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.

The GRAP Handbook contains the consolidated Standards of Generally Recognised Accounting Practice (GRAP) and related material developed by the Accounting Standards Board (ASB). The ASB gives effect to the constitutional requirement that uniform standards should be developed to ensure the achievement of consistent and comparable financial information across all spheres of government. The adoption of Standards of GRAP by all reporting entities in the public sector in South Africa improves the quality and comparability of financial information reported and enables those charged with governance to hold entities to account for the resources entrusted to them by citizens, taxpayers and ratepayers. The 2018 edition is valid until 31 March 2019.