24 Oct 2007: ISS Today: Can Sustainable Development Policies be Transferred?

24 October 2007: Can Sustainable Development Policies be Transferred?

 

Sub-Saharan Africa has witnessed ‘waves’ of public sector reforms since the mid 1980s. These have included the structural adjustment programmes, the capacity-building wave and more recently the shift toward public service delivery. Most of these reforms have been driven by the West and Western Financial Institutions. An important, yet under-explored, question is whether an underdeveloped sub-Saharan Africa should be left to reform itself or whether it should be compelled to pursue externally driven reforms?

 

So far, the plausibility of an underdeveloped state reforming itself has not been meaningfully envisaged or contemplated. It is for this reason that the majority of the reform initiatives have been promoted through a combination of global economic pressures and international donor activity.

 

Proponents of policy and institutional transfer like David Dolowitz and David Marsh present a general framework within which to locate questions of transfer. This framework entails both voluntary transfer (essentially a process of imitation, either through the adoption of a best practice model or through educational and training mechanisms) and coercive transfer (where some form of power or conditionality is used by one organization or state to shape the policy trajectory of another). The problem, however, is that there are a range of constraints that inhibit or affect such transfers, resulting in policy transfer failures in recipient countries.

 

Administrative and political cultures often vary widely making it necessary for some form of cultural adaptation, whose nature may be difficult to conceive upfront. Hood in his book The Art of the State: Culture, Rhetoric, and Public Management observes that national systems are ‘path-dependent’. That is to say that their existing possibilities for change are restricted and shaped by prior historical and institutional formation, for example through colonalisation and decolonisation processes and subsequent political styles and influences. The point underscored here is that a similar policy could have quite different outcomes when pursued in different contexts. 

 

Looking at Africa, the question that emerges is whether or not, on existing evidence, the ‘imported’ reform models have contributed toward their intended outcomes. Some have had mixed outcomes while others have been accused of being long on rhetoric but short on actual results. In a number of cases, like the Structural Adjustment Programmes, the initiatives were said to have in fact constrained the capacity to deliver on reforms to the public. This highlights the need to mediate between policy transfer and local context. Many reform initiatives do not fail because they are wrong per se but because of a number of other factors, including the tendency to apply a ‘one size fits all’ approach. There is need for caution in offering solutions to problems on the sole basis of those solutions having worked elsewhere.

 

Sometimes well-intended reforms fail simply due to poor political and administrative leadership. When those responsible do not understand or cannot properly direct the reform process, there exists a recipe for failure. Grindle and Thomas observe that the problem with Africa is that the socio-economic situation has been degenerating while the external environment has not been facilitative. At the same time African bureaucracies have tended to see the situation in non-crisis terms and have continued to stick to bureaucratic approaches driven by micro-politics. The consequence is that governance has been compromised and the capacity of the state to address central problems has been weakened. The resulting situation is a vicious cycle in which there is paralysis in governance, public administration and public sector reform, all of which add up to the failure to promote sustainable human development. This in turn further paralyses governance, public administration and public sector reform.

 

This situation calls for a rethinking of policy transfers and local contexts, and the capacity to manage change in Sub Saharan Africa. Otherwise, in the words of Mc Lennan and FitzGerald, Africa will simply continue to be ‘stuck with the ox-wagon’.

 

Kisiangani Emmanuel, Research Associate: Regional Projects, ISS