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Books > Business & Economics > Industry & industrial studies > Civil service & public sector
Building a capable public service is fundamental to postconflict
state building. Yet in postconflict settings, short-term pressures
often conflict with this longer-term objective. To ensure peace and
stabilize fragile coalitions, the imperative for political elites
to hand out public jobs and better pay to constituents dominates
merit. Donor-financed projects that rely on technical assistants
and parallel structures, rather than on government systems, are
often the primary vehicle for meeting pressing service delivery
needs. What, then, is a workable approach to rebuilding public
services postconflict? Paths between Peace and Public Service seeks
to answer this question by comparing public service reform
trajectories in five countries - Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierra
Leone, South Sudan, and Timor-Leste - in the aftermath of conflict.
The study seeks to explain these countries' different trajectories
through process tracing and structured, focused methods of
comparative analysis. To reconstruct reform trajectories, the
report draws on more than 200 interviews conducted with government
officials and other stakeholders, as well as administrative data.
The study analyzes how reform trajectories are influenced by elite
bargains and highlights their path dependency, shaped by
preconflict legacies and the specifics of the conflict period. As
the first systematic study on postconflict public service reforms,
it identifies lessons for the future engagement of development
partners in building public services.
A compelling profile of a pioneer in social welfare and human
rights policy development in Nova Scotia is provided in this
autobiography of Fred MacKinnon. Discussions of key issues that
MacKinnon advocated, including the modernization of social
assistance, the extension of the child welfare service, and the
development of a human rights program accompany personal accounts
of his family, career choices, and educational experiences.
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