Högskolan i Skövde

Administrative reform is about changing structures, institutions and about changing the attitudes, motives and work conduct of the people working within those structures. Our previous research (Sobis and De Vries 2008) into the process of technical assistance to governments in CEE countries in transition, during the period 1990-2004, found that the ineffectiveness thereof was due to a combination of problems. We pointed to a combination of contrary objectives among the organisations involved and awkward resource dependencies within the aid-chain, and also to the emergence of a specific kind of attitude among professionals. In public administration, one often thinks that performance measurement, monitoring and evaluations can solve that problem. This approach, however, has proven to have serious negative side effects. The main objective of this paper is to search for alternatives to this approach.

In this paper, we seek these alternatives within the discipline of social psychology. This discipline sees human behaviour as the result of the interaction of mental states and immediate social situations. We will argue that public administration can learn from theories in social psychology and the application thereof to organisational behaviour in the public sector. An application on the technical assistance by western advisors to the governments in CEE countries in transition illustrates the findings.

This article investigates technical assistance (TA) to CEE countries in relation to development aid in general. There is plenty of literature examining the foreign aid, but specific components of aid, like technical assistance, remain largely unexplored. One debate about development aid focuses on whether aid is primarily given to improve the situation in the recipient countries or if this improvement is simply a side-effect from aid based on political-military factors. This article argues that development aid, unlike technical assistance, is often provided based on political-military factors with the accompanying side-effect of improving the situation. To investigate aid money to CEE countries during their transition (1990-2004), we used data from OECD DAC that distinguishes technical assistance as a component of foreign aid. The analysis shows that the foreign aid to CEE countries in general seems to have been largely determined by political factors while the money provided for TA is shown to be especially determined by the recipient countries' needs. The technical assistance has proved to be much more sustainable. The article concludes that empirical research should analyze the components of aid separately.

Previous research by the authors on the Western assistance to CEE countries during the transition process revealed that it was often ineffective and that priorities in and the nature of aid changed irrespective of negative side-effect on ongoing processes. Recipients blamed foreign advisors for giving inadequate advice; the Swedish foreign advisors pointed to the aid organizations, which did not provide adequate boundary conditions; and the latter told us that it was all politics, decided by consecutive ministers in the Swedish government (Sobis & De Vries, 2004, 2005, 2006, De Vries & Sobis, 2006). This paper is a follow-up on this previous research. In this paper we investigate the motives and reasons behind the assistance programs from the perspective of the Swedish government, which was responsible for this kind of aid. How did Swedish government arrive at decisions regarding the technical assistance to CEE countries and changes therein? The aim of this research is to gain further insight in the explaining factors of the (in)effectiveness of foreign assistance programs. The research question underlying this investigation reads: What were the characteristics of the position of Swedish government with regard to foreign assistance to CEE countries? How did these change during the last 15 years and what were the determining factors explaining these developments? In neo institutional theory two explaining factors are mentioned: the logic of consequentiality and the logic of appropriateness. (March & Olsen, 1989). The research presented in this paper will be framed within this theory. The description of this theory constitutes the first part of the paper. This theoretical part is followed by the presentation of our empirical research. This empirical research is based, firstly, on interviews with the Swedish officials: the Prime Ministers, the representative of Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the representative of Finance Ministry, who were politically active during the years of 1988-1997. Secondly it is based on an analysis of the diaries written by the Swedish officials who were political active during the years 1988-1997, and by some politicians who are still politically active today. Thirdly, it based on an analysis of the Swedish statute-books, government bills, resolutions and reports. The paper concludes on the question which logic (of consequentiality or of appropriateness) was dominant in explaining the decisions made by the Swedish government regarding assistance to CEE countries during the transition process.

During the transition process in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the post-socialist countries received much support from Western high developed countries in order to improve the effectiveness of their public administrationand to adapt it to the demands given by the EU. Similar as it was with foreign aid for Latin American, African and Asian countries before, this support was, to say the least, not always effective. The question this paper addresses is how to understand such failures. To answer that question we reviewed the literature on the subject of foreign aid. In that literature an increasing radicalism about foreign aid, based on dubious assumptions, is observed. These assumptions are that the quantity of aid as such makes a difference, that nobody in the aid business cares, that optimizing the input, process and output in organizational and managerial terms will almost automatically improve effectiveness, and that there exists a coherent aid industry.

This paper explicates the assumptions, and treats them as hypotheses. The conclusion, based on research into the aid given to CEE-countries during their transition process, is that the hypotheses have to be refuted. The assumptions underlying the debate about foreign aid are one-sided and false

In the transition process, many ‘experts’ from international organisations and Western countries came to CEE countries to advise them how to become EU members and to improve their situation. Despite the spread of such experts and the costs involved, little is known until now about the substance of their advice, nor of the extent to which such advice had an effect, that is, was implemented. This chapter addresses this issue. It starts by summarising the literature about the desired substance of advice. The empirical part is based on interviews with western advisors

At least according to the Swedish public debate, men and women are not treated equally. There are differences in income, employment, unemployment, carrier possibilities, but even in education opportunities, especially post graduate studies, and in medical treatment, which cannot be explained. Though one should be careful to use the expression of discrimination, when people of different sex or ethnic background are treated differently, it seems that at least in Sweden - and probably even in other European countries – income differences cannot be explained with differences in labour productivity. Therefore our first conclusion is that discrimination is existing, that people with different sex and different ethnic background are treated differently. Gary Becker, in his Economics of Discrimination, has discussed, how discrimination is influencing among other aspects the total economy, e.g. expressed in GDP (in constant prices). Based on Becker we would expect that discrimination influences the total economy negatively. In this paper, we are investigating, whether we can see signs of female discrimination, i.e. we are excluding ethnic aspects. Furthermore, we are investigating the relation or relations between female discrimination and macroeconomic performance, expressed as growth, employment, price stability, GDPpc and net exports. Macroeconomic performance will be expressed by an index. If female discrimination in Europe is existing and influences macroeconomic performance negatively, this has important implication for the Lisbon agenda, which aims at making the EU the “... the most competitive and dynamic knowledge based economy,...capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”. If female discrimination influences macroeconomic performance negatively, and if there is female discrimination in post graduate education, then female discrimination makes it more difficult to achieve the goals of the Lisbon agenda.