Prof Christian Schuster's Inaugural Lecture. Good governance is essential, but governance reforms in the global south often fail. This lecture asks why. One increasingly popular view is that the strategy adopted by international development organisations – which focuses on advancing ‘global best practice’ laws – is fundamentally flawed and that solutions need to be home-grown. This lecture challenges that perspective.
Drawing on evidence from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, it shows that certain global best practices do exist, and that effective government institutions share a common set of foundational management practices. But different institutions inside governments vary in the extent to which such practices are in place – despite sharing the same governance laws. Prof Schuster therefore advocates for a data-informed approach to introducing management good practices in government institutions one-by-one, rather than pursuing government-wide best practice laws.
Mentioned in this lecture:
‘Merit, Tenure and Bureaucratic Behavior: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment in the Dominican Republic’, Comparative Political Studies, 2018, Vol. 51(6), p. 759–792, 2018 (with Oliveros, V.)
‘The Causal Effect of Public Service Motivation on Ethical Behaviour in the Public Sector: Evidence from a Large-Scale Survey Experiment‘, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2019, Vol. 29(3) (with Meyer-Sahling, J. and Mikkelsen, K.)
‘Government Analytics: An Empirical Guide to Measuring Public Administration‘ Washington DC: World Bank, forthcoming (co-edited with Rogger, D.)
‘Getting the basics right: How to manage civil servants in developing countries‘ (with Meyer-Sahling, J. and Mikkelsen, K.) World Bank, Governance for Development Blog, May 2018
‘What the UK civil service can learn from developing countries on pay and acting on evidence‘ (with Meyer-Sahling, J. and Mikkelsen, K.) UK Civil Service World, May 2018
Find more of Christian's publications via https://www.christianschuster.net/