Publication: A Review of the Anthropological Literature on the Civil Service
Loading...
Date
2017-05
ISSN
Published
2017-05
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper reviews anthropological literature on the topic of how and why civil services function as they do. The paper considers the formal and informal rules that structure bureaucratic practice, including the effects of institutional history or culture. The review examines how bureaucrats understand or experience their work, such as the rules that guide them; the clients, bosses, or employees with whom they interact; and their own actions. Finally, the review considers what methodological or ethical challenges are posed by the study of bureaucracies. The first section explores normative expectations of organizational practice and how they shape scholars’ accounts of the nature of bureaucratic power. The second section focuses on bureaucratic decision making, scrutinizing how institutional goals manifest in specific practices. The third section considers how sociocultural structures bear on bureaucratic practice, including the question of how organizational history and culture might complicate efforts at institutional reform. The fourth section engages with questions of knowledge production, ignorance, and indeterminacy, reviewing recent literature that questions the presumed role of bureaucracies and states as producers of knowledge. The fifth section explores the conceptual and practical methodological challenges faced by field researchers at institutions, and points toward key areas for future research.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Hoag, Colin; Hull, Matthew. 2017. A Review of the Anthropological Literature on the Civil Service. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8081. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26953 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Geopolitics and the World Trading System(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-23)Until the beginning of this century, the GATT/WTO system worked. Economic research provided a compelling explanation. It showed that if governments maximize the well-being of their own countries broadly defined, GATT/WTO principles would facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation over their trade policy choices. Now heightened geopolitical rivalry seems to have undermined the WTO. A simple transposition of the previous rationalization suggests that geopolitics and trade cooperation are not compatible. The paper shows that this is only true if rivalry eclipses any consideration of own-country well-being. In all other circumstances, there are gains from trade cooperation even with geopolitics. Furthermore, the WTO’s relevance is in question only if it adheres too rigidly to its existing rules and norms. Through measured adaptation to the geopolitical imperative, the WTO can continue to thrive as a forum for multilateral trade cooperation in the age of geopolitics.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05)Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.Publication From Patriarchy to Policy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Legal institutions play an important role in shaping gender equality in economic domains, from inheritance to labor markets. But where do gender equal laws come from? Using cross-country data on social norms and legal equality, this paper investigates the socio-cultural roots of gender inequity in the legal system and its implications for female labor force participation. To identify the impact of social norms, the analysis uses an empirical strategy that exploits pre-modern differences in ancestral patriarchal culture as an instrument for present-day gender norms. The findings show that ancestral patriarchal culture is a strong predictor of contemporary norms, and conservative social norms are associated with more gender inequality in the de jure legal framework, the de facto implementation of laws, and the labor market. The paper presents evidence for a political selection mechanism linking norms to laws: countries with more conservative norms elect political leaders who are more hostile to gender equality, who then pass less progressive legislation. The results highlight the cultural roots and political drivers of legalized gender inequality.Publication Global Socio-economic Resilience to Natural Disasters(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-22)Most disaster risk assessments use damages to physical assets as their central metric, often neglecting distributional impacts and the coping and recovery capacity of affected people. To address this shortcoming, the concepts of well-being losses and socio-economic resilience—the ability to experience asset losses without a decline in well-being—have been proposed. This paper uses microsimulations to produce a global estimate of well-being losses from, and socio-economic resilience to, natural disasters, covering 132 countries. On average, each $1 in disaster-related asset losses results in well-being losses equivalent to a $2 uniform national drop in consumption, with significant variation within and across countries. The poorest income quintile within each country incurs only 9% of national asset losses but accounts for 33% of well-being losses. Compared to high-income countries, low-income countries experience 67% greater well-being losses per dollar of asset losses and require 56% more time to recover. Socio-economic resilience is uncorrelated with exposure or vulnerability to natural hazards. However, a 10 percent increase in GDP per capita is associated with a 0.9 percentage point gain in resilience, but this benefit arises indirectly—such as through higher rate of formal employment, better financial inclusion, and broader social protection coverage—rather than from higher income itself. This paper assess ten policy options and finds that socio-economic and financial interventions (such as insurance and social protection) can effectively complement asset-focused measures (e.g., construction standards) and that interventions targeting low-income populations usually have higher returns in terms of avoided well-being losses per dollar invested.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Preparatory Work for a World Bank Programming Mission on Civil Service Reform in Indonesia(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-12)This report describes a mission to Indonesia, with the purpose of mapping Human Resources Management (HRM) Practices in three selected ministries: Finance (MoF), Foreign Affairs (MoFA), and Home Affairs (MoHA). The mappings within these ministries were intended to provide an input to a World Bank Programming Mission on Civil Service Reform scheduled for 2-13 February 2009 to determine what kind of support the World Bank could provide in helping the Government of Indonesia (GOI) develop its ongoing civil service reform program. This report is a summary of the information gathered and includes a comparison among the three ministries. The summary is organized in accordance with the HRM core areas: (i) human resources strategy, (ii) job classification, (iii) recruitment, (iv) career management, (v) performance management, (vi) ethics management, (vii) training and development, (viii) remuneration, and (ix) the organization of the HR divisions.Publication Entry-Level Civil Service Leadership Development Programs(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-11)This note presents an overview of several entry-level civil service leadership development programs (ELDP), defined here as a government program – separate from mainstream civil service recruitment and development mechanisms – that seeks to recruit young professionals, select the best candidates based on merit, develop their skills to meet the business needs of government ministries and programs while preparing them for leadership in the civil service. It draws on experiences from the Unites States, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Liberia. All of the programs analyzed cover the national or federal level of government. The remainder of the note is organized into five sections: (i) Background, which places ELDPs in the broader context of civil service reform; (ii) Advent of ELDPs, which describes the challenges ELDPs were designed to address; (iii) Analysis of Programs, which describes the general characteristics typical to ELDPs; (iv) Country cases, which highlights salient characteristics of each of the four ELDPs analyzed; and (v) Initial thoughts on introducing such programs.Publication Lao PDR - Civil Service Pay and Compensation Review : Attracting and Motivating Civil Servants(World Bank, 2010-06-01)Lao PDR is at a point on its development trajectory where strategic attention to administrative performance is crucial. An efficient and high-performing civil service, with the compensation and human resource management systems to attract and motivate qualified personnel, will be essential to Lao PDR's development efforts. The ministerial-level Public Administration and Civil Service Authority (PACSA) is currently spearheading the drafting of a comprehensive new civil service management strategy that will be implemented over the period 2010-2020, with a number of important reforms to strengthen the civil service anticipated to take place within the next five years. Key objectives include improvements in human resource policies and planning, salary reform, and enhanced performance management. In order to present as comprehensive a picture as possible of the Lao civil service pay and compensation system, and its strengths and challenges, this report comprises four chapters. The first characterizes the Lao civil service in perspective. The second examines how civil servants are compensated. The third assesses whether they are compensated adequately. The fourth summarizes civil servants own characterization of their incentives in both compensation- and non-compensation-related terms. A brief conclusion points to a set of principles for civil service reform and outlines three sequenced steps toward achieving a more rational civil service pay and grading system.Publication Alternative Mechanisms of Service Delivery : Legal and Regulatory Review, Volume 1. Main Text(Washington, DC, 2009-11)This report reviews the Indonesian legal and regulatory framework that might support or obstruct the promotion of alternative mechanisms of service delivery (AMSD). AMSD, as it has been translated in Indonesian, is a term used especially in Canada to describe an array of strategies and tools that government can use to deliver services in "not the normal way'. 'Alternative' is used in the sense of 'alternative lifestyle" or 'not traditional'. The objectives of the project in relation to promoting AMSD within regional governments are: i) assistance to government in the rationalization of different institutional arrangements for the delivery of sub-national public services; and ii) aid in the development and implementation of new (contracting) methods for service delivery. The report aims to describe the current proximate legal and regulatory framework within which the eight strategies work. The report provides the basis for understanding where the strategies already have 'support' and where the framework needs improving or additions.Publication Guinea-Bissau - Public Expenditure Review Update : Enhancing Growth and Fiscal Adjustment Through Civil Service Reform(World Bank, 2007-05-23)Guinea-Bissau's large public sector wage bill poses a major threat to the country's macroeconomic stability: it hampers growth, limits the government's ability to service the domestic and external debt, and crowds out private investments. For this reason, the government decided in early 2006 to retrench more than 2,800 civil servants in a first phase, and about 1,600 military later. The objectives of this public expenditure review (PER) update are to: (i) review progress in macroeconomic and fiscal management since the previous PER; (ii) analyze the issue of compensation benefits in the context of the ongoing civil service reform; and (ii) update the debt sustainability analysis for Guinea-Bissau. Besides this introduction, the report includes three main chapters on macroeconomic management, improving the fiscal situation, and debt sustainability. The report also gives a final conclusion and discusses the way forward.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Doing Business 2014 : Understanding Regulations for Small and Medium-Size Enterprises(Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2013-10-28)Eleventh in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 185 economies, Doing Business 2014 measures regulations affecting 11 areas of everyday business activity: Starting a business, Dealing with construction permits, Getting electricity, Registering property, Getting credit, Protecting investors, Paying taxes, Trading across borders, Enforcing contracts, Closing a business, Employing workers. The report updates all indicators as of June 1, 2013, ranks economies on their overall “ease of doing business”, and analyzes reforms to business regulation – identifying which economies are strengthening their business environment the most. The Doing Business reports illustrate how reforms in business regulations are being used to analyze economic outcomes for domestic entrepreneurs and for the wider economy. Doing Business is a flagship product by the World Bank and IFC that garners worldwide attention on regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship. More than 60 economies use the Doing Business indicators to shape reform agendas and monitor improvements on the ground. In addition, the Doing Business data has generated over 870 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals since its inception.Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Remarks to the Annual Meetings 2020 Development Committee(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-10-16)David Malpass, President of the World Bank Group, announced that the Board approved a fast track approach to emergency health support programs that now covers 111 countries. Most projects are well advanced, with average disbursement upward of 40 percent. The goal is to take broad, fast action early. The operational framework presented back in June has positioned the Bank to help countries address immediate health threats and social and economic impacts and maintain our focus on long-term development. The Bank is making good progress toward the 15-month target of 160 billion dollars in surge financing. Much of it is for the poorest countries and will take the form of grants or low-rate, long-maturity loans. IFC, through the Global Health Platform, will be providing financing to vaccine manufacturers to foster expanded production of COVID-19 vaccines in both part 1 and 2 countries, providing production is reserved for emerging markets. The Development Committee holds a unique place in the international architecture. It is the only global forum in which the Governments of developed countries and the Governments of developing countries, creditor countries and borrower countries, come together to discuss development and the ‘net transfer of resources to developing countries.’ The current International Financial Architecture system is skewed in favor of the rich and creditor countries. It is important that all voices are heard, so Malpass urged the Ministers of developing countries to use their voice and speak their minds today. Malpass urged consideration of how we can build a new approach to debt restructuring that allows for a fair relationship and balance between creditors and debtors. This will be critical in restoring growth in developing countries; and helping reverse the inequality.Publication World Development Report 2011(World Bank, 2011)The 2011 World development report looks across disciplines and experiences drawn from around the world to offer some ideas and practical recommendations on how to move beyond conflict and fragility and secure development. The key messages are important for all countries-low, middle, and high income-as well as for regional and global institutions: first, institutional legitimacy is the key to stability. When state institutions do not adequately protect citizens, guard against corruption, or provide access to justice; when markets do not provide job opportunities; or when communities have lost social cohesion-the likelihood of violent conflict increases. Second, investing in citizen security, justice, and jobs is essential to reducing violence. But there are major structural gaps in our collective capabilities to support these areas. Third, confronting this challenge effectively means that institutions need to change. International agencies and partners from other countries must adapt procedures so they can respond with agility and speed, a longer-term perspective, and greater staying power. Fourth, need to adopt a layered approach. Some problems can be addressed at the country level, but others need to be addressed at a regional level, such as developing markets that integrate insecure areas and pooling resources for building capacity Fifth, in adopting these approaches, need to be aware that the global landscape is changing. Regional institutions and middle income countries are playing a larger role. This means should pay more attention to south-south and south-north exchanges, and to the recent transition experiences of middle income countries.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.