recruitment processes. For instance, the recruitment process may not be clearly described in the law, but certain procedures will be followed, including approvals via signature by various officials. Similarly, the criteria for those decisions may not be clearly outlined. Such practices are often difficult to transform, particularly as changes in laws and regulations are not implemented such that the bureaucracy stops the informal practices and follows new formal ones.

# **Research Design**

The complexity of the topic, including the number of officials and members of the public involved, as well as the fact that most decisions are made outside the public eye, necessitates a multi-faceted research approach that triangulates information. The research design therefore includes three parts, including the following:

# _Part One: Quantitative Data Analysis of Civil Service Database_

The research begins with an analysis of trends in government employment, in which the main source of data is a questionnaire completed by practically all civil servants, with a total of nearly 11,000 observations. The peak recruitment periods are correlated with key historical events that are suggestive of explanatory factors; similarly the educational qualifications for civil servants are analyzed over time. The questionnaire gathered information on several particular topics, including years of recruitment, the home village of the civil servant, and the level and type of education, among others. This questionnaire was disseminated together with the overall civil service census, which was completed under the World Bank supported Good Economic Governance Support project via the High Authority of the Civil Service, a civil service unit that reports directly to the President of the Union of Comoros. A copy of the questionnaire appears in Appendix 2.

# _Part Two: Community Level Study_

The research consists of interviews in a sampling of systematically selected communities on all three islands of Comoros, with over 400 individuals interviewed. Here, the research probed both the experience of local civil servants and other job seekers, as well as the nature of the patron-client relationship in communities. These communities were randomly selected from a targeted set of socio-economic groupings, so as to provide a sense of recruitment practices in different types of communities. As such, in Ngazidja, which has the largest population of the three islands, communities were divided into nine categories, based on a low, medium or high level of poverty and a small, medium or large population; a community was then randomly selected from that category, for instance, one community representing the small population size and relatively low level of poverty. In Anjouan, four communities were selected randomly, while in Moheli, two were selected randomly. Interviews in these communities focused on several issues: first, the process of hiring for those members of the community who work for the public sector; second, any support that the member communities may have offered in return for public employment; third, the social position and other characteristics (such as gender) of those who access public employment. Furthermore, because of the targeted sampling strategy, the research attempted to determine the characteristics of the communities whose members successfully access public employment. Interviews included village elites, women, public employees – particularly teachers – and youth. The teacher interviews complemented the above case study. A more complete listing of the communities visited appears in Appendix 3.

# _Part Three: Institutional Analysis of Recruitment, with a special focus on the Ministry/Commissions of Education_

The research includes a case study of the Ministry and Commissions of Education (commission is the Island Government version of a ministry), in order to understand the recruitment practices of government from the inside, both in terms of the official and unofficial 8