administration’ was increasingly discredited as an approach to public administration in developing countries.39 In the 1990s much PAR, at least that coming out of a number of Anglo-Saxon countries and the IFIs, was dominated by the ideas of ‘new public management’. The growing use of budget support by donors added an extra motive for donor engagement in reform of developing country administrative and financial systems. In the 1990’s the emergence of ‘conflict-affected and fragile states’ meant that in a number of countries PA underwent significant deterioration and in some cases effective collapse. However, as the case studies for this review demonstrated, some aspects of PA are remarkably resilient.40

30. In recent times much PAR is seen to have been disappointing.41 The importance of effective public sectors, and thus of PAR, for development outcomes continues to be stressed, but the overall tone of much of the literature has become quite discouraging about the impact of PAR projects.42 There is considerable agreement in the literature on the lessons and issues:43

Reforms require strong domestic leadership to be successful – exogenous attempts at PAR are unlikely to be successful or sustainable.

Incremental approaches taken within reforms may be more sustainable and politically feasible.

Timing and sequencing of reforms should be major considerations when designing and planning the implementation of PAR.

Donors should consider how they can support citizens in creating public pressure for reform.

enthusiastic action was that in the 1950s public administration was a magic term and public administration experts were magicians,’ Quoted in Farazmand (2005) pp8037 ‘With the rise of neo-patrimonial rule, the mode of governing bureaucracy shifted from the clarification, monitoring, and enforcement of formal rules to informal rules set without transparency, and sometimes increasingly capriciously, by a country’s political leadership. The consequence was a decline in bureaucratic performance.’ Levy and Kpundeh (2004) pp5 38 See e.g. ‘At different times from the late 1970s through the 1980s, the rot set in and a decline of the PA system in many SSA countries became noticeable’, Adamolekun (2005).39 Klinger (2004) pp14540 AREU (2004)41 Both the World Bank and DFID have recently conducted major reviews of their work on PAR, and the World Bank is currently developing a new global strategy intended to address many of the challenges noted above. These new approaches focuses on improved diagnostics, and in the Bank’s case, adopting a ‘problem-solving’ approach to removing binding constraints to effective administrative functions, together with delivering better political economy analysis, better designs, more effective risk management, lessons learned and cross-Bank collaboration. World Bank (2011). 42 The literature is replete with articles with such titles as ‘Why civil service reform does not work’ (Haque, 2007) or ‘Why civil service reforms fail’ (Polidano 2001) or ‘Civil service reform in developing countries: why is it going badly’ (Shepard, 2003). 43Taken from Scott (2011)

14

Poor public sector performance must be addressed although there is no consensus on how to do this, with alternative suggestions being to increase staffing levels, focus on pay reform, introduce more performance management and support organisational change.

Donor behaviour and systems need to be adapted to provide support that is more long-term, predictable and not entangled with perverse incentives.

And finally it is agreed that PAR has weak diagnostic tools and no globally recognised conceptual framework, which means that reforms are often based on poor diagnostic work and are missing a robust ‘theory of change’.

2.3 Lessons from research on governance and institutional change

31. In recent years a number of different researchers have critiqued the broad approach of much donor work on governance, capacity development and organisational support.44 This too is a complex area, but there are perhaps three main insights that are relevant to this review:45

Recognize that governance deficiencies are primarily political, especially in fragile and conflict affected states where the ‘political settlement’ is still being negotiated. Technical deficiencies in institutions certainly exist, but they are rooted in underlying political conditions and structures that prevent simple fixes.

Strive for best fit rather than best practice. Much governance aid, in particular to PA, has traditionally focused on building ‘best practice’ institutions. That is, pushing developing countries to conform to a set of recommended practices for such institutions drawn from the experience of developed countries. Civil service commissions and anti-corruption bodies are good examples. This approach has proved problematic and has frequently led to the creation of the form of institutions without corresponding function. Governance experts have increasingly embraced the idea of “best fit” rather than best practice. Instead of importing Western models, a ‘best fit’ approach focuses on helping to support institutions that are appropriate for the specific context in which they operate. Other ways of putting this insight are ‘swimming with the tide’ or ‘good enough governance’, ‘beginning where the country is’ and asking ‘What is there to build on?’.

44 E.g. Moore and Unsworth (2010), Grindle, M (2011) Booth, D (2011), Carothers and De Gramont (2011)45 Taken from Carrothers and De Gramont (2011)

15

Focus on solving specific problems and achieving specific outcomes, not on wider processes for systemic reform.46

2.4 The ‘proper’ relationship between politics and public administration

32. Discussion on the ‘proper’ relationship between politics and administration has been a mainstay of the public administration literature for over a century.47 As has been already pointed out, politics in the immediate aftermath of conflict is often highly partisan and conflictual, and the role and function of PA is often at the heart of this conflict. Understanding the ‘proper’ relationship between politics and administration is thus of particular importance for UN support to PA post-conflict.

33. Much PAR has been underpinned by the assumption that effective state institutions are key for growth, and that the most effective civil service is one along the lines that emerged in Western countries in the late 19th and early 20th century, i.e. a career civil service, with political oversight but not political interference, with job security and a career path, recruited and promoted on technical merit as opposed to political patronage, a hierarchical divisor of labour, and rule-based decision-making.48 This model is intended to avoid the ‘politicisation’ of administration, i.e. to reduce the ability of politicians to abuse their oversight role to pursue their own good as opposed to the public good.49 It is also meant to ensure a long-term approach to development, promote stability, prevent corruption, and ensure the best technical or 'scientific’ approach to problem solving. There is evidence that, at least in more stable political and institutional environments, this model is indeed effective in terms of growth50 and poverty reduction.51

34. This approach is widely regarded as the best model for the ‘proper’ relationship between administration and politics. The UN, as a global norm-setting body, has used this model in its advice to developing countries since its inception, and much UN support to PA is focussed on promoting this model as ‘best practice’.52 The World Bank has largely done the same, and the EU’s accession programme has also used adherence to this model as in effect a condition for entry into what is known as ‘European administrative space’.53

46 Fritz et al (2009) 47 In a famous article Woodrow Wilson argued: ‘Most important to be observed is the truth already so much and so fortunately insisted upon by our civil-service reformers; namely, that administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics. Administrative questions are not political questions. Although politics sets the tasks for administration, it should not be suffered to manipulate its offices.’ Wilson, W (1887).48 Evans(2008)49 See e.g. ‘Most dysfunctional public bureaucracies can trace their poor performance directly to the intervention of politicians who want to use the administrative machinery for their own purposes, or prevent it from interfering in their activities.’ Fukuyama, (2009).50 Evans and Rauch, in a well-known paper, argued that there is a relation between a country’s economic performance and the ‘Weberianness’ of its public institutions, Evans and Rauch (1999). 51 Henderson et all 200352 E.g. UN (1961), UNDESA (1995) pp 7053 SIGMA

16

35. However, some researchers assert that the direction of causality is the other way round, arguing that a civil service functioning as per the model above is a product of development rather than a cause.54 It is certainly the case that many advanced industrial countries grew significantly before they had anything approaching ‘good governance’, and many of the legal reforms that brought this civil service model into place were promulgated quite late in their development.55 There is also wide variation in the model: the US civil service, for example has a much higher percentage of political appointees than European administrative space would allow and relies on other checks and balances to promote integrity and control corruption.56

36. There are many explanations as to why merit reforms have occurred in different times and places; why politicians would give up patronage when it provides such obvious advantage remains a puzzle.57 But it is clear that the process is always highly political and context dependent, takes many years, is the result of prolonged bargaining between different groups, and is subject to reversal.58 Merit reforms have also tended to take place in emerging market capitalist economies that have already developed a fair amount of infrastructure and have a reasonably stable political settlement, for example, Britain and the US at the end of the 19th century, Japan’s Meiji Restoration, some Eastern Asian and Southern European states in the 1950s-60s, or Eastern European countries in the 1990s.59 In other words, they have rarely been done in societies having to renegotiate their political settlement in the immediate aftermath of violent conflict.

37. It must also be recognised that arguments for rejecting the separation of politics and administration can be made on grounds of principle, not just to protect opportunities for political patronage. Without strong political oversight bureaucrats can be unrepresentative, can become over-mighty, resist direction by the ‘will of the people’ through their elected representatives, or simply be unresponsive.

38. These arguments, plus the injunctions from researchers not to blindly pursue best practice and the transfer of institutions above, call into question the appropriateness of the promotion of the standard model in the immediate aftermath of conflict. In the long-term it is clear that isolating parts of the bureaucracy from political and societal pressure is important for a range of reasons; working out which, and how to do this in the short-term after conflict, is much more complex. Arriving at a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the ‘proper’ relationship between politics and administration in the immediate aftermath of conflict is a key policy challenge for the UN in its support to core public administration in these contexts.

39. Given that whatever it is, the relationship between politics and administration is going to reflect wider political processes, it also needs to be recognised that proposing the standard model, i.e. the separation of politics from administration and isolating the 54 Chang (2003)55 For example, it was only after the Pendleton Act in 1883 that the US federal government started recruiting its employees through a competitive process (Chang, 2003) and then even only a proportion (Gilman, 2003). The famous Northcott-Trevelyan report that initiated the reform of the British civil service in 1854 took over 50 years to implement.56 Gilman (2003)57 There is a wide literature on this question, but see, for example Geddes (1994) for one answer.58 Evans (2008)59 Lapuente and Nistotskaya (2009)

17

bureaucracy from political interference, is in itself a political proposal that will have specific consequences for the interests of different groups within a specific context, and will thus be resisted, or supported, accordingly.

18

Chapter 3: Main findings and recommendations

40. This chapter sets out the review’s principle findings and recommendations, in other words the core argument of the report. It first examines the UN’s current capacity for support to PA post-conflict and then lays out an idealized statement of the UN’s current approach. It then offers an alternative approach based on the case studies and on the wider literature described in Chapter 2. It presents in effect a revised ‘theory of change’ for UN support to PA. It then touches on the issue of context. Chapters 4-6 expand this overall argument and present the detailed findings and recommendations.

3.1 The development of UN capacity for support to public administration after conflict

41. The UN is natural partner for support to PA in developing countries, and indeed the UN has a long history of such support, in particular to newly independent post-colonial states and to countries emerging from conflict.60 The UN helped Libya establish an Institute of Public Administration in 1956 shortly after its independence,61and in 2012 is again discussing training the next generation of Libyan administrators with the new Transitional Administration. The UN Programme on Public Administration was started early as 1948 and in 1951 published the first of many texts on the topic.62 In the 1950’s supporting public administration was much more of a priority for the UN system than it is today and was seen as being as important as economic development or social welfare.63 This is not surprising, in an age when many new member states were being built from the ground up, establishing basic administration was naturally an important topic. The UN was a much more important partner for developing countries than the development banks or the IMF, which came to prominence in this area the 1970s and 80s.64

42. However, as the wider debate on development and the state has shifted from government to governance, and as many member states have graduated from the need to build basic administration to much more complex problems, the slightly old-fashioned idea of ‘public administration’ has to some degree been left behind at the UN.

43. It was not until the establishment of UNTAC in Cambodia in 1991 that the UN had experience of direct administration. And in the tumultuous year of 1999 the UN was 60 See Annex ? for a chronology of wider UN developments relevant to PA 61 UNDESA (2008)62 UN (1951). 63 UNDESA (2008). See also Lee Kuan Yew's memoirs for how UNDP assisted the government of Singapore in its early days.64 See http://blog-pfm.imf.org/pfmblog/2008/12/fiscal-affair-1.html

19

mandated by the Security Council to establish and run transitional administrations in Kosovo and East Timor. The UN has since been asked by the Security Council to perform a wide range of functions in support to CPAF in different countries.65 However, despite this, and despite its importance as an essential ’precursor’ or ‘prior need’ to other aspects of government delivery, restoring core public administration capacity after conflict has not received as much attention from the UN in recent years as might be expected. Along with the rest of the international system, in the last decade the UN has paid much more attention to building state capacity in the delivery of security and justice, and to social services, than to core public administration.66 The topic received scant attention in the 2000 Brahimi report, for example, which focused on security and justice, rule of law, and peace-keeping. And it was administrators that the UN struggled to recruit for Kosovo and East Timor.67

44. The predominant assumption at the time was that in the post-conflict period peace and reconciliation would gradually lead to improvements in the quality of governance, and that core government functionalities would be restored, either as a by-product of the stability and normality brought about by peace and improved security, or in response ‘in due course’ to normal development assistance in favour of the public sector.

45. However, the evidence emerging in the early 2000s from the post-conflict situations examined by this review and from elsewhere led to a growing realization that, without direct assistance, post-conflict governance improvements are neither guaranteed nor irreversible, and that concerted and targeted action is required, by the UN System and others, if core government functionalities are to be restored in a timely manner in such settings. A number of the institutional or policy initiatives taken within the UN System in the mid-2000’s sought to address this objective in a variety of ways:

Most UN peacekeeping missions began increasingly to emphasize civil affairs support to host country authorities (e.g. Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burundi), and such measures continued to evolve – to the point, where ‘support to the restoration and extension of state authority’ was officially articulated, in 2008, as one of the three core roles of the Civil Affairs within UN peacekeeping, first in the DPKO/DFS ‘Policy Directive on Civil Affairs’ and soon after in the Capstone Doctrine.

When the blueprint for the Peacebuilding Commission and the Peacebuilding Fund was prepared in 2005, the Secretary-General stressed that these new UN institutions were intended, inter alia, to ‘ensure adequate early attention to and financing for oft-neglected issues, such as building public administration capacity for the rule of law and the delivery of public services”.68 Accordingly, when the PBF was created in 2006, ‘establishment or re-establishment of essential administrative services’ was one of its four Priority Areas.

65 See Annex ? for a full analysis of Security Council mandates and PA66 According to a recent literature review on PAR there is only a ‘slim literature on public administration in fragile states’ (Scott, 2011). A Google search on 1.11.2011 for “service delivery in fragile states” produced 60,000 odd results’ whereas one for “public administration in fragile states” got just 1.67 ref68 ‘In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all’, Report of the Secretary-General, Addendum 2 on the Peacebuilding Commission, document A/59/2005/Add.2 dated 23 May 2005, para. 10, page 3.

20

The 2005 humanitarian reform process and its focus on gaps in the international response to crises broke new ground by including in the Global Cluster System a special cluster on ‘Early Recovery’, specifically aimed at expanding the humanitarian agenda by ensuring that it is also ‘guided by development principles’ in terms of both economic recovery and ‘governance recovery’.69

A parallel process of re-thinking international development assistance to conflict-affected countries was also initiated at this time. A World Bank/UNDP workshop on ‘Rebuilding Post-Conflict Societies : Lessons from a Decade of Global Experience’ (New York, September 2005) paved the way for the launch in 2006 of the ‘World Bank/UNDP Statebuilding Initiative’.70 Building on the notion that current development prescriptions used and tested in stable societies have limited relevance in conflict-affected and fragile states, and that a new “fragile/failed states sub-discipline” with a substantially different development paradigm was needed, this Statebuilding Initiative aimed at enhancing WB/UN cooperation at Country Office level, especially on capacity development assistance, and to generate more empirical knowledge and inter-agency learning in these issues.

46. While these and other initiatives have heralded the emergence of a better understanding of the importance of CPAF in post-conflict environments, they have not been coordinated as part of a deliberate strategy. Instead, they represented pragmatic responses to a range of unmet needs -- largely drawing on existing institutional assets that were created for other purposes. Furthermore, they have not augured a closer integration of assistance to public administration and local governance in post-conflict countries, nor improved strategic approaches to post-conflict CPAF assistance. As a result, despite its centrality to national ownership of recovery and post-conflict transitions, support to CPAF remains fragmented.

47. In part this lack of focus on CPAF may be due to peace-building, and not state-building, being the wider policy frame for the UN in post-conflict contexts. As argued above, the UN has forgotten the importance of core public administration in building state capacity and it has over the years been overtaken in this area by the World Bank and the IMF, who are now important partners in stable contexts for many donors and governments on issues, notably PFM. Nevertheless, the case studies conducted for this review highlight the importance of CPAF in institutionalising the political settlement, and in particular the instrumental use of the civil service, and its payroll, as a means to rapidly progress reintegration and reconciliation.

69 IASC’s ‘Guidance Note on Early Recovery’ (April 2008) includes (on page 32) a “Menu of indicative early recovery activities” which lists 16 different ‘early recovery’ activities related to governance – among them (a) rehabilitation of essential government facilities (incl. material and equipment support), (b) capacity support in technical fields such as mapping, geographical information systems (GIS), and the restoration of Internet access, (c) measures to strengthen transparency, accountability and good governance in the recovery process, and (d) assessment of the capacity of national and local authorities to coordinate external assistance, formulate policy, plan and resume the delivery of basic public services.70 Details on the WB/UN Statebuilding Initiative and the activities undertaken under its auspices are found here : http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/PROJECTS/STRATEGIES/EXTLICUS/0,,contentMDK:22542897~menuPK:6993472~pagePK:64171531~piPK:64171507~theSitePK:511778,00.html

21

48. As crucial as public administration is in implementing the government’s policies and programs, support must be tailored to the conditions in and the needs of conflict torn societies.71 The feasibility of interventions is limited by the social, political, economic and military conditions in the country, and conventional approaches proposed in politically stable contexts are unlikely to be appropriate. The correct level of focus and capacity is a matter of judgement not science, but overall the first major finding of this review is that, given the UN’s key role in assistance post-conflict, and its natural role in support to CPAF, the current UN-wide level of focus and capacity for supporting core public administration functions in the immediate aftermath of conflict is insufficient, in particular in terms of policy, learning, and personnel, given the political and technical complexity of the task, and its foundational importance in developing national ownership of the state and peace-building process. Recommendations on how the UN could enhance its focus and capacity are detailed in Chapter 6.

49. A corollary of this conclusion is that UN support to CPAF needs to be more integrated through joint programming, guidance and policy to capitalise on existing capacities. The UN system’s capacity for support to core PA functions is not as well as developed or financed as its role in supporting political processes, security and justice, or basic service delivery. However, cases of effective support have been field-driven and resulted from integrated coordination and support to CPAF functions across the UN family, with innovation emerging from a number of the cases studied for this review. However, closer integration of UN policy, capacities and learning at HQ lags behind. As a result, links to other bodies, notably the World Bank, are constrained.

50. This has occurred despite strong potential capacity at country level. The primary components of UN capacity at the country level can be found in the civil affairs officers (CAOs) fielded by DPKO, the various projects, and some limited financial support from the PBF. This is complemented by a large number of projects conducted in support of core PA functions undertaken by UNDP.72 There are also a number of UNCDF projects (on local government), and a few by DESA and UNICEF. Some ‘line’ agencies, e.g. UNICEF and WHO, also of course support PA capacity in their specific area of expertise. At HQ, UNDP has a limited policy, support and learning capacity, as does DESA, UNDP also has some capacity in its regional centres. Closer integration of the technical capacities of UNDP and political and operational capacities of DPKO in several countries has proven to be important. Likewise joint UN programming bringing together UN agencies, has achieved substantial success in restarting local government functions, in Kosovo and Liberia for example.

51. However, evidence of the impact of the limited integration of UN capacities in CPAF is readily to hand. Support to the extension and restoration of state authority given by Civil Affairs officers is very valuable, but coordination with support provided by bilateral and multi-lateral development agencies is often ad-hoc, and rarely do civil affairs officers possess technical expertise in areas of public administration. PBF support towards ‘establishment of essential administrative services’ can be critical, but for a variety of reasons PBF has been called upon to provide such assistance only in a very limited number of cases. Governance recovery is in principle an important dimension of Early Recovery, but

71 Rondinelli, Dennis (2006)72 See Annexe ?? for a full project listing, and the case studies for listings of relevant projects for each country.

22

in post-conflict situations in practice very few CPAF-related proposals have found their way into the CAPs and HAPs, and even fewer of them have been funded. Much new conceptual and empirical knowledge has been generated through cooperation between the World Bank and the UN on post-conflict issues, but operationalization and application of this knowledge still has a long way to go.

52. This review thus argues that part of the reconceptualization and reprioritisation of UN support to CPAF will require a shift away from the perception of CPAF as an agency or sector specific issue, and the development of frameworks for the effective coordination of UN wide support to CPAF, at national and local level, between humanitarian, peacebuilding and development sectors.

3.2 The UN’s current approach to support to CPAF

53. The UN’s current approach to support to public administration post-conflict can be summarised as follows:

Firstly, the function of PA is to raise resources, deliver services, promote growth, and to provide a set of rules through which citizens can interact with and influence the state and participate in or challenge decisions that will affect them;

Secondly a public service with a clear political/technical distinction, merit-based recruitment, etc, is the best way to do this. Public Administration Reform (PAR) is the way to get to develop such a public service, and despite agreement on the political nature of PAR, it is still implemented as a largely technical process of introducing new institutions, organisations and best practices; and

Thirdly, there is a ‘post-conflict moment’ that offers an opportunity for new political leadership, supported by the international community, to ‘wipe the slate clean’ and bring in a range of systemic reforms to the public service.73

54. In other words, the best way for public administration to contribute to peace and state-building in the short-term, and to development in the long-term, is to leverage the post-conflict moment to introduce best-practice institutions and systems, as these will reform the public service and enable political leaders to deliver public benefits - security and justice, economic opportunities and social services - in a way that promotes peace and development and also fosters legitimacy and resilience.74

73 See, for example, the following assessment of Afghanistan. ‘During the reconstruction push in the past ten years, Afghanistan was often treated as if it were an institutional tabula rasa: a country that had never been centrally governed and that could be given institutional frameworks and procedures modelled on the latest governance fashions or based on the preferences of the various donor countries. This resulted in a hotchpotch of laws, procedures and strategies, usually linked to short-term programs and often with little relation to previous practices or the perceived responsibilities of the institutions.’ Afghan Analysts Network (2011). Or in relation to Kosovo and Timor-Leste: ‘International interventions in statebuilding and territorial administration perpetuated certain problematic approaches drawn from the UN trusteeship system and colonial administration, considering post-conflict territories – such as East Timor or Kosovo – as ‘blank slates’ needing complete re -construction of governments, economies and social systems.’ Montanaro (2009).

23

55. In effect, this approach is an updated version of the approach to development administration that has been around since the 1950s, but applied to the post-conflict context in the last 10 years or so. Virtually all practitioners are individually sceptical of the model as described above, but it is sustained at a system level for a variety of reasons:

The UN’s normative function means it instinctively reaches for a ‘best practice’ solution. It finds it hard to work with the compromises to ‘best practice’ required of a politically complex reality (this is more of a problem for the development and human rights branches, the political and peacekeeping branches are more comfortable with the compromises required by political reality).

Donors often push for, and offer money for, reform and ‘best practice’ approaches, as they offer the promise of, or at least the appearance of, meaningful results within political cycles in donor countries.

UN agencies in a competitive fund-raising environment are incentivized to offer unrealistic promises of reform to attract funding and stake out ‘turf’. They are also sensitive to criticism by NGOs, media representatives and others who are often unforgiving towards efforts that aim at less than ‘best practice’ solutions.

Technocratically-minded CPAF professionals are professionally motivated, and to an extent judged by their peers, on the complexity and modernity of the systems they introduce, not their suitability or appropriateness. They want to provide, and are asked for, solutions, not options.

Reformist politicians and technocrats in the governments of post-conflict states want to be seen to be modernising, both for their own interest and identity but again to access donor resources. These technocrats are often not well linked to the real power-holders in these contexts and often have stronger links to the international bureaucracy.

56. It must also be acknowledged that the challenge is also simply very difficult. According to the only available data sets for cross-country comparisons of performance on CPAF, the rate of development of CPAF in the case-study countries has been modest, with most countries consistently at or near the bottom of the international rankings. (See Annexe xx for the data). According to the data, some countries have made modest but sustained progress (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burundi), the others made initial gains after a peace agreement, but then slipped back (Timor Leste, Afghanistan, Kosovo). Unusually for post-conflict countries, Rwanda (not a case study for this review but included in the tables as a comparator) has made outstanding progress.

3.3 The proposed approach

74 The UN is by no means alone in this approach, it perhaps reached its apogee with the assertion by US General Stanley McChrystal before the NATO and Afghan army assault on Marjah in February 2010, when he said “We’ve got a government in a box, ready to roll in”. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/world/asia/13kabul.html

24

57. Based on the case studies, and on the wider lessons set out in Chapter 2, the second major finding of the review is that, in short, in the aftermath of conflict, the UN is trying to rush wider reforms to public administration, and, partly as a result, is not focusing enough on restoring its basic functionality. The review agrees that the primary function of PA is to raise resources, provide security and justice, deliver basic services, and promote growth, while ensuring citizen participation, and that the standard model of a public service is the best way to do this in the long-term. However, the very special circumstances of post-conflict require a very different approach in the short to medium-term. In the immediate aftermath of conflict, the UN needs to understand and approach public administration as much as an expression of the developing political settlement as a vehicle for delivering public goods.

58. Firstly, in terms of ‘rushing reform’, as laid out above, the UN’s (and many donor’s) default setting is to propose and support often wide-ranging institutional reform in the ‘post-conflict moment’. Often aimed at institutionalising normative standards, or improving efficiency, these approaches often do not consider the political importance or politicisation of the public administration. However, post-conflict politics are usually highly conflictual. There is usually a degree of peace, but not yet an established political settlement, let alone any agreed ‘rules of the political game’. There are also usually no strong institutions to mediate and contain political competition, and most aspects of state and society are ‘politicised’. This in turn means there is rarely a consensus vision on a development strategy or on what sort of PA is needed to implement it.

59. The political leaderships in these contexts often resist public administration reforms, that have long-term pay-offs, in favour of approaches that will deliver on short-term political interests, which are sometimes dominated by simple survival, or, at best, on establishing new political and constitutional ‘rules of the game’. Rarely in the cases studied by this review was long-term development, and thus the type of public administration needed to deliver it, a core political issue in the immediate aftermath of conflict. Thus new or reformed PA institutions proposed and funded by the UN and donors often simply get stuck for many years.

60. Historically, in some countries, a national shock or emergency has provided a platform for radical change by a determined and unified leadership. However, in many countries, and certainly in our case study countries, in the immediate aftermath of conflict the political leadership is often very divided, and trust and confidence between political decision-makers, state and society and among different social, ethnic or political groups is often very low. The public administration may itself have been used as an instrument of oppression, exploitation or pecuniary gain. In these contexts, it is common for new political leaders in post-conflict settings to be suspicious of the existing PA and to want a public service in which they have confidence and that is responsive to their political goals. This often results in the desire to make political appointments to the civil service that violate the standard merit-based model. Electoral competition, now a universal step after conflict, can also incentivise the abuse of the public administration for electoral advantage, not its reform.75

75 Kelsall et al (2010)

25

61. In these contexts, it is simply unrealistic to think that the standard reform agenda is appropriate. As one of the architects of NPM put it ‘You have to invent government before you can reinvent it’.76 Rather than undertaking broad reforms, in post-conflict environments, public administrations must focus on the critical tasks, in implementing often fragile peace agreements, unifying diverse political factions and taking ownership of recovery planning and coordination.

62. Thus, in the immediate aftermath of conflict the UN needs to approach PA as much as an expression of the developing political settlement as a vehicle for delivering public goods. Sustaining a political settlement over the longer-term is the UN’s overarching policy goal, as without that all else will be in vain, and the nature of the public administration plays an important part in sustaining the political settlement over the long-term. An important function of PA post-conflict is to serve as a forum in which questions of access, entitlement, and accountability are negotiated and settled. Seen in this way, as much as a mechanism to deliver core government functions, PA is also a mechanism for reconciling differing interests in core public domains – security and justice, economic opportunity, and the management and distribution of public goods. In this sense, public administration is an important mechanism for progressively deepening, broadening and institutionalising the political settlement as much as it is a mechanism for delivering public goods.

63. However, as an external actor, the UN has limited influence over this process. To be accepted and thus effective, new rules and institutions for PA must be negotiated, they cannot be imported, or designed by consultants. UN support to PA reform post-conflict should thus focus on facilitating the bargaining process over the public sector between political leadership, civil servants, and citizens, not be seen as a technical process of introducing best practice. The UN should facilitate this bargaining by providing options, not recommendations, and lessons from other countries based on an understanding of the context, and pointing out the pros and cons of different options based on international experience.77

64. For example, the UN’s response to a desire on the part of a new political leadership to introduce trusted colleagues into the upper reaches of the civil service should not be to discourage those practices as they violate the ‘standard model’ of merit-based recruitment, but rather to understand the motivation to ensure the PA is responding to political direction, work with host government to ensure appointees are also technically competent, and provide options on how this problem has been tackled in other countries.

65. These recommendations do not entail a shift towards pragmatism, but emphasise the need to reconcile technical principles of statebuilding with political realities required for effective peacebuildling. For example, given the importance of inclusion to the sustainability of the political settlement, the UN also has a key role in pushing for the expression of the political settlement in the public service to be as inclusive as possible with a particular focus on supporting the integration of marginalised or politically excluded groups into the civil service. This should be done, for example, 76 Gaebler, quoted in in Evans (2008) pp8177 This implies a shift to the sub-discipline of comparative public administration as a source of inspiration, not so much the ‘best practice’ approach that often comes out of ‘public management’.

26

through supporting the recruitment of women and excluded groups into the civil service, and promoting wider international human rights norms on inclusion. Similarly, in order to widen the negotiations over the nature of a country’s PA, the UN should be both using its leverage with the political leadership to ensure civil society is at the negotiating table, and supporting civil society to formulate and express its demands on PA.

66. This role is as much a political role as a technical one. Understanding the history, context, and political incentives and interests of different players, and building the relationships needed to gain access to and secure the trust of political actors, is thus fundamental to a successful outcome for UN support to CPAF, not an optional extra. It also requires the UN to work better together, notably in combining the political analysis and access capacity of the mission with the technical capacity of the agencies. Based on experience to date, UN expectations also need to very realistic, this process is likely to take many years, and UN human and financial resources need to be configured accordingly.

67. More detailed recommendations on how the UN can play this role are laid out in Chapter 4.

68. In the short-term, however, in the immediate aftermath of conflict, the UN should be doing more to provide fast, relevant, and flexible support to restoring core government functionality. A focus on comprehensive ‘reform’ is distracting the UN from restoring and supporting the basic functionality of what already exists, in part as what capacity does exist is often over-looked or seriously under-estimated.78 In order to improve the functionality of security and justice, revenue raising and service delivery in the short-term the UN needs to understand and build on what already exists, and focus on immediate solutions to policy implementation problems, introduce new systems only where necessary, and then ensure they are as simple as possible. While national ownership is critical, temporary solutions may include the contracting of external expertise in certain line functions (e.g. in the area of revenue and procurement management, or financial controls). The UN needs to be continually looking for political leaders who are ready to seize available opportunities to make iterative improvements, nationally and especially locally, and help to restore or put in place the systems and processes to do so, including capacity for sub-contracting, where appropriate, to non-government actors. The UN needs to focus on solving immediate problems to delivering essential functions such as collecting revenues, priority planning and input-based budgeting, simple procurement, and the delivery of basic services that individual ministers are genuinely committed to, as opposed to initiating systemic reforms that are prone to get bogged down in over-complexity and wider political competition between ministers. Hopefully, as the political settlement solidifies, and a consensus, vision and agreement on the ‘rules of the game’ emerges, the potential for more serious reform will open up.

69. More detailed recommendations on how the UN can improve its impact here are laid out in Chapter 5.

70. The implications of this approach for sequencing the functional CPAF areas the review examined is laid out in a table in illustrative form in Annex xx.

78 Ghani and Lockhart (2008)

27

3.4 The importance of context

71. As is now well established, an intervention needs to be built on an analysis of context. In terms of understanding opportunities for support to PA, geography, population density, education levels and economic development are all important. However, the evidence suggests that the key contextual factors are:79

the nature of the political settlement, in particular how unified or fragmented political authority is;

the time horizons of the political leadership (short v long); and

the pre-existing nature of state institutions and the degree to which institutions eroded during the conflict.

72. There is a good body of evidence that shows that the degree of concentration of political control directly impacts political incentives for reform. In short, the more power is concentrated the more likely is substantial reform.80

73. It has also been increasingly understood that the scope and scale of reform is deeply influenced by the time-horizons amongst the political leadership; i.e. the higher degree of political stability, and the longer the expectations political leadership has as to the length of time they will remain in office, the more likely is substantial reform.81 In many contexts the time horizon is most readily determined by the frequency of elections, but it is often shorter and is also influenced by other variables, including the quality and cohesion of the political settlement and the fluidity of the security environment.

74. The strength and spread of existing state institutions will also clearly be a factor in how likely they are to recover functionality.82 The strength of pre-existing institutions in Kosovo, for example, was clearly very different to that in Liberia.

75. In short, the more political authority is concentrated, the longer-term the political vision, and the more robust the existing administration, the more that can be done to support reform of PA. Whereas the more fragmented is political authority, and the shorter-term the political horizons, and the more degraded is administration, the harder substantive support to reform of PA will be.

76. These factors help explain why public administration reform in Rwanda has had such remarkable results (see Annex xx on governance data). The political settlement after the genocide ensured a unified political leadership, with a long-term vision. However in contexts where political authority is dispersed, or the political settlement is still not in place and with

79 Needs some refs80 ref 81 ref82 Grindle (2011)

28

very weak pre-existing institutions (Afghanistan, for example), the situation has been much less positive.

77. There are also some contexts where anything but the barest minimum of work on public administration should not even be considered:

‘…for a rapacious, unrepresentative regime, an underpaid, deskilled, ineffective public administration is an asset: it keeps public employees dependent for their survival on the regime’s handouts, impels their corruption, precludes their “exit,” and turns them into reluctant accomplices. In these “kleptocracies,” while there might perhaps be conceivable reasons for certain kinds of external involvement, assistance to improve the government administration is a wasteful delusion.’ (Schiavo-Campo, 2000, pp 729)

78. More importantly for this study, given the close links between support to PA and the political context, there is a minimum of political order and commitment that needs to be in place post-conflict for any meaningful reform to be considered. Quoting again from the UN’s first 1951 text on PA (written at a time when the UN was supporting a number of new governments):

‘A fundamental requirement for the improvement of any system of public administration is the attainment of government stability, public order, and the rule of law. Where civil disorder is endemic or where changes in political control are frequent, administrative improvement is severely handicapped. For areas where governments have been newly organised and where governmental institutions have not yet been thoroughly established, some degree of administrative instability may in the short-run be considered as a part of the general political development. But where, over a long period of time, governments are not able to establish orderly political processes, administrative reforms are likely to lag, and the prospects of permanent administrative improvement are slight.’ (UN, 1951)

79. In 1996 the joint evaluation of the Rwanda response famously concluded that 'humanitarian action cannot substitute for political action' a similar point can be made about support to the reform of public administration: it can deepen, but cannot substitute for, a political settlement.

29

Chapter 4: Deepening the political settlement

80. The second main recommendation made in Chapter 3 is that the UN needs to approach the wider PA, as well as CPAF, as an important component in deepening the political settlement, as well as an implementer of government policy and deliverer of public services. This makes support to CPAF a concern for the UN as a whole, not just the development agencies.

4.1 Include consideration of CPAF in peace agreements

81. Peace agreements increasingly contain provisions for reform of PA, though these are clearly not as important as those on politics and security. In a study of 27 peace agreements between 1989 and 2007, provisions directly on public administration and governance were the least common compared with those on security, justice, economic recovery and reform and political representation.83 However, provisions for civil service reforms, reorganization of public administration, anticorruption strategies and policies on revenue collection mechanisms have increased markedly over time.84

82. Substantive structural reforms to PA are sometimes reflected in peace agreements as well: quotas for ethnic representation, as in Burundi; provisions for local or sub-national government, e.g. the shift from a unitary to a federal state in Nepal. This is not surprising given that abuses and injustice perpetrated through and by PA are a common element in conflict.

83. Setting up independent commissions under respected academics or former politicians is a common way of postponing the details of PA reform until peace processes are on more solid ground. While these can be useful, in many contexts they have also proved to be dumping grounds outside the political mainstream and so unable to negotiate real change.

84. Given the complexity and technical nature of many of the issues in PA, and the significant expense involved in reforming or establishing new layers of government, the UN should consider supporting the parties to a peace agreement on PA issues at the earliest possible time prior to the negotiation of the agreement through, for example, helping them think through the consequences of different proposals for reform to government structures or options for local government. DPA’s mediation support unit should refine and expand its expertise in the field of governance to include also detailed know-know 83 CMI (2007) pp 2184 CMI (2007) pp24

30

on CPAF and related issues.85 In some cases, the heat and pressure of forging a peace agreement may crowd out a range of PA issues that appear to be less urgent. But in those cases, where they have been factored in during the negotiation process (e.g. during the Burundi peace negotiations in 1998-2000), it has had a very positive impact on the subsequent peace implementation process. It is therefore recommended that advisory support to the parties on PA options be made a regular and well-founded part of the UN’s menu of support to conflict-affected countries.

4.2 Promote discussion and negotiation on the character and function of public administration

Many underlying determinants or contributory factors influence the development and performance of public administration - societal norms, the interaction of power, politics and violence, the legitimacy of the governing leadership. Many of these determinants are obscure and cannot easily be understood or influenced. What can be understood and should be factored into any public administrative support as a starting point are popular perceptions and expectations of the role of the state, the function of the public service (e.g. vis a vis the private sector and community, in the economy, in delivering services), the scope of its presence; and how it can and should respond to the root causes of conflict. A more practical question pertains to the size and scope of the civil service - should this be assessed in relation to the country’s GDP, or should a different yardstick be used, given the fact that post-conflict states are often the largest player in the economy, and responsible for driving the transition process, and economic recovery?

85. These are essential and strategic questions of policy that will influence and shape the way in which a country’s administrative system develops. Effective administrative performance will only result when there is a link between the administrative and public sphere, and when public service reflects what the population want and expect. The UN should work with governments post-conflict to analyse empirically how the public view public administration, and what different groups want from the state. For this it is necessary to investigate, and not presume, how people see their state and what they want from it. UNDP’s ‘Early Warning’ reports in Kosovo are examples of good practice here as they are based on regular perception survey data published in 28 successive issues over a period of eight years, from mid-2002 until mid-2010.86 Perception surveys and local views on various aspects of administrative functioning e.g. levels of corruption or quality of services, are important too and can assist the government (and the UN) in making decisions about prioritisation and trade-offs. This is as important for legitimacy as it is for efficiency. 85 DPA’s Mediation Support Unit (MSU) has divided its substantive agenda into 17 different thematic issues which are also being used in its mediation training activities and as search criteria in its roster of external mediation experts. These are (a) Security, Military, Police, DDR, etc.; (b) Constitution and Political System/Structure, Institutions; (c) Rule of Law and Administration of Justice; (d) Electoral Framework; (e) Human Rights; (f) Women; (g) Children; (h) Minorities, Indigenous Peoples, and Other Groups; (i) Humanitarian and Refugee Issues; (j) Socio-economic and Development; (k) Media and Information; (l) Transitional Security, Governance and Institutional Arrangements; (m) Transitional Justice; (n) Traditional and Local Actors; (o) Statehood and Identity; (p) Implementation Mechanisms and Arrangements; and (q) Implementing/Supporting Actors. 86 http://www.kosovo.undp.org/?cid=2,40

31

86. This can clearly be a politically sensitive area, and there is currently little guidance offered to UN leadership in the field on how to approach this issue. DPKO is doing some work to develop public perception tools.87 Guidance should be provided to missions and UNCTs’ specifically on canvassing public attitudes to public administration.

87. As discussed above, it is also important for the UN to be facilitating wide discussion on public administration reform, with the private sector for example. It is important however, that the UN to avoid presenting solutions as this shuts down discussion and negotiation. The UN should present policy options for discussion, not solutions. The preparation of policy options papers is good practice, as UNCDF did for local government reform in Timor Leste, as this allows ministers and others in leadership positions to make informed policy decisions and it allows negotiation and discussion among the country’s political leaders based on a realistic picture of the pros and cons of alternatives. Similarly, in order to widen discussion, the first draft of policies, laws, regulations etc, should be in the local language, not as is sometimes the case, only final drafts, to ensure wide consultation and comment.

4.3 Assist politicians, parties and other political actors to understand CPAF

88. National politicians and political parties are clearly the main drivers of a peace process, and then of post-conflict public administration. One of the primary ways peace processes impact on PA is that they determine who will control it, this is most clearly and commonly demonstrated in the often protracted haggling over the allocation of different ministries to different parties, leaders or factions. But it is a common feature post-conflict that political leaders and parties have little or no experience of public administration. Their expectations of what PA can and cannot do, and their knowledge of how to manage and direct PA to achieve a political programme or manifesto pledge, is often also minimal.88 This is for a number of reasons: leaders may have recently come to power after previously being insurgent military commanders or political activists, political parties may have been clandestine, and shaped by the needs of armed conflict and not those of running a public administration, or based in the diaspora who can be out of touch with local realities. During the conflict the scope for civil administration is often limited as well, so even those within government can have limited experience of running a peacetime public administration. It is thus common for parties and political leaders post-conflict to struggle with the transition to civilian leadership and managing public administration.

89. Administrative development ultimately depends on the way in which political leaders interpret their role in government post-conflict, and, except in the relatively rare cases where a party with a long-term vision wins a convincing victory, the evidence is that political 87 DPKO88 Misperceptions amongst politicians about the capacity of PA and their relationship to it are common even in advanced democracies with well-functioning PAs ‘When I was first elected, I thought it was the leader’s job to set the vision and let the system get on with implementing it. What I came to realise was that if I waited for the system to do what I was asking of it, I would never be around long enough to see it.’ Blair, A (2010)

32

parties and politicians, tend to have very short-term horizons.89 They rarely expect to remain long in office, and often governments in the immediate aftermath of conflict are transitional and tasked with putting in place a constitution or elections. They thus do not often have the mandate for reform, or the attention. These 'transitional' arrangements however can go on for some years.

90. Frequent changes of ministerial leadership, often with short-term horizons, are thus a feature of many post-conflict situations (e.g. the number of governments in Nepal since the CPA) in line with unstable politics more generally. A major problem for reformist politicians then is seen in balancing competence with political inclusion, at both ministerial and lower levels. This can have a major impact on service delivery. This is clearly not very useful for reform processes, which the evidence shows are most likely to work with consistent long-term political leadership.

91. Working with political parties is relatively new for development agencies.90 However, there is not that much experience in post-conflict contexts and much of the work focuses on party organisations, support to parliaments, and not the politics of managing a public administration post-conflict. Discrete support to parties on some aspects of policy, especially peace negotiations, does occur post-conflict.91 But, ‘the post-conflict environment is usually not conducive to the development of political parties’92 and there is little experience of support to parties involved in negotiating a peace process of managing PA. This is an area that needs to be developed as in the early aftermath of conflict these dynamics will initially dictate outcomes. The UN should consider partnering with reputable non-governmental institutions to provide discrete support to parties, especially new ministers, new to government on how public administration works, what it can and can’t do, PFM, etc.

92. In the ‘hyper-politicised’ contexts of post-conflict it is also common for a number of civil society actors to have close links to parties (NGOs, business associations, and regional or ethnic groups are commonly identified with one party or another, or even if not identified with a party, are often politically active in representing the interests of their group). The UN should consider support to non-party actors in the political arena on CPAF.

4.4 Assist governments to generate ‘process legitimacy’93

93. If stable, effective transitions emerge from continuous processes of state-society interaction, and if governments that identify and manage societal grievances through legitimate administrative mechanisms (at national and local levels) are more likely to improve perceptions of their legitimacy and performance and the prospects of a non-violent

89 Ref90 UNDP (2006), Carothers91 ref92 Curtis, Devon and de Zeeuw, Jeroen (2010)93 See FN 31 for a definition of process legitimacy

33

transition – then procedural legitimacy becomes particularly important. This gives primacy to considerations of consultation, participation and grievance redressal.

94. As an external actor, the UN’s role is to try to make the settlement and its expression in the public service, as inclusive as possible by supporting excluded groups and facilitating and expanding the space for broad-based inclusion, and grievance redressal, while the longer-term goal of developing rule of law and formal judicial controls is still developing. Post conflict administrative development in Burundi, and the administrative experience post 2006 crisis in Timor-Leste show that there is room and much value in tackling structural disadvantage, and integrating socially, politically and ethnically marginalized groups into the administration conflict. Public appointments to address pre-existing exclusion, and the creation of specialized mechanisms to give voice to marginalized groups in policy, planning, and administrative decision-making are proven means to achieve this. Again, the purpose here is to strengthen, stabilize and deepen any pre-existing political settlement, but it would help for the UN (DPKO and UNDP) to develop a set of new and innovative options for an inclusive administrative approach. On the other hand, there will also need to be clear recognition that it will not always be possible to achieve this. The experience in Kosovo shows ethnic harmony is not always be possible in the short to medium term.

4.5 Monitor labour disputes between government and state employees

95. Monitoring social, political and economic divisions, and acting quickly to prevent disputes spiralling into violent conflict, are key to effective management of risk. The review team came across several examples of a specific form of conflict related to PA - public sector labour disputes between state employees of various kinds and government. As pointed out above, in many post-conflict countries an important function of PA is to act as a form of ‘second best welfare’ (Shepard, 2003).

96. In a number of case-study countries, the general context of change and upheaval led to an escalation of labour disputes. These quickly become linked to perceived wider socio-ethnic disparities and inequities, and, at worst, resulted in widespread disruption of services and occasionally even violence. Where managed, i.e. in the mediated management of a dispute in Burundi, there were positive administrative consequences in the form of an established a process of conflict mitigation, management and resolution practices. But, where this was overlooked - i.e. in Timor-Leste, and Kosovo - the consequences were violent, as seen in ethnically motivated violence in Kosovo in 2004 and in Timor-Leste’s crisis of 2006. The UN needs to include a labour relations component in its overall conflict analysis and be prepared, possibly in close consultation with the ILO, to support countries emerging from conflict in addressing and resolving burgeoning public sector labour disputes.

34

4.6 Promote inclusion in PA

97. Domination of public employment by one group or another can contribute to exclusion and so conflict. There is a growing body of evidence that political settlements post-conflict need to be inclusive if they are to be sustainable. And of course there is a now widely accepted principle that public administration needs to be representative of the society it serves. Ensuring public administration, often the biggest formal employer, is more inclusive and representative is thus beneficial not only for conflict prevention but for more effective service delivery.

98. Making PA more representative is a feature of a number of political settlements. In Burundi for example, the constitution sets out some specific percentages for different groups in different parts of the state. At commune level for example, there is an upper limit for administrators no more than 67% for one group. And in the public enterprises, representation must be 60% or less for Hutu and 40% or less for Tutsi. In Nepal (not a case study for this review), the settlement [and constitution?] sets out fixed percentages in the civil service for different ethnic groups and for women.

99. The UN has also been called upon to support political reintegration programmes and that have installed vetting systems, fast-tracked training opportunities, and targeted education and retraining schemes for former combatants and their dependents so that senior and mid-level commanders and officers can participate more directly in both military and civilian public sector posts.

100. Percentages in themselves are not enough, excluded groups are often also excluded from educational opportunities, a key barrier to state employment, and there is a need for special support to excluded groups to be able to take up and succeed in public employment. There is also a need to ensure government can effectively monitor the achievement of such targets, often a problem when HR data collection is weak.

35

Box: xx Gender and PA in Kosovo

In 2004 UNIFEM (now part of UN Women) entered into a partnership with the Prime Minister’s Advisory Office for Good Governance (AOGG) and the Kosovo Institute for Public Administration (KIPA, the in-service training institute attached to the Ministry of Public Services that conducts mandatory training for all Kosovo civil servants). The goal of the partnership with AOGG and KIPA was to increase the public administration’s capacity to integrate a gender perspective in its planning and delivery, but also to increase gender equality within the public administration itself.

In the first phase of the training the methodology of gender analysis was covered, with a special emphasis on the collection and analysis of sex-disaggregated data, models for formulating gender-sensitive public policies, and budgetary planning. In 2004 and 2005 more than 200 civil servants from different Ministries and levels of government were trained in four day sessions.

The second phase was a Training of Trainers programme with the aim of creating a pool of experts to be utilized by KIPA in their internal training processes but also available to other government institutions and associations. The participants represented a range of government institutions from central and local levels, as well as civil society. The training included the methodology of gender training; understanding how to gender mainstream the work of the public administration, how to do a gender analysis of social problems and

Chapter 5: Restoring basic functionality

101. The third overarching recommendation made in Chapter 3 was that the UN should increase its focus on restoring basic functionality to core PA functions immediately after conflict.

5.1 First things first

102. UN support for CPAF needs to start from what exists, with initial support in the immediate aftermath of conflict aimed at stopping “institutional haemorrhaging” which can happen during a conflict and often continues in the chaos prevailing right after peace has broken out. This can take many forms, but includes for example, the leakage of revenue, the demoralization or marginalisation of qualified civil servants, and the erosion of confidence in the ability of the authorities to take control, uphold law and order, and produce benefits. Typically the immediate aftermath of conflict requires decisions to be made and resources allocated. In very basic terms this means ensuring basic forms of recruitment, (re)-establishment of rudimentary mechanisms to pay wages, and basic decisions about how and where to allocate resources (money and people). Critically this involves rapid mobilisation of advisory support from the UN to the centre of government, or in the case of geographically specific conflicts, to local government.

103. Initial support can rapidly transition into the introduction of basic systems, to sustain meaningful progress. Re-patching systems, and importing or capacity substitution can help to bring systems and skills not already in place, in areas central to basic functions, for example, in customs and procurement, or revenue management. However, in all areas, basic capacity assessments or baselines should predate investment

104. When the time is right, and some early results have been delivered, UN support could transition to supporting reform, as the political settlement allows and when appropriate emphasis can be given to institutional design; and to ensuring different institutional options are considered for good fit.

105. Successful examples of institutional development in Timor-Leste (the Ministries of Health and Social Solidarity), Kosovo, and Liberia (the Contracts and Monopolies Commission or CMC, which later became the Public Procurement and Contracts Commission) show that time taken to negotiate and develop home-grown institutional solutions and link these to the particularities of the country,94 improves their chances of success. The Ministry of Health in 94 The Liberian Concessions Management Commission was mandated by Government to lead the special review of contract and concession agreements entered into by the National Transitional Government of Liberia from 14 th

October 2003 through 16th January 2006. The purpose of the review was to determine whether those contract and concession agreements entered into by the NTGL were done with transparency and economy and to the benefit of the Government and people of Liberia. This exercise enabled the Review Committee to review 95 contract and

36

Box: xx Gender and PA in Kosovo

In 2004 UNIFEM (now part of UN Women) entered into a partnership with the Prime Minister’s Advisory Office for Good Governance (AOGG) and the Kosovo Institute for Public Administration (KIPA, the in-service training institute attached to the Ministry of Public Services that conducts mandatory training for all Kosovo civil servants). The goal of the partnership with AOGG and KIPA was to increase the public administration’s capacity to integrate a gender perspective in its planning and delivery, but also to increase gender equality within the public administration itself.

In the first phase of the training the methodology of gender analysis was covered, with a special emphasis on the collection and analysis of sex-disaggregated data, models for formulating gender-sensitive public policies, and budgetary planning. In 2004 and 2005 more than 200 civil servants from different Ministries and levels of government were trained in four day sessions.

The second phase was a Training of Trainers programme with the aim of creating a pool of experts to be utilized by KIPA in their internal training processes but also available to other government institutions and associations. The participants represented a range of government institutions from central and local levels, as well as civil society. The training included the methodology of gender training; understanding how to gender mainstream the work of the public administration, how to do a gender analysis of social problems and

Timor-Leste is a good example as it focused on building up its capacity to deliver basic health care first before embarking on more complex programmes.95

106. The central message is to focus on the basics, with a view to improving over time. Doing this will require a greater readiness on the part of the UN to accept risk, and mediate ‘best practice’ approaches with a minimum level of acceptable practice to ensure that peace building dividends are not lost. We have seen several examples in the country cases studies where, the UN accepted less than optimal solutions in the interests of delivering results. For example, the UN’s experience of engaging with informal subnational networks in Kosovo to establish local government, and a willingness to support the Timorese Government to make direct cash payments to the internally displaced, and the wider poverty-stricken population, based on relatively crude eligibility criteria, are examples where adopting ‘good enough’ responses to administrative problems, seems to have worked. These were imperfect measures by any account, but they delivered immediate results to an expectant population.Initial support was quickly followed by remedial measures to address vulnerabilities or gaps, to improve the integrity of the end result. In Kosovo this meant convening local elections to ensure the legitimacy of locally actors, in Timor-Leste UNDP facilitated a new partnership between government and the highly regarded Brazilian Poverty Centre to make systems improvements to Timor-Leste’s cash transfer program.

107. Another lesson is to build on success, or ‘islands of excellence’,96 and avoid ‘whole of government’ reforms. Delivering public benefits in one area can generate popular support and incentivise better performance in other projects, programmes or institutions, and early successes should be built on. UNCDF’s pilot local development projects, which were in effect in five of the case study countries, are a good example of the merits of such an approach.

108. On the other hand, the Review Team did not come across any examples, where ‘whole of government’ interventions seemed to work. Such approaches, have often been stymied by political fluidity and the weakness of cross cutting systems. In many cases, wider reform agendas are stalled at the political level of government where ministers seeking to control resources (human, physical and financial), resist centralised initiatives, such as capacity building units. Timor-Leste’s Governance and Public Sector Management Strategy and Burundi’s government-wide civil service reform program are telling reminders of the cost of technically correct, whole of government reforms. concession agreements and recommended that 52 of the agreements should be accepted, 16 to be renegotiated and 27 to be cancelled. The Ministries of Health and Social Solidarity (MSS) in Timor-Leste were built from the ground up (rural health practice) and, in the case of MSS, arose in response to a national crisis and the acute conditions of poverty and vulnerability in the country.95 Ref96 ref

37

Box ? Safeguarding Public Assets

In Liberia direct substitution of international advisers in line functions in the economic ministries assisted government to stem a tide of corruption, prevent economic plunder, while at the same time rapidly increasing government revenues available for budget allocation. Similar experiences were seen in revenue collection in Burundi and petroleum revenue management in Timor-Leste – each of which produced favourable results.

109. Faced with these challenges, UN support for PA at an institutional level needs to be cognisant of the impact that minister-level relationships can have in their respective ministries,; and avoid (to the extent possible) cutting across ministerial domains of control. In these contexts, Ministry-by-ministry or sectoral approaches are likely more capable of producing results through, for example, the deployment of international advisers in line functions. Risks of institutional and systems atomisation should be met with measures to promote inter-agency policy coherence, to adopt standard-setting instruments or inter-agency partnerships to share results and lessons learned.

110. The lessons on the need to scale back ambitious programs and be wary of ‘whole of government’ endeavours are of particular importance to questions of accountability, particularly financial accountability. There is a well-established body of literature that shows that many external accountability mechanisms (e.g. media, parliament, external commissions, civil society) rarely function well in the immediate aftermath of conflict, and as a result the UN should prioritise internal controls first, and seek to establish external oversight later.97 In particular, it can be difficult to take a strong stand on formal, high-profile anti-corruption approaches when the threat of violence remains prevalent, or when the transgressions are committed by leaders who are seen as “freedom fighters” or national heroes who sacrificed their safety and comfort in the armed struggle. But even without the threat of violence per se, post-conflict politics are often too sensitive or difficult to sanction transgressions, citizens might have poor information about performance leaving them ill-equipped to challenge administrative decisions or actions, or the independent judicial controls needed to help these mechanisms to deliver are still in their infancy.98

111. The ‘separation of powers’ is essential to modern government, but has tended to emerge following long processes of social contestation that have led to institutional change. In the immediate aftermath of conflict, parliament and the judiciary are typically weak and the executive tends to dominate, which suggests that internal administrative rather than judicial controls are likely more effective mechanisms for integrity and systems control in the initial period after conflict. For example, internal audit is a particular priority to identify systems gaps and track money and performance, and as such is an essential building block in a wider anti-corruption strategy. Contracting out internal audits, as was done in Timor-Leste and Kosovo, can be an effective strategy where there is a skills shortage, and has the advantage of establishing a systems baseline, and guiding systems improvements. It is unrealistic to construct elaborate external checks and balances to ‘control’ government when the government’s internal capacity is weak; it is better in the initial stages to focus on developing robust internal systems and processes to begin, and work incrementally to adjust performance through the use of tracking and monitoring systems, as opposed to adopting external sanction-oriented controls that constrain government activity further. This approach has the added advantage of being a lesser drain on already scarce resources.

97 For financial control, for example, ‘its [external audit] effectiveness depends among other things on good management controls and internal audit within the spending entities themselves. Operational effectiveness and integrity cannot be achieved only by external scrutiny. Also, before expending resources and staff on audits of performance and efficiency, the basic audits of compliance and financial integrity must be strong and effective.’ Schiavo-Campo (2000) pp44. 98 IDS (2010) p41.

38

112. It is worthwhile mentioning at this juncture that hybrid legal rules and norms were a common feature in some of the countries visited (e.g. in Kosovo and Timor Leste) and often led to confusion around which rules to apply and how they function., They also suggested incompatible approaches e.g. civil service commissions versus a general directorate of the public service, or Auditors General created in civil law systems that typically trend more towards executive and judicial controls (i.e. High Tax and Audit Courts). Ultimately, common law and civil law approaches are different and should not be combined, at least not until local institutions have the capacity to navigate these hybrid terrains effectively.99 Linked to this, it was evident that advisors (as well as the donors that fund them) tend, inadvertently, to bring their own ways of working and legal and administrative tradition, adding to the ambiguity and complexity of a given context. More careful and targeted recruitment of technical advisers is thus perhaps warranted with a background in the appropriate tradition, particularly in UN transitional administrations.

113. Capacity readiness assessments, basic skills development (e.g. numeracy and literacy programs as in Guinea Bissau100 and Timor-Leste), the establishment of basic cash management systems (as in Liberia and Burundi), information sharing systems (re-establishment of radio broadcasts as in Kosovo and Burundi), and systems audits that are regular and publicly disclosed as in Timor-Leste, are ‘first things first’ approaches that all worked well, and all assisted government to restore some basic confidence and provided the platform for more sophisticated reforms to follow.

5.2 Resist the urge to make big plans

114. Several of the countries visited by the Review Team (Burundi, Liberia, Timor-Leste) launched soon after the end of conflict elaborate multi-year planning instruments and it was unclear whether the work required to produce them was commensurate with the results that they deliver. In Sierra Leone, the scale of the country’s development ambition was not limited to post-2002 strategic plans, but was evident even as the civil war was still raging. By contrast the country’s subsequent ‘Agenda for Change’ (2008-12) replaced the profligate political, security and development plans that were in place, with a single planning document, reducing the coherence and administrative burden for the country and strengthening national ownership.101

115. A number of interviewees complained of the ‘inertia’ caused by these complex planning frameworks. In Burundi, a lessons 99 ‘Whenever the United Nations has the mandate to legislate in a country, the local legal traditions and systems should be respected. A confusing mixture between common and civil law elements, as exists in Kosovo, should not be repeated.’ Muhremmi, (2003) 100 In Guinea Bissau, among the more simple training methods adopted, reportedly with much success, was basic literacy and numeracy training, using the Cuban method 101 Draft, ‘Review of the UN’s Peacebuilding Architecture’, p9.

39

Box x National Priority Programs

The experience of Timor-Leste is that National Priority Programmes have an important function in the early years after conflict, and can be constructed using several criteria: e.g. what it takes to meet the needs of the population; projects that are quick to initiate and design using employment intensive techniques; projects that are non-prejudicial to longer-term priorities; and projects that take into account the poverty and vulnerability profile. This is very much in-line with the ‘New Deal’ which reinforces the value of priority programs. To work, however, they must also be grounded in a realistic

learned review of the UNDAF II noted that ‘the excessive number of priorities and activities has led to a scattering of interventions and a duplication of efforts as well as too much focus on symptoms rather than on structural causes’.102 Ultimately, even here then, striking a balance between planning and pragmatism proved difficult.

116. The weakness of these development planning processes is typically down to two things:

117. First, in the immediate aftermath of conflict political leaders are often still in conflict, and are ill-equipped to develop the political consensus needed to agree medium-term development priorities. During this period, political attention tends to be dedicated to establishing or consolidating the political rules of the game (usually in the form of a new constitution), securing positions of authority, or tackling protracted political challenges. Nowhere was this more evident than in Kosovo, where several attempts to formulate and approve a National Development Plan ended in failure. A Kosovo Development Strategy was articulated in 2006, but poor political buy-in and inadequate structures for implementation meant the plan was not approved and did not move forward.103 Since then, priorities have been driven set by the EU accession plan and what is required needed to join.

118. Secondly, national planning frameworks often propose technical solutions that do not address some of the most intractable political dilemmas. Guinea Bissau is one such example in which successive UNDAFs (2002; and 2008-2012) proposed good governance and poverty reduction strategies, with a particular emphasis on deepening public administration and local governance gains including through policy and regulatory reforms, the introduction of civil service performance standards, when the central and intractable priority was security sector reform and delinking the military from public sector management. 104 Rightfully the mission gave the political challenge considerable attention, but the impact of computerizing public administrative management, and decentralization initiatives remains to be seen. The question to be considered is – in the absence of a peace settlement – is support for public administration and local governance premature, and if not, what practical measures could be taken that might survive a change of leadership, or government, or resurgence of violence. This is not a question that can be easily answered, in particular in contexts of deteriorating governance, (e.g. Afghanistan), there were efforts that seemed fruitful and these were typically public administration diagnostics (i.e. systems audits or civil service censuses) or interventions less reliant on formal systems (community-driven development projects such as the NSP in Afghanistan or local development programs),. At the other end of the spectrum, in the context of a comprehensive peace settlement or, more specifically, ‘winner-takes-all’ victory, achieving political consensus around development priorities may be more likely, but these instances are rare and were not evident in any of the countries visited. Donors and the UN should avoid seizing on a fragile consensus and promoting developmental paralysis by over-prescribing the outcomes wanted - be they MDGs, UNDAFS, PBF Strategic plans. More useful approaches are seen in those country cases where government, civil society, other interest groups, and development partners agree a limited 102 ‘Integrated Strategy of UN Support to Burundi 2010-2014’, UNDAF-II, April 2009, p19.103 Heidi Tavakoli and Shkumbin Saneja, (June 2011), ‘Public Financial Management Reforms in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States: Providing Operational Guidance for Development Practitioners’, Kosovo Case Study, p29.104 In Guinea Bissau, the EC suspended Direct Budget Support in the wake of an attempted coup, and demanded the government complete and publish investigations into those recent events, and restructure and reform the military – despite that attempts to reform the military in preceding years had exacerbated violence.

40

Box x National Priority Programs

The experience of Timor-Leste is that National Priority Programmes have an important function in the early years after conflict, and can be constructed using several criteria: e.g. what it takes to meet the needs of the population; projects that are quick to initiate and design using employment intensive techniques; projects that are non-prejudicial to longer-term priorities; and projects that take into account the poverty and vulnerability profile. This is very much in-line with the ‘New Deal’ which reinforces the value of priority programs. To work, however, they must also be grounded in a realistic

and discrete set of priority programmes, focus on these in the first few years, and leave the big plans for later. Some of the better examples of this were evident in Timor-Leste (above). The complexity demanded of plans also required the use of international consultants, which tended to decrease national ownership and commitment.

119. The UN has made considerable progress implementing its new integrated planning approach, and considerable progress has been seen in the harmonisation of poverty reduction and peacebuilding strategies. The team saw very good examples, in Burundi, and to a lesser extent Liberia (particularly at local levels through the County Support Team). But, where integration and prioritisation looked strong, transition strategies were lacking, and early gains risked being lost. Progress in establish sub-national governance systems in Liberia and Guinea Bissau suffered from the lack of a clear transition strategy and many important structural gains risked being lost, while here again, Timor-Leste offers a good example [see Box ? above]. Another institutional challenge, symptomatic of atomised agency roles and functions, was that Offices of the DSRSG/RC often struggled to secure the cross-agency support needed to ensure an effective integration process. This suggests that more incentives are needed to ensure that UN agencies see themselves as responsible to the DSRSG/RC, as well as to their own management structures.

120.

One of the primary drivers of improvements to CPAF in the immediate aftermath of conflict, and a useful planning tool, is direct budget support; and the UN may have a role to play in helping government to shape informed policy options and prioritise what can be accomplished. In Guinea Bissau, direct budget support, was used to pay civil service salaries and wages, in Burundi it paved the way for direct technical substitution to safeguard revenue collection. Given its practical function, the operating premise should be that the UN align with and facilitate the PA dimensions of any direct budget support that is given – Timor-Leste and Guinea Bissau can be looked to as constructive examples.

41

Box ? Transition Planning in Timor-Leste

Timor-Leste has enjoyed several years of stability since the crisis of 2006, the role of the UN in Timor-Leste is changing, with UN withdrawal anticipated for the end of 2012, To facilitate a smooth transition the UN took the unprecedented step of planning the drawdown jointly with Government. The architecture adopted to make this possible has included a High-Level Committee (HLC) co-chaired by the President and Prime Minister, and the SRSG, which agreed seven priority areas for the drawdown, and designated government and UNMIT focal points and working groups tasked with delivery. At this early stage, consensus has been reached on priority needs, objectives for Government-UNMIT collaboration, actions to be taken until December 2012, and indicative resource implications. The plan is clear, simple and easy to follow –lightening the load on an already burdened country context. Most important the plan outlines the prospects for operational continuity beyond

121. The prolific and sophisticated multi-year planning frameworks demanded by the international system tend to propose too much too soon, raise expectations and often weaken a nascent government, tying it up and constraining its ability to act. In politically fragmented, highly unstable environments that are typically dictated by short-term horizons, overly ambitious plans rarely achieve results. In some cases they can do more harm than good by tying up scarce resources and crowding out the opportunity for tangible early impacts. UN-sponsored support to post-conflict transitions showed a consistent pattern of setting high goals and expectations, and overloaded planning systems with poverty reduction and peace-building instruments (MDGs, UNDAFs, PRSPs or National Development and Sector Investment Strategies, Peace-building Frameworks, etc).

122. When a country emerging from conflict reaches the point, where basic functionality in key PA institutions has been restored and become more robust, it will be possible to move on to planning and programming with a longer time-horizon and to rise above some of the special restraints and limitations of the immediate post-conflict phase. Depending on the circumstances and the findings of continuous post-conflict analysis, the next step in the planning and programming process could comprise an Interim PRSP, and/or a PBF Peacebuilding Strategy, and/or a medium-term UNDAF – all prepared with a keen eye on post-conflict functionality and good-enough solutions based on a set of critical trigger questions related to the consolidation of the host country’s PA progress.

123. Under these circumstances, and considering this Review’s focus on the immediate aftermath of conflict, the UN System’s should discourage the investment of scarce government and UN System manpower resources and funds in the preparation of ambitious, multi-year and multi-sectoral development plans. The findings of the LLR Review point to the need for a more nimble, realistic, and phased approach.

124. At the early post-conflict stage, the priority should be quick-impact initiatives that mobilize existing capacities around rapid restoration of basic functionality in key PA institutions, thereby making it possible for the host government within a short-term horizon (a) to prioritize better, (b) to weigh the merits of different trade-offs more clearly, and (c) to make difficult choices on a more solid basis.

5.3 Speed up grievance redressal

125. For the formal justice system in particular, reform can take decades to mature and become effective. However, less formal grievance redressal mechanisms (citizen complaints channels, mediation and dispute resolution mechanisms, administrative solutions), need not take that long to put in place, which makes them good interim solutions while formal systems are still developing. UN support for the Kosovo Property Agency (KPA); and the land commissions of Burundi and Liberia are mechanisms that have done good work but, on the whole, these options remain under-documented and therefore underutilized in other post-conflict situations. The review recommends that the UN system familiarizes itself more thoroughly with the grievance redressal mechanisms in the countries in which they are operating, and equips itself better to support them. Capitalizing on the

42

complementarities between informal dispute settlement institutions and formal justice systems is also important and can then be used as a “bottom-up” approach where formal systems are lagging (Di- John, 2008).

5.4 Promote ‘South-South’ links and inclusion in regional PA initiatives

126. South-south partnerships and instruments were also important in a number of places. South African officials were instrumental in bringing about ethnic quotas in Burundi’s peace agreement, for example. South-south support for CPAF should be developed.

43

Box ? Rebuilding South Sudan’s Administrative Capacities The functioning of the South Sudanese State depends upon the emergence of a viable state apparatus staffed by civil servants capable of, and willing to, manage public affairs in the public interest – a resource that is currently limited. Recognising that ‘fly-by consulting engagements’ seldom develop sustainable capacity, and that knowledge transfer is likely best facilitated by peer-to-peer relations between individuals from similar contexts and administrative traditions, South Sudan is currently engaged in a regionally organised capacity building initiative. The Initiative for Capacity Enhancement in South Sudan is a south-south based, triangularly funded coaching and mentoring program for South Sudan’s civil service. Established by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Government of South Sudan (GoSS), it is supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and resourced with secondments of civil servants from three of South Sudan’s neighbouring countries - Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda - who are also IGAD members. The countries will second and place 200 civil servants to serve as immediate capacity enhancement in key functions identified by GoSS ministries themselves. They will also work on developing local capacity through ‘twinning’ with South Sudanese counterparts in peer-to-peer coaching partnerships. This approach takes into account the lessons learned from decades of largely unsuccessful technical assistance, and refocuses capacity development to address the personal attitudes and beliefs of the individual civil servants as an integral component of transferring technical knowledge. The initiative is an example of triangular cooperation as Norway is funding the (comparatively small) allowances for the civil servants as well as providing project support and management. The civil servants remain on payroll in their contributing countries for the duration of the project, making the individual contributions one of the largest examples of in-kind South-South assistance for post-conflict state-building to date. A study of the program in its early phases found that the ‘sending’ governments had made substantial investments in quality assurance considering the secondments an ‘investment’ in the stability and growth of a neighbouring country of critical importance. The GoSS on the other hand has been in the driver’s seat throughout the process and exhibited a high degree of national ownership over the programme.

127. In a number of cases, the desire to meet the standards and norms of administration set in the immediate region exercised a powerful incentive on national governments and seems to have boosted the motivation to reform PA. Regional partnerships have wielded considerable influence and helped to shape performance and outcomes in critical ways, for example the East African Community in Burundi, the EU in Kosovo, or ECOWAS in Guinea Bissau.105 The lessons in this is that the UN should be supporting regional standard setting initiatives, investing in development of regional good practice, fostering collective responsibilities, and sharing regional experiences of leadership, administrative performance, centre-regional administrative management, institutional and capacity development.

5.5 Support the restoration of local governance

128. It is important to emphasise, that much of this analysis presented above applies to support to local government as much as to central. Many of the interventions and much literature on the subject of local government in recent years has been dominated by the single policy issue of decentralisation.106 The evidence on the impact of decentralisation in terms of improving service delivery at the local level is mixed, and even more so in terms of post-conflict. While the issue of strengthening local government is widely seen to be important in post-conflict environments, in particular as it can improve service delivery, and promote inclusion and accountability, both important for the sustainability of the political settlement, the specific issue of decentralisation is more complex. In fragile and conflict affected states it is often argued that too rapid political and fiscal decentralisation can promote conflict and even weaken the state. Furthermore, decentralisation processes are often stalled in complex political negotiations. Given this, supporting local government should take a long-term view, decentralisation should be debated, not assumed (the issue of local government is often a key element of wider constitutional debate, so the UN needs to support this debate and not jump to policy conclusions), and if pursued it should not be rushed. In most cases, in the immediate aftermath of conflict, support to local government should start with immediate support to the basic functionality and capacity of local government, and at most, support to administrative (i.e. de-concentration) as opposed to full decentralisation.107

105 The proposal that Burundi be held up as the 2012 good practice administration in the region has incentivised improved administrative performance. 106 Definition…107 GSDRC (2008)

44

129. The importance of restoring the capacity of local government as being key to wider peace and state-building was raised consistently in all the case studies, however, until recently the issue of local government has suffered from ‘systematic neglect’ from the international community (UNDP, 2007: pp12). Local government was seen as particularly important where regional exclusion or conflicts between the centre and the periphery were drivers of the conflict, as in Afghanistan. As well as basic services, key functions of local government include sometimes overlooked but important administrative service such as land management, identity papers, etc.

130. Local governments have an important conflict mitigation potential due to their greater ability to interact with communities and traditional authorities compared to national institutions, and have the potential to foster political inclusion in post-conflict processes. However they can also be a particular focus for unresolved conflict (e.g. in Kosovo).

131. During the conflicts in Sierra-Leone, Somalia, Burundi and Timor-Leste, local governments became the only semblance of state presence to many citizens and therefore local government leaders acting in collaboration with traditional chiefs and clan leaders created havens of peace and access to basic services for many communities. These localities became the pressure centres for the quest for peace and development, and active centres for dialogue initiation.

132. Common problems with getting local government functioning again were lack of clarity or understanding of the rules and responsibilities of centre and local, high levels of suspicion and lack of trust between the centre and the local (often linked with political issues, but usually expressed as a lack of faith in the capacity of the local by the centre), and lack of money at the local level.

133. In the early recovery situation local government is even more vulnerable to being ‘crowded out’ than national by international agencies. In a number of case study countries, the emergence and establishment of local governments and governance for that matter was constrained by numerous and varied interventions by international non-governmental organisations who competed for resources, space and legitimacy.

134. The response to the CPAF during the peace building, recovery and development requires the development of targeted capacity needs of the local governance system at the different phases; peace building, recovery and development. It should be noted however that the response may depend on the circumstance of the existing local government system.

135. The local governance system at the recovery stage requires legitimacy and therefore must be supported to establish a clear system of representation, a linkage with the national systems, institute processes for consensus-building and participatory decision-making, and promote response to minority needs and institute early initiatives for mediation and sustaining peace. The basic political, administrative and fiscal/financial capacity should therefore be established as a critical action under the CPAF.

136. The development stage would require that the UN should support in putting in place a long term perspective of the local governance process. This should be captured in statutes

45

and policies defining roles and responsibilities, representation, expenditure assignments, fiscal powers and reporting channels. The role of the local governments at this stage would go beyond security and basic services to include the promotion of local economic recovery.

5.6 Focus on outcomes

137. A number of the issues come together in a particularly important lesson for support to CPAF- focus on outcomes, not processes. Much work on capacity-building of PA is vaguely focused on general improvements to the system, and can result in unfocussed training or equipment provision which has little impact. As UNICEF describes in the box below, it is important to start from the objective of delivering a specific function or service. Alongside this is the necessary leadership, and political priority, as described above. This lesson is backed up in the wider literature, mentioned above, that stresses the importance of a problem-solving analysis and that it is more realistic to focus on getting particular key functions working than the whole system.108

108 Fritz el al (2009)

46

Box xx UNICEF’s approach to national capacity development in fragile settings

In 2009-12 UNICEF identified four issues with its support to government capacity. First, ad hoc activities and outputs (trainings and work-shops), which did not develop capacity. Second, the lack of capacity assessments to identify existing capacities. Third, the lack of CD plans that address individual and organizational capacity gaps. And finally, the lack of exit strategies to ensure that CD leads to real transfer of responsibilities to national actors and sustained capacities. As a result, UNICEF developed an approach to CD programming, which is applicable in fragile settings through a lighter, simpler and outcome-oriented process to achieve very specific humanitarian Benchmarks in a short period of time.

Perhaps most importantly, the CD for CCC approach is outcome oriented, which means the focus is on the specific number of children benefitting from services, rather than the number of trained or skilled professionals. For the outcome to be tangibly monitored, UNICEF together with national counterparts prioritizes distinct Benchmarks to be met in a relatively short period of time (3 months – 1 year) and other Benchmarks for long-term process. Then, UNICEF and national actors conduct a Rapid Capacity Assessment for these specific Benchmarks, in which existing versus desired capacities are identified (ensuring the development of existing systems wherever possible). Finally, UNICEF with national partners develop a Capacity Development Plan that addresses technical capacities on individual level and organizational capacities on institutional level (developing only technical capacities such as trained teachers, without supporting the organizational capacities - safe buildings, textbooks, blackboards etc will not by itself provide the children with quality education). The CD

47

To assist countries programmes to adopt this approach, UNICEF provided resource intensive technical support, which entails a dedicated “CD for CCC Specialist” working with each country for 1 – 2 years to firstly facilitate the articulation of a national outcome and CD Benchmarks. Then, the CD Specialist conducts the Capacity Assessment and supports national partners to develop the CD Plan with immediate implementation structures for the Plan. Finally, support for the implementation and documentation of the CD Plan is provided in real-time so that upcoming challenges are addressed immediately. The process ensures that lessons from other countries are shared, and there is a constant focus on knowledge transfer between countries and regions through UNICEFs regional offices.

For example, In Kenya, the outcome was identified by the Ministry of Water and Irrigation and more than 15 NGOs and CBOs, to be: ‘Water and Environmental Sanitation Coordination effectively coordinates water, sanitation and hygiene promotion interventions of its members in order to ensure that 80% of emergency affected populations have access to basic water, sanitation and hygiene services with an initial focus on 6 priority districts in Turkana county as a pilot model for sub-national WASH coordination. The coordination will be guided by the following: 1) real time mapping of WESCOORD coverage, 2) minimum WASH standards, 3) promotion of programming that supports DRR and community resilience and 4) conflict sensitive programming.’ The four points listed above were the main outputs in the CD plan, each has a specific capacity development input. Due to their specificity and concreteness combined with the fact that they focus on a well-

Chapter 6: Prioritising UN support to core public administration functions

138. As argued in Chapter 3, one of the main recommendations of this review is that the UN enhances its focus on, and capacity to, support core public administration in the earliest days after conflict; core PA functions underpin much of the wider peace and state-building process, such as rule of law and service delivery, and are a key component of ensuring national ownership in the longer-term. This chapter lays out in more detail how the UN could achieve this.

6.1 Develop UN-wide policy on support to CPAF

139. As this review demonstrates, support for CPAF is complex and difficult. However, this review also notes that whilst critical to the effectiveness and sustainability of UN objectives and fundamental to the principle of national ownership, it is not a sector or defined area of UN cooperation in itself. As a result, whilst work on CPAF in post-conflict contexts is undertaken by a range of UN actors, and others, notably the World Bank, this happens without an agreed framework for collaboration, without a mandated lead agency, and without agreed and durable mechanisms for coordination.

140. This means the UN tends to regard CPAF as instrumental in support of respective mandates, but not as an end in itself; from a peacekeeping perspective, CPAF is necessary for the restoration and extension of state authority, from a humanitarian perspective CPAF is necessary for an early recovery process that nurtures national ownership, and from a development perspective CPAF is necessary to move beyond fragility towards the achievement of the MDGs.

141. However, without integrated coordination, planning or implementation mechanisms support for CPAF is often fragmented and not sufficiently prioritised in the immediate aftermath of conflict. In many of the cases reviewed for this study, consistent and coherent support to the development, execution and review of state policy and functioning was neglected until major development financing and operations began several years after the ending of a conflict, and then were managed as an agency specific project rather than a UN programme.

142. The case studies have highlighted where early intervention on CPAF paid major dividends to fulfilment of UN mandates. The case of integrated UN support to local government recovery through County Support Teams and the Governance and Economic Management Programme in Liberia, for example, or the immediate interventions in Timor and Afghanistan supporting the setting up of basic pay scales and management systems for

48

Box xx County Support Teams in Liberia

In support of the Government of Liberia’s recovery efforts, the United Nations (UN) created an integrated mechanism to strengthen the capacity of local administration, joining the collective capacities, knowledge, expertise and resources of the UN’s peace-keeping, humanitarian and development arms.

The County Support Teams (CSTs) in each county were established to ensure a coherent and consolidated UN approach to addressing county challenges, supporting Government and building capacity of government institutions.

To further support these teams with enhancing the capacity of the weak local administration, the UN created the CST project, which is coordinated by UNDP and works through UNMIL Civil Affairs staff in the 15 counties. Working closely with other UN agencies, the project focuses on:

Restoring functionality of administrative buildings and providing other logistical support and;

Developing capacity of county officials; and

Strengthening data/information management in the counties.

The CST aligns itself to the objectives and plans of the Government and puts national ownership squarely at

the civil service, highlight the importance of safeguarding and rebuilding key civil systems and capacities early on.

143. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that no operational UN agency has a mandated responsibility to ensure that support to CPAF is provided in the immediate aftermath of conflict, nor do frameworks for integrated support to CPAF exist.109 This review recommends that at the level of the Policy Committee, a UN policy framework on support to CPAF in post-conflict environments is articulated, with country-level implementation entrusted to the RC/HC.

144. Given the importance and nature of support to CPAF, an unusually high degree of cross-UN discipline is required in terms of ensuring learning, policy and coordination. Ensuring effective implementation of this policy will require establishing a leading institution or multi-agency mechanism, within the system.

145. The report of the Secretary General on ‘Civilian Capacity in the aftermath of conflict’, has requested ‘the inter-agency working group on capacity-development, chaired by the United Nations Development Programme, (UNDP), to develop, by 2012, core principles and guidelines for better using and developing national capacity in post-conflict contexts, as well as plans for developing concrete tools to equip field teams to conduct capacity assessments, design strategies and monitor results.’110 109 Chapter 1 highlighted that the policy position lacks clarity due to the wide range and ambiguity of language used to describe public administration throughout the UN. The absence of common terminology, principles and guidance serves to weakens focus and de-prioritise CPAF. Categorising state functions is far from straight- forward, but an improvement on the current situation is central to meeting demands for the UN to improve performance in capacity development and institution building. ‘In general, the United Nations have to reconsider their peacekeeping approach and shift from an originally military undertaking to a more administrative approach. The future peacekeepers will need to have the profile of public administrators, accountants and lawyers rather than that of soldiers’. Muharemmi (2003).110 UN civilian capacity in the aftermath of conflict: Report of the Secretary-General, August 2011, A/66/311–S/2011/527, pp. 5.

49

146. UNDP is further recommended within the Senior Advisory Group’s Independent Report on Civilian Capacity on the Aftermath of Conflict,111 as the lead agency for the core government functionality pillar, with the World Bank leading specifically on ‘Public Administration Reform. This review recommends that a UN Global Focal Point on support to CPAF should be agreed as soon as possible through the Civilian Capacity Steering Group and Civilian Capacities implementation process. This review recommends that the framework for the global focal point, including identification of existing capacities, consolidation of best practice and guidance, confirmation of key areas of support, and responsibilities be agreed between UN system agencies and the BWI.

6.2 Bring a ‘state-building’ framework into the UN’s approach

147. In the context of the International Dialogue for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding, the G7+ has proposed ‘a new deal to deliver international assistance to fragile states which generates results that are aligned with peacebuilding and statebuilding objectives, is more transparent, flexible and effective, and strengthens (rather than duplicates) national and local capacities and institutions.’112

148. The UN’s wider role in peace-building and state-building is beyond the remit of this review.113 However, wider UN policy and approaches here impact directly on support to CPAF. Although much progress has been made in filling the ‘statebuilding gap’ there are important lacunae in the institutional and policy landscape. There are many reasons why these lacunae (in the form of unmet needs and unresolved complexities) continue to exist, but two of them stand out as particularly serious within the UN system:

Both within the UN, and in the relationship between the UN system and the Bretton Woods Institutions, there is insufficient clarity on the mandates and on the division of labour with respect to support for conflict-affected and fragile states; and

Within the UN itself, operational and practical obstacles stand in the way of closer and more seamless inter-agency collaboration, because the institutions involved have, in the words of the UN Secretary-General, ‘different mandates, guiding

111 ‘Civilian capacity in the aftermath of conflict - Independent report of the Senior Advisory Group’, February 2011 – document A/65/747–S/2011/85.112 See the Monrovia road map agreed at the second International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding, 15-16 June 2011, available at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/23/24/48345560.pdf.113 Alongside the gradual evolution of UN knowledge and support to PA in recent years, a rich and new understanding is emerging about fragile and conflict-affected contexts, in particular the centrality of the state-citizens relationship and the social contract. It includes seminal work and contributions by the OECD/DAC, the World Bank, the G7+ and many academic institutions and think tanks. The literature on this issue is rapidly accumulating, but what these many new insights mean in practice and what impact they have for the UN System’s current practice (for example, for planning, anti-corruption, local governance) has not yet been fully analysed and digested. In particular, there is tension between the UN’s norm-setting role and the reality of working in post-conflict situations.

50

principles, governance structures and financing arrangements — and different cultures and notions of how things should be done.’ 114

149. The UN’s support to CPAF highlights again that it will not be possible to make significant progress towards a more coherent and effective UN system response to the pressing needs of conflict-affected and fragile states unless these two sets of issues are addressed in a concerted manner.

150. For the purpose of aligning the UN System’s overall policies and approaches, and integrating immediate responses in the aftermath of conflict, to longer-term developmental responses, it is recommended that the UN system develop a broader concept and architecture for state-building, acknowledging the growing demand for UN support to fragile states in this area.115 The state-building concept which is in widespread use today is explicitly an endogenous process, i.e. a country-led and country-owned effort aimed at strengthening, on their own terms, national leadership and national capacity in the development process.

151. The acceptability of state-building as a necessary and legitimate goal in fragile environments was clearly demonstrated at the 2011 High-Level Aid Effectiveness Forum in Bhusan, where (a) the New Deal was endorsed by 32 UN member states and five international organizations (including the UNDG and the World Bank), and (b) the specific mention of the New Deal’s “Peace-building and State-building Goals” was approved by all the 160 participating countries.

6.3 Improve planning for CPAF in UN operations and mandates

152. The role of UN missions in support to public administration is evolving, however, in general UN missions are getting more responsibilities in this area.116 The widest-ranging responsibilities under this review have been assigned to the UN missions in Kosovo and Timor-Leste. All other field missions play a supportive role in administrative development with mandates focussing on capacity-building of state institutions to address causes of conflict, on more generally on measures to ‘increase efforts to promote good governance’, usually combined with or after assisting with the extension of state authority (see Sierra Leone, Liberia, Burundi). In Guinea-Bissau, the focus was on capacity-building of national institutions to maintain constitutional order. In Haiti, UNSMIH was the first mission with a mandate related to institution-building, supporting the Secretary General’s role in the

114 The Secretary-General’s report on “Peacebuilding in the immediate aftermath of conflict”, June 2009, document A/63/881 – S/2009/304, paragraph 24.115 This view was forcefully articulated in June 2009 by Lakhdar Brahimi : ‘the concept of state-building is becoming more and more accepted within the international community and is actually far more apt as a description of exactly what it is that we should be trying to do in post-conflict countries – building effective systems and institutions of government. Indeed, acceptance of state-building as a generic term to describe our activities will help to concentrate international support on those very activities’, speech on “State Building in Crisis and Post-Conflict Countries” at the “7th Global Forum on Reinventing Government” in Vienna, June 2009.116 See Annex ? for a comprehensive analysis of relevant mandates and language of CPAF

51

Box 3. Conflict Analysis in Guinea Bissau

In 2006, and on the invitation of UNIOGBIS, Interpeace established the Voz di Paz Program to carry out country-wide consultations on the root-causes of conflict. Between 2008-2009, Voz di Paz conducted nationwide consultations with over 6,000 Bissau-Guineans including, for the first time, members of the military and the police, who were identified by the process as embedded at the heart of

“coordination of activities by the United Nations system to promote institution-building”. MINUSTAH was mandated to assist the Transitional Government in extending state authority, then to assist the government of Haiti in strengthening state institutions. References specifically to support governance on the local level can be found mostly for UNAMA and for MINUSTAH, which is mandated to support the strengthening of State institutions “especially outside Port-au-Prince”, “at all levels” or to undertake capacity building “at the national and local level”.

153. Given the fact that no one UN agency possesses all the expertise, funding and manoeuvrability necessary to address the wide spectrum of post-conflict challenges, it is important to have a mechanism that facilitates (a) the articulation of context-specific, achievable, and system-wide objectives for each post-conflict situation and (b) the incorporation of these objectives into an integrated planning framework which encompasses both the UN mission and the UN Country Team agencies. Progress was made in that direction by the adoption in 2006 of the UN Integrated Mission Planning Process (IMPP) Guidelines,117 which were supplemented in 2008 by the introduction of the Integrated Strategic Framework (ISF) applicable to conflict-affected countries with both a UN Mission and a UNCT presence.118

154. At present, the ISF is the only common UN framework that seeks at the strategic level to address and plan ‘peace consolidation’ for the entire UN system. It is designed to articulate -- based on the UN system’s current analyses and consultation processes -- a shared strategic vision, which can and will vary in depth as well as in areas covered. The ISF is therefore a particularly important planning tool for UN support in substantive areas that require a high level of cross-agency cooperation and coordination. Accordingly, the review recommends that statebuilding/CPAF support be given their rightful place in the UN system’s main planning and prioritization processes (incl. the ISF and IMPP), and that the in-country UN leadership be provided with the required capacity and expertise to make that happen.

155. As a corollary to a sharper focus on statebuilding/CPAF in the country-level planning context, efforts must also be undertaken in New York to ensure that staff in DPA’s Security Council Affairs Division (SCAD) - when initially drafting and when later revising mission mandates -- have ready access to expert knowledge and advice on the essential role of statebuilding/CPAF in the overall peacebuilding process and on the UN System’s emerging policy and growing experience on these issues.

6.4 Improve analysis for planning and programming

156. Chapter 3 argues that the UN as a whole, i.e. not just the missions, needs to be able to conduct and apply a wider

117 ‘United Nations Integrated Missions Planning Process (IMPP) Guidelines’ endorsed by the Secretary-General in June 2006 (Decision 2006/26)118 Detailed instructions on the purpose and content of the ISF are found in paras. 24-54 of the ‘IMPP Guidelines : Role of the Field - Integrated Planning for UN Field Presences’, endorsed by the Secretary-General in January 2010

52

Box 3. Conflict Analysis in Guinea Bissau

In 2006, and on the invitation of UNIOGBIS, Interpeace established the Voz di Paz Program to carry out country-wide consultations on the root-causes of conflict. Between 2008-2009, Voz di Paz conducted nationwide consultations with over 6,000 Bissau-Guineans including, for the first time, members of the military and the police, who were identified by the process as embedded at the heart of

range of political and institutional analysis. This is not an optional extra, but essential for programming and the more advisory role the UN should be playing in support of PA reform within the context of the political settlement outlined above. While the review found many examples of good practice, overall, there are some gaps in the current analytic approach where new tools are needed, where existing tools should be more consistently applied, and where analysis needs to be better shared within the UN during both planning and programming processes.

157. In terms of content conflict analysis is not new to the UN, especially the missions, and is seen in varying guises. Particularly good practice models observed by the review team included; a) a conflict analysis prepared in partnership with Voz di Paz, a local entity in Guinea Bissau (see box xx); b) the ‘Early Warning’ reports series produced jointly by UNDP and a local think-tank in Kosovo (see paragraph 84 above);119 and c) the 2006 Secretary General’s Report on Timor-Leste to the Security Council, on the underlying causes of Timor-Leste’s 2006 crisis. Conflict analysis in Sierra Leone identified conflict drivers - i.e. corruption, patronage and ineffective/weak public institutions - that were then directly accounted for in UN and UN agency mission statements.120

158. However, UN support to PA, especially its role in institutionalising and expressing the political settlement, requires an extension of current practice. In particular, better analysis is needed on the links between the political process and state institutions.121

Critical factors in a political economy analysis relevant to support to PA would include identifying who the key actors are and how the interests of key actors interact with or influence public administrative and local governance arrangements - employment in state institutions, for example, or the extent of delegation of powers to the local level.122 Of particular interest for PA are questions around which processes promote consensus and how decisions are made, as these point to how rule-based public authority might emerge.

159. The production of analysis, conflict and political economy analysis should be dynamic, it is not a one-off task, and analysis should be conducted regularly to track changes over time. This will help UN staff both in the missions and in the agencies understand how or what has caused different interests or incentives to come together or split apart. As argued in Chapter 3, the key task in supporting core public administration functions in the immediate aftermath of conflict is not to initiate reform of whole systems, but to rapidly identify opportunities or bottlenecks in re-establishing basic systems functionality. The analysis need not be highly elaborate, ‘quick and dirty’ reviews that identify interests and divisions and their links to institutions are sufficient. This type of analysis will also assist relevant UN staff to be flexible, a key recommendation for all work in post-conflict countries, and to adjust their interventions to context. These analyses, outlining the political settlement, are crucial for the UN Country Team’s planning, specifically for the formulation of the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) and the respective agencies Country Programme Action Plans (CPAP). It is important to avoid a 119 Institute for Development Research “Riinvest” http://www.riinvestinstitute.org/?gjuha=en120 Ref needed121 A good example would be…..122 Structural dimensions – for example, important historical events or legacies, dynamics of participation (i.e. who is included or excluded), interests groups, available resources (human, physical and financial)– are all also important. The role of donors, the UN’s own role, contribution and political economy all need to be thought of as well.

53

burdensome approach to analysis in which it becomes an obstacle to action or programming, but at the same time, adequate time should dedicated to enabling staff or consultants to deliver these assessments and diagnostics as part of program and project development. The UN should develop a protocol for the rapid collection of basic data and capacity assessment of public administration, ideally with the involvement of the World Bank, the IMF and INCAF.123

160. In respect of the dissemination of analysis, the political analysis currently done within DPKO/DPA is of high quality, given the fact that it draws on a broad spectrum of insights from experienced mission analysts with both civilian and military background and often also from Civil Affairs staff dispersed at the local level. However, DPKO/DPA’s political analysis tends to be written largely for internal purposes (e.g. for the SRSG and for ‘Code Cable’ use), and it is too rarely shared in a strategic and systematic manner with UN agencies in the field. Joint DPKO/DPA and UN agency analysis is key for support to PA to ensure the institutional aspects are covered. This will not happen by direction but requires appropriate mechanisms and incentives for collaboration. The UN needs to improve sharing analysis between the mission and the UNCT. The RC’s office would seem to be the logical home to coordinate such functions, but UN agencies should also be challenged to integrate these diagnostics into program and project formulation and implementation. So far as possible, emphasis should be given to producing this work in partnership with local entities – again, both the Kosovo and Guinea Bissau experiences provide good examples. The Secretariat and UNDG should produce joint guidance on the content, production and distribution of UN political and institutional analysis at the country level and how to apply these to the relevant planning processes.124

161. The analysis conducted should start with the collection of basic information. There is often a simple dearth of accurate basic data about public administration available to the international community: numbers and type of employees, state-owned enterprises, location of offices, etc. There are some examples of good practice here, such as the ‘Guide to Government’ done in Afghanistan by the World Bank and AREU’ (see box xx).125 The UN should as standard practice compile and publish basic data on, and a description of, public administration in all conflict-affected countries, where it is present, and ensure that this is made widely accessible to the international community. As with the analysis, this information collection does not need to cover all elements of the administrative structure but should at least enable the UNCT, and wider donor community, to acquire a basic understanding of the current system and dynamics for use in the planning and programming of the UNCT.

162. With a longer timeframe, a more detailed assessment of wider system reforms and how these might improve or expand the political settlement should also be done. Medium-term system assessments should not be done at the expense of identifying and responding

123 There is a wide literature on capacity assessment and assessment of public administration. None of it though has been adapted to the specific demands of post-conflict public administration.124 There are important steps underway to projects in the UN system tasked specifically with making improvements to the ways and means by which we go about this kind of analysis. For example, UNDP is developing a Guidance Note for Institutional and Contextual Analysis (ICA), and already has a CDA, which will soon be further elaborated (more?)] and the aim of our work here is not to reproduce that work or those developments. 125 http://www.areu.org.af/ResearchProjectDetails.aspx?contentid=2&ParentId=2&ResearchProjectId=1&Lang=en-US

54

Box xx: ‘A Guide to Government in Afghanistan’

The guide has three objectives: i) it seeks to provide newcomers to the administrative and political scene in Afghanistan with a basic guide to the structures and processes of government; ii) it intends to provide reformers with some understanding of how to work “with the grain” of the existing institutional arrangements; and iii) it seeks to pay tribute to the remarkable people who have kept the system running and who are now reforming it. In pursuing these objectives, the guide attempts to set out the underlying strengths of the public sector, describing the evolution of the Afghan state, the current political context, and the administrative and organisational

to immediate needs. The results of this assessment should then be fed into the wider planning processes.

163. There are multiple planning tools within the UN system.; specifically within the context of post-crisis, this includes Post Conflict Needs Assessments and Transitional Results Frameworks, Integrated Mission Planning Processes and the UNDAF (as above).

6.6 Enhance the role of CPAF in the PCNA process

164. The Post-Conflict Needs Assessment (PCNA) mechanism is a well-tested and codified process endorsed and supported by a broad multi-agency coalition which brings together the UN System (represented in this context by the UN Development Group and DOCO), the World Bank, the European Commission, the AfDB and the AsDB. The PCNA has evolved over a period of almost a decade, starting in the early 2000s. The PCNA methodology has been applied, in various permutations, in over ten post-conflict situations.126

165. During the first generation of PCNAs, issues related to statebuilding and public administration were typically addressed within the larger context of governance and capacity-building, not as a topic of special systemic importance or particular urgency. A first step towards heightened CPAF-awareness was taken in the wake of the joint PCNA review in 2006, when a new joint guidance note was issued on integrated recovery planning entitled “Post Conflict Needs Assessment and Transitional Results Frameworks”.127 It incorporated relevant recommendations of the joint review (especially taken from its Annex V entitled “State functions and stabilization”)128 and stressed inter alia that state-building is a central objective of recovery planning, because post-conflict countries typically have limited institutional capacity, hampering their ability to implement needed actions. The PCNA guidance note recommended that preliminary analysis of national capacities should be part of the pre-assessment work. It advised that capacity considerations should be built into all clusters during the assessment process.

166. In 2010, the UN, the WB and the EU jointly developed a practical tool kit on how to include capacity assessment considerations in the prioritization of needs in the PCNA.129 It stresses that recovery plans should address not only what types of services should be provided, but also who should provide them. It emphasized that during the initial transitional years the focus may primarily be on ensuring broad national ownership and early capacity building in core governance functions. Once a democratically elected government is in place, such efforts will need to be accompanied by an expanded and deepened effort to increase the capacity of the state to both coordinate and deliver services.

126 For details on the history of PCNAs, see UNDG’s website feature on “ Past and Current Country Experiences”, http://pcna.undg.org/index.php?option=com_docman&Itemid=16127 http://www.undg.org/docs/7818/Joint-Guidance-Note-for-PCNAs-and-TRFs.doc 128 Annex V on “Statebuilding” : http://pcna.undg.org/index.php?option=com_docman&Itemid=14129 The PCNA Capacity Assessment Tool : http://pcna.undg.org/index.php?option=com_docman&Itemid=4

55

Box xx: ‘A Guide to Government in Afghanistan’

The guide has three objectives: i) it seeks to provide newcomers to the administrative and political scene in Afghanistan with a basic guide to the structures and processes of government; ii) it intends to provide reformers with some understanding of how to work “with the grain” of the existing institutional arrangements; and iii) it seeks to pay tribute to the remarkable people who have kept the system running and who are now reforming it. In pursuing these objectives, the guide attempts to set out the underlying strengths of the public sector, describing the evolution of the Afghan state, the current political context, and the administrative and organisational

167. However, from a CPAF-perspective, the PCNA approach has important drawbacks : (a) the PCNA covers a broad multi-sectoral spectrum of post-conflict requirements in which the specific CPAF tends to be crowded out or overshadowed by more compelling service delivery needs; (b) even after the addition of the capacity development toolkit, the PCNA methodology still offers very little specific guidance on how to assess CPAF needs and formulate CPAF support initiatives; and (c) it often takes several months to plan and deploy a full PCNA mission and additional weeks, if not months, to synthesize and publish its findings.

168. These drawbacks are important, but given the many institutional advantages offered by the broad institutional platform of the PCNA and the larger context of post-conflict analysis which it presents, the review concludes that the PCNA remains the best available entry point for a heightened focus on CPAF concerns in the immediate aftermath of conflict, especially if the identified weaknesses can be remedied. Towards that end, the review recommends that UNDP take the lead, in close cooperation with the World Bank and with DOCO, in the development of a distinct module within the PCNA with direct focus on the special post-conflict CPAF needs. Such a module would be most useful, if divided into two components:

A fast-track CPAF assessment carried out during the first few weeks of the post-conflict period, and

A more in-depth CPAF assessment as an integral part of a larger multi-sectoral PCNA assessment.

169. This two-tier approach is suggested especially for two reasons : (a) some post-conflict situations do not lend themselves easily to the standard PCNA approach, but nonetheless have pressing CPAF-related dimensions (e.g. Libya in late 2011 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime), (b) since many of the sectors covered in a full-fledged PCNA process depend on a minimum level of functionality in core government functions, it is a distinct advantage for the larger PCNA exercise to have advance feedback of data and diagnostics from a fast-track CPAF assessment of the ‘wiring and the plumbing’ of the Government.

6.7 Deepen the UN’s human resource base on CPAF

170. The current expertise in the UN on support for CPAF post-conflict is thin given its importance to wider peace and state-building, especially at HQ but also at regional levels. While there are a number of governance advisors and political and civil affairs officers spread through the system, both at HQ and in missions/agencies, there are few with specific CPAF expertise, and they are mainly found in UNDP and in UN DESA. Most governance advisors or political and civil affairs officers do not have (or claim to have) the professional skills needed for effective support to CPAF. The UN needs better access to the ‘plumbers and electricians’ of CPAF, not so much the architects of wider reforms. There is expertise in projects at the country level, but this is dependent on project funding; it does not constitute a permanent resource able to ensure a predictable response to CPAF in crisis countries in

56

terms of planning, programming , monitoring, knowledge sharing and policy development. This review confirms the findings in the CivCap report that that overall UN capacity in terms of core PA functionality is insufficient.130

171. To remedy this situation and ensure reliable technical skills, two solutions need to be developed: (1) improving the rosters on CPAF to ensure a pool of reliable, highly qualified experts in CPAF; and (2) strengthen the UN’s internal capacity to ensure that there is a minimal pool of experts available from within the system.

6.8 Invest in learning and training on CPAF

172. The UN’s capacity to deliver appropriate support to CPAF post-conflict depends greatly on access to high-quality know-how and diagnostic tools.131 Within the UN itself, there is a wide range of relevant knowledge resources covering various dimensions of the issues being examined here, but no single repository of knowledge that provides an intellectually cohesive or operationally useful overview of relevant know-how which UN practitioners, whether at headquarters or in field postings, need to have (another manifestation of the relative neglect of CPAF). To acquire a comprehensive overview of all issues relevant to the UNs role in this field, a practitioner would need to search more than a dozen UN-hosted websites (for details, see Annex ??).

173. It is recommended that a UN-wide “Knowledge and Learning Portal” be established which can serve as a permanent home for knowledge development and learning specifically on PA in post-conflict settings. It would be launched for the following purposes:

As a repository/library of relevant source material/documentation on post-conflict PA

and CPAF;

As a learning platform in support to orientation/training on post-conflict PA/CPAF; and

As the hub for an electronic Community of Practice on post-conflict PA/CPAF.

174. The ownership and management arrangements for such a portal must be well chosen from the start to ensure that it is (a) UN-wide, (b) comprehensive, (c) interactive, and (d) sustainable. It cannot be the product and property of just one agency; it will, for practical reasons, have to be hosted by one agency, it should be managed and populated through a collaborative mechanism, e.g. a committee of co-sponsoring agencies drawn from the membership of the UN Working Group on Public Administration in New York. At a minimum,

130 Civcap p 20 35b.131 See Annexe ?? for some resources on wider peace and state-building

57

it would be advisable to ensure that the following UN agencies are represented in a core group of portal co-sponsors: DPA, DPKO/DFS, PBSO, UNDESA, UN-DOCO, UNICEF, and UNDP.

175. This review has considered a range of options for the hosting and management of such a portal and has concluded that there is a strong rationale for UNDP to take on the role:

(a) UNDP’s inter-agency involvement in this sector goes back to a Policy Committee decision taken in September 2006, designating UNDP as the chair of a working group on “Public Administration, Local Governance, Financial Transparency and Accountability” – the precursor to today’s Working Group on Public Administration, of which UNDP also serves as chair;

(b) UNDP was proposed in the Civilian Capacity Review as the “global service provider” for the cluster on core government functionalities, and as lead agency for four of the eight sub-clusters envisaged within that cluster; and

(c) UNDP has specialized entities for three of the key sub-disciplines of CPAF relevance, i.e. BCPR (crisis prevention and recovery, and crisis governance), BDP/DGG (public administration and local governance), and BDP/CDG (capacity development). Moreover, UNDP is closely affiliated with the UN’s specialized entity on public finance for local development, i.e. the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).

176. On that basis, UNDP is comparatively well equipped to offer a cohesive solution that brings together and integrates “under one roof” the broad spectrum of expertise required in a PA portal.

177. The proposed portal will also have to be designed to support and facilitate any learning and orientation activities which the participating UN agencies decide to arrange for relevant categories of their staff. It will have a light staff footprint, but be extensively networked with knowledge cells in all the participating agencies and with the major external sources of expertise on this subject. A list of relevant UN staff categories and suggestions for their learning needs on CPAF is found at Annex xx.

6.9 Increase and speed up funding for CPAF

6.9.1 The ‘Early Recovery’ Funding Window

178. The largest and most rapidly available source of funds in the immediate aftermath of conflict is usually humanitarian aid, mobilized through the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) by means of Flash Appeals and Humanitarian Action Plans (HAPs). Prior to the mid-2000s, such funding – raised primarily to save lives and reduce human suffering - was highly

58

unlikely to be allocated for any CPAF-related initiatives, given their longer-term time horizon and their institution building objectives.

179. Subsequently, the system-wide acceptance of the Early Recovery perspective -- ‘guided by development principles’ and encompassing a range of ‘governance recovery’ measures – has paved the way for the legitimate inclusion of CPAF-related objectives through early recovery mechanisms. So far, the Early Recovery components in CAPs and HAPs for post-conflict have been dominated by proposals aimed at economic recovery, while limited attention has been paid in this context to the need for ‘governance recovery’. But the important contribution of CPAF to the overall post-conflict recovery process is gradually gaining traction, and as a result eligible CPAF-related proposals are beginning to appear in UN humanitarian assistance efforts -- as clearly evidenced in some recent ‘early recovery’ programmes described in UNDP’s ‘Signature Products for Crisis Response’ and in UNICEF’s ‘Capacity Development for Humanitarian Response’ initiative. The following two examples will serve to illustrate the relevance of the ‘early recovery’ platform to CPAF support :

Support for a country-led and country-owned resource mobilization and aid coordination function at the earliest possible point in the recovery process, aimed at (a) strengthening the institutional capacity of the national agency/ies overseeing international humanitarian assistance, and (b) ensuring that external aid flows -- sooner rather than later - are properly recorded by and factored into the regular national resource planning process.132

Support for increased local government involvement in planning and implementing humanitarian aid activities at the local level, aimed at ensuring (a) that such aid is carried out in a country-led and country-owned manner, and (b) that some of the political credit for such assistance can be and is effectively attributed to the local authorities to reinforce their output legitimacy.

180. Early recovery mechanisms provide an important entry point for a limited number of activities needed to restore core government functionalities in the immediate aftermath of conflict. It is an important source nonetheless for a number of reasons : (a) it promotes country-led and country-owned recovery processes, based on the early restoration of basic host government functionality; (b) it is likely to be available at the earliest stage of the post-conflict period, often even before a formal peace process has been completed; (c)

132 An early real-life example of such an initiative: A UNDP-sponsored proposal was included in the January 2008 Flash Appeal for Kenya, following the outbreak of election-related violence. The project was entitled “Enhancing the emergency response capacities of the Kenyan authorities”. Budget : US$ 500,000. Objective : Government agencies capable of coordinating the emergency response and rapidly resuming their functions for longer-term development of the areas affected. Partners : Government of Kenya National Disaster Operations Centre, and the Government’s Committee on Reconciliation, UN agencies and NGOs. Beneficiaries : 250,000 displaced persons and residential populations of more than one million.

59

reinforcing local leadership and leveraging local knowledge in a collaborative and inclusive manner is an important way (i) to ensure a more effective humanitarian response and more resilient development in the longer term, and (ii) to avoid national and local capacity being undermined by humanitarian actors in the urgency to respond and the tight spending timeframes for humanitarian funds.

181. Against this background, this review recommends that an inter-agency dialogue be initiated soon, particularly involving the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator/OCHA and UNDP, aimed at ensuring (a) that in the future relevant UN practitioners in the field will have at their disposal a certain number of ‘technical templates’ for such CPAF-relevant ‘early recovery’ assistance that are pre-accepted as eligible for funding from humanitarian assistance sources, and (b) that ‘governance’ and CPAF concerns are not only included in the ‘early recovery’ segments of future CAPs and HAPs, but also backed up by proposals that are well justified and well designed.

6.9.2 CPAF Needs Assessment in the Immediate Aftermath of Conflict

182. One of the first CPAF-related challenge facing the UN system’s senior leadership at the country level in the immediate aftermath of conflict is to arrange for a rapid diagnostic assessment of ‘the state of the state’ so as to be able to determine how much of the country’s existing public administration capacity has remained intact, and to what extent its key CPAF-relevant institutions are performing their basic functions effectively under the prevailing conditions.

183. This diagnostic assessment should go hand in hand with the formulation of a fast-track assistance programme designed to safeguard pre-existing CPAF capacity and to restore the CPAF functionality that was diminished or lost during the conflict. Such a restoration programme would need to start without delay and focus on what is likely to produce concrete results within the first 24 months, while at the same time pave the way for a prolonged and gradual institution-building process (PAR) that is likely to last a decade or more.

184. As discussed in section 6.6 above, the UN system has an elaborate and time-tested mechanism for Post-Conflict Needs Assessments (PCNAs) within the framework of which it is possible to accomplish the dual task of undertaking both (a) a fast-track CPAF assessment during the first few weeks of the post-conflict period, and (b) a more in-depth CPAF assessment as part of a larger and multi-sectoral PCNA.

185. The larger PCNA process has well-established funding arrangements, with each participating agency normally covering its own costs. But in the interest of speed and inclusiveness, this review recommends that the fast-track CPAF assessment be carried out through a pre-funded multi-agency mechanism, based on a joint project which could, for instance, be managed by UNDP (drawing on its TRAC-III resources) and include cost-sharing from interested bilaterals. In this way, no delays will be caused by

60

funding issues, and it will be possible at short notice to include some UN agencies that are particularly relevant for the CPAF agenda, but may not have funding readily available for this purpose (e.g. UN DESA, UN Habitat, UNCDF).

186. These two CPAF assessment exercises will need to be carefully codified in advance, based on (a) a solid rationale, (b) a detailed description of the preparatory work to be undertaken ahead of each new CPAF assessment mission, and (c) generic terms of reference laying out the parameters of the tasks to be accomplished in the course of the mission. Existing PCNA guidelines and protocols will be drawn upon for inspiration in the codification process.

187. The UN agency participation in each rapid CPAF assessment will be context-specific and may thus change from case to case. But it is assumed that at least DPKO, PBSO and UNDP will participate in most cases. Considering the central role which the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have increasingly played over the years in post-conflict recovery efforts, particularly related to macro-economic recovery, public financial management, and public service reform, there are evident advantages in having both Bretton Woods Institutions (BWI) included in these efforts as well. It is therefore recommended that current discussions with the World Bank and IMF on post-conflict issues be expanded to include their joint participation or closely synchronized involvement in the proposed CPAF assessments, so that they become an integral part of any future inter-agency plan or protocol guiding international support for post-conflict CPAF.

188. Once the initial CPAF assessment has taken place and the concerned country’s most immediate CPAF support needs have been determined, the attention of the senior UN leadership at the field level will turn to resource mobilization for the longer haul.

6.9.3 Drawing on Transitional and Developmental Financing for CPAF Support

189. The existing multilateral aid architecture offers a range of financing options for CPAF support during the first two years after the end of a conflict. They fall broadly within two distinct categories : (a) those that are ‘developmental’ in origin and accordingly have a prolonged time horizon, and (b) those that are conceived in a more explicit post-conflict or peacebuilding perspective and therefore have a shorter and more ‘transitional’ time horizon.133 One of the main CPAF challenges for the UN System at this time is to determine how to optimize its efforts to restore core government functionality, drawing on both transitional and developmental funding at its disposal in the most flexible and results-oriented manner.

133 In the context of ‘transition financing’, OECD/DAC defines ‘transition’ as follows : ‘A transition period spans across a broad spectrum of activities along the path out of conflict and toward sustainable development, greater national ownership and increased state capacity. This includes recovery and reconstruction activities that traditionally fall between the humanitarian and development categories, and security-related and peacebuilding activities’. Ref. ‘International Support to Post-Conflict Transition : DAC Guidance on Transition Financing - Key messages’, March 2012 - http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/38/27/49372078.pdf

61

190. CPAF-relevant UN funding sources that are ‘developmental’ in nature are more numerous, given the fact that public administration is an old and familiar development discipline. Among the most relevant UN sources in this category are (a) UNDP’s core funds and its Thematic Trust Funds for, respectively, Democratic Governance and Crisis Prevention and Recovery; (b) UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) resources earmarked for local development, (c) funding made available to UNDESA’s Division for Public Administration and Development Management; and (d) ‘special purpose’ contributions in this sector allocated by bilateral donors to UNDP, UNCDF, UNDESA, and others.

191. The main challenge posed in efforts to attract funding to public administration activities in post-conflict environments from traditional ‘development’ sources has been to substantiate that assistance for public administration purposes is both necessary and feasible in the less-than-stable environments prevailing in the immediate aftermath of conflict. But in the face of growing empirical evidence from institutional self-assessments and academic research, it is now increasingly accepted that statebuilding in general and CPAF in particular are legitimate and central ‘developmental’ objectives for UN support in the midst of the instability and uncertainties prevailing in the immediate aftermath of conflict.

192. Taking into account the fragmented nature of the UN System, and faced with many vestiges of the fragmented aid architecture within the donor community, the Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Report in 2009 made a strong appeal for ‘bold and innovative solutions’ which, -- combined with ‘a higher tolerance of risk’ -- will ‘establish flexible, rapid and predictable funding modalities in countries emerging from conflict’.134 Those objectives are also reflected in an in-depth study, commissioned by the Secretary-General and OECD and published (March 2012) under the title ‘International Support to Post-Conflict Transition: Rethinking Policy, Changing Practice’.135 It is based on extensive consultations internationally and reflects an emerging international consensus on the steps and measures needed today to change funding arrangements and to improve the coherence of the international responses across various policy principles and institutional mandates.

193. The review has examined the full range of suggestions emanating from the OECD/DAC Guidance on Transitional Financing, the New Deal, and the Civilian Capacity Review, in an effort to identify those that – over and above their general System-wide reform objectives -- are most relevant to ensuring increased and speedier funding for UN support to CPAF. On that basis, we wish to highlight the following factors and suggestions:

Closer Inter-agency Collaboration : The DAC Guidance on Transitional Financing emphasize that current financing instruments ‘are fragmented and designed based on institutional mandates, rather than on the objectives to be achieved’. New approaches and funding arrangements will need to ensure not only rapid responses, but also ‘more serious collaboration, joint analysis and willingness to be held collectively accountable to deliver results against agreed objectives’. This can only

134 Peacebuilding Report, para. 77135 ‘International Support to Post-Conflict Transition : Rethinking Policy, Changing Practice’, published as part of OECD/DAC’s Guidelines and Reference Series, March 2012 (91 pp.) – supplemented by a four-page summary entitled ‘International Support to Post-Conflict Transition : DAC Guidance on Transition Financing : Key messages’, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/38/27/49372078.pdf

62

happen if the UN System and others are ready to adopt ‘a collective approach across policy communities’.136 CPAF interventions represent a striking example where ‘a collective approach across policy communities’, i.e. Delivering as One, is critically important.

CPAF Sections in All Compacts: The New Deal Declaration and OECD/DAC advocate the use of transition compacts which constitute ‘light and flexible agreements between national and international partners (…) based on a collective agreement on key priorities and an explicit strategy for how, and from which instruments, im-plementation will be financed. Compacts reduce the risk of strategic failure, improve the focus on results, and provide realistic steps towards stronger national involvement and leadership’ – all essential steps towards more predictable resource flows. On that basis, we recommend that all future transition compacts include a mandatory section on measures needed to ensure effective post-conflict CPAF.

Multi-donor Trust Funds (MDTFs): The Secretary-General’s peacebuilding report stated that ‘when resources are channelled through such funds, they can contribute significantly to predictability and coherence and facilitate alignment by directing funds towards a focused set of agreed priorities. If well-supported, multi-donor trust funds and other pooled funds can be the muscle behind a common strategic approach’.137 Moreover, it is also generally agreed that MDTFs serve to ‘significantly reduce transaction costs for both donors and host governments’.138 However, while CPAF support is important and catalytic within any UN post-conflict intervention, it does not warrant a separate funding window within the UN. Instead, it is recommended that a special CPAF module be included in all future post-conflict MDTFs so as to provide both host governments and donors with a simple and nimble funding source for support in this vital area.

Flexibility to direct capacity towards needs: The Civilian Capacity Review stressed the importance of the UN leadership in the field being able to ‘use resources flexibly’, e.g. by being allowed – with ex post facto justification – to reallocate up to 20% of resources in the budget for civilian personnel.139 In a rapidly evolving mission context, such a mandate would give an SRSG/DSRSG important new options (e.g. by means of Civil Affairs officers) for strengthening basic government functions at short notice.

Comparative advantage in mandate implementation: The CivCap Review stressed the principle of comparative advantage in mandate implementation. In many situations, this implies that the UN makes a deliberate effort to tap into local capacities, when practical and feasible, to solve pressing problems. Beyond that, it also implies that when a UN agency or others (e.g. NGOs) have a comparative advantage in implementing a task mandated by the Security Council, the Head of Mission should be able to direct funds to that actor. Similarly, when a UN Mission and its field

136 ‘DAC Guidance on Transition Financing : Key messages’, p. 1137 The Peacebuilding Report, para. 78138 ‘Transition Financing : Building a Better Response’, published as part of OECD/DAC’s ‘Conflict and Fragility’ series, Paris 2010, p. 16139 ‘Civilian capacity in the aftermath of conflict - Independent report of the Senior Advisory Group’, February 2011 – document A/65/747–S/2011/85, recommendation 14, para. 61

63

personnel have comparative advantage in implementing a mandated task, heads of mission should be able to provide the necessary programmatic funds from assessed contributions for them to do so. This comparative advantage principle is a welcome development, aimed at breaking down counterproductive barriers in the current aid architecture and at promoting the ‘unusually high degree of cross-UN discipline’ which is called for in such complex situations (ref. para. 139 above). The Secretary-General endorsed this principle in his response to the CivCap Review.140 The implications of this policy for the promotion of CPAF are self-evident.

Succession Arrangements : Finally, given the prolonged time horizon required for all support to public administration, and the much shorter time horizon typically applied within existing post-conflict funding windows, deliberate steps must be made to pre-plan an orderly succession of funding arrangements in this sector. The review team recommends, therefore, that the agencies most active in post-conflict CPAF agree to map out and codify a variety of pre-arranged ‘dove-tail’ arrangements, i.e. options aimed at providing a realistic path for CPAF support provided in the immediate aftermath of conflict to be followed by a second (and even third) generation of CPAF assistance which will safeguard the initial progress made and stay the course towards longer-term consolidation of the required CPAF-related institution building and modernization outcomes.141

6.10 Develop co-operation with other organisations

194. The international community’s rapidly growing interest in the essential role of CPAF in the immediate aftermath of conflict has largely been driven by a few multilateral institutions, supported both intellectually and financially by a small number of especially interested bilateral donors. The initial upsurge of interest occurred in the period 2005-2008 spearheaded mostly by the OECD/DAC, the World Bank, and the United Nations. More recently, these three have been joined by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and lastly and perhaps most importantly the G7+ group of fragile and conflict-affected countries. It is essential that the United Nations develop further its engagement with all of them to ensure that the UN system remains able to contribute to as well as benefit from the dynamic on-going learning process in this field. What this implies vis-à-vis each of the other three

140 ‘I shall issue appropriate guidance to heads of field missions and planners to apply the principle of comparative advantage in recommending how to go about discharging a mandate. The use of other United Nations actors, for example, to discharge mandated and budgeted functions for which they are well equipped, can offer practical advantages, including engagement with an entity often present in the country or area before a mission deploys and likely to be present after the mission leaves. Cooperative or joint planning, such as the development of an integrated strategic framework, should help to determine the comparative advantages of United Nations actors in the field. My priority will be to strengthen the ability of United Nations entities to plan, cooperate and work together in critical post-conflict situations’ “Civilian capacity in the aftermath of conflict”, Report of the Secretary-General (document A/66/311–S/2011/527), 19 August 2011141 This can be done in several different contexts, e.g. as part of existing multi-agency planning processes such as the PRSP, the Integrated Strategic Framework (ISF), or the UNDAF – or as part of the multi-stakeholder ‘transition compact’ envisaged in the New Deal Declaration.

64

institutions is spelled out in detail in Annex xx, below we focus on the most important. In brief:

The G7+ The G7+ is clearly a key actor for developing more effective an timely support for CPAF, and it has included CPAF functions as one of its five state-building goals.142 The UN should consult further with the G7+ on this agenda on, for example the post-conflict assessment framework recommended above.

The World Bank The World Bank has widely recognised strengths in PFM issues post-conflict, as well as in other CPAF issues such as human resource management, and has been developing its work on peace and state-building recently most notably through the WDR 2011. The World Bank though needs to work with the UN on many issues, and it was a common issue in the case study countries that work on CPAF needs to be better coordinated between the World Bank and the UN. This review recommends that a working group should be established between the UN and the World Bank to work out the specifics, based on the broader recommendations in this report and the WDR 2011, perhaps under the auspices of the Civ Cap process.

The IMF The IMF until fairly recently has kept to a relatively narrow, though essential, focus on macro- economic issues. However there are three areas where better joint working could be explored with the UN on CPAF issues. First, the rapid CPAF needs assessment being proposed by this review would benefit greatly from being done either jointly by these three institutions or, alternatively, in a coordinated or at least parallel manner that will ensure synergy and multi-disciplinary response to the needs identified, particularly related to public financial management and aid coordination. Second, the availability of quick-disbursing support from IMF’s Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) would serve to jump-start the restoration effort in key processes related to revenue and budget management – and also bring technical assistance needs in this sector to the early attention of all three parties, each of which will have valuable contributions to make in areas of comparative advantage. And third, it would be of major mutual benefit for the UN Mission in general and for the SRSG/DSRSG in particular to remain in close contact with the IMF, especially prior to and during IMF’s periodic Article IV Consultations with the host government. IMF will be able to draw on the UN Mission’s understanding and insights into the political and institutional realities in the country, while the institutional context analysis of the UN Mission will be enriched by the IMF’s fiscal sustainability analysis.

142 Peace and state building Goal 5 “Revenue & Services’ is to “manage revenue and build capacity for accountable and fair service delivery.”

65

Chapter 7: Conclusions and next steps

{TBC}

66

Annex xx Summary of Recommendations

{TBC}

67

Annex xx Inventory of UN-affiliated websites of relevance to public administration and local governance in post-conflict situations

Institution Knowledge Resources and Locations

PBF/PBSO The main Peacebuilding Fund/Peacebuilding Support Office’s website http://www.unpbf.org

DPA The DPA main website’s sections on (a) Peacemaking and Conflict Prevention, and (b) Peacebuilding : http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/undpa/main

DPKO The main DPKO website on “United Nations Peacekeeping” http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/

DPKO/DPET The Peacekeeping Resource Hub managed by DPKO’s Policy, Evaluation and Training Division http://www.peacekeepingbestpractices.unlb.org/PBPS/Pages/Public/Home.aspx

DFS Independent website of the Senior Advisory Group for the “Civilian Capacity Review” hosted by the UN Department of Field Support http://www.civcapreview.org/

UNDG/DOCO

Section on “Crisis and Post Conflict” which includes details on the Post-Conflict Needs Assessment (PCNA) - http://www.undg.org/index.cfm?P=6

UNDP/BCPR The “Conflict Prevention and Recovery Network” managed by the Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Recovery : http://practices.undp.org/cpr/

UNDP/

BDP/DGG

The “Public Administration Reform and Anti-Corruption” section of UNDP’s IntraNet managed by the Bureau of Development Policy’s Democratic Governance Group http://practices.undp.org/pcb/index.cfm?prac=121515&tab=121660&doc=&src=121660

UNDP/

BDP/CDG

“Capacity Development” in UNDP’s IntraNet managed by the Capacity Development Group within the Bureau of Development Policy :http://content.undp.org/go/topics/capacity/

68

UNICEF The “Fragile States” section of the Basic Education and Gender Equality websitehttp://www.unicef.org/education/index_42707.html

UN Women The main UN Women website’s section on “Women, War and Peace”http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/women_war_peace/

UNDESA The UN Public Administration Network (UNPAN) managed by the Division for Public Administration and Development Management : http://www.unpan.org/

UNCDF The UN Capital Development Fund website’s section on local government : http://www.uncdf.org/english/local_development/

Annex xx Note on governance data

There are very few data sets with which cross-country and temporal comparisons can be made on the performance of core public administration functions for the case studies, and those that exist have numerous methodological problems. Below are two complied by the World Bank: firstly a sub-set of the World Governance Indicators, and secondly a sub-set of the CPIA scores.

WGI: Government Effectiveness Indicators

According to the WGI, ‘Government effectiveness captures perceptions of the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government's commitment to such policies.’

69

1996 1998 2000 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 20100

10

20

30

40

50

60

WGI: Government Effectiveness IndicatorsAll Country Comparisons

AFGHANISTANBURUNDIGUINEA-BISSAUKOSOVOLIBERIARWANDASIERRA LEONETIMOR-LESTESubsaharan Africa

Year

Per

cen

tile

Ran

k (

1-1

00

)

IRAI Public Sector Management and Institutions

The IRAI public sector score is made up of sub-scores for: Property Rights & Rule-based Government, Quality of Budget & Financial Management, Efficiency of Revenue Mobilisation, Quality of Public Admin, Transparency, Accountability & Corruption in Public Sector

70

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2.4

2.6

2.8

3.0

3.2

3.4

3.6

3.8

4.0

AfghanistanBurundiGuinea BissauKosovoLiberiaSierra LeoneTimor LesteGhanaRwanda

71

Annex xx Illustrative sequencing tableThe table below illustrates what this would mean for when it might be appropriate to initiate different types of support for the different areas the team examined. Note the timing depends on an analysis of political context, not the amount of time passed since a conflict notionally ended, the progression from column 1 to 3 has been quick in some contexts, and others have remained in column 1 for many years.

Conflict or immediate aftermath of conflict

Stabilising political settlement

Deepening political settlement

Public Finance Mgt/ACC

o Safeguarding revenue pathway (ref: GEMAP, Liberia; HIPC Burundi?)

o (Re)-establishment of cash mgt systems/ single treasury account (ref: Burundi)

o Internal performance and systems audits (TL)

o Support for an auditor

o Support to the parliamentary budget committee

o CSO budget monitoring networks

o Pro poor budgeting (?)

o Performance based budget

o Gender-based budget

o Development of an MTEF

o Anti-corruption commission

Aid Coordination

o Participatory prioritisation

o Dual accountability Priority Programs (ref: TL, Sth Sudan)

o Development of a few quick to initiate programs

o Sector Wide Approach

o Sector budget support (?)

o National Development Plan

o Direct Budget Support (SL)

Civil Service Reform

o Recruitment of Mgrs (ref: Liberia CEBS, Tokten, SES)

o Internal Oversight Board (Kosovo)

o Salary supplements(?)o Civil Service Censuso Payroll mgt

o Creation of specialized professionals with tailored reward and incentive structures

o Right-sizingo HRMIS

o Merit-based recruitment and promotion scheme

o Performance mgt (i.e. performance contracts etc>0

o Salary and wage reforms

o Functional reviewso E-governance

Local government

o UNCDF/LDP pilots (as in TL)

o CDD (a la NSP)o Support for NGO

service delivery (grants etc.)

o Testing fiscal transfer mechanisms

o Fiscal and political decentralisation

Support for the Centre of Government

o Radio and public broadcasts

o Use of public noticeboards, inter-agency information

o UN support for a public information campaign

o Development of web-based

o Formulation of a communication strategy

72

sharing information systems

73

Annex xx CPAF in UN mission mandates The widest-ranging tasks have been assigned to missions in Kosovo and Timor-Leste, where the first task was to actually establish an administration which was run by the Mission until authority could be gradually transferred to national institutions once they were in place.

In Kosovo, the mission was mandated to perform basic civilian administrative functions, then to organize and oversee the development of provisional institutions for democratic and autonomous self-government and to transfer its administrative responsibilities to those provisional institutions and eventually to oversee the transfer of authority from Kosovo's provisional institutions to institutions established under a political settlement (see op 11 of resolution 1244 (1999)). The mission in Timor-Leste was tasked with establishing an effective administration and assist in the development of civil and social services, but then relatively quickly its mandate focused on support and assistance for administrative structures and on capacity building for self-government, so that, compared to Kosovo, the mandate shifted quite quickly from oversight to assistance. Only in Timor-Leste did the Security Council mandate tasks relating to “public administration”, including through establishing an explicit public administration component for UNTAET (see op 3 (a) of resolution 1272 (1999)).

All other field missions play a supportive role in administrative development (capacity-building of State institutions to address causes of conflict, generally calls to “increase efforts to promote good governance”), usually combined with or after assisting with the extension of state authority (see Sierra Leone, Liberia, Burundi). In one case (DRC), extension of state authority was a mandated task but then only at a later stage (see op 21 (c) of resolution 1906 (2009)). In Guinea-Bissau, the focus was on capacity-building of national institutions to maintain constitutional order. In Haiti, UNSMIH was the first mission with a mandate related to institution-building, supporting the Secretary General’s role in the “coordination of activities by the United Nations system to promote institution-building”. MINUSTAH was mandated to assist the Transitional Government in extending State authority, then to assist the government of Haiti in strengthening state institutions.

References specifically to support governance on the local level can be found mostly for UNAMA and for MINUSTAH, which is mandated to support the strengthening of State institutions “especially outside Port-au-Prince”, “at all levels” or to undertake capacity building “at the national and local level”.

Mandates relating to the support of local conflict resolution are assigned to UNIPSIL (see resolution 1829 (2008), op 3 (a): “Providing political support to national and local efforts for identifying and resolving tensions and threats of potential conflict; whatever the source”) and to UNOGBIS, which in 2004 was mandated “to assist in strengthening the national mechanisms for conflict prevention during the remainder of the transitional period and beyond”.

74

Annex xx ResourcesOutside the UN, the most comprehensive sources of know-how in this field are the following:

The OECD/DAC Development Cooperation Directorate’s website section on “Conflict and Fragility” 143 and two separate, but affiliated sections on (a) the “International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding” 144 , and (b) the “International Network on Conflict and Fragility” (INCAF) 145 , both of which are also hosted by OEDC on behalf of a wider group of dialogue/network participants, i.e. the G7+ group of fragile and conflict-affected countries, development partners, and international organizations.

The World Bank’s website segment on “Fragility and Conflict” managed by the Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries Group (OPCFC) within the World Bank headquarters. 146

The recently created website of the “g7+” Group of 19 Conflict-affected and Fragile States with the headline title “Goodbye Conflict, Welcome Development”. 147

143 http://www.oecd.org/document/57/0,3746,en_2649_33693550_46582713_1_1_1_1,00.html144 http://www.oecd.org/site/0,3407,en_21571361_43407692_1_1_1_1_1,00.html145 http://www.oecd.org/document/57/0,3746,en_2649_33693550_42113657_1_1_1_1,00.html146 http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/PROJECTS/STRATEGIES/EXTLICUS/0,,menuPK:511784~pagePK:64171540~piPK:64171528~theSitePK:511778,00.html147 http://www.g7plus.org/

75

Annex xx Suggestions for training by UN staff type and function

Priority attention should be given to skill upgrading and learning for the following UN agencies/staff categories:

Agency/Staff Category

Context

SRSGs/DSRSGs Annual/semi-annual “summits” at Montreux for in-depth confidential discussions (organized by DOCO in consultation with DPKO/DPA)

DPA/Mediation Support Unit (MSU)

PA exposure for Mediation Support Standby Team, MSU staff and roster members (positive case study : Arusha Peace Accord in Burundi)

DPA/Security Council Affairs Division (SCAD)

PA in UNSC mandates, with focus on staff in (a) the Security Council Secretariat Branch, and (b) the Practices and Charter Research Branch

DPKO/DPA Focus on political economy analysis in a PA perspective, to be aimed at Political Affairs Officers as well as Mission staff in JMAC and JOC functions

DPKO – Civil Affairs PA exposure for Civil Affairs Officers – with special focus on their role in “restoration and extension of state authority” and on QIP support for national ownership/national capacity purposes

Various Peacekeeping Training Centres

PA module for prospective staff in JMAC/JOC and Civil Affairs Units – organized through the “International Association of Peacekeeping Training Centres” (IAPTC) with outreach to 90 “likeminded” institutions worldwide

PBC/PBF/PBSO Focus on the role of PA in peacebuilding in the immediate aftermath of conflict, especially related to “essential administrative services”, with the aim of encouraging “demand” from the field and advertising “supply” and Identifying catalytic PA functions with a view to providing support.

UN-DOCO PA module to be included in : (a) Annual Induction Training for first-time UN Resident Coordinators (organized by UNDP’s Learning Resource Centre), (b) training workshops for UN Coordination Officers assigned to RC Units; and (c) training for UN Strategic Planners assigned to UN Missions and UNCT member agencies (model : Nov 2008 workshop at HQ with DPKO, DPA,

76

PBSO, UNDP, OCHA and others)

UN-DOCO’s Crisis and Post-Conflict Cluster

PA module to be added to existing policy guidance and toolkits on the Post-Conflict Needs Assessment (PCNA) jointly sponsored by UNDP, WB, European Commission and others

OCHA PA module for inclusion in pre-deployment briefings for Humanitarian Coordinators-designate and as an Addendum to the “Humanitarian Coordinator Handbook”

UNDP/BCPR PA module for inclusion in periodic training course for UNDP Early Recovery Advisers (ERA) and Early Recovery Cluster Coordinators (ERCC)

UNDP/BCPR PA exposure for individuals selected for postings as UNDP Peace and Development Adviser (30+ positions in post-conflict countries)

UNDP PA exposure for UN programme staff involved in post-conflict project identification and project formulation, particularly those in the fields of governance and capacity building (to be organized possibly by the UNDP Learning Resources Centre, e.g. through workshops, on-line courses)

UNDESA / UNPAN Staff within UNDESA’s Division for Public Administration and Development Management responsible for “Reconstructing Public Administration after Conflict” (World Public Sector Report 2010); and inclusion of a training module on post-conflict PA in the UNPAN Online Training Centre

Considering the wide variety of post-conflict PA issues which the proposed learning process needs to address, such responsibility must be shared among a number of the UN training institutions that are suitable and available, based on a pre-agreed division of labour. Such an approach will encourage a stronger professional engagement in post-conflict PA across the UN system and make it possible to develop a higher degree of specialization within each participating institution.

77

Annex xx List of CPAF projects in the case study countries

Core Public Administration Function

Project / UN Mission intervention Year Lead Institution

Afghanistan

Civil Service Reform

Support Project for the Civil Service Commission 2002 UNDP

Support to Civil Service Commission - Training and Development 2004 UNDP

Women's Advancement and Equal Opportunities in the Afghan Civil Service launched

2004 UNDP

Civil Service Leadership Development project 2005 UNDP

Capacity for the Afghan Public Service project 2007 UNDP

National Institution Building project 2010 UNDP

Public Financial Management

Making Budgets work project 2004 UNDP

Accountability and Transparency project 2007 UNDP

Aid Coordination

Afghan Aid Coordinaiton Authority and Donor Assistance Databse (DAD) launced

2002 UNDP

Making aid and budgets work project 2007 UNDP

Local Government

National Area-Based Development Project (NABDP) Phase I launched 2002 UNAMA/UNICEF/

UNDP

National Area-Based Development Project (NABDP) Phase II launched 2006 UNAMA/UNICEF/

UNDP

National Area-Based Development Project (NABDP) Phase III launched

2009 UNAMA/UNICEF/UNDP

78

Core Public Administration Function

Project / UN Mission intervention Year Lead Institution

Afghanistan Sub-national Governance Programme Phase II launched 2010 UNDP

Central Government

Support to the Centre of Government project launched 2006 UNDP

Strengthening Statebuilding through Strategic Government Communication project

2008 UNDP

National State Governance Project (NSGP) launched 2010 UNDP

Burundi

Civil Service Reform

Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi: Article 10 sets the basic institutional framework for the public administration

2000 N/A

Joint Programme for the Consolidation of Peace and Governance for Burundi 2007 BINUB/UNICEF/UNDP

Support for national capacity for the consolidation of peace and democratic governance

2010 UNDP

Revitalization of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration 2010 BINUB/UNDP

Public Financial Management

Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi: Article 10 sets the basic institutional framework for the public administration

2000 N/A

Programme of support for good economic governance 2002 UNDP

Programme to support reinforcement of anti-corruption mechanisms (Appui au reinforcement ds mecanismes de Lucha contre la corrupcion et les diverses a travers malversaciones tout le pays)

2007 Peacebuilding Fund

Aid Establishment of the National Committee 2005 UNDP

79

Core Public Administration Function

Project / UN Mission intervention Year Lead Institution

Coordination on Aid Coordination (CNCA)

Support to the Permanent Secretary of the National Committee for Aid Coordination (SP-CNCA)

2009 UNDP

Local Government

Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi: Article 10 sets the basic institutional framework for the public administration

2000 N/A

Programme to support local communities (Cadre d'Appui aux Communautes)

2002 UNDP

Project to support local planning and capacity of communities 2004 UNDP

Programme of support to the Reconstruction and Community Development in the Province of Rutana

2006 UNDP/UNCDF

Support to improving provision of local public services 2008 Peacebuilding Fund

Guinea-Bissau

Civil Service Reform

The programme of reform and strengthening of capacity of civil servants 2009 Peacebuilding Fund

Public Financial Management

Administrative Reform and Capacity Building Project

2008 UNDP

Local Government

Projet d’Appui au Développement Régional et Local dans la région de Gabù (PADRL)

2006 UNCDF

e-governance programme (for improved public service delivery, human resource management and public finance

2009 UNDP

80

Core Public Administration Function

Project / UN Mission intervention Year Lead Institution

Central Government Security Sector Reform Programme 2008/200

9UNIOGBIS / UNCT / PBF joint-programme

Kosovo

Civil Service Reform

Establishment of Senior Public Appointments Committee

1999 - 2001 UNMIK

General principles of Civil Service 1999 - 2001 UNMIK

Regulations of Kosovo Civil Service 1999 - 2001 UNMIK

Senior Civil Service Training Project 2002 UNDP

Public Administration in Kosovo: Situational Analysis and Strategy 2002 UN DESA

Public Administration and Civil Services Development 2003 UNDP

Capacity Building Facility for Kosovo 2003 UNDP

Capacity Building for European integration 2006 UNDP

Public Administration Reform Strategy (PARS) 2007 - 2012 2007 UNDP

Kosovo Capacity Development Strategy 2007 UNDP

Public Financial Management

Responsibilities of Finance and Economic Development outlined

1999 - 2001 UNMIK

Establishment of the Office of the Auditor General 2002 UNMIK

Promulgation of law on Public Financial Management and Accountability 2003 UNMIK

Promulgation of law on Public Procurement 2004 UNMIK

81

Core Public Administration Function

Project / UN Mission intervention Year Lead Institution

Donor Coordination Unit established 2005 UNDP

Kosovo Transparency Initiative 2006 UNDP

Anti-Corruption Strategy (2009 - 2011) 2009 UNDP

 Aid Coordination

Support to Aid Effectiveness and Coordination 2008 UNDP

Local Government

Municipal Administrative Board established

1999 - 2001 UNMIK

Local Governance Programme 2002 UNDP

Establishment of the Ministry of Local Government Administration 2004 UNMIK

Support to Decentralization in Kosovo 2005 UNDP

Local Governance Information Network (LOGIN) 2006 UNDP

Central Government

Establishment of Kosovo Statistical Office

1999 - 2001 UNMIK

UNMIK Radio starts operating 2000 UNMIK

Liberia

Civil Service Reform

UNMIL Logistics support to deliver wages to civil servants 2004 UNMIL

Civil Service Census 2005 UNDP

TOKTEN (Transfer of Knowledge through Expatriate Nationals) 2006 UNDP

SES (Senior Executive Service) 2007 UNDP

Support to Governance Commission 2007 UNDP

Support to LIPA (Liberian Public Administration Inst.) 2008 UNDP

Support to National Capacity 2009 UNDP

82

Core Public Administration Function

Project / UN Mission intervention Year Lead Institution

Development

Public Financial Management

GEMAP (Governance and Economic Management Assistance Programme) 2005 Multi-donor (USAID

primarily) / UNDP

PFM Institute in Ministry of Finance 2007 World Bank / UNDP

National Integrity Framework for Liberia 2007 UNDP

LEITI 2008 UNDP

Support to Anti-Corruption Commission 2009 UNDP

IFMIS (Integrated Financial Management System) 2011 World Bank

Aid Coordination

Capacity Building for aid coordination 2005 UNDP

Support to LRDC (Liberia Reconstruction and Development Comm.) 2006 UNDP

Local Government Decentralization Reform Project 2006 UNDP

Community-based Recovery Projects 2006 UNDP / UNCDF

CST (County Support Teams) 2006 UNMIL / UNDP

LDLD 2007 UNDP / UNCDF

CST (County Support Teams) - Phase II 2009 UNMIL / UNDP

Central Government

Support to LISGIS (Liberia Inst. For Statistics and Geo-Information Services) 2005 UNDP

LECBS (Liberia Emergency Capacity Building Support) 2006 OSIWA / UNDP

PRS "Lift Liberia" 2008 UNDP / UNMIL

National Visioning Process 2010 UNDP

Sierra Leone

83

Core Public Administration Function

Project / UN Mission intervention Year Lead Institution

Civil Service Reform

Commission on the Restructuring of the Civil Service 2003 UNDP

Delivering Results and Accelerating Public Sector Reform with Diaspora Resources and Experts from the South Project

2007 UNDP

Public Sector Reform and Capacity Development Project 2009 UNDP

Public Financial Management

Establishment of Anti-Corruption Commission 2000 UNAMSIL

Direct Budget Support for Sierra Leone 2001 DfID

Public Procurement Act 2004 UNIPSIL

Strengthening the MTEF Technical Committee for the Enhancement of Transparency, Accountability and Participation Project

2007 UNDP

Support to Capacity Building and Programmes of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy Secretariat

2008 Peacebuilding Fund

Aid Coordination

Support to Development Partners Committee and Development Assistance Coordination Office (DACO)

2004 UNDP

Support to developing a National Aid Policy 2009 UNDP

Local Government Local Government Act 2004 UNAMSIL

Support to District Recovery Committees (DRCs) and Chiefdom Recovery Committees (CRCs) through the Transition Initiatives Fund (TIF) Project

2004 Joint Programme - UNCT

84

Core Public Administration Function

Project / UN Mission intervention Year Lead Institution

Local Governance and Decentralization Programme 2010 UNDP / UNCDF

Central Government

Support to Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) in the Office of the President

2008 / 2010 (Phase II)

UNDP

Support to the Development of an Independent National Public Broadcasting Service

2009 / 2010 (Phase II)

Peacebuilding Fund

Timor Leste

Civil Service Reform

Establishment of the Public Service Commission 2000 UNTAET

Policy paper on civil service personnel management 2001 UNDP

Concept paper for civil service management structure, seeking to ensure ownership by the East Timorese Government

2002 UNTAET and UNDP

Support to Development Posts for the Government of East Timor 2002 UNDP

Comprehensive 10 year programme for govenance and public sector development prepared by the Planning Commission

2002 UNDP

Support to the Development Posts – Phase II: The Critical Posts 2003 UNDP

Priority areas identified where international assistance are critical: legal drafting, to strengthen the legislative framework of the public administration

2005 UNMISET

Support to the Civil Service in Timor-Leste

2006 UNDP

85

Core Public Administration Function

Project / UN Mission intervention Year Lead Institution

Support to Civil Service Reform 2007 UNDP

Public Financial Management

Regulation on the establishment of a Central Payments Office of East Timor; public procurement for Civil Administration; provisional tax and customs regime; taxation system; budget and financial management;

2000 UNTAET

Alkatiri Initiative, a review by a panel of experts, conducted 2006 UNOTIL, UNDP,

World Bank

Office of the Inspector-General (OIG) and the Civil Service Commission 2009 UNTAET

Public Service Commission re-established, and planning for an Office of the Auditor General

2009 UNMIT

Anti-Corruption Commission established 2010 UNMIT

Aid Coordination

National Directorate of Aid Effectiveness established 2009

Local Government

Establishment of village and sub-district development councils for the disbursement of funds for development activities

2000 UNTAET

Local Governance Support Programme (LGSP) 2003 UNDP / UNCDF

Support to Community Development and Local Development Fund 2003 UNDP

Local Government Options Study, Government of East Timor 2003 UNDP / UNCDF

Local Governance Support Programme 2007 UNDP / UNCDF

Assistance for the Government on the legislative framework for decentralization

2009 UNDP / UNCDF

86

Core Public Administration Function

Project / UN Mission intervention Year Lead Institution

Central Government

Establishment of the Cabinet of the Transitional Administration in East Timor 2000 UNTAET

Support to the National Planning and Development Agency 2001 UNDP

Support to Co-ordination, Monitoring and Planning Assistance for Timor-Leste National Development Plan Implementation (COMPASS)

2003 UNDP

Support to Coordination, Monitoring and Planning Assistance for Timor-Leste National Development Plan Implementation (COMPASS II)

2005 UNDP

Project to support the Presidency with the organisation of national conferences with civil society and the political parties on the political, economic and social development of the nation, engage with the Timorese youth

2006 UNDP

Provision of advice to the Government on key governance issues such as the balance of powers between the organs of sovereignty, the need for an effective parliamentary opposition, decentralization and local governance and the electoral process

2007 UNMIT

Support to Coordination, Monitoring and Planning Assistance for Timor-Leste National Development Plan Implementation (COMPASS) Phase III

2008 UNDP

Capacity Development

Support to Development Advisory Services 2000 UNDP

GPSM Program Document proposed establishing the Capacity Development and Coordination Unit (CDCU)

2001 UNDP

87

Core Public Administration Function

Project / UN Mission intervention Year Lead Institution

National Planning and Development Agency (NPDA) with the preparation of a 10-year programme called the Capacity Development for Governance and Public Sector Management (GPSM).

2002 UNDP

Support to Institutional Capacity Building of the Office of the Inspector General of East Timor, and subsequently, the Government Information Office, the Office of the advisor for Human Rights, the Cabinet Office, the Office of the Advisor for gender equality and the Capacity Development Coordination Unit

2002 UNDP

Support to Capacity Development for HRM in the Civil Service 2002 UNDP

Support to Development Advisory Services II 2003 UNDP

Institutional Capacity Development Support Project 2004 UNDP

Support to Strengthening the Institutional Capacity of the Office of the President

2008 UNDP

88

Annex xx Key organisations that have developed work on CPAF post-conflictThe international community’s rapidly growing interest in and focus on the essential role which capable CPAF-relevant state institutions play in the immediate aftermath of conflict has largely been driven by a small number of multilateral institutions, supported both intellectually and financially by a small number of especially interested bilateral donors. The initial upsurge of interest occurred in the period 2005-2008, spearheaded mostly by (a) OECD/DAC, (b) the European Commission, (c) the World Bank, and (d) the United Nations. More recently, these four have been joined by (d) the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and (e) the G7+ group of fragile and conflict-affected countries.

Looking ahead to the next couple of years, there is every reason to believe that these same institutions will be at the forefront of the international community’s continuing efforts to generate additional empirical knowledge and to articulate new policy guidance in this area. Hence, it is essential that the United Nations stay fully engaged with all of them to ensure that the UN System remain able to contribute to as well as benefit from the dynamic on-going learning process in this field. What this implies vis-à-vis each of the other five institutions is spelled out in the following sections.

The G7+ Group of Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries

The G7+ group of countries constitutes an indispensable ally in the UN System’s efforts to highlight the importance of CPAF in the immediate aftermath of conflict. These countries – 19 altogether and among them six of the seven case study countries of this review 148 -- speak with unique authority about the complexity and high cost of fragility, and their “New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States” (published at the Bhusan High-level Forum in November 2011) represents the international community’s most articulate and most widely supported strategy to-date to address on a broad front some of the key aspects of statebuilding (including effective CPAF) in the immediate aftermath of conflict. The main CPAF-relevant features of that strategy are the following :

Peacebuilding and Statebuilding Goals : Among the New Deal’s five Peacebuilding and Statebuilding Goals (PSGs), two are directly relevant to this review : (a) Legitimate Politics, intended to “foster inclusive political settlements and conflict resolution” (PSG-1), and (b) Revenue & Services, meant to “manage revenue and build capacity for accountable and fair service delivery” (PSG-5) 149 .

PSG Monitoring Tools : The G7+ group is presently working with its international partners (including UNDP) to design a dual set of PSG benchmarks : (a) a menu of

148 Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Haiti, Liberia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Timor-Leste, Togo (the case study countries in this review are underlined for easy identification).149 The three other Peacebuilding and Statebuilding Goals are : (c) Security (establish and strengthen people’s security), (d) Justice (address injustices and increase people’s access to justice), and (e) Economic Foundations (general employment and improve livelihoods).

89

national-level indicators from which each country can select those that are most conducive to a context-relevant assessment of its own PSG progress, and (b) a set of global indicators for each PSG goal that will make it possible to arrive at an international comparison of each country’s PSG progress.

Customized Planning Tools : As a corollary to the policy objectives embodied in the PSGs, the New Deal also represents a commitment by the G7+ countries to design (with international partner support) several planning tools that are customized to the particular needs of fragile and conflict-affected countries :

periodic Fragility Assessments will examine “the causes and features of fragility and sources of resilience”, drawing upon a “fragility spectrum” which will comprise five distinct stages of fragility and an accompanying diagnostic tool which enables each country to assess its own fragility status in each PSG area;

based on the findings of the Fragility Assessment and consultation with civil society, each G7+ country will draw up a “one vision, one plan”, i.e. “one national vision and one plan to transition out of fragility”; and

a formal “compact” will guide the implementation of the “one vision, one plan” approach, based on consultations with multiple national stakeholders and the international donor community – and it will be subjected periodically to a national/domestic review exercise as well as to an international peer review process.

Hence, the New Deal Declaration reflects in a variety of ways some of the key experiences that have been gained by the international community during the past five years, including many of the lessons learned captured by this review. The New Deal views post-conflict fragility through the dual prism of peace-building and statebuilding, it is clearly concerned with the earliest possible restoration of state capacity, and it is emphatic about the need for country-owned and country-led diagnostic and prioritization processes, leading to one vision and one plan – rather than to a multiplicity of over- elaborate planning instrument imported from elsewhere (ref. section 5.2 above entitled “Resist the urge to make big plans”).

Against that background, it is recommended (a) that the UN as a whole continues to engage collectively and globally with the G7+ group and align its future policies and ‘how to’ guidance notes on support to CPAF closely with the agenda of the New Deal; and (b) that in addition the UN Resident Coordinators and the UN Country Teams on the ground in each of the 19 G7+ member countries be given special responsibility for supporting PSG implementation in general while paying special attention to progress on PSG-5 (“Revenue & Services”).

The World Bank

90

The UN System and the World Bank have a long history of field-level cooperation in conflict-affected countries - with the Bank and UN jointly typically supporting coordination of external assistance plus the formulation and implementation of the initial post-conflict national development strategy (e.g. PRSP, UNDAF). For many years, this cooperation relied extensively on informal arrangements, but in the course of the last decade, the relationship has become increasingly structured and recurrent, especially around the following three objectives : (a) post-conflict needs assessments; (b) thematic research and policy coordination; and (c) HQ-level institutional dialogue and interoperability measures.

Post-Conflict Needs Assessments (PCNAs) : The first formal joint exercise of this kind was the Iraq Post-Conflict Needs Assessment in July-September 2003, involving both the UN, the World Bank and the IMF. After that, the PCNA initiative evolved to become an increasingly codified methodology, endorsed and supported by a broad multi-agency coalition comprising the World Bank, the UN (represented by the UN Development Group), the European Commission, the AfDB and the AsDB. PCNA exercises have so far been carried out, in different permutations, in close to one dozen other post-conflict situations, usually within the first 4-6 months after the conflict was brought to an end.

Initially, CPAF-related issues were addressed in PCNAs within the larger context of governance and capacity building, but over the years issues related to post-conflict statebuilding and restoration of core functions have been given increasing attention among the diverse sectors covered by a normal PCNA exercise. However, while there is a clear awareness among the PCNA partner institutions about the key importance of quickly restoring the host country’s core public administration functions, the PCNA methodology does not yet incorporate detailed guidance on CPAF (as already pointed out in section 6.6/paras. 134-136 above), nor does it explicitly accord to CPAF the important ‘precursor’ status which they merit : without restored core PA functions, none of the other pressing needs identified in a PCNA exercise can be effectively addressed.

In that light, the review recommends that the World Bank and UNDP jointly develop a distinct module within the PCNA with direct focus on the special CPAF needs typically arising in the immediate aftermath of conflict. Such a module would be most useful, if broken down into two components :

A fast-track CPAF assessment carried out during the first few weeks of the post-conflict period, and

A distinct CPAF assessment as an integral part of a larger multi-sectoral PCNA assessment.

This two-tier approach is suggested for two reasons in particular : (a) some post-conflict situations do not lend themselves easily to the standard PCNA approach, but nonetheless have pressing CPAF-related dimension (e.g. Libya in late 2011 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime), and (b) a full-fledged PCNA process, whenever warranted and requested, often takes many weeks to prepare and several months to complete, and it is especially

91

problematic to have delays of that magnitude in the diagnosis and start-up of CPAF restoration efforts (for more on the fast-track proposal, see below in the section on funding).

Thematic research and policy coordination : Close UN/WB cooperation on CPAF-related research and policy development dates back to a joint workshop on “Rebuilding Post-Conflict Societies” held in New York in September 2005 150 and the WB/UNDP “Joint Programme on Statebuilding” initiated in 2006 151 . Partially funded by Norway, this Joint Programme has fostered research and reflection on a variety of important issues, incl. a study on “Peace Processes and Statebuilding” (March 2007) 152 , detailed case studies on statebuilding processes in Sierra Leone and Liberia (2008-2009), and deliberations on capacity development in pursuit of state-building objectives.

Similar thematic cooperation also took place during the preparation of the World Development Report 2011 on “Conflict, Security and Development” – with the UN actively involved in the reflection that preceded publication and in the dialogue on its operationalization which is now taking place. There is also close UN/WB cooperation (as well as OECD participation) in support of the G7+ countries’ on-going efforts to develop detailed PSG indicators and diagnostic tools for their fragility assessments. Moreover, staff from DPKO and UNDP are currently working with World Bank colleagues to build a toolkit for Public Sector Expenditure Reviews that are specifically focused on the security sector – with Liberia as the first pilot country. Of equal relevance to the review is the World Bank’s current efforts to develop a new global strategy on public administration reform focuses (as mentioned in footnote 38 in section 2.2 above), an important part of which is focused on the special approaches needed to design appropriate post-conflict PAR approaches.

HQ-level institutional dialogue and interoperability : The complex challenges involved in providing effective post-conflict assistance to fragile states have inspired several initiatives that aim at (a) strengthening further the formal institutional interface between the UN System and the World Bank, and (b) enhancing the practical interoperability between them in field-level interventions. Senior HQ managers in both institutions are in close contact through bi-annual meetings and through regular World Bank participation in conflict-relevant UN fora, such as the Peacebulding Commission, the Senior Peacebuilding Group, and the Peacebuilding Contact Group.

Interoperability in post-conflict situations – for long a major challenge due to incompatible legal frameworks and disconnected operational mechanisms -- has also made significant progress as a result of the approval and signature in October 2008 of three key instruments, i.e. (a) the “United Nations-World Bank Partnership Framework for Crisis and Post-Crisis Situations” signed by the UN Secretary-General and the World Bank President, (b) the UNDG/World Bank “Post-Crisis Operational Annex” signed by the UNDG chair and the World 150 ‘Rebuilding Post-Conflict Societies: Lesson from a Decade of Global Experience’, Report on a World Bank/UNDP Workshop, 19-21st September 2005.151 “Peace Processes and Statebuilding: Economic and Institutional Provisions of Peace Agreements”, prepared by the Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway, March 2007.152 Details on the World Bank/UNDP State Building Initiative (managed within UNDP by BCPR) are available here : http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/PROJECTS/STRATEGIES/EXTLICUS/0,,contentMDK:22542897~menuPK:6993472~pagePK:64171531~piPK:64171507~theSitePK:511778,00.html

92

Bank Managing Director, and (c) the “Fiduciary Principles Accord” between the UN-DOCO and World Bank, subsequently also endorsed and signed by virtually all the UNDG member agencies with operational post-conflict roles.

The momentum for closer UN/WB post-conflict cooperation and dialogue has also been enhanced by the approval in 2010 of a ‘UN-WB Fragility and Conflict Partnership Trust Fund’ financed by a US$ 3.0 mill. grant from the Swiss Government. The Trust Fund aims to ‘support enhanced partnership activities between the United Nations and World Bank with a view to achieving more effective international response in fragile and conflict-affected environments’ and to advance ‘the various UN-WB partnership agreements in fragile and post-conflict environments, through focused strategic interventions’. 153

The UN/WB Partnership Trust Fund supports a variety of measures aimed at facilitating closer interaction in multiple fora. At the HQ level, a staff exchange programme supports the secondment of one senior World Bank staff member to the DPKO/DFS team operationalizing the Civilian Capacity Review and the deployment of one World Bank staff member within PBSO and one UNDP staff member within the World Bank’s fragile states unit (OPCFC). There is also a grants programme for joint UN-WB projects (<$100K) with activities initially in four pilot countries (Central African Republic, DR Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia) and more in the pipeline. Among other tasks covered by the Trust Fund are (a) a comprehensive review and mapping of existing UN/WB partnerships in fragile states, including those that are CPAF-relevant, (b) efforts to collect and expand the exchange of case studies, operational guidance documents and field-focused information, and (c) shared training activities (e.g. workshops).

Efforts are currently underway to extend and increase the resources of the Partnership Trust Fund so as to make it possible to pursue further opportunities of UN/WB cooperation related to fragile and conflict-affected states. The three main objectives of CPAF relevance that are to be pursued in the extension phase are as follows :

To build closer linkages on research, knowledge and learning, e.g. in the context of follow-up to the WDR-2011 and related to the proposed new Hive knowledge platform to be launched by OPCFC 154 .

To strengthening upstream, strategic cooperation in post-crisis settings.

To advance UN/WB interoperability and the use of existing agreements and tools, e.g. by facilitating implementation by one entity of trust funds managed by the other, in post-crisis circumstances.

Overall, very significant progress has taken place during the past 6-8 years in UN/WB collaboration on support for statebuilding and restoration of CPAF in post-conflict contexts, involving both Secretariat-based institutions such as DPKO and PBSO and UN Funds and Programmes, particularly UNDP. Going forward, the review recommends that the 153 Details on this Swiss-funded Partnership Trust Fund are available at the following website address : http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/PROJECTS/STRATEGIES/EXTLICUS/0,,contentMDK:22991180~pagePK:64171531~piPK:64171507~theSitePK:511778,00.html154 http://www1.worldbank.org/operations/hive/news/2012-01/indexNew.html

93

momentum for expanded collaboration be maintained and point to the ‘UN-WB Fragility and Conflict Partnership Trust Fund’ as a suitable instrument for continued pursuit of increased interoperability and collaboration on a CPAF-agenda inspired by WDP-2011 and the Civilian Capacity Review.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF)

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has a long history of extending emergency assistance to member countries facing crises caused by factors unrelated to their economy. From the early 1960s to the mid-1990s, such assistance was limited to instances of natural disasters – with funding from an Emergency Natural Disaster Assistance (ENDA) scheme.

In 1995, a parallel Emergency Post-Conflict Assistance (EPCA) facility was created for the benefit of countries in post-conflict situations – with war-torn Bosnia & Herzegovina as the first beneficiary country. In the period 1995-2009, a total of 27 EPCA loans were approved for 15 different post-conflict countries. Funding from EPCA was limited to “circumstances where a member with an urgent balance of payments need is unable to develop and implement a comprehensive economic programme because its capacity has been damaged by a conflict, but where sufficient capacity for planning and policy implementation nevertheless exists” 155 .

During this period, IMF’s support to conflict-affected countries focused on the design of the overall strategy for rebuilding or establishing fiscal institutions. Assessment missions were fielded to evaluate existing fiscal institutions and procedures and identify areas requiring technical assistance. Typically, donors joined in such missions to facilitate agreement on a common strategy of fiscal management and on funding. Subsequently, there were often specialized follow-up missions focused on specific areas of support. In many cases, IMF also posted long-term advisers in such countries in support of efforts to strengthen budget formulation, budget execution, statistics, and macro-economic management 156 .

In early 2010, the IMF created - as part of a wider reform of its concessional lending operations -- a new Rapid Credit Facility (RCF). It replaced IMF’s previous emergency assistance schemes and offered, within a newly established Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT), a more flexible instrument for extending quick-disbursing concessional lending (without the need for programme-based conditionality) to low-income countries (LICs) with urgent balance of payments needs. The RCF can be accessed by countries in a wide range of circumstances, incl. in post-conflict situations and/or emergencies related to fragility, and it offers very favourable concessional terms (e.g. zero interest, 5½ years grace period, repayment after 10 years) 157 .

Technical advice relating to macroeconomic policies and supporting structural measures go hand in hand with RCF funding – with particular focus on assistance to restore the

155 FACTSHEET : “IMF Emergency Assistance: Supporting Recovery from Natural Disasters and Armed Conflicts”, 15 September 2011 - http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/pdf/conflict.pdf156 “Rebuilding Financial Institutions in Post-Conflict Countries”, IMF Occasional Paper #247, Washington 2005157 FACTSHEET “IMF Rapid Credit Facility”, 15 September 2011, http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/rcf.htm

94

government’s capacity to formulate and implement suitable macroeconomic policies, e.g. by “rebuilding statistical capacity and establishing and reorganizing fiscal, monetary, and exchange institutions to help restore tax and government expenditure capacity, payment, credit, and foreign exchange operations” 158 .

As part of this new orientation, IMF’s Strategy, Policy and Review Department produced in June 2011 an internal staff paper on “Macro-economic and Operational Challenges in Countries in Fragile Situations” which arrived inter alia at the following conclusions :

“Engagement with the Fund has on the whole been beneficial for fragile low-income countries (LICs) : macroeconomic policy frameworks have been strengthened; economic outcomes have improved over time; institutional and human capacity has gradually been built up; and fifteen LICs in fragile situations have received debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and Multilateral Debt Relief (MDRI) Initiatives.

Nevertheless, the implementation of Fund-supported programs in fragile LICs has been bumpy, possibly reflecting too bold reform agendas or too optimistic assessments of implementation abilities. The mode of engagement with LICs in fragile situations has overwhelmingly been through the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF)/Extended Credit Facility (ECF) and conditionality in programs with fragile states has been relatively ambitious. Such programs have been affected by frequent interruptions” 159 .

IMF has traditionally worked with its member governments either on its own – or in tandem with the World Bank – on a comparatively “narrow” fiscal agenda. Given IMF’s institutional mandate and its long tradition of staying away from overtly political processes such as conflict prevention and peacebuilding, this “relative isolation” of IMF made sense. But IMF’s new post-2010 approach to fragile states points to the need for a closer and more explicit post-conflict alliance between the UN and the two Bretton Woods institutions. There are three obvious entry points for such a trilateral alliance :

Entry Points for closer UN System Cooperation with IMF in the Immediate Aftermath of Conflict

Rapid CPAF Needs Assessment

Post-conflict PFM Funding

Annual Article IV Consultations

IMF-specific needs assessment jointly with or parallel to rapid CPAF needs assessment by the World Bank and the UN

Quick-disbursing support from the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) –

Technical assistance to Central Bank and Ministry

Review of the utilization of RCF funding combined with fiscal sustainability analysis

158 Ibid.159 http://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2011/061511a.pdf

95

System of Finance

First, the rapid CPAF needs assessment being proposed by this review would benefit greatly from being done either jointly by these three institutions or, alternatively, in a coordinated/parallel manner that will ensure synergy and an optimal response to the needs identified, particularly related to public financial management and aid coordination. A synchronized approach at this early stage would be welcome for several reasons : (a) it will ensure easier access to the highest levels of the host government and a broader priority debate at the “centre of government” level; (b) it will reduce the transaction costs for the host government, and (c) it will bring conflict prevention/peacebuilding considerations more prominently into the design and structure of the BWI assistance package.

Second, the availability of quick-disbursing support from IMF’s Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) would serve to jump-start the restoration effort in key processes related to revenue and budget management – and also bring technical assistance needs in this sector to the early attention of all three parties, each of which will have valuable contributions to make in areas of comparative advantage.

Third, it would be of major mutual benefit for the UN Mission in general and for the SRSG/DSRSG in particular to remain in close contact with the IMF, especially prior to and during IMF’s periodic Article IV Consultations with the host government. IMF will be able to draw on the UN Mission’s understanding and insights into the political and institutional realities in the country, while the institutional context analysis of the UN Mission will be enriched by the IMF’s fiscal sustainability analysis.

The OECD/DAC and Subsidiary Bodies

For the past 5-7 years, the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD/DAC) has been at the forefront of the international community’s efforts to understand and document the very special development conditions prevailing in fragile and conflict-affected states. In 2007, it spearheaded the ‘Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States” which advocated “focus on state building as the central objective” (principle no. 3). Since 2008, OECD/DAC has produced a continuous flow of path-breaking and in-depth publications as part of its “Conflict and Fragility” series 160 , many of which have been quoted in the context of this review.

It follows that the OECD/DAC has been and will remain a key partner in the UN System’s continuing efforts to provide effective and well-targeted support to post-conflict CPAF. In terms of institutional formality, OECD’s Development Assistance Committee comprising 24 member states has granted observer status to the World Bank, the IMF, and UNDP. This status ensures that both the UN and the BWI are right at the center of the international

160 http://www.oecd.org/document/15/0,3746,en_2649_33693550_45793615_1_1_1_1,00.html

96

community’s most serious and substantive discussions about development and development cooperation policies.

However, from an explicit CPAF perspective, it is even more important for the UN System to maintain close intellectual and operational links with three of the OECD/DAC’s subsidiary bodies : (a) the Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP-EFF), (b) the Network on Governance (GOVNET); and (c) the International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF). Each of these three fora is a major source of CPAF-related intellectual leadership and institutional insights, and it is therefore essential for the UN System to stay actively engaged with them, seizing the opportunities they offer for the UN System to (a) contribute its experiences to the evolving debate, (b) learn and benefit from the insights being acquired by others, and (c) interact with the bilateral donors represented there and work jointly with them towards viable solutions, in terms of approach and substance as well as funding.

97

Bibliography

Adamolekun, Ladipo, 2005. ‘Reorienting Public Management in Africa: Selected Issues and Some Country Experiences’, ADB, Economic Research Working Paper, No 81.

Afghan Analysts Network, 2011. ‘The International Community's Engagement in Afghanistan beyond 2014’, AAN Discussion Paper 03/2011.

AREU, 2004. Guide to Government in Afghanistan, Kabul,

Blair, A. , 2010. ‘Not Just Aid: How Making Government Work Can Transform Africa’, The Centre for Global Development

Booth, David ‘Aid, Institutions and Governance: What Have We Learned?’ Development Policy Review, 2011, 29 (s1): s5-s26 Blackwell Publishing, Oxford

Carothers, Thomas and de Gramont, Dianne, 2011. ‘Aiding Governance in Developing Countries Progress Amid Uncertainties’, Carnegie,

Chang, Ha-Joon , 2002. Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, London, Anthem Press

CMI, 2007. ‘Peace Processes and State-building: Economic and Institutional Provisions of Peace Agreements’, Stockholm

Curtis, Devon and de Zeeuw, Jeroen, 2010. ‘Rebel Movements and Political Party Development in Post-Conflict Societies – A Short Literature Review’, Program on states and security, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies

DFID, 2010. ‘The Politics of Poverty: Elites, Citizens and States A Synthesis Paper Findings from ten years of DFID-funded research on Governance and Fragile States 2001–2010’ London

Di John, Jonathan and Putzel, James, 2009. ‘Political Settlements: Issues Paper’, Governance and Social Development Resource Centre

Evans, A., 2008. ‘Civil Service and Administrative Reform: Thematic Paper’, Background Paper to Public Sector Reform: What Works and Why? An IEG Evaluation of World Bank Support, Washington D.C, World Bank.

Evans, Peter, and James E. Rauch,1999. ‘Bureaucracy and Growth: A Cross-National Analysis of the Effects of "Weberian" State Structures on Economic Growth.’ American Sociological Review 64 (5):748-65.

Farazmand, Ali, 2005. ‘Comparative and Development Administration: Past Present and Future’, in Handbook of Comparative and Development Administration

98

Fritz, Verena, Kaiser, Kai and Levy, Brian, 2009. ‘Problem-Driven Governance and Political Economy Analysis: Good Practice Framework’, Washington, DC: World Bank, PREM Network.

Fukuyama, F, 2009. ‘International Institutional Transfer’ in The Princeton Encyclopaedia of the World Economy, Eds Reinert, K, Ramkishen, R, Princeton, pp 672

Gilman, Stuart, 2003. ‘Contemporary Institutional Arrangements for Managing Political Appointments and the Historical Processes of Depoliticization: The Experience of the United States at the Federal Level and in Some states’, Prepared for the World Bank International Anticorruption Conference Seoul, South Korea

Grindle, Merilee, 2011. ‘Good Enough Governance Revisited’, Development Policy Review, 29 (s1): s199-s221 Blackwell Publishing, Oxford

Geddes, Barbara, 1994. Politician's Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Ghani, Ashraf and Lockhart, Clare, 2008. Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World, OUP, Oxford

GSDRC , 2008. ‘Decentralisation and Assistance to Sub-national Governments in Fragile Environments’ Helpdesk Research Report, 26.11.08

Haque, N. U, 2007. ‘Why Civil Service Reforms Do Not Work’, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, PIDE Working Paper 2007:24, Islamabad

Henderson, J, David Hulme, Hossein Jalilian and Richard Phillips, 2003. ‘Bureaucratic effects: 'Weberian' state structures and poverty reduction’ CPRC Working Paper Number 31

IDS, 2010. ‘An upside down view of governance’, Centre for the Future State, Sussex

Ingraham, Patricia W, and Amy Kneedler Donahue. 2000. ‘Dissecting the Black Box Revisited: Characterizing Government Management Capacity.’ In Governance and Performance: New Perspectives, ed. C. J. Heinrich and L. E. Lynn. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press

International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and state-building, 2011, ‘A New Deal for engagement in fragile states’

Kelsall, Tim and David Booth, with Diana Cammack and Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, 2010. Developmental patrimonialism? Questioning the orthodoxy on political governance and economic progress in Africa Power and Politics, Working Paper, No. 9 July, ODI London

Lapuente and Nistotskaya, 2009, ‘To The Short-Sighted Victor Belong The Spoils: Politics and Merit Adoption in Russia’ in Governance, Volume 22, Issue 3, pages 431–458

Levy, Brian and Sahr Kpundeh , Eds, 2004. Building State Capacity in Africa New Approaches, Emerging Lessons WBI

99

Martin, Roscoe, 1952. ‘Political science and public administration: a note on the state of the Union’, The American Political Science Review Vol. 46, No. 3, pp. 660-676

Montanaro, Lucia, 2009. ‘The Kosovo Statebuilding Conundrum: Addressing Fragility in a Contested State’ FRIDE and International Alert Working Paper

Muharremi, Robert, Lulzim Peci, Leon Malazogu Verena Knaus and Teuta Murati, 2003. ‘Administration and governance in Kosovo: lessons learned and lessons to be learned’. KIPRID, Kosovo,

Moore, M. and S. Unsworth, 2010. ‘Societies, States and Citizens: A policymaker's guide to the research of the Centre for the Future State’ IDS: Sussex

OECD, 2008. ‘State building in situations of fragility initial findings’ OCED: Paris

OCED, 2011. ‘From power struggles to sustainable peace: Understanding political settlements’ Conflict and Fragility series, OCED: Paris

OECD 2011.’Supporting Statebuilding in Situations of Conflict and Fragility: Policy Guidance’, DAC Guidelines and Reference Series, OECD Publishing: Paris

ODI, 2011. ‘Getting better results from assistance to fragile states’, ODI Briefing Papers 70,

UN, 2009. ‘Guidance Note of the Secretary-General on Democracy’, New York

Parks, Thomas and William Cole, 2010. ‘Political Settlements: Implications for International Development Policy and Practice’, Occasional Paper, No. 2, The Asia Foundation

Polidano, C, 2001. ‘Why Civil Service Reforms Fail’ IDPM Public Policy and Management Working Paper No 16, University of Manchester

Schiavo-Campo, Salvatore and Pachampet Sundaram (2000), To serve and to preserve: improving public administration in a competitive world, ADB, Manilla

Scott, Zoë, 2011. ‘Evaluation of public sector governance reforms 2001-2011 Literature Review’, OPM, Oxford

Shepherd, Geoffrey, 2003. ‘Civil Service Reform in Developing Countries: Why Is It Going Badly?’ Paper presented at the 11th International Anti-Corruption Conference, Seoul, Korea, May 25-28

Tarp, Kristoffer and Frederik Rosé, 2012. ‘Coaching and mentoring for capacity development’, African Security Review, 21:1, 15-30

UN, 1951. ‘Standards and Techniques of Public Administration with Special Reference to Technical Assistance for Under-developed Countries’ Technical Assistance Administration, Special Committee on Public Administration Problems, New York

UN, 1961. Handbook of Public Administration: Current Concepts and practices with Special References to Developing Countries, New York

100

UN, 2011. ‘Civilian capacity in the aftermath of conflict: Independent report of the Senior Advisory Group’ (A/65/747-S/2011/85), New York

UNDESA,1995. ‘Rethinking public administration: an overview’, New York

UNDESA ,2008. Contribution of the United Nations to the Improvement of Public Administration: A 60-Year History United Nations, New York

UNDESA , 2009. ‘Report of the expert group meeting Lessons Learned in Post-Conflict State Capacity: Reconstructing Governance and Public Administration Capacities in Post Conflict Countries’ United Nations, New York,

UNDESA 2010. ‘Reconstructing Public Administration after Conflict: Challenges, Practices and Lessons Learned’, World Public Sector Report, New York

UNDP, 2006. A handbook on working with political parties, New York

UNDP, 2007. Workshop on Local Government in Post-Conflict Situations: Challenges for Improving Local Decision Making and Service Delivery Capacities, UNDP Report, Oslo, Norway, 28-29 November 2007

UNDP, 2012. ‘Governance for Peace: Securing the social contract’, UNDP: New York.

Van de Walle, S and Z Scott, 2009. ‘The Role of Public Services in State-And Nation-Building: Exploring Lessons from European History for Fragile States’, GSDRC Research Paper

Wilson, Woodrow, 1887. ‘The study of administration’

World Bank 2011. ‘World Bank Approach to Public Sector Management 2011-2020: Better results from public sector institutions’, Extended Working Draft for Consultation, 6 April 2011

World Bank, 2011. ‘Conflict, Security, and Development’ World Development Report 2011, World Bank: Washington DC

101