We have been much slower to agree on the practical implications of that recognition. One view is that only minor adjustments to the existing recipe are needed. Nunberg (1997) argued that the content of pay and employment reforms was broadly correct, and also politically feasible. Only the process was faulty: reform should be deeper (in the sense of the depth of cuts on payroll spending), broader (it should take place in a larger public administration context) and longer (unrolling over a longer period than the typical aid project timetable).

More recently, however, there have been arguments that something more radical is needed. Should reform advocates adjust their reform proposals to the prevailing political economy, so that the issue is reframed as one of political feasibility rather than commitment, even if that means watering down the reform? In this paper I have anticipated that approach by outlining six reform models and arguing that they can be selected to suit the problem situation - in this context, the political economy – of a given country. Or (a different approach) should reform advocates concentrate instead on giving policymakers incentives to implement the ‘correct’ reform, even if the reform is politically demanding?

Taking the second approach, the Swedish and UK governments and the World Bank have invested in political economy studies which focus on what drives reform in individual countries (Dahl-Østergaard _et al._ , 2005). These studies have pointed to generic factors like technical capacity, insulation from societal interests and building incentives for politicians to embark on reform; and country-specific factors like the importance of public society and the media in the case of Zambia (Duncan _et al._ , 2003; Robinson, 2007). The political factors can have a bearing on specific models of reform. Grindle (2006) has shown how capacity-building, for example, can be intimately affected by political preferences and calendars.

Practitioners have sometimes complained that the political economy studies are academic, and fail to specify what policymakers should do differently. Two studies by the author of this paper respond to this criticism.

# **Box 5. Using Politics to Craft Reform**

The failure of public service reform in Swaziland up to 2003 was rooted in Swaziland’s unusual political system, in which the king and the chiefs had effective power. Prospects for reform therefore depended either on fundamental political change, or on engaging with the rulers’ fear that reform represented a threat to their interests. Since the former appeared unlikely at the time of the study, it was argued that reformers should concentrate on persuading the traditional rulers to distinguish between their fundamental interest in the continuation of the existing system and their contingent interest in perpetuating a system of patron-client relations in the allocation of government jobs; public service reform did not have to be the thin end of a wedge. A litmus test that they had been persuaded, and that their commitment to reform was genuine, would be their willingness to restore the independence of the Public Service Board, the body responsible for public service appointments and promotions. Subsequently, the new Constitution introduced in July 2005<sup>xiv</sup> established the Public Service Commission on an ‘independent and impartial’ footing.

Sri Lanka’s experience has much in common with Swaziland’s. The outcome of public service reform under a World Bank structural adjustment program was that there were 10 percent more public service employees in 1992 than in 1989, and twice as many government ministries. By the turn of the century, major donors had withdrawn in despair. Yet as in Swaziland, this was the point where, left to its own devices, the government pushed through a constitutional amendment in 2001 which restored the independence of the Public Service Commission (PSC). This was much more of a feat than in Swaziland’s semi-absolute monarchy, since it required a two-thirds majority in Parliament, and it was in the face of Sri Lanka’s deep-seated political patronage. Despite that, this was one occasion where legislative turkeys did actually vote for Christmas.

_Sources:_ McCourt (2003); McCourt (2007); TISL (2011).

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