Transcript Document

Policy reform
i.e. transforming the state
WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOES NOT WORK
Sorin Ioniţă
Romanian Academic Society
(SAR, independent think tank)
[email protected]
1
Symptoms of poor policy making
• Ministries work in isolation and produce narrow
draft laws; no cross-cutting strategies and
policies; imprecise language, avoiding hard
decisions (made by default in secondary legislation)
• Discomfort in negotiating with other line agencies
/ assess broader social effects / facing trade-offs –
quest for “the right technical solution”
• Dysfunctional cabinet meetings – long, uncertain
agenda, ambushed by agencies with their own pet
projects, crisis-driven
2
Symptoms of poor policy making
• No proper policy analysis, outcome assessment,
CBA, implementation monitoring and feed back
• Unstable and poor quality legislation leads to
crises, solved typically by direct intervention;
formal norms and institutions are by-passed:
crisis mood – adoption of the acquis
• Reinforce existing social habits to apply laws
selectively; or ignore “unpleasant” rules
In weak states, conflicts and negotiations occur
after, not before a decision is made
3
Good policy process
• An institutional “brain” exists helping the central
government to filter and aggregate issues before they
reach the cabinet; identify trade-offs, esp. across
sectors, and make informed allocations (re-politicisation);
cost out its actions; and monitor implementation
• Relations among tiers of government are based on
predefined rules (contractual), with due consideration
paid to local autonomy
• What the government does is reasonably transparent to
the public
• Bureaucracy is impersonal and effective (weberian)
4
Good policy process
All these = changing the nature of the state
= completing the unfinished process of
modernization of Balkan societies (an effort
pre-dating Communism)
• Difficult change: it alters the balance of power
between social actors
• A good institutional structure (ex. Hungary) is
a necessary, not sufficient condition of success
5
Agenda for reform
How do we get there?
two strategic reform principles:
• People respond to incentives – not to
preaching, pleas, trainings, etc.
• Trainings and TA can fix knowledge problems;
they cannot fix incentives problems
6
The actors
What various actors can and cannot do.
1. The government
2. The parties
3. The think tanks
4. Brussels
7
1. The government
Do:
•
•
•
•
Admit that it has a problem with policy making
Spend some political capital to initiate PM and CS
reforms – commitment at the top
Accept the idea of outside scrutiny (corporate audits)
Pilot new PM system on big cross-sectoral
legislation: decentralization, fiscal code, etc
Don’t:
•
•
Expect the problem will be solved through TA alone
Avoid unpleasant tasks (reforming the policy cycle,
CS reform) by delegating them to junior ministers
with little real power
8
2. The parties
Realistically - little to be expected from them; it is
usually easier to reform the state than the
parties
= subjects rather than instruments of reform
Do:
•
•
Try to separate people seeking high office
(ministeriabili) from those seeking advisory
positions (experts)
Try to recruit and support good experts – in party
think tanks
9
3. Independent think tanks
Dilemma:
• Providers of expertise (limited success)
• Enablers – create an environment in which
politicians are forced to deliver and good
policies pay off politically
10
3. Independent think tanks
Do:
• Start with big, eye-catching issues which can
be explained on a bumper sticker, but are
relevant – get media attention and make
impossible for politicians to avoid them (ex.
declarations of assets and income)
• Alternate friendly advice (increase capacity)
with confrontational approach (make things
move)
11
3. Independent think tanks
Don’t:
• Criticize “political class” in general, cynicism
is already widespread / but identify
champions of reform in government and the
CS and help them (otherwise, counterselection); help the public opinion to
distinguish performers / poor performers
(popularity is not a good predictor)
12
4. Brussels
Do:
•
Use the EU conditionality mainly as an anchor
for the rule of law (use “soft acquis” to reform
the judiciary)
Don’t:
•
•
Expect the negotiations / absorption of the acquis
to change SCG public administration and policy
making process – it won’t
On the contrary, it will add extra burdens on a
weak state and consume the scarce resources
of time and energy of the government
13
4. Brussels
•
“EU models” used as a rhetorical device to
promote one’s group agenda
• Danger that acquis will generate another layer
of formal institutions, while reality will
continue unchanged beneath
The EU enlargement is not a development agenda
for a poor and weak state; it helps only if used
wisely by domestic actors
14
Agenda for change
Practical things to reform PM and CS:
• “Sunshine law”
• All public procurement contracts are made
public (including privatizations)
• Institutionalize public hearings in parliamentary
Committees (and possibly cabinet committees)
• Individual track record of votes in Parliament,
posted on the website
15
Agenda for change
• External audit on the Prosecutor office (possible:
secondment?)
• External audit / monitoring (formal, informal) on
budget execution, based on benchmarks
• Formula-based financial transfers to local
governments
Basic idea: increase the costs to politicians of
poor policy or clientelism
16