The Civil Service Act of 2007 was a significant enactment of reform in the island nation of the Maldives. It was part of the constitutional changes that the nation embarked on starting in 2003, which resulted in a new constitution leading to the country’s first multiparty elections for president and parliament. The initial focus of civil service reform in the Maldives was to change from a personalistic, patronage-driven system of public employment to a meritocratic employment system largely removed from the direct control of the elected government. Reforming the traditional centralized governance modalities was not the focus at that stage. The adopted civil service model was thus a continuation of a tradition of centralized governance through a statutory commission mandated with the overall human resource management of the civil service.

The main objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the administrative structure of Bangladesh, highlighting the history of key administrative-reform attempts, New Public Management (NPM), and major trends in the country’s system of administration. Based on a review of secondary material, the findings of this paper suggest that several reform initiatives have been adopted by successive governments to streamline the administrative system, but that regrettably, most of them have not been implemented. Most importantly, reforms targeting the installation of different principles of NPM in the administrative system have not been successful. Due to these failures, Bangladesh’s administrative system still displays a high degree of politicization, bureaucratic dominance, incapacity—institutionally, technically, administratively—a chaotic political situation, and deteriorating law and order. NPM reforms are a dire necessity, for they could help the country overcome these features of poor governance. To implement NPM reforms, strong political leadership is required—one capable of building a solid institutional framework, sound rule of law, a proper control structure, and an effective civil service system. Otherwise, the ineffective administrative system could continue to hinder the process of overall development in the country.

The Imperative of Good Local Governance is a true state-of-the-art volume in the field of local governance, decentralization and local democracy summarizing a substantial part of the insights from original research in the last decade. It is also a future-looking volume with explicit policy relevance, paving the way for innovative thinking (and acting) on the next phase of development in the field. In a unique way it brings together authoritative contributions from authors that to a large extent have been defining the field for the last decade or more. From a theoretical perspective it is adjoining top–down and bottom–up rationalities, which is further illuminated through a wide variety of key case studies. The case studies are selected for their relevance for the theoretical perspectives offered, as well as for their paradigmatic power in the current global evolution of decentralized policies and politics. The volume concludes that overall, local development and local politics will not go away – it has a huge potential – but also that the field is full of unfulfilled promises, some of which could be remedied through the perspectives revealed in this volume.

This article sets out to describe recent approaches to strengthening local government within the framework of the World Bank's Municipal Management Programme (1985–95) in Sri Lanka. The article examines a number of innovations adopted within the programme that are of general relevance to the task of strengthening local government throughout the developing world. The article briefly outlines the background to the present system of local government showing that, whilst existing structures and functions remain relatively weak, a number of important innovations have been introduced to assist with the process of strengthening local resource mobilization and improving performance in service delivery, and enhancing certain aspects of accountability, particularly those areas concerned with the allocation and use of public funds. Since a number of these innovations have wide applicability to the process of local government strengthening and reform it is hoped that this article will demonstrate the practical relevance of certain key innovations for practitioners and policy makers elsewhere.

Decentralization - an essential pillar of institutional reform - is of critical importance in developing countries, particularly in regard to democratization, effective development, and good governance. Uganda, since 1986 and the start of decentralization measures under Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement, has represented one of the most serious commitments in Sub-Saharan Africa. With the benefit of extensive fieldwork, Fumihiko Saito demonstrates how conflict resolution, information dissemination, and encouragement of the many and varied stakeholders to form partnerships are critical to successfully bringing services "closer to the people. Decentralization and Development Partnerships: Lessons from Uganda goes beyond theory to compare academic assumptions to the reality of decentralization implementation in modern Uganda. Although the process is by no means free of difficulties, Saito concludes that a "win-win" outcome is a real possibility.