Abstract: | This paper investigates the impacts on, and responses of, Third World bureaucracies, in the context of the changing demands of development management. These include efforts at debureaucratization; localization and training; circumvention, through relying on semi-autonomous public enterprises; reorientation, by altering civil servants' attitudes and incentives; decentralization; and privatization and pressure. For these governments, privatization proved more demanding and demoralizing than any of the previous notions they had confronted. Today, under the rubric of governance, there appears to be some acknowledgement that the anti-State emphasis of the structural adjustment era may have gone too far, and the call is for the more effective bureaucracies to be accountable. The danger in many poor countries, however, is that the real and relative salaries, the morale and ethics of the bureaucracy, and public trust in the bureaucracy, have all plummeted so far, that it may be too late to turn these trends around. The paper is based on reading, discussion and observation over the years and from experience mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. Bibliogr., sum. |