Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 21st NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview PA Reform Author(s) Grazyna Bukowska University of Warsaw Warsaw Poland Title Quality of public administration and human capital File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Grazyna Bukowska Abstract There are two reasons for bad government in transition countries political economy and productivity. The political economy arguments hold that governments are less accountable because citizens have few opportunities to exercise their voice. As countries become richer and more educated, government responsiveness to citizen needs and hence its quality improves, in part because politics become more democratic and transparent (Papaioannou and Siourounis 2008). An alternative view of bad government in developing countries holds that low productivity of government services is explained by inputs, including human and physical capital as well as technology. Low government productivity can show up in a number of outcomes: public worker absenteeism, corruption and bureaucratic delays or just low quality of public goods. In this paper, I ask if the quality of administration improves with education and development in transition societies and why this happened? I also test empirically an explanation of improvement in the quality of civil service by the process of recruitment civil service based on merits, where higher values indicate a more professionalized public administration. I use evidence from cross-national public opinion data (World Survey Value, Worldwide Governance Indicators) to analyze the post-communist countries.
