Voice or Public Sector Management? An Empirical Investigation of Determinants of Public Sector Performance Based on a Survey of Public Officials

June 2002

45 Pages Posted: 20 Jul 2002

See all articles by Daniel Kaufmann

Daniel Kaufmann

Results for Development; The University of the Philippines Diliman; The Brookings Institution

Gil Mehrez

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Tugrul Gurgur

Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey

Date Written: World Bank Research Working Paper

Abstract

Drawing on an in-depth governance micro-survey of public officials within a country, we address empirically the question of the relative importance of the various determinants of governance. We investigate the causes of poor governance, and show that commonly made inferences about policy based on simple correlation can be highly misleading, because the high correlation between the various governance (and public sector management) determinants, as well as the endogeneity in these variables. We find that undue emphasis may have been given in previous work to a number of conventional public sector management variables (such as civil servant wages, internal enforcement of rules, autonomy of agency by fiat, etc.), while undermining the priority due to more 'external' (to public sector management) variables, such as external voice, transparency, and politicization. The latter set of 'voice'-related variables has larger affect on the quality of service and corruption than the more traditional public sector management type of variables. Further work drawing in depth on country-specific surveys in other settings is warranted to ascertain with more confidence whether a shift towards more prominence to transparency and 'voice'-type of variables is needed, backstopping the results for Bolivia in this paper.

Keywords: Governance, corruption, public officials, policy, public sector management

JEL Classification: C32, C42, C81, H32, P16, H4, O17

Suggested Citation

Kaufmann, Daniel and Mehrez, Gil and Gurgur, Tugrul, Voice or Public Sector Management? An Empirical Investigation of Determinants of Public Sector Performance Based on a Survey of Public Officials (World Bank Research Working Paper). June 2002, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=316865 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.316865

Daniel Kaufmann

Results for Development ( email )

1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1210
Washington, DC 20009
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://r4d.org/about/our-team/daniel-kaufmann/

The University of the Philippines Diliman ( email )

Manila
Philippines

The Brookings Institution ( email )

1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.brookings.edu/experts/kaufmannd

Gil Mehrez (Contact Author)

International Monetary Fund (IMF) ( email )

700 19th Street NW
Washington, DC 20431
United States

Tugrul Gurgur

Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey ( email )

Istiklal Cad. 10 Ulus
06100 Ankara, Ankara 06050
Turkey

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