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Article

New Public Indian Journal of Public


Administration
Management-based 64(1) 15–35
© 2018 IIPA
SAGE Publications
Reform in Bangladesh: sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0019556117735458
A Review of Public http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ipa

Administration
Reform Commission

Md. Shariar Islam1

Abstract
This article highlights that Bangladesh has not been able to achieve desired
success in implementing Public Administration Reform Commission’s (PARC)
new public management (NPM)-driven reform recommendations as there are
major challenges such as lack of political commitment, bureaucratic unwillingness
to bring about change, lack of advocacy for NPM reform among the people and
inefficient public service management. To face the challenges of NPM reform
implementation, it is needed to ensure political commitment, bureaucratic support,
awareness among the people through government, non-government and social
organisations.

Keywords
Bangladesh, administrative reform, new public management, South Asia

Introduction
In recent years, especially after the 1980s, citizens have become more demanding
as public administration strives to become more socially responsive. Such a
demand has emerged due to the prevalence of inefficiency of traditional system of
public administration and management. Similarly, Bangladesh public administra-
tion has reached an unprecedented level of inefficiency (Khan, 2013b; Sarker,
2004) with the need for the expansion of operations for the private sector and

1
Assistant Professor of Public Administration, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Corresponding author:
Md. Shariar Islam, Assistant Professor of Public Administration, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
E-mail: shahislam04@du.ac.bd
16 Indian Journal of Public Administration 64(1)

enhancing the level of accountability and responsibility, both administrative


reform (AR) and new public management (NPM) approach have been inter-
twined in many efforts to bring about changes within the administration.
Samaratunge, Alam and Teicher (2008) view NPM as the key agent of AR in
South and Southeast Asian countries. It implies that this part of the world has been
influenced by the NPM characteristics while reforming the administration. Such
influence has been observed due to the rise of globalisation and the introduc-
tion of global convergence in policy matters (Cheung, 2002). Hence, analysing
the issues of NPM reform from the perspective of a developing country like
Bangladesh also provides the opportunity to identify some neglected dimensions
of analysis. Bangladesh, one of the emerging nations, was ruled by the Europeans
like most South Asian countries. Thus, historically there is similarity among the
countries of South Asian region in terms of culture, social, political and economic
architecture. Hence, analysis of NPM-based reforms in Bangladesh would present
several significant dimensions through which one can apprehend the scenario of
other developing countries in this region.
The article attempts to show the degree to which Bangladesh has been success-
ful in implementing NPM-based reforms. In analysing such an important issue
of Bangladesh public administration, this article focuses on the largest reform
effort in the country’s history. In order to present and analyse the state of NPM-
based reform in Bangladesh, Public Administration Reform Commission (PARC)
is considered so that an intensive discussion about the result of this major reform
effort can be realised. Through the analysis, it is intended to delineate the factors
and actors influencing PARC-proposed recommendations and implementation of
those by different regimes. It is important to note that PARC had a wide-array
focus to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in the public sector. However, this
article only sheds light on those recommendations made typically based on NPM
principles. In this regard, key conceptual literature and secondary materials on
NPM and AR are reviewed. Before presenting the analysis, this article provides
a discussion to highlight the relationship between NPM and AR researched
previously in different contexts. A detailed analysis of the PARC follows the con-
ceptual section to highlight its organisation, background and critical factors that
influenced the operation. A later section contains an analysis of major challenges
faced by PARC’s NPM-driven proposals. In that section, the result of PARC is
realised through the lenses of those proposals and their implementation. The anal-
ysis also includes discussion about the role of social, political and administrative
culture in accepting and implementing PARC’s recommendations. This article
also highlights the implications of Bangladesh case, that is, PARC in understand-
ing the challenges and opportunities in implementing NPM-based reforms in
other South Asian countries. Such a discussion is important to realise possible
generalisations of PARC’s outcome in regional context.

Administrative Reforms and NPM: Conceptual Discourse


Administrative Reforms (AR) are seen as ‘those efforts which call for or lead to
major changes in the bureaucratic system of a country intended to transform the
Islam 17

existing and established practices, behaviors and structures within it’ (Khan,
2013b). Turner and Hulme (1997) opine that these different meanings indicate
several common elements. These are: deliberate planned change, innovations and
improvement; need to cope with uncertainties and rapid change; heavy technical
content with an inherent political process; system-wide change or targeting spe-
cific institutional issues; means to an end; and involve a combination of strategies
and approaches. Abueva (1970) focuses on the behaviour of the bureaucrats and
the personnel in charge within the administrative framework. He stresses on the
change in mindset and behaviour. Caiden (1969) states that AR has three key
elements: (a) moral purpose, (b) artificial transformation of administration and
(c) administrative resistance. His ground-breaking research on AR paved the way
for future research in this area. Besides, many scholars from different corners of
the world and development agencies have also tried to categorise AR based on
some of its features.
Conceptualisation of NPM is loose and multifaceted (Christensen & Laegreid,
2001, p. 19). There is a correlation between neo-liberalism and NPM (Boston,
2011). The rise of ‘Managerialism’ and ‘Public Choice Theory’ also facilitated
the growth of NPM as a major agenda of research and discussion (Buchanan,
1978; Niskanen, 1971; Pollitt, 1998). NPM has been viewed as an entrepreneurial
government in which government plays the role of a referee while market remains
as the main source of services (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992). Hughes (1998) further
elucidates Hood’s (1991) research and opines that application of managerial
theory in the public sector means flexibility in managing the functions of the
government where public managers are empowered to manage their tasks and
responsibilities with complete autonomy like the private sector. Nevertheless, the
influence of political system, representative democracy and political culture has
been critically presented by Christensen and Laegreid (2002). Chandhoke (2003)
talks about the non-hierarchical and non-bureaucratic horizontal linkages among
those actors that also correspond with the basic NPM features. However, Peters
and Pierre (2003) inferred the similarity between governance and NPM as both
discuss about the public service delivery in a wider perspective. Despite some
variations, NPM has nine basic elements (Pollitt, 1995). These are cost-cutting,
capping budgets and transparent resource allocation, fragmentation of traditional
rigid bureaucratic organisations into separate ones, decentralised management,
segmentation of public service delivery, establishing market and quasi-market
mechanisms, emphasising performance-based management, payment based on
performance and increasing emphasis on customer responsiveness and service
quality. These basic features of NPM have been used by many countries with
some necessary modifications taking into cognisance indigenous culture and
actors. That is the reason, features of NPM depend on the context such as micro-
economic environment, macroeconomic environment, politics, immediate policy
contexts, diagnoses of the problems and institutional context (Flynn, 2002).
Despite controversies and criticism from many scholars and practition-
ers (Armstrong, 1998; Flynn, 2002; Pollitt, 1990; Savoie, 2002; Singh, 2003),
NPM became a central part of the AR reform in developing countries during
the 1990s (ADB, 2004; Common, 1999; Larbi, 1998; Rahshanjani & Alam, 1997;
Samaratunge & Bennington, 2002; Samaratunge & Hughes, 2001). NPM basically
18 Indian Journal of Public Administration 64(1)

came as a reform agenda and brought some new ideas and strategies with it for
those who want to work for administrative change and reform (Eliassen & Sitter,
2008; Khan, 2013a, 2013b). NPM-based reforms do not necessarily reject all the
features of traditional public administration. It has to be the injection of some
NPM features into the vessel of existing public administration through reform
initiatives (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2004). Similarly, Wise (2002) argues that it is not
only the NPM which shapes the administrative reform. According to him, some
normative changes within the administrative setup can be useful to bring about
desired change. Manning (2001) and Turner (2002) point out that NPM can be the
menu from which countries can choose some features that suit their context best.
Polidano (2001) and Caiden and Sundaram (2004) note that lack of proper mana-
gerial capability and resources lead to failed adoption of sophisticated NPM fea-
tures in developing countries. They assert that ARs in developing countries based
on NPM are quite vulnerable and do not bring success with a complementary
relationship. Samaratunge et al. (2008) opine that NPM and AR are not mutually
exclusive in developing countries. But they also suggest that diversity in political,
macroeconomic and administrative contexts plays a greater part in AR efforts.

PARC: An NPM-based Reform Effort


NPM-based reform efforts in Bangladesh have been initiated either solely by the
government or in collaboration with international organisations. The legacy of
such efforts portrays that the government has been solely responsible for initiating
few of those and others have been done in collaboration with international donor
agencies and development partners such as the World Bank, United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), Department for International Development
(DFID), UK, and International Monetary Fund (IMF). PARC has been the biggest
effort so far by the government to reform the whole system of public administration
considering NPM principles. After the reintroduction of parliamentary democracy
in 1991, successive governments have tried to reform public administration based
on identical NPM features. Among those, the very first was PARC (Khan, 2013b).
PARC was constituted in January 1997 with a former secretary to the gov-
ernment as its chairman. The Commission was constituted with broad terms of
reference for reform of central public administration. The Commission submitted
its main report in June 2000 (ibid.). The main objective of PARC was to bring
about changes in public administration based on NPM. In line with that PARC
advocated improving the system of public service delivery. All the major recom-
mendations of PARC provided the guidelines to establish a system through which
one can get transparent, efficient, effective, flexible, and technology-based and
customer-oriented public service.
There were some political reasons behind the initiation of PARC. The
chief reason was the tendency to ignore the previous Administrative Reforms
Commission’s recommendation. It is important to note that this Commission
was formed by previous government led by Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Obviously, the other major political party, that is, Bangladesh Awami League
Islam 19

(BAL), after forming the government in 1996 wanted to institute new efforts in
reorganising age-old traditional administration inherited from colonial rule. In
the process of that the BAL-led government tried to abolish most of the policy
measures and reform efforts taken by BNP-led previous government. It implies
that the political rivalry plays a pivotal role in a developing country like Bangladesh
where regime change comes as a prime factor in many initiatives to reform public
administration (Cheung, 2005).
At the same time, the pressure from the international donors, who already
conducted few important studies that presented a picture of the failed public sector
to ensure efficiency and effectiveness, forced the government to initiate something
that could incorporate available international prescription to bring about reform
in the public sector (Khan, 2013b). Apart from the pressure of donor agencies
and political motive, there was also some internal pressure from the administra-
tive incumbents. Most of the senior bureaucrats who played an important role in
toppling the last BNP-led government were given key positions in the administra-
tive hierarchy. After being rewarded, they tried to reinforce the notion of useful-
ness of NPM to modernise the public administration. Interestingly, they initially
thought that the modernisation would bring them benefits without sacrificing
the traditional bureaucratic status quo. However, the recommendations made
by PARC were not applauded by the same people in later days. Because, those
recommendations, to a significant extent, threatened the status quo. Basically the
Commission sought to abolish the status quo as they thought it was one of the
major barriers to successful implementation of the recommendations. Thus, it is
important to know what are the recommendations made by the Commission and
what is the aftermath of this largest reform effort in the history of Bangladesh. In
the forthcoming sections, these questions are answered through a critical analysis
of NPM-driven recommendations.

Mission
The PARC responsibilities included

1. recommending policies, programmes and activities to improve the level


of efficiency, effectiveness, accountability and transparency in public
organisations;
2. enabling them to fulfil the government’s commitment to ensure socio-
economic development and reach out its benefits to the people (CPD,
2001, p. 5);
3. advising the government on issues of organisation and civil service and
4. restructuring the outmoded system of administration (GOB, 2000).

Delay
The first and the second chairmen resigned in quick succession after short periods,
and the third and last chairman, Dr ATM Shamsul Haq, did not take over until
May 1998. The Commission’s original term of two years was extended at that
time to November 2000.
20 Indian Journal of Public Administration 64(1)

Significant Recommendations
The Commission has made three types of recommendations, namely interim,
short term and long term, for administrative reform in areas such as defining the
mission and functions of the public offices; affirming professionalism in the civil
service; performance monitoring and result-oriented performance and audit of
government agencies; delegation of powers to subordinate and field offices; open
and free access to government documents and reports for the sake of transparency
and accountability; separation of judiciary from the executive; separation of audit
from accounts; and simplification of outdated laws, rules, regulations and forms
(ibid.). The PARC proposed the preparation of performance standards and a citi-
zens’ charter for three ministries and five important organisations; the constitution
of three clusters of closely related ministries—general, economic and socio-
political infrastructure; and the creation of three public service commissions—
one for general services, another for technical services and a third for education
services (Jahan, 2006, p. 6).
The major recommendations of the PARC included

  1. determination of missions and functions of the public offices;


  2. formation of a professional policymaking group—‘Senior Management
Pool’ (SMP);
  3. lateral entry into the civil service;
  4. reduction of the number of ministries from thirty-six to twenty-five and the
abolition of six organisations;
  5. establishment of the Supreme Court Secretariat;
  6. establishment of the Office of the Ombudsman;
  7. the local councils/parishads at the district, upazila and union should have
overall authority of coordination for development activities;
  8. establishment of an independent commission against corruption;
  9. establishment of a Criminal Justice Commission;
10. monetisation of public service benefits and
11. establishment of a Public Administration Reform Monitoring Commission
(CPD, 2001).

NPM-driven Recommendations

Improving the Delivery of Public Services


The recommendations included significantly greater delegation of authority
within agencies; specification and monitoring of performance standards; greater
public access to information about agencies including published performance
standards in the form of a Citizens’ Charter and a Freedom of Information Act;
a shift towards value for money audit (and the long overdue separation of audit
from accounts) and market-based salaries for the civil service.
Islam 21

Reforming the Civil Service


Eliminate or at least reduce the balkanisation caused by the cadre system; increase
the proportion of entrants appointed on merit; increase competition for senior posi-
tions; improve pay, particularly at more senior levels; link promotion to perfor-
mance; lengthen rotation times in posts; and strengthen training and development.

Reorganising Institutions and Rationalising Manpower


The Commission’s general thesis is that

1. the government undertakes functions which could either be privatised or


contracted out;
2. there are too many organisations for the functions that do need to be
performed, resulting in overlapping and redundant functions;
3. a large number of existing ministries and other organisations could conse-
quently be abolished or merged and
4. there are far too many staff in the civil service in lower grades and not
enough in higher grades. PARC’s review covered ministries and their
subdivisions and not ‘autonomous and semi-autonomous bodies’, includ-
ing public corporations and SOEs. PARC recommended that these man-
power reductions be achieved entirely through attrition (Laking, 2001,
pp. 80–81).

Restructuring Field Administration and Decentralisation


The Commission’s terms of reference were limited to advice on devolution of
powers to local government within the existing proposed four-tier local govern-
ment structure and decentralisation of central government functions.
The report identified two types of problems:

1. Failure to complete the devolution of powers to local government envis-


aged in the local government reforms and
2. A continued high degree of detailed central control by ministries of the
local activities of government departments.

Only one of the four tiers of local government—the union parishad—was fully in
place. Its problems were lack of resources and an ambiguous relationship to
locally deployed central government officials. A second set of problems was the
continued interference by the secretariat in the detailed activities of field agencies.
So, central ministries—particularly at the Sub-district (upazila) level—continued
to decided local priorities, regardless of the theoretical decentralisation of policy
implementation to departments operating in the field or the devolution of control
of these functions to local government. PARC’s recommendations on local
government were designed to ensure that the functions and the resources of central
government were effectively transferred to local government

a. by transferring the ‘functions, personnel and budget’ of relevant service


delivery departments to the zila and upazila and
22 Indian Journal of Public Administration 64(1)

b. by abolishing the division-level offices of government departments, trans-


ferring further development functions to local government and empower-
ing local government to appoint its own personnel. The problems of the
weak revenue base of local government were addressed only in passing
with a proposal for revenue sharing.
Reducing Wastage and Promoting Value for Money
Following are ways to reduce waste and promote value for money:

1. strengthening of Comptroller and Auditor General’s Office;


2. rationalising public financial management system;
3. stopping irrational system losses in different sectors;
4. involvement of the private sector in the transport pool;
5. enactment of comprehensive consumer protection law;
6. privatisation of state-owned enterprises within the capacity of market
absorption;
7. streamlining rules to reduce corruption and wastage of funds;
8. turning existing public sector hospitals into limited companies; and
9. increasing users’ fees in respect of services/utilities.

Combating Corruption
Following are some ways to combat corruption:

1. appointment of Ombudsman;
2. allowing more private companies to cut down on monopoly power;
3. deregulation of non-core activities;
4. reduction of discretionary powers of public officials;
5. updating anti-corruption laws; and
6. establishment of an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).

Other Recommendations

Establishment of an SMP
PARC recommended that the SMP should be introduced in the Secretariat.
Induction into the SMP at the level of Deputy Secretary would be on the basis of
competitive examination to be conducted by the Bangladesh Public Service
Commission (BPSC), which would ensure scope for representation of all cadres
at the Secretariat and also facilitate fast-track promotion for the meritorious
officers (Ministry of Public Administration and UNDP, 2008).

Pay Policy
The recommendations on pay were based on a principle of ‘market-oriented
competitive wages and salaries to civil servants as soon as possible’. Financial
institutions and trading enterprises would be excluded from control. For the non-
market public sector, pay policy would be based on cashing up non-monetary
benefits, regular market-related reviews and cost-of-living adjustments. The result
Islam 23

would be a significant increase in pay rates for the top end probably paid for by
reductions in numbers of lower-level staff (Laking, 2001, pp. 79–80).
Performance Assessment
The Commission recommended annual performance assessments based on ‘merit,
efficiency, integrity, training and service records evaluated on the basis of perfor-
mance targets’ and broad-banded salary scales to give flexibility at recruitment
and enable pay to be linked to performance (ibid., pp. 79–80).
Creation of Decentralised Bangladesh Public Service Commissions (BPSCs)
The rationale for this proposal was to reduce the load on the existing BPSC and to
make the Education and Technical BPSCs more focused in their assessments.
There should be fewer candidates and fewer boards, which should increase the
speed of recruitment and should also increase the reliability and validity of the
interview boards. It is important to have a degree of separation between the selec-
tion processes for the different cadres. This would enable assessment methods to
be better focused on the requirements for the job and should lead to more efficient
selection and more reliable and valid assessment. It will also enable more direct
comparison to be made between candidates, since they would all be competing for
similar jobs on a level playing field. Another positive side effect of this separa-
tion is that it would be harder for technically qualified candidates to opt for
generalist positions, whereas the current system facilitates this (Ministry of Public
Administration and UNDP, 2008).
The outcome of PARC can be analysed through four major perspectives.
These perspectives are taken from Pollitt’s (1995) principle of NPM. The per-
spectives are: (a) efficient civil servants for better service delivery, (b) decentral-
ised and e-governance for efficient service delivery, (c) customer satisfaction and
(d) combating corruption for transparent and just public service. These four
principles provide a framework to analyse the outcome of the Commission.
One can see that the NPM-driven recommendations of PARC easily fall within
this framework. Hence, the next segment builds the analysis on this framework
which covers all those recommendations based on NPM principles and values.

Outcome of PARC

Efficient Civil Servants for Better Public Service Delivery


PARC pointed out that performance management in public service delivery is
crucial for achieving efficiency and customer satisfaction. It can be possible when
public service delivery is in the hands of civil servants who are keen to adopt
NPM principles while delivering efficient public service. To devise a pool of
efficient and performance-oriented pool of civil servants, PARC stressed the
importance of recruiting committed, talented and meritorious people in the public
service. PARC suggested that merit should be the basis for appointments, postings
and promotions at all levels of public bureaucracy. The Commission also suggested
to ‘increase the proportion of entrants appointed on merit; increase competition
24 Indian Journal of Public Administration 64(1)

for senior positions; improve pay, particularly at more senior levels; link promo-
tion to performance; lengthen rotation times in posts; and strengthen training and
development’ (Khan, 2013b). The most significant recommendation that PARC
made to improve the quality of manpower working in the public sector was to
raise the merit component from 45 per cent to 55 per cent in recruitment to all
class I and class II posts. Unfortunately, this recommendation has not yet been
implemented. One of the key reasons is the government does not want to lose
the support of freedom fighters (Zafarullah, 2010). The quota reserved for the
children and grandchildren of the freedom fighters in 1971 is 30 per cent and it
still exists. There is no doubt that introduction of NPM in public service delivery
system needs talented and qualified public managers at all levels (Pollitt, 1995).
But no major initiative was taken by the past governments to implement the
recommendations of PARC which might has improved the condition of personnel
management (The Daily Star, 2009).
In order to create a pool of efficient civil service managers and leaders, manag-
ing at the top (MATT) programme was introduced with the joint collaboration of
Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre (BPATC), Ministry of Public
Administration (MOPA) and the DFID, UK. This initiative was undertaken to
make the senior civil servants familiar with the NPM-based change occurring in
recent times. Surprisingly, despite lack of resource and institutional readiness,
MATT programme in two phases has been quite successful in achieving its goals
(Jacobs, 2009).
UNDP and Government of Bangladesh initiated Civil Service Change
Management Programme (CSCMP) in 2008 with the aim to provide ‘a toolbox
or road map’ for civil service reform in Bangladesh. This public administration
reform programme aimed at supporting the government of the People’s Republic
of Bangladesh in undertaking strategic, doable and high-leverage initiatives.
CSCMP does not intend to design, develop and implement wholesale public
administration reform. Instead, its main aim is to put the Bangladesh Civil Service
(BCS) on the road to change, in line with the essentially incremental and unpre-
dictable nature of change. Basically, both MATT and CSCMP were more focused
to make civil servants keen to replace traditional administration with NPM.
UNDP also collaborated with the government in building capacity of existing civil
servants through capacity development programmes (Khan, 2013b).

Decentralisation and E-governance for Efficient Service Delivery


PARC was the first reform body to categorically propose adoption of decentral-
ised practice in public service delivery, customer orientation, downsizing the
public sector, introduction of e-governance and contracting out government func-
tions. All these recommendations of PARC are the essence of NPM (see Pollitt,
1995). The initial status of the implementation of those recommendations did not
give a positive picture but later some significant changes in the institutional struc-
ture and process occurred. Splitting big ministries into smaller ones is one such
significant change. Still most of the recommendations in strengthening field
administration have not been implemented. Apart from this, there has not been
Islam 25

any measure to increase the autonomy of public managers working at local level.
Decentralised administration is still an enigma.
The PARC proposed payment of all public utility bills at one place at one time
instead of several payments at different times and places. In 2003, the BNP-led
government introduced the ‘One Stop Utility Bill Payment System’ to remove
the hassle, waste of time and harassment of customers. Normally, customers
had to pay bills for four utility services—telephone, power, gas and water—to
separate banks, running between branches and waiting in long queues for hours
(Jahan, 2006). Under the present system, a subscriber can pay all utility service
bills through banks from home. The present and previous (2008–2013) Awami
League (AL)-led governments successfully launched the e-governance through
‘Digital Bangladesh’ campaign. This indicates innovation based on NPM ideas
of decentralisation of services and customer-driven mechanism (see Chandhoke,
2003; Pollitt, 1995). Union Information Service Centre (UISC) is a component
of such campaign introduced by AL-led government (2009–2013). UISC can be
considered as the example of e-governance. UISC is set up to provide certain
services to the people at grassroots level without going through traditional official
rigid procedures. Similarly, e-portal of each administrative district is already set
up to provide the people with opportunity in receiving service with just one click.

Customer Satisfaction
To treat the citizens as customers, PARC recommended that Citizens’ Charter
should be introduced in all service-rendering public organisations to enable
citizens to know their rights and to ensure the commitment of organisations to
their service delivery and assure value for money (Khan, 2012). Customer satis-
faction was the main objective of Citizens’ Charter. It is PARC which has
produced the guidelines for future changes in the policy framework, institutional
structure and process. Since 2007, the scenario started to change as military-
backed Caretaker Government (CTG) took over the charge of running the country
(Khan & Islam, 2014). In June 2007, the CTG asked all ministries to formulate
citizens’ charters. Following this directive, all ministries and most of the public
agencies formulated citizens’ charters. It is to be noted that UNDP provided the
technical assistance to the government in launching Citizens’ Charter in public
offices. Although citizens’ charter was introduced in public offices from 2007, the
degree of its efficiency and effectiveness declined sharply in the course of time.
The major cause of country-wide unsuccessful implementation of citizens’ charter
is the lack of advocacy and awareness-building programme for the grassroots
people. Public servants hardly tried to be at service of the people by giving them
free access to the public office as they always wanted to maintain the elitist status
in the society (Jamil, 2007). This has been another reason why citizens’ charter
has been discarded in public service delivery system. It can be noted that once a
democratic government came to power in 2008, public servants re-established
their political linkages to maintain status quo as they have been doing since inde-
pendence (Zafarullah, 2013). It implies that the politics–bureaucracy nexus, the
manner in which it influences public-policy implementation and administrative
26 Indian Journal of Public Administration 64(1)

reform efforts in Bangladesh, adversely affects the implementation of many


reform initiatives (Khan, 2013b; Khan & Islam, 2013a, 2014; Zafarullah, 2003).

Combating Corruption for Transparent and Just Public Service


PARC’s recommendation included the need for establishment of an Independent
Anti-corruption Commission (IACC). PARC suggested improving the transpar-
ency in public service delivery. It was also deemed by PARC that through IACC
public servants would not be able to manipulate the system while delivering
service to the people. The government took this recommendation seriously only
after mounting pressure from international donors and set up an IACC. The IACC
was set up to investigate and prosecute irregularities in public service delivery.
It was thought that IACC would play a vital role in holding public managers
accountable. Christensen and Laegreid (2002) see that accountability of public
managers in a setting based on NPM ideas could raise questions about success of
NPM in a democratic system. On that note, one can argue that PARC was quite
aware of that and suggested of establishing IACC. Since the creation of IACC,
most people have talked about the politicisation of the Commission. Recently,
IACC’s investigation of large-scale corruption involving some state-owned banks
have, to some extent, resurrected the credibility of the Commission.

Problems and Challenges to Implementation


NPM-driven Recommendations
The major challenges and problems to successful implementation of reform
efforts in Bangladesh are not new to the available body of literature, but most of
those claims are made based on overall analysis of the public administration
reform in Bangladesh. Thus, it is necessary to look at the challenges and problems
PARC’s recommendations faced since last two decades. This will help the people
to answer the question as to what extent the outcome of this Commission is differ-
ent than others in the past. It is also significant to note that PARC is the last major
reform commission formed by the Government of Bangladesh. There have been
many reform efforts during the last two decades but those are not done by forming
a full-fledged commission (Khan, 2013b).
Problems and challenges of NPM-based reforms’ implementation in Bangladesh
can be identified through the analysis of the reform efforts presented in each one
of the four perspectives in the earlier section. The first perspective shows that
efficient pool of civil servants is one of the major prerequisites of NPM-based
reforms as they are the key change agents and the persons who are to utilise NPM
principle in delivering services. In a parliamentary democracy like Bangladesh,
the legislature as the representative of the people is supposed to reflect the desire
of the people pertaining reform initiatives. Over the years, the legislature has
not been able to take actions against the executive’s failure in implementing
the reform recommendations. This kind of unjustified dominance of executive
Islam 27

over legislature creates power struggle between politicians and bureaucrats


(Bowornwathana & Poocharoen, 2010). Undoubtedly, this type of power struggle
creates confusion among the incumbents responsible for implementation of NPM
reforms. Power hungry and confused public sector managers do not really want
innovation and change based on NPM. Thus, politics–bureaucracy nexus pose
challenge to NPM-based reform. For instance, PARC urged to reform the quota
system in the recruitment of BCS cadre officers. This recommendation has not
been implemented. Quota system still prevails in the recruitment of civil servants.
Apart from this, bureaucracy suffers from conflict within its organisation.
For example, specialist–generalist conflict and posting of generalists in specialist
posts have degraded AR efforts (Khan, 2013c). Equally, the extent of unjusti-
fied bureaucratic interventions in AR efforts has always taken the centre-stage at
every discussion about reforms and change (Zafarullah, 2002). Not only they
have intervened unjustifiably but also impeded in every possible manner to thwart
new large-scale change within the civil service (Khan, 2002, 2013b,). In one
way or another, bureaucratic intervention in AR efforts has appeared as bureau-
cratic resistance to reform. Due to these challenges and internal problem, imple-
mentation of reforms focused on modern and performance-based civil service
management. Although MATT programme has changed the attitude of some
senior bureaucrats in initiating changes, but they have not been able to utilise
the learning fully because of the continuing resistance from both within political
and bureaucratic arena. Furthermore, MATT intended to create a pool of public
managers who are willing to accept NPM-based changes within public sector.
The programme has not been able to increase the capability of the public-sector
leaders in initiating and implementing NPM-based changes. Significantly, this
type of training programme does not often go through the evaluation phase (Khan,
2013c). That is why MATT has not been able to check regularly how the leaders
are playing their role regarding the installation of NPM in the public sector. That
is why the goals of MATT are underachieved and the public sector still lacks
the required number of quality public managers seeking to bring about changes
based on NPM ideas. MATT was the brainchild of DFID, UK. Both MATT and
CSCMP have been steered by international donors. The donors hardly consider
the indigenous culture and heritage and their impact on politics and administra-
tion of the country. Ferdousi and Qiu (2012) assert that apart from political factor
and bureaucratic rigidity to change, conditional introduction of NPM principles
have lowered the degree of acceptance of those principles among both politi-
cal and administrative officials. It implies that influence of international donor
agencies such as UNDP, Asian Development Bank (ADB), World Bank and DFID
in the process of AR itself throws an important challenge for the implementation
of reforms in Bangladesh. After the reintroduction of parliamentary democracy
in 1991, many suggestions and recommendations to reform the public sector
have been made by different international donor agencies. Sometimes, countries
like Bangladesh enthusiastically attempt to adopt foreign practices as guide to
reform. Polidano and Hulme (1999) opine that many developing countries have
taken up elements of the NPM agenda, but they have not adopted anything close
to the entire package, and they are simultaneously undertaking reforms that are
28 Indian Journal of Public Administration 64(1)

unrelated or even contrary to that agenda. Moreover, NPM was the brainchild of
developed nations which already had well-developed market structure. As NPM
is closely linked with economic ideas such as free market and neo-liberalism, it is
unlikely that underdeveloped domestic market in Bangladesh can accept rigorous
implementation of NPM reforms.
The second point of analysis presents that introduction of decentralised and
techno-based practices are the two most important aspects of NPM reforms.
Unfortunately, since independence, the country has been plagued with too many
political upheavals (Khan & Islam, 2014). Lack of democracy and regime change
like pendulum (Heady, 2001; Huque & Zafarullah, 2014) made the situation even
worse. Despite some fragmented reforms based on NPM principles, the public
sector still must undergo major restructuring in favour of accountable and rule-
based government. Bureaucrats have strengthened their status quo due to weak
system of accountability. This brings a key challenge to implementation of NPM
reform (Samaratunge et al., 2008). People cannot hold public managers account-
able for not implementing the necessary reform initiatives. In terms of decen-
tralisation, neither the local government nor the field administration bodies have
been given enough authority and power to dictate and mould the reform efforts.
Interestingly, many recommendations of the PARC and international donors
have remained unimplemented pertaining the establishment of strong local gov-
ernment and field administration bodies. There has not been any single effort
to define the role of locally elected representatives of local government bodies
and the civil servants working at the local level (Khan, 2009). Due to such con-
fusing and overlapping role definition, reform efforts attempting to decentralise
the service delivery have failed. Due to the lack of required autonomy at field
level, public managers have not been able to initiate necessary changes and estab-
lish required environment for the introduction of NPM practices. Decentralised
style of administration has been advocated both by PARC and by the interna-
tional organisations. Unfortunately, civil servants working at the central level
are quite unwilling to delegate enough authority to the civil servants at the local
level to change the traditional process of delivering service. Bureaucratic culture
and colonial legacy of administration have neither allowed PARC recommenda-
tions nor did other significant AR efforts from being successfully implemented.
In such an environment, civil servants cannot actually implement what they
learn from programmes such as MATT and CSCMP. One of the major causes
of the failed implementation is the lack of linkages between the decentralised
units and the bureaucratic and hierarchical coordination mechanisms. Due to the
lack of communication and horizontal linkages between decentralised govern-
ing units and central administration public servants at grassroots still depend on
the people working at the central administrative positions (Chandhoke, 2003).
It means the absence of such linkages thwart the growth of NPM-based ideas in
the administration and public service delivery stream in Bangladesh. Notably, both
local government and field administration heavily relied on the central admin-
istration for decisions regarding finance and resource allocation (Khan, 2011).
This kind of dominance of central administration over decentralised units in
a unitary parliamentary system is not conducive to deliver service to citizens
with desired efficiency as prescribed by NPM. However, the Commission’s
Islam 29

recommendations were criticised for lack of consistency and were hardly imple-
mented. Implementation of the Commission’s recommendations in this regard
was slow (Khan, 2013b).
But it is to be noted that NPM allows higher degree of discretion to the public
managers which may further damage the existing weak channels of accountability
(Hood, 1991; Pollitt, 1995). That is why the challenge for Bangladesh is to have a
suitable bureaucratic structure so that no activity goes unnoticed and unchecked.
It means re-bureaucratisation needs to be considered along with NPM reform
implementation with equal importance.
Through the introduction of e-governance, it was assumed that public service
would be better accessed by the people without any significant hassle. It was
also predicted that public procurement would be fast and transparent through
the mechanism of e-governance. Out of nine principles of NPM, the principle
of transparent resource allocation and cost-cutting is an important one (Pollitt,
1995). Public procurement is the way through which the public sector allocates
its resources. In most of the cases, the introduction of Public Procurement System
based on e-portal is yet to be familiar to both users and providers. There is still
digital divide in Bangladesh as people with hardcore poverty are not at all familiar
with modern technologies. In fact, they are far from enjoying the fruits of latest
technologies based on which the government is trying to implement the features
of NPM. Similarly, due to the existing digital divide people are not getting enough
access to the services provided through the e-governance system. Such digital
divide augments the exploitation of rural people by their urban counterparts.
In addition, corruption, mismanagement and lack of required and competent
manpower impede the way of achieving desired efficiency in public service
delivery through e-governance mechanism. Among these reasons, one can iden-
tify the importance of competent and committed manpower in the public sector.
Unfortunately, there is detachment of performance-based system from service
delivery mechanism (Hood, 1991). Public managers have been less keen to address
customer feedback as they know they would not get payment based on the service
delivered. It is a belief among many former and incumbent senior bureaucrats
that use of Annual Confidential Reports (ACRs) for promotion of civil servants
fosters incompetence and partisan loyalty within the administration (The Daily
Star, 2010). Performance-based Evaluation System (PBES) was accepted as
a policy decision to replace the current ACR; unfortunately, PBES has not yet
been implemented. The main resistance to this change comes, not surprisingly,
from the senior bureaucrats who do not want to lose their rigid control over the
subordinates as they utilise the traditional ACRs to dominate their junior officers.
There are still some problems in the administrative culture and the organisa-
tional mechanism (Razzaque, 2012). The absence of performance-based payment
system has been a key problem in improving the motivation of the public manag-
ers working to implement reform initiatives (Huque & Zafarullah, 2014).
It has been seen that efforts like Citizens’ Charter are launched to increase
customer satisfaction. It is important to understand that there is a correlation
between the people-centred reform and positive bureaucratic behaviour. If bureau-
crats know that people are unaware of the reforms, then they are reluctant to
implement reform proposals as people would not be able to hold the bureaucrats
30 Indian Journal of Public Administration 64(1)

accountable for their failures. Awareness at the grassroots level about reform is a
significant phenomenon that needs to be considered. It has been seen in the case
of Citizens’ Charter. For instance, Kemp, Funk and Eadie (1993) and Bingham
and Wise (1996) conclude that successful implementation of new programmes
depends on top management’s ability to disseminate information about the change
and convince employees by advocating the urgency of change. At the same time,
it is evident that rural people are deprived of many innovations like Citizens’
Charter. It is the grassroots people who also need to be aware of the need for
reform through NPM channel. This challenge is two-fold: one is motivating civil
servants for NPM reform and the other is advocating intended reforms among
people. Moreover, one can see the demise of ‘Citizens’ Charter’ due to frequent
regime change and transition of governments. During 2007–2009 in Bangladesh,
there was a non-elected military-backed CTG in power. Once AL took over power
from that CTG, existence of initiatives like Citizens’ Charter were at stake as the
past ideas and reform measures are usually discarded with new political agendas
when regime change happens in a developing country (see Bowornwathana, 2004;
Khan & Islam, 2013b). In a turbulent democracy, civilian governments are aller-
gic to meaningful reform efforts undertaken by their non-elected predecessors.
The fourth aspect clearly denotes that rampant corruption also has not allowed
the public sector to win the trust of the service receivers (TIB, 2012). Trust in
government and people play a vital role in facilitating NPM reforms (Halligan,
2007; Walle, 2011). To resurrect the trust of people, IACC has been set up to curb
corruption and maintain a transparent process in the delivery of public services
in which there would be no nepotism and favouritism. Significantly, one needs
to consider the importance of micro and macroeconomic environment for NPM
reform in a developing country like Bangladesh. Absence of strong market and
rules for market practices pose serious challenge to the implementation of NPM
reforms (Sarker, 2006). Due to such absence, influential people seek to manipu-
late the mechanism and widen the gap between the rich and the poor. Due to
this, corruption further deepens its roots into the polity leading to the abuse of
ill-developed market system. Thus, market development is one of the key chal-
lenges, too. To facilitate the overall NPM reform in Bangladesh it is also neces-
sary to change the culture of violating law. Violation of law and manipulation
of the legal system have been the culture in Bangladesh. Such a cultural legacy
is seen in administration, politics and society (Jamil, 2007). Jamil (2007) and
Khan (2013b) state that prevalence of the colonial culture in the administrative
system, patron–client relationship and dominance of generalist cadre officers
over specialists have aggravated the negative administrative culture and politick-
ing. Such domineering cultural traits have also let the executive to dominate the
legislature (Khan, 2014). That is why the members of the executive get away with
corruption very easily. There has been hardly any significant check imposed by
the legislature over executive to curb corruption. The IACC remains an ineffec-
tive body incapable to check corruption and people rightly question its capability
and independence.
Islam 31

Conclusion
It is not easy to cope with change. Change brings about pressure to do things in
diverse ways and break away from conventional practices and behaviour. Learning
new behaviour and adopting new attitudes are required. These are not easy propo-
sitions. NPM reforms in Bangladesh have been difficult and critical in many
ways. Complex political environment, reactive and hostile administrative culture
and increasing inequality have made the situation doubtful in terms of successful
implementation of NPM reforms. Due to the presence of several factors and
actors, discussed in earlier sections, Bangladesh is quite unlikely to implement
major and path-breaking NPM reform initiatives, such as, a pool of efficient civil
servants, efficient mechanism of service delivery, ensuring customer satisfaction,
and corruption-free public service. It can be inferred that Bangladesh has started
driving the NPM car but is still out of the right track. Analysis has shown that
public administration itself remains as one of the biggest resisters of major reforms.
In most cases, public bureaucracy is responsible for implementing the changes.
It clearly signifies that the administrative culture in Bangladesh is not conducive
to initiate and implement major NPM reforms. Such administrative culture’s
attributes include politics-bureaucracy nexus, specialist-generalist conflict, patron-
client relationship and disparity between administrative policy measures, and citi-
zens’ demand. Ineffectiveness of parliament in holding to account the executive
has been another major problem as the civil servants often try to bypass new
changes and reforms. Even efforts such as MATT and CSCMP, prescribed and
managed by international donors, fail due to critical political and administrative
culture. That is why such initiatives from international donors benefit none.
It indicates that programmes and suggestions of international donor agencies do
not always bring success in introducing changes like NPM (Killian, 2008). Thus,
developing countries like Bangladesh need to be careful in adopting formulas of
international organisations. Moreover, it is evident that regime change and gov-
ernment transition often impels the incumbent in power to cancel the measures
taken by its predecessors. Analysis thus shows that Bangladesh has to face stiff
internal and external challenges in solving the major problems of implementing
reforms based on NPM principles.
One fondly hopes that adhering to the major policy prescriptions ahead can
create an NPM reform-friendly environment in Bangladesh. These NPM princi-
ples are democratisation of the society, rightsizing/downsizing the public sector,
enhancing accountability and transparency of political and appointed public
officials through parliamentary committees, institutionalising parliamentary democ-
racy, facilitating participatory and democratic practice within political parties for
improved political commitment, stringent punishment for corrupt officials, intro-
duction of performance-based management and pay in the public sector, ensuring
bureaucratic reorientation to change the behaviour of bureaucrats, facilitating re-
bureaucratisation to maintain impartiality to regain trust of the people, formation of
an efficient negotiating body to deal with foreign donor agencies, simplifying the
intended reforms while advocating those at the grassroots levels and establishing
permanent reform implementation body at the highest political level.
32 Indian Journal of Public Administration 64(1)

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