| Overview : Arab States, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring revolutionary movement, are faced with transformational changes to state-society relations which call for a new conception of the functions, role and capacity of the public administration machinery to meet the evolving nature of political and social transitions in the region. To this date most international attention on the post-Arab Spring transformations in the Arab world has, understandably, been on the political and security aspects of these developments - on ensuring new elections, constitutions and security sector reforms. However, if freedoms are not only to be won but also to be sustained, they will need to be reflected and institutionalized in a range of public administration reforms.
People in the Arab region are calling for a new social contract between state and citizens, a contract that sees these political changes transformed into better and more responsive service delivery by the state, into growth and jobs, and into new opportunities for men and women to participate in policy making and monitoring public sector performance. This will be particularly important at the local level - the level of government most people interact with most of the time, and the level least well-developed in highly centralized and autocratic regimes.
Public administration, at both the central and local level, generally reflects the orientation and character of domestic politics. In Libya, for example, under the previous regime, both local government and central ministries were repeatedly changed and re-organized as a part of a deliberate strategy to thwart the development of the institutions of a modern state. Similarly, the Libyan civil service is considerably overstaffed, again as part of a wide-ranging patronage strategy intended to shore up support for the old leadership. In patriarchal and exclusionary societies, women, youth and minorities are often excluded from the public administration. For instance, it is common in many countries to observe a higher proportion of women in lower-levels of the public administration (e.g. there is only approximately 10% women in national public administration leadership in Morocco and in Jordan, 5% in Somalia, and 1% in Qatar). Women tend to be more present in “support” functions, and in “traditional sectors” (education, health, culture, etc.). Public administration often perpetuates gender-biased traditions, attitudes and practices, and this situation often reveals a lack of transparency, effectiveness and inclusion.
As a consequence of political transition, the public naturally expects newly-won freedoms to be rapidly reflected in the character of public administration. As experience in many countries demonstrates, however, reforming public administration and local government to reflect a new political dispensation poses considerable challenges: reform is slow and complex, it arouses considerable resistance from groups entrenched under previous dispensations who are nevertheless often essential for ongoing service delivery, and it requires sustained political consensus and vision to see it through.
Other regions and countries have undergone transitions with traits that, while recognizing fundamental political, socio-economic and cultural differences, have certain similarities to what a number of Arab States are undergoing today. In order to learn from potentially transferable experiences, UNDP is commissioning studies of such transitions which hold a potential for transferability to the current Arab context and in particular the ongoing reforms to the public administration which have proven challenging in all the Arab States.
In South Korea, for example, the democratic transition has been a challenging process since the Chun Doo Hwan government succumbed to the popular demands for democratization in the late 1980s. Although there was a significant institutional foundation to build on, the ensuing political transition sparked a number of significant changes to the State-society relations – including to the functions of the public administration. While South Korean public administration reforms have led to impressive overall achievements in particular in enhancing efficiency in public sector functions and among civil service personnel as well as creating a cultural change toward a more client-oriented public service, the undertaken reforms are an important reference point of lessons and benchmarks, as they held and continue to hold a number of similar potential threats, tradeoffs and challenges as those identified in the Arab State transitions.
Common challenges include the question of how to tackle the previous capture of the State, including the public administration, by an authoritarian military leadership as well as deep-rooted socio-economic inequalities leading to a number of complex challenges to power-sharing and civil service management. Furthermore, the autocratic political repression in South Korea held an explosive conflict potential during the transitional transfer of power – a conflict potential which was mitigated in ways that might hold valuable inspiration for decision-makers in the Arab States, notably but not exclusively those in transition countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Overall, how did public administration reform become a take-off platform and lynchpin for sustainable and inclusive economic growth and development?
In the context of the Arab transitions, UNDP is organizing a regional conference in late 2014 to examine the opportunities and challenges for Public Administration and Local Government arising from the political transitions in the Arab world. One of the objectives of the conference is to bring international experience of reforming the public administration after a political transition into the debate in the Arab region, and thereby to help identify a series of priorities for future work on public sector reform in the Arab transition countries. In sum, this ToR is for a background paper to inform the conference with experiences and lessons on public administration reform undertaken in the political transition in South Korea.
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