ABSTRACT:
In public administration theory and practice, the 21st century has been marked by a shift of emphasis from efficiency (often simplified as cost-saving, downsizing, and outsourcing) to effectiveness, due to the realization that nothing is so expensive and unproductive as a badly-working civil service. In developing and transition countries, a productive civil service is even more important. Yet, in order for the public administration and “government” to work (and work well) “capacities to govern” must be developed. These capacities include capacities related to setting strategic direction, building capacity to implement policy, and building new ways of financing public goods and services, as well as – especially in development and transitional countries – to absorb funds and manage programs. The purpose of the present collection of rigorously selected and thoroughly edited contributions to the NISPAcee 11th Annual Conference (which took place in Bucharest, Romania, in 2003, under the heading “Enhancing the Capacities to Govern: Challenges facing the Central and Eastern European Countries”) is to contribute to that discourse and to discuss the nature of effective civil service and public policy in general, but especially in the Central and Eastern European region. The selection includes both theoretical and empirical cases, mostly from and about the region, often about countries or cases that have hitherto received scant, if any, scholarly attention in public administration.
