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GOOD GOVERNMENT in the TROPICS • • • Judith Tendler THE JOHNS HOPKINS STUDIES IN DEVELOPMENT Vernon W. Ruttan and T. Paul Schultz, Consulting Editors THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS BALTIMORE AND LONDON To Albert Hirschman, with gratitude © I997 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published I997 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 06 05 04 03 02 OI 00 99 98 97 5 4 3 2 I The Johns Hopkins University Press 27I5 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland zr2r8-43I9 The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data will be found at the end of this book. A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN o-8or8-5452-0 Contents Acknowledgments 1x I Introduction I The Research 9 The Previews I 3 Clarzfications I 6 2 Preventive Health: The Case of the Unskilled Meritocracy 2I The Central in the Decentralized 2 3 The Unskilled Meritocracy and Its Supervisors 28 The Self-Enlarging Job 37 Conclusion 42 3 The Emergency Employment Program and Its Unlikely Heroes 46 The De-clientelization of Drought Relief 48 Destined for Poor Performance? 54 The Extension Agent as "Refrigerator" 58 State versus Municipal Government 6 3 Lessons for Normal Times 72 4 Frontline Workers and Agricultural Productivity 74 The Story of Santana: Driven by Clients and Customized 79 vii viii Contents Fighting the Boll Weevil and Hurting Small Farmers 84 The New Standardization: The Training-and-Visit System 9I Acknowledgments Standardization versus Customization in Agricultural Extension 93 Conclusion: Implications for Practice 99 5 Small Firms and Large Buyers: THE RESEARCH behind this book could not have been done without the Demand-Driven Public Procurement I02 support of several people and institutions. For financial and other invalu SF-Favoring Procurement: The Nonexistent Debate Io8 able support, I thank the Institute of Planning of the state government of Customers, Suppliers, and Their Brokers: Ceara in Brazil (Funda'<ao Instituto de Planejamento do Estado do Ceara/ The Case of School Furniture I I 5 IPLANCE), particularly its director, Antonio Claudio Ferreira Lima, now When Small Firms Deliver Better: School Maintenance Secretary of Planning. I also thank the Department of Urban Studies and Repair, and Reconstruction I 24 ' Planning of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for providing un Publicity, Opposition, and the Unreplicated Success rz8 stinting logistical support, funding, and leaves at the appropriate moment. I am grateful to Tasso Jereissati and Ciro Gomes, the two governors who Conclusion I 3 I brought good government to Northeast Brazil, for supporting the research and, at the same time, appreciating the academic freedom needed for re 6 search and publication. Jose Rosa Abreu Vale, who was Secretary of So Civil Servants and Civil Society, cial Action (and is again now), and Antonio Carlile Holanda Lavor, who Governments Central and Local I35 was Secretary of Health, were important figures in the stories that follow. Work Transformed I 3 5 They showed enormous kindness to me and my students and passionate Decentralization, Participation, and Other Things Local I42 interest in talking about their work with us. Most of all, I thank Antonio Rocha Magalhaes, colleague and friend, who was the Secretary of Plan The Three-Way Dynamic: Local, Central, and Civic I46 ning of the state of Ceara when I first met him in I988. He not only made Civil Society and Good Government: What Causes What? I 5 I this project possible in many ways, but he was strongly and silently be The Comparative Advantages of NGOs and Government I 57 hind some of the important achievements described herein. Leadership, Inadvertency, and Advice I 63 For an opportunity to present my findings in Brazil on two separate oc casions, I thank the Ceara state Department of Planning, the State Uni Notes I67 versity of Ceara, and the Development Bank of the Northeast in Brazil. References I93 I also benefited immensely from the opportunity to get feedback on ear Index 2I7 lier versions of this manuscript in various seminars-in particular, the day long workshop organized around the book by the Inter-American Di alogue and the Inter-American Development Bank at the latter institution in Washington. I thank Peter Hakim and Michael Shifter of the Dialogue for suggesting the event and making it happen, as well as a half-day ses sion sponsored by the Dialogue at the Brookings Institution on an earlier occasion. I also received valuable feedb~ck from colleagues at the work shop on "Social Capital, Government Action, and Economic Develop- ix X Acknowledgments Acknowledgments xi ment" at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the UNDP work two subsequent ones into the teaching curriculum of the Department of shop in Buenos Aires on New Generation Social Policies in Latin Amer Urban Studies and Planning. Much of the fieldwork on the four central ica, the LBJ School of Public Affairs in Austin, the Texas Industrial Areas cases was carried out under my supervision by five of these graduate stu Foundation of Austin, the Joint Harvard-MIT Political Development dents, with the collaboration of two more senior students in administra Seminar, the MIT workshop on the works of Albert Hirschman, the MIT tive and supervisory roles-Gabrielle Watson and Hugo Eduardo Beteta. Industrial Relations Seminar, and the U.S. Agency for International De We met together weekly for the semester preceding the fieldwork, which velopment. took place during the three summer months of I992, and during the se I am particularly grateful to the many colleagues who interacted with mester thereafter. I spent three weeks with them in Ceara and, since the me about the ideas set forth here. For dedicating their time to reading one I992 fieldwork, returned there five times-most recently in August I996- or another version of the manuscript-or parts of it-and giving me valu which allowed me to continue following developments there. able comments and criticisms, I thank Gabrielle Watson, Jose Rosa Abreu Two additional graduate students were an integral part of the group, Vale, Meenu Tewari, Paul Streeten, Elisabeth Stock, Paul Smoke, Herman although the cases they worked on ended up, for fortuitous reasons, not Schwartz, Donald Schon, Bish Sanyal, Charles Sabel, Vernon Ruttan, Lloyd appearing in this book. Each of the seven went on to write a master's the Rodwin, E. B. Rice, Dennis Purcell, Michael Piore, Robert Picciotto, Bar sis on his or her particular case. The theses are listed in the references bara Nunberg, Lynn McCormick, Antonio Rocha Magalhaes, Albert under their names-Sandra Zarur, Ruth Wade, Sara Freedheim, Silvia Do Hirschman, Peter Hakim, Sara Freedheim, Silvia Dorado, Octavia Dami rado, Octavia Damiani, Julia Bucknall, and Monica Amorim. They were ani, Alice Amsden, and Monica Amorim. For invaluable research assis a delight to work with-sharp, hard-working, intellectually challenging, tance, I thank Brandt Witte, Laura Tagle, Monica Pinhanez, and John passionate about their work, generous, and fun. The success of this ven Frankenhoff. ture with them made possible two subsequent projects of this nature For helping me put parts of a marked-up manuscript into neat hard copy one in the state of Ceara again, in I995, and another in the state of Maran on very short notice, I thank Janice Molloy and Grant Emmison. Maria hao in I996-all of which earned the MIT Irwin Sizer Award in I996 for den Boer of Nighthawk Designs was a superb and remarkably understand Most Significant Improvement in Education at MIT. ing copy editor. Kathy Hoag, senior secretary at MIT, helped me in myr Sara Freedheim worked on the preventive health case of chapter 2, Ruth iad ways that made it possible for me to complete the book. Wade on the emergency employment-creating program of chapter 3, Oc For tangling with me intensely over the ideas in the book, providing me tavia Damiani on the case of agricultural extension of chapter 4, and Mon with wonderful sources of reading, and marking up my prose from be ica Amorim and Silvia Dorado on the small-firm public procurement ginning to end with demanding questions, I am eternally grateful to Hu program of chapter 5· (Sandra Zarur looked at innovative municipal govern bert Schmitz, Mick Moore, Richard Locke, Peter Evans, Susan Eckstein, ments, and Julia Bucknall at the history of a project to conserve a large and Rose Batt. area of mangroves in the capital city as an urban park.) None of the persons or institutions named above, of course, is respon Earlier versions of parts of this manuscript appeared in Tendler and sible for the ideas or interpretations within these pages, nor necessarily Freedheim (I994a,b) and Tendler and Amorim (I996). I thank World De agrees with them. velopment and the Brookings Institution for their permission to use these This book was informed by several years of evaluation research that I materials. carried out on government programs in Northeast Brazil, starting in the early I98os. In addition, the project resulted from an unusual combina tion of research and teaching, starting in I992, which I could not have done without the support of MIT and department heads Donald Schon, Phil Clay, and, particularly, Bish Sanyal. They all supported my integrat ing the training of graduate-student research assistants for this project and GOOD GOVERNMENT in the TROPICS • I • Introduction THIS IS A book about good government in developing countries. We actually know much more about bad government in these places, and stories about it are by now a familiar litany. According to these accounts, public officials and their workers pursue their own private interests rather than those of the public good. Governments overextend themselves in hir ing and spending. Clientelism runs rampant, with workers being hired and fired on the basis of kinship and political loyalty rather than merit. Workers are poorly trained and receive little on-the-job training. Badly conceived programs and policies create myriad opportunities for bribery, influence peddling, and other forms of malfeasance. All this adds up to the disappointing inability of many governments to deliver good public services and to cope with persistent problems of corruption, poverty, and macroeconomic mismanagement. In trying to explain this sad state of affairs, economists and political scientists have richly chronicled the bad behavior and used it to good advantage in the building of theory. I This sorry experience, and the literature attempting to explain it, have given rise to the current body of advice proffered by bilateral and multi lateral donor institutions, governments in North America and Western Europe, and even smaller nongovernment aid-giving organizations (NGOs). 1 Much of the advice is directed at limiting the "damage" the public sector I Good Government in the Tropics Introduction 2 3 can do in developing countries, and falls into three categories: (I) reduc Second, and insofar as the mainstream development community has ing the size of government by getting rid of "excess" workers, contract shown more interest recently in analyzing good performance and "best ing out for services, privatizing, and decentralizing; (2) terminating many practice," it has focused too much on recommending that developing coun of the policies and programs that inadvertently provide opportunities for tries import ideas and practices from the already industrialized countries bureaucrats to exert undue influence and for citizens to bribe them-such or from some o(the more recently industrialized countries, particularly , as the licensing of imports or exports, the subsidized provision of credit those of East Asia. The exemplars of best practice for advice about pub and other inputs to industry and agriculture, and the subsidized purchase lic management are Australia, New Zealand, Britain, and, to a lesser ex of certain products; and (3) subjecting public agencies and their managers tent, the United States-the so-called New Public Management or Man and workers to market-like pressures and incentives to perform, includ agerialism;6 the exemplars of best-practice macroeconomic policies and ing exposing them to the wishes and dissatisfactions of users.2 development strategies are, as everyone knows, the East Asian countries. I refer to the literature on which the advice is based as mainstream de Approaching inquiry in this way often leads to incorrect interpretations velopment thinking, and the advice-givers as the mainstream donor com of why governments in developing countries sometimes perform well, as munity. I purposely avoid the terms neo-liberal or Washington consensus3 examples below and others throughout this book show, or completely because the views summarized above, or some subset of them, are held by misses instances of good performance that do not fit the mold. a larger and more disparate set of observers and practitioners than those Third, the development literature likes to label whole countries (or groups terms imply. For example, both nee-liberals and their ardent critics, like of them) as good or bad performers. This habit comes froiiithe-overwhelm-· the NGOs, believe that government in developing countries is overbear ing preoccupation of the field in the I98os with major macrolevel eco ingly powerful, and that several of its functions would be better carried nomic problems, as well as from the "national models" literature of the out or monitored by private entities, including NGOs. Again, both advo field of comparative politics and international political economy. 7 But it cates and critics of state intervention stress the importance of incentives, is difficult to be engaged in characterizing a whole country as good or pressures, and increased user voice in improving the performance of gov bad, on the average, and at the same time to be curious about the varia ernment. And a good number of development practitioners who feel per tion between good and bad experiences within that same country and the fectly comfortable using the language and concepts of the mainstream de lessons to be learned from it. For this reason, the donor community is not velopment community are not aware of the writings that gave rise to very adept at unearthing and explaining promising developments within these views and, if asked, would disagree with them. Nevertheless, this countries that perform poorly on the average, or good performance by set of ideas about the causes of poor performance and about how to im some government agencies as distinct from others in the same country. In prove it profoundly influences the way development practitioners inter giving advice to the bad performers, then, donors are best at telling them pret what they see, write reports, and give advice. about the practices of good performers somewhere else and how to be 111 The explanations of poor performance summarized above, although in more like them. A good illustration is the set of studies explaining why Latin America • mcaatengyowriaeys.s accurate, have given rise to a consistently flawed body of ad vice about how to improve government. The flaws fall into the following did not do what East Asia did, 8 followed by a cottage industry of advice to Latin America on how to be more like East Asia. A recent World Bank (I) First, the mainstream donor community's advice about public-sector re publication criticizing the Latin American "populist state," for example, '-' ,~!·form arises from a literature that looked mainly at poor performance. Al- declares that "[r]elatively little is known about the process leading to mas ,J though this literature has advanced our understanoing o1wliy governments sive institutional change" in Latin America (Burki and Edwards I996:27). so often do bad1y,4 it has provided nowhere near the same insights and case With respect to labor market and employment policies, it then suggests material on the circumstances under which governments perform well. 5 This looking at "the lessons of East Asia's success"; with respect to ideas about means that countries and the experts that advise them have few models of how to create "a modern civil service," it suggests looking at East Asia's I good government that are grounded in these countries' own experiences. "efficient meritocracies" (pp. 23, 26). Once the seal of good (or bad) ap- 4 Good Government in the Tropics Introduction 5 proval is stuck to a country, finally, observers interpret much of what is is now popularly known as worker participation and self-managed worker going on there through that particular lens. For example, while Italy was teams, multiskilling of workers and multi task jobs, and flexibly organized fabled for many years for its corruption and lack of political stability, sig or "specialized" production. Almost all these innovations involve greateG nificant developments in institutional dynamism, stability, and trust be worker discretion and autonomy, greater cooperation between labor and tween major actors at the regional level remained, until recently, unchron management, and greater trust between workers (or firms) and their cus icled (Locke I995:chap. I). tomers, as well as between workers and managers.14 Many of these prac Fourth, the mainstream development community often filters what it tices were disseminated as a result of extensive research on Japanese "lean" sees through the lens of a strong belief in the superiority of the market production, which produced grounded models of how to change organi mechanism for solving many problems of government, economic stagna zational practices and management.15 tion, and poverty. This also creates a propensity for misinterpretation of In analyzing governments and in issuing advice about how to reform good performance, the classic example coming from the successful growth them, the mainstream development community has shown remarkably little stories of the East Asian countries. Until the World Bank's publication of interest in the subject of-worker aeoicatiolltoilie]ob,) Guided by an al The East Asian Miracle in I993,9 the donor community interpreted these most religious belief in self-interest as an explanation of human behav successes as representing minimal government intervention in markets, ior-what Charles Sabel so aptly calls "the science of suspicion"16-the despite substantial evidence to the contrary.lO These governments used attention of the development literature has been riveted on the absence of highly interventionist policy instruments, all of which are considered by worker commitment. Whereas the IPWT research tries to understand the the donor community to be wrong: they subsidized credit to agriculture kinds of social norms and organizational cultures that foster dedication and industry, they fixed key prices, and they told firms what to produce. among workers, the donor community starts with the assumption that Other instances of the development community's inattention to the evi civil servants are self-interested, rent-seeking, and venal unless proven dence in interpreting success will be revealed in the course of this book. otherwise. Whereas the IPWT literature prescribes greater worker auton Fifth, many of today's views on the roots of poor performance in de omy and discretion as a way of obtaining better performance, the devel veloping countries simply ignore and even contradict an impressive body opment community prescribes just the opposite-namely, reducing the of evidence on the causes of improved performance in large organizations discretion of civil servants and, thereby, their opportunities to misbehave. in the industrialized countries. This evidence,-basedpartly on studies of Whereas downsizing is but one of many measures used by successfully re -nigh-performing firms, appears in recent research on industrial performance structuring firms to increase productivity and profits, the donor commu and workplace transformation, in an older literature on the sociology of nity has focused most of its attention on downsizing government to the organizations, and even in the popular treatments of private-sector restruc exclusion of complementary measures required to increase performance.17 turing in the press. I refer to this body of research and advice as the liter This despite the clear evidence from the private sector that without mea ature of industrial ~erformance and workplace transformation (IPWT).ll sures to reorganize work in ways that increase worker commitment, down Although the earlier researcli on this siil:lfect involved mainly manufac sizing does not lead to increased productivity and often makes performance turing firms, many of the same findings have emerged from later studies worse.l8 of large service firms.l2 Although focused mainly on private firms rather Sixth, and related, today's views on reforming the public sector place' than public agencies, many of the IPWT findings are now being applied excessive faith in the actions of the "user'' or "client" .of public ser-vices_ to the public sector of the industrialized countries.13 In an otherwise laudable advance, the development community now views IPWT researchers have pointed to the importance of worker dedication consultations with and pressures from the client-the citizen, the villager, to the job, among other things, in accounting for increases in productiv the grass roots-as key to fixing government. This new faith manifests it ity and other improvements in performance. This has caused the best-prac self in three ways: the proliferation of research on user behavior and pref tice firms to pay close attention, even when downsizing, to a set of inno erences, the keen interest in decentralizing government in order that it be vative practices that has increased worker dedication. These include what (among other things) closer to the user, and the enthusiasm over "associ- 6 Good Government in the Tropics Introduction 7 ationalism" and civil society-particularly user associations and other institutions, could play in stimulating and mediating the difficult debates NGOs that demand accountability from government or provide services and supporting the research needed to face this challenge properly. In themselves.19 stead, the donor community has cast public-sector unions :md professional This turn of attention toward users of public services and their local associations as the villains in stories of attempted reform, particularly in setting represents a distinct improvement over the previous period of al the social sectors of education and health-to be avoided, circumvented, most complete disinterest by planners in what citizens thought or wanted. and undermined.22 Ironically, this vilification of public-sector employee It is also quite consistent with the findings of the IPWT studies, which associations has occurred at a time when the donor community has been show that the best-practice service firms try to be more responsive to cus celebrating all other forms of associationalism and civil society, including tomers and work closely with them. But the IPWT studies also show that business associations., Surely, associations of workers and professionals responsiveness to the client requires a larger context of relations of trust should number among this now-celebrated set of collective actors. But between committed workers and their customers. This has translated into while the development community consistently describes public employee research on, and enactment of, the kinds of changes in workplace condi associations as the ultimate in self-interest, it views all other forms of as tions that enable trusting relations to develop. Although the mainstream sociationalism-in a serious lapse of consistency-as wholesome expres development community has now become as interested in the user as the sions of the public interest. This amounts to a lopsided picture not only IPWT community, it has nevertheless shown little interest in the larger of worker associations, but of what is necessary to achieve reform in prob setting of trust between workers and users that user involvement requires lem sectors. in order to improve performance. Associations of public-sector workers and professionals have certainly Seventh, IPWT researchers and practitioners have dwelled on the need made reform difficult on various occasions and continue to do so, creat to change the existing system of centralized and highly defined labor-man ing a serious problem for improving government. But they have also pre agement relationships that have prevailed since the I930s in the United sented more opportunities for constructive action in the public interest States and other Western countries. This system, in which big labor ne than the current vilification of them suggests. In a study of the responses gotiated collective bargaining agreements with big management, worked of Latin American unions to proposed reforms of social service delivery, fairly well under the mid-twentieth-century system of stable consumer mar for example, Murillo notes that despite "the common assumption ... that kets and mass production. The system is no longer compatible, however, public sector unions opposed these reforms, union responses were diverse ... with the requirements of today's rapidly changing, more globalized, highly [including] resistance, cooperation, negotiation and inaction" (I996:I}. competitive markets. The high-performance practices associated with adap In research on significant recent advances made in the public management tation to these changed conditions depend on greater consultation between of India's forests, Joshi (forthcoming) discovered, to her surprise, that the labor and management around daily problems, more cooperative and in public-sector workers' association-the West Bengal Subordinate Forest formal relations between the two parties, greater flexibility around the Employees Association-played a key role in advocating and implement definition of jobs, and decentralization of production, management, and ing these reforms. supervision. For this reason, IPWT researchers and practitioners have been In a study of high performance in education by a municipal government engaged in a profound debate over the past IO years about how to change in Northeast Brazil, Frankenhoff (forthcoming) found that the best teach a system of labor-management relations that no longer works.2o ers had spearheaded a long campaign to promote these reforms. Oppo The mainstream development community has shown little appreciation nents to the reform, moreov:er, were not the usual suspects-teachers and of the need for this kind of debate or research.21 But its regular complaints teachers' unions-but elected local government officials who did not want about public-sector unions-that stalemates between governments and to lose their power to use teacher appointments for patronage. This find their public-sector unions have seriously jeopardized needed reforms ing is actually quite consistent with those of a forthcoming book by Ames suggest a dire need for such research. Similarly, the international donors on Brazilian politics, particularly his analyses of governors who were mod have displayed no interest in the important role that they, as third-party ernizing and clientelistic at the same time.23 Ames describes how certain