Bank support for civil service reform (CSR) in developing countries used to focus mainly on improving government pay, and employment practices. In recent years, CSR programs have sought a broader set of management improvements. But getting public pay and employment right is still fundamental:...

Changes in public sector institutions and governance systems in developing countries may be relatively easy to achieve technically, but very tough to implement politically. Such reforms create winners and losers, so understanding the political realities that shape the incentives of key...

A gnawing critique of civil service reform efforts persists, intimating that these civil service reform operations of the World Bank have boosted neither efficiency nor effectiveness. The outlines of the problem are fairly clear: civil service pay and employment reforms have had only limited...