Administration tends to be highly centralized: the model posits an unbroken hierarchical chain from the top (in the capital) to the bottom (in the remotest outpost of government). The tendency is to focus on _inputs_ , in the sense of the efficient management of resources rather than _outputs_ in the sense of the goods and services that the resources are used to produce, let alone _outcomes_ in the sense of the social and economic results that derive from the outputs.

Bureaucracy has of course a bad name in the popular imagination. However, a study commissioned by the World Bank in the run-up to its 1997 _World Development Report_ found a close statistical connection between public bureaucracy and economic growth. Their data suggested that merit-based recruitment was the most important bureaucratic element, followed by promotion from within and career stability for public servants (Evans and Rauch, 1999; Rauch and Evans, 2000). Further support for meritocracy came from a more detailed study of personnel management in the Kyrgyz and Slovak republics and in Romania. It highlighted the importance of sound administrative procedures underpinning merit, very much as outlined here (Anderson _et al._ , 2003). So we have recent evidence that Weber’s century-old insight was basically sound: the bureaucratic model was indeed the efficient successor to patrimonial regimes which had centered on the personal and arbitrary power of an absolute ruler.

But there are a number of pre-conditions which may need to be in place for the model to produce the results that Weber anticipated. I will mention two. The first is a culture in which rules are respected and followed. (This point has been emphasized by Schick. I expand on it later in this paper.) A second condition is that the Weberian rules should not be undermined by patronage pressures. Weber did not anticipate that bureaucracy and patrimonialism would become fused in the hybrid of ‘neopatrimonialism’, where state resources are diverted for patronage purposes such as securing support in an election. This neopatrimonial hybrid is widespread, having been identified in modern times in places as far apart as Greece, and Chicago in the United States (Clapham, 1982).

As the state developed, it was perhaps inevitable that there would be an attempt to use its growing resources in the same way that ‘traditional’ patrons used private resources: to co-opt supporters and ensure their loyalty (McCourt, 2007). But the neopatrimonial twist was that patronage operated by a single, visible patron mutated into patronage operated by political parties and other broad groupings, often organized on a national scale. With many individuals implicated at different levels, this stubborn neopatrimonial bush with its complex root system could be even harder to eradicate than its relatively simple patrimonial predecessor. Much recent reform effort has been devoted, either explicitly or implicitly, to the task of eradication. The reforms of the Public Service Commission in Sri Lanka and Swaziland, which I discuss in Box 6 below, are examples.

# **Capacity Building**

A distinctive feature of public administration in developing countries is that unlike industrialized countries, where capacity evolved gradually, developing countries have put in place crash programs of capacity-building following independence and, more recently, armed conflict and state collapse. The programs have centered on staff training and development. The assumption is that public administration is deficient because public administrators lack skills which can be readily imparted through training. The training and visit system for agriculture extension workers was a typical example. In the context of a fixed program of field visits overseen by their supervisors, extension workers received frequent one-day training sessions to impart the three or four most important agricultural recommendations that they should pass on to farmers in the following few weeks.

There is no doubt that capacity affects performance, as even politically-orientated studies such as Nelson’s (1990) recognize. But we have learned that capacity-building is rarely effective in an 4