essentially the same HR reform helps us to understand why policy implementation has been described as ‘the continuation of politics by other means’ (Bardach, 1977: 85).

# **Box 4. Performance-Related Pay in Mauritius and Malaysia**

Mauritius and Malaysia, middle-income countries on opposite sides of the Indian Ocean, both have relatively efficient public services, and both have been experimenting with PRP linked to staff performance management and appraisal since the late 1980s. Malaysia’s experiment endured for more than two decades. At the time of writing in 2011, a counterpart scheme had still failed to get off the ground in Mauritius, despite Mauritius having started to experiment in 1987, five years before Malaysia. Political differences between the two countries explain the different outcomes.

Mauritius has had coalition government ever since independence, but in an unstable form. That has lessened the power of the executive to drive through PRP in the face of public servants’ resistance. Such resistance is not unique to Mauritius, of course, but in Mauritius it has an ethnic dimension. A central official who had a leading role in the appraisal experiments attributed its failure to the fact that _‘Different communities are sensitive – “Mauritian specificity’’.’_ Moreover, the pervasiveness of political patronage in public administration led a public service union official to comment that _‘Mauritius isn’t ready (for PRP). Now we are coming to election time. Politicians will interfere.’_ In 2011, the government was still attempting to introduce PRP and the union was still opposing, with a union official insisting that ‘A public servant cannot be penalised to the salary ceiling (sic) even if his performance is below expectation.’ Malaysia has a strong and highly centralized state executive, with essentially the same coalition in power since independence in 1957. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad threw his weight behind appraisal and PRP, chairing all ten meetings of the committee which designed the scheme which was implemented in 1992. He brushed aside fears that giving managers power over their subordinates’ salaries would worsen tensions between public servants who were members of the three main ethnic groups, the Chinese, Indians and Malays. When later on the public servants’ union CUEPACS transmitted the concerns of its members that favoritism had duly ensued, the scheme was not abandoned, but modified in 2004 to introduce a quasi-examination procedure (again this was Mahathir’s personal <u>preference) which partly replaced the manager’s individual assessment.</u> _Source_ : Independent (2011); McCourt (2006).

# **The Meta-Level: Politics**

Over the last twenty years, the most interesting work on public service reform, and on public sector reform generally, has been done on the interaction between reform models and the underlying political economy. Tables 5 and 6 summarize some of the key findings. Table 5 is a digest of five analytical studies; Table 6 draws on World Bank evaluation reports on the success of the Bank’s civil service reform efforts.

**Table 5: Factors Associated with Reform Success**

|**Study**|**Sample**|**Factors Identified**|
|---|---|---|
|Nelson (1990: 335-<br>344)|12 countries|•<br>Evolving economic trends<br>•<br>Administrative capacity, notably a united economic team<br>•<br>Executive authority|
|Johnson and Wasty<br>(1993)|81 World Bank<br>programs in 38<br>countries|•<br>‘Ownership’, with ‘expression of political will by top<br>leadership’ as most important component|
|Levy (1993)|8 countries|•<br>Administrative load imposed by reform<br>•<br>Political constraints|
|Williamson (1994)|11 countries|•<br>Coherent economic team<br>•<br>Strong political base|

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