Performance evaluation, public management improvement and democratic accountability

Abstract

The results-oriented management reforms fostered by the New Public Management movement are often argued to emphasize the search for efficiency, quality and other typical market values at the expense of democratic accountability. On the other hand, challenging this view, some authors claim that results-based management reforms have the potential to enhance political accountability and representative democracy. There is however, limited empirical evidence of this relationship. This article uses some of the findings from a comparative study of public management evaluation systems in four Latin American countries to illuminate this relationship in practice. We discuss the fact that, in two of the four countries surveyed, the design features of the new systems were based on the explicit search for increased political accountability and the deepening of democracy. We also discuss the possible causes for the finding that the outcome and performance information generated is not being applied for decision-making purposes yet, as expected.

Keywords:

• Accountability
• Latin America
• management improvement
• New Public Management
• performance evaluation
• representative democracy
• results-oriented management reform

Notes

For examples of how performance measurement is used to link information on the achievement of government-wide, organizational and/or individual goals in Canada and Australia, see U.S. General Accounting Office (2002b).

The other two normative drivers Wise mentions are the demand for social equity and humanization of the public bureaucracy.

Brazil's public sector has a fairly sophisticated performance evaluation system in place (dos Santos and dos Santos 2001; Neirotti 2001). It was not included in the study because of the difference in country size, history and language.

We acknowledge the authors of each country case: Marianela Armijo (Chile), Emilio Freijido (Uruguay), Mario Mora (Costa Rica) and Sonia Ospina and Doris Ochoa (Colombia). The final comparative report, as well as this article, drew heavily on the excellent work done in the individual cases.

The design's trade-off was between the researcher's deep knowledge of the system given the short duration of the field work (six months), and the researchers' emotional identification with the system and capacity to distance themselves sufficiently to assess it in a relatively objective manner.

The acronym SINERGIA stands for Sistema Nacional de Evaluación de Resultados de la Gestión Pública.

The acronym SINE stands for Sistema Nacional de Evaluación.

The acronym SEGPR stands for Sistema de Evaluación de la Gestión Pública por Resultados.

OPP stands for Oficina de Planeamiento y Presupuesto.

The acronym DIPRES stands for Dirección de Presupuestos.

In Spanish, Departamento Nacional de Planeación.

The National Development Plan reflects the priorities outlined by the incoming President and his administration in the electoral platform that brought them into office.

MIDEPLAN stands for Ministerio de Planificación.

The acronym CDR stands for Compromiso de Resultados.

In Colombia, the last de-facto military government was in 1956 – 7. From then on, the authorities have been elected through free elections, although the state of siege remained in place for several decades. As to Costa Rica, except for a military dictatorship between 1870 and 1882, this nation has enjoyed one of the most democratic governments in Latin America.

Both Chile and Uruguay suffered their last military coups in 1973, when their civilian governments were ousted, to be replaced by two of the most brutal dictatorial regimes in South America. In Uruguay, full political and civil rights were fully restored in 1985, when the military government relinquished power. In Chile, the military authorities only stepped down in 1990.

This has been done through a remarkable effort to train the media in the nuts-and-bolts of the evaluation and reporting system's logic (Mora Quirós 2003).

Uruguay's public administration's integrated system of financial information is known under the acronym of SIIF (in Spanish, Sistema Integrado de Información Financiera).