The Passionate Bureaucrat

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• Foreword: Look Back to See Ahead
• Acknowledgments
• Contents

When things go well in government, public officials rarely get any credit. Attention-seeking politicians, focused on the next election, are only too happy to hog the limelight. When government fails, political leaders are usually more than eager to blame their officials. Yet, whether ignored or derided, public service is critical to sustaining and improving the quality of life for nations around the world. A trusted, responsive and dynamic civil service underpins the ability of a state to deliver on the needs and aspirations of its citizens. Civil services ensure that governments now and in the future can be catalysts for progress.

An effective, efficient and equitable public administration is essential for a modern state to be able to deliver on its obligations to citizens and the international community. But how can a country improve its public service?.

Along with perhaps the other main text (Ukg. 6, the oval plaque), the two cone tablets form the core texts of our exploration of the first public administration ‘reform’ in history. Cones A/Ukg.1, Aa/Ukg.2/AO 4598a, Ab/Ukg.3/AO 4598b, AO 27621 and four fragments, MNB 1390, AO 12181, AO 12782 and clay tablet Crozer 005 (Cone D, in the collection of the Crozer Theological Seminary, Rochester, New York, USA) are fragments, confirming the narrative around the elimination of corrupt practices of state officials. They provide a later version of the ‘reforms’, when Urukagina had been reduced to ‘the king of Girsu’ but more on that later.

The texts of the clay tablets, and meaning of the narrative that they relate, are opaque and obscure. So few agreed ‘facts’ exist about the life of Urukagina, the socio-economic structure of the city of Lagash or even the chronology of the ‘Early Dynastic IIIb period’ (see ‘A Quick Introduction to Sumerology’ above) to which his reign belongs that almost any interpretation about his ‘Reforms’ is possible, if not always plausible.

First accounts of the ‘Reforms’ in the early years after their discovery presented a balanced view. For example, Leonard King, Assistant Keeper of the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum, in his monumental work, A History of Sumer and Akkad of 1910 argued that the priests grew rich by plundering the people with impunity, but public officials were thoroughly complicit. Urukagina dismissed officials who had accepted bribes from the priests. The priests were deprived of their privileges, and burial fees were cut by more than half. Urukagina put an end to the extortions of officials, imposed drastic penalties for theft, and sought to protect by law the humbler classes of his subjects, including the muskenum (serf/villein) and the awilum (free man) or mar awllim (son of a (free) man) from oppression by their wealthier and more powerful neighbours.

The world’s first ‘Reformer’ had a fine counterpoint. Urukagina’s main antagonist was Lugalzagesi, the king of Umma, who was seeking to establish dominance over southern Sumeria.

Development nowadays is hampered by the lack of the sort of divine guidance in which Urukagina placed his faith — or what nowadays is called a credible theory of change to explain how or why an impartial, ethical, fair and merit-based public service emerges, and how it can be promoted and fostered.

The Nobel prize-winning economist Sir Arthur Lewis once noted that the secret of development was really quite simple: ‘sensible politics and good public administration’. Those two requirements have all too often proved so remarkably elusive.

Failure has proved endemic in public sector reform, not just in developing countries. Public sector reform has a long history of failure, and lack of evidence that outcomes have improved. Such reforms are indeed rarely successful. Successive civil service reforms did not substantially improve efficiency or reduce corruption. Fewer than 9% of reforms across the EU showed plausible outcomes. In the United States, reforms to the federal government between 1945 and 1995 rarely achieved their goals.

When President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf took office in January 2006, Liberia was one of the poorest nations in the world. Its economy had collapsed. Fourteen years of a bloody civil war had destroyed the country’s physical infrastructure and the health-care system. The civil service had collapsed. Bloated by patronage and neglect, only poorly qualified staff remained on the government payroll. Most educated Liberians had fled abroad, and younger people who remained had missed out on regular schooling.

In the English language, institutions and organisations are ‘built’. The verb subtly implies a physical, bricks-and-mortar imagery when we talk about building up the civil service and its capacities. In the building trade, the most appropriate analogy is probably plumbing. When the pipes are properly installed and the taps fitted, water flows easily and efficiently around the structure without leaks or wastage. There is usually a ‘best practice’, the optimal way to position the pipes in the most cost-effective manner. Reform, then, means an outsider being hired, the plumber, to come with a toolkit for finding, often from overseas, ways to adjust the pipes and taps to ensure the ‘best practice’ is applied.

The naval battle off Minorca in May 1756 in the Mediterranean at the start of the Seven Years’ War resulted in the court-martial and execution of the British commander, Admiral John Byng, for ‘failure to do his utmost’ to hold the island of Minorca. The French philosopher Voltaire, in his novel Candide (published in 1759), famously commented on this with the one-line quip: il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres — ‘it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others’. Presumably for the same reason in 2016 Kim Jong-Un, the leader of North Korea, ordered the execution of Ri Yong-jin, a senior official in the education ministry, for falling asleep at a meeting chaired by Kim.

In 2015, Singapore commemorated a half century of independence. It was something worth celebrating. Since splitting away from Malaysia in 1965, the small island city-state has enjoyed sustained economic growth, achieved long-term political stability and maintained honest government. The country’s success can, however, be all too easily taken for granted. The early days of the newly independent city-state were challenging. In 1967, Singapore’s political and administrative leadership unexpectedly confronted a ‘pre-modern’ public health scare that threatened their still fragile aspirations for national development. The newly independent city-state briefly suffered a mass psychogenic illness or collective anxiety neurosis.

Dramatic change happens in public administration when political discontent and disruptive technologies merge. Technology advances in giant leaps, not incremental steps. To change habits, new technology cannot just offer marginal improvement. It must be enormously better — as a rule of thumb, at least 10 times better — than the technology that it replaces. Electric light was far cheaper, safer and more convenient than burning candles. The car was much more convenient than a horse.

The ‘passionate bureaucrat’ sounds like a contradiction in terms, or possibly the title for a particularly uninspired Mills and Boon ‘romantic’ novel. Yet in the third century BC, the ancient Indian political philosopher Kautilya, in the Arthashastra, advised that the qualifications (amátyasampat) to be a senior official (amátya) should include possessed of enthusiasm. Other attributes that he regarded as essential included being well-trained, possessed of foresight and a good memory. Public officials also needed to be bold, well spoken, excellent in their field of expertise, learned in theoretical and practical knowledge, pure of character, of good health, kind and philanthropic, free from procrastination, fickle-mindedness, hate, enmity, and anger. Bureaucrats should be dedicated to dharma, or righteousness, by upholding duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and the “right way of living”.

For governments to be perceived as legitimate requires effective institutions — which are deeply rooted in history and core principles of impartiality, meritocracy and trust needed to address the deeply rooted human desire for certainty to allay primordial fears about the future:

‘Something must be done!’ shrieks every politician. The ambitious local MP emerges to congratulate the government on its handling of the crisis. The opposition spokesman puts in an appearance to condemn the ruling party for allowing acts of God to happen. The high-flying political appointee in the departmental ‘delivery unit’ continues to adjust the data until at last the graph shows that the problem has been ‘fixed’. The junior minister rushes to the scene of the disaster, looking more shaken by the bumpy ride in the shabby vehicle from the office car pool than by the incident. The Secretary of State cancels her holiday to exploit a much-needed opportunity to appeal to voters as earnest, committed and deeply motivated, at least to hang on to her job. Meanwhile her cavalcade is blocking the road, thus hampering the emergency services from dealing with the scene. The Prime Minister flies home from the Summit meeting, clutching his umbrella, waving a piece of paper and declaring ‘Peace in Our Time’, even as the invasion is taking place.

From the 4500 years perspective, the current ‘Age of Anxiety’ is witnessing a ‘Fourth Bureaucratic Revolution’ that will develop into a competition among countries to become ‘Creative States’.

The following section is included:

• Index