RECASTING THE
IRAQI BUREAUCRACY IN THE US IMAGE: THE CASE OF THE MINISTRY OF OIL
Nancy
S. Lind and Eric E. Otenyo
Department
of Politics and Government
Illinois
State University
For
a variety of reasons, the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime has ushered in a new
era in the management of Iraq’s most important ministry. Needless to say, the temptation to introduce
advanced management techniques and practices similar to those in operation in
the US requires greater deliberation than is publicly admitted. This article
probes and assesses the empirical context of the US administrative control of
Iraq’s Ministry of Oil. Additionally, a series of implications that might guide
future empirical investigations and help managers strengthen administrative capacity
are put forward. The article is
structured around four major topics: (1) An overview of the Iraqi state, (2)
Strategic and critical tasks in the Ministry of Oil, (3) the Bush
administration’s oversight, and (4)Possible pitfalls to be avoided. The authors
conclude that progress toward building Iraqi bureaucratic capacity is more
likely to be attained if the new administrators are careful to avoid time
tested mistakes.
Introduction
Previously,
Iraq’s civil service functioned in accordance
with the Civil Service Law and Cadre Law (1962), mainly derived from
British and Arab traditions. Iraqi civil
servants fell into at least nine grades and included employees of
semi-government and parastatal organizations.
Under Hussein, the largest ministry was that of the Interior. Like the civil service in former British
protectorates and colonies, including Egypt and Kuwait, the administration of
the civil service schemes of service was centralized. Employment was open to all Iraqi citizens and
recruitment was in theory based on merit competitive exams (Merriam, 1991,p.282). In
fact, before the Gulf War of 1991, Iraqi’s bureaucracy was reasonably modern
and efficient by developing country standards. But it was not grounded in the
national constitution. Although Iraqi Basic Law was first promulgated in 1925
and revised over and over again, no administration respected it. The latest revision, in 1990,provided for a
Saddam Hussein dominated political process
(Al Fadhal, 2000). As a result,
there is no tradition of checks and balances and hence the relative salience of
discretionary power within national administrative institutions.
The
lack of relative bureaucratic autonomy impacted on staffing, planning, and
other public management practices. The militarization of society and state
under Hussein did not necessarily preclude the growth of Weberian hierarchical
structures and competence ethos. To some
extent, some Iraqi ministries were a bastion of well –qualified bureaucrats
–even though there were strong correlations between Ba’ath party memberships
and a civil servant’s promotion prospects.
With Saddam Hussein as the party secretary –general, refusal to join the
party would often result in serious disciplinary consequences (Human Rights Watch, 1994). Ministries such as defense and its affiliates
including the Military Medical Command, the Ibn Sina State, Al-Qa’qa State and
the Al- Nasr Al-Adheem State Companies had extensive competence in weapons
building and other defense matters.
Importantly, too, Iraqi’s Ministry of Oil had considerable latitude in
technical decision making. Indeed,
United Nations Chemical inspectors found records of highly qualified personnel
at sites such as the Al-Dawrah refinery, belonging to the Ministry of Oil.
Without doubt, the latter ministry has assumed importance in the wake of its
visibility in the reconstruction of Iraq following the April 2003 violent
overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime by a combined force of U.S. and Britain.
In
spite of its relative stability, the national Iraqi bureaucracy was not
generally an effective agent of positive national development. However, the Ministry of Oil generally
adapted to harsh external and internal environmental situations of the past
decade. The agency continued to deliver
the promise of Hussein’s tight control of the state and contributed to the
entrenchment of a regime considered by many observers as both brutal and
regressive. There are other ministries
that supported regime consolidation and survival. From a purely practical and functional view,
all government ministries were partners in regime consolidation. Needles to say, as in all countries,
government ministries are ranked according to their strategic importance. For Iraq, arguably, the most strategically
important ministry is that of oil.
Strategic ministries are those that are central to the management of key
sectors of the economy (Kiggundu, 1989,
261).
Small
wonder then, that after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, U.S. forces rushed
to secure oil fields and the capital’s oil ministry. Leaving other ministries
such as Education and Irrigation, universities, museums, hospitals, and
businesses to be looted and burned. Hundreds of troops were also placed inside
and outside the Ministry of Oil and that that if the interior. The later was secured primarily for purposes
of security and intelligence gathering.
Considering that the post Saddam Hussein reconstruction process lies on
the shoulders of the U.S., to what extent will the vital public oil bureaucracy
be managed to effectively generate revenues and other resources required for
Iraq’s long term sustainable development?
The purpose if this paper is to explore and probe the dynamics of the
public oil bureaucracy and ensuing reforms that might be introduced against the
backdrop of Iraq’s social, economic, and political realities. The final part of the paper provides insights
into possible challenges to be faced by U.S. planners and managers of this
vital administrative agency.
Methodology
Articles
published in major news outlets, recently declassified government documents,
and interviews are the primary base for our study. Additionally, content
analysis is extrapolated from translated official statements from public
officials involved in the reconstruction of the post Saddam Hussein Iraq. We searched for articles published before
and after the war in Iraq. There has been a substantial increase in the number
of empirically oriented papers published since the first Gulf War. We employed
an open structured approach to identify research themes in the discussions on
Iraq’s national bureaucracy. As we proceeded, it became apparent that there
were at least four main study foci to organize the paper: (1) An overview of the Iraqi state, (2) Strategic and critical operating tasks in the Ministry of Oil, (3) the Bush
administration’s management and policy oversight, and (4)Possible pitfalls to
be avoided when introducing management changes.
While
empirical based articles published in cognate fields such as political science,
business, history, and cultural anthropology are omitted; some references are
made to the literature in those fields. In the study of the state, for example,
there is a sizeable literature dealing with behavior of Iraq’s vast public
bureaucracy. Political science literature, for the most part, conceptualizes
state behavior in terms of actions of civil servants (see Evans, Rueschmeyer and Skocpol, 1985).
The Iraqi State is unlike
US
Students
of comparative administration have always known that public administration U.S.
style is the exception rather than the rule.
The American model should never be treated as an exemplar for all other
countries. For the most part, the difficulties
arise from differences in the ecology of public administration. Since John Gaus and later Fred Riggs, seminal
work o n the ecology of public administration systems, we have always known
that public administration can only be understood in its political context (Gaus, 1950; Riggs 1961; 1968, p. 73).
Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq is characterized as a dominant party rather than military state
(Heady 1991, p. 284). The profile of politics is very much based on
Stalinist style control of the Iraqi masses. Under Hussein, the General
Security Directorate, Iraq’s internal intelligence agency or secret police had
a monopoly of information about the country’s wealth including its mineral
resources. Iraqi intelligence apparatus
were essential in smuggling oil and managing kickbacks for Saddam’s cronies in
the wake of UN ban of Iraqi oil sales that followed the Gulf War in February
1991. Recent evidence suggests that the Iraqi intelligence bureaucracy was
extremely diligent and filled away important correspondences in a systemic
fashion in spite of the fact that the bureaucrats lacked modern computers for
indexing files. Significant
intelligence was equally entrusted on key Ba’ath leaders whose long term
hegemonic agenda included using the country’s oil wealth to promote pan Arabism
and the Arabization of Kurdish lands (Human
Rights Watch Report, 1884). The
Ba’ath Party was technically not a state bureaucracy but since its control of
the state apparatus in 1968, it framed the ideological and mission statements
within which the Ministry of Oil and other vital public organizations functioned
and operated. Indeed, government memos
discovered after the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime indicated that
public officials often issued memos in the name of the party, revolution, or
republic. Thus, civil servants could be
technically absolved of any and all personal responsibility for possible
misconduct and abuse of discretion and official power.
Saddam
Hussein became Iraq’s president in 1979 and began to implement some of the
party’s ambitions incuding his own.
Needless to say, Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, Kuwait in 1990, and
thereafter suppressed Iraqi Kurds (Khaled
Salih, 1995,p.36). Politically, Iraq remains an unstable enclave
precisely because the country has an unsettled Kurdish population seeking
greater autonomy or statehood as well as deeply seated religious schisms
between minority Sunni and majority Shia Muslims. To contain these divisions, Saddam’s reign
was absolute and too strong (Gunter 1993;
McDowall, 1996, p.359).
Because
the broad security bureaucracy was repressive, the dictates of the ruling elite
determined the management of the vast oil revenues. For obvious spatial reasons, the Ministry of
Oil was structurally deconcentrated. But, in the troubled Kurdish claimed
oil-producing areas around Kirkuk and Monsul, central control was ensured
through the command of Oil Protection army division forces the Qiyadet Quwat Himayet al –Natt.
Apart
from the political, the ecology of public administration includes an economic
and social component. The social
structures and environment in Iraq is equally, challenging. The country’s psyche is rooted in deep
Islamic traditions and cultures with very different ideas on ethics and
obligations to the public, family, and God in matters of resource management
and profiteering.
Currently,
public administration occurs within a globalizing world with a highly
neo-liberal environment embracing various privatization and deregulation
regimes. Oil will remain the mainstay of
the Iraqi government for the future. Oil
provides more than 60% of Iraq’s GDP and 95% of its hard currency
earnings. In spite of oil earnings,
Saddam’s bureaucracy was performing poorly due to misplaced priorities and
several years of war and UN economic sanctions.
The country’s GDP for 2001 was estimated to be at about one third the
level in 1989 (Cohen and O’Driscoll, 2003).
Because
of Iraq’s policies of nationalization of the oil industry, extensive central
control of the economy, massive expenditures in weapons programs, political
corruption, wars with Iran, Kuwait, and the Kurds, its foreign debts rose to
over $ 140 billion. The economic
implications of the second Gulf War in 2003 have yet to be factored into the
calculations of Iraq’s total debt. But it is quite obvious that the oil
industry requires the best plans and management to be able to provide revenues
for reconstruction and economic development.
Without doubt, therefore, the Ministry of Oil is at the center of Iraq’s
economic revival and survival.
Strategic and Critical
Operating Tasks in the Ministry of Oil
Because
of the centrality of oil in Iraqi national life, the Ministry of Oil assumes
heightened importance. The fact that
most of the oil industry is regulated provides sufficient bureaucratic
difficulties. Under Saddam Hussein,
managers of key oil producing state companies were said to be corrupt. He appointed the council of ministers and
their deputies who theoretically had executive authority but in reality simply
endorsed decisions of Saddam Hussein and his Revolutionary Command Council
(RCC).
Besides,
policy management was compromise by the lack of checks and balances in the
administrative system. Iraq’s judiciary
was not independent, thereby hindering processes that check and limit abuses of
the vast senior level discretionary power.
Critical Operating Tasks (COTS) such as ministry staffing, planning, and
development were therefore jeopardized and contributed to overall decline in
efficiency and accountability. After the
UN imposed sanctions on Iraq, ministry accounting systems became obsolete and
so did the country’s ability to modernize its oil extracting systems. There were, however, improvements in delivery
systems especially in the construction of pipelines to Syria and Jordan. However, marketing concessions to its Arab
sister nations eliminated rationalization of management plans and overall
competitiveness. For example, in 2000,
Iraq and Jordan signed concessionary oil deals (Jordan Times, November 3-4, 2000).
Although there was desire from both governments to normalize trade
outside the UN embargoes, Jordanian authorities expressed considerable concerns
about Iraq’s failing oil bureaucracy.
Jordanian officials regarded Iraq’s Ministry of Oil, especially its
oversight of marketing and coordination with the Aqaba Ports authority as being
riddled with high handling costs and “bureaucracy.” This is explicable by the fact that Iraq’s
oil infrastructure never completely recovered from the eight- year war with
Iran.
Besides,
since 1993, Iraq’s accounting systems were ignored as key regime figures
profited from illegal smuggling of oil thereby undermining UN sanctions and
oversight of the later introduced food for oil programs allowed since 1995 for
supporting humanitarian objectives. The UN set the prices for Iraqi oil, but
all exploration, extraction, refining, pipelines, ports, and utilities were
controlled through Saddam’s civil service patronage and cronies. A chaotic unaccountable system provided
avenues for rent seeking and corruption.
Junior employees in Iraq’s Ministry of Oil and the affiliated state
refineries are on record as complaining that officials pocketed proceeds from
oil revenues (Youssef, 2003).
The
country has affiliation in the Bretton Woods institutions. Needless to say, significant rules for the
global economy are imposed through the World Trade Organization (WTO)-World
Bank- International Monetary Fund (IMF) networks. Under the current globalizing world, Iraqi
trade in oil was hampered by its non membership in the WTO and lack of
participation in policy reforms as prescribed through the World Bank and IMF
financial and monetary systems. For
example, Iraq’s nationalization programs defeated the public choice rationale
informing the neo-liberal trade regime that dominates contemporary global
capitalism. Without affiliation with
global financial institutions, administrative reforms would require
reorganization and engineering to provide learning environments for skills and
knowledge for reintegration into the world economy. Importantly, Iraq cannot possibly ignore the
realities of the global trend toward state decline ( Riggs 2002: Shields and Evans, 1998: Thurow,1996,p.138).
The
Saddam years, shielded Iraqis from that reality. The point is that future reforms in public
management must recognize that it is not only the authority of the statist
Ba’ath party that is passé, but indeed, we are already living in a syntropic world (Riggs, 2002). Framing
broader policy reforms in globalist rhetoric shields Western reformers from
accusations of neo-imperialism.
The Bush administration’s
vision and strategic plan
The
announcements that the U.S. would, in the interim, manage the affairs of Iraq’s
reconstruction and development inevitably falls on the skill and
resourcefulness in managing the vital oil infrastructure. Even though the U.S. maintains a large
military force in the country, its civilian administrators working in
collaboration with Iraqi self-rule governing councils face the challenge of
creating a political environment for the civil service to function. Besides ensuring security for the oil
infrastructure, huge administrative capital is required for upgrading
communication networks, facility upgrades and maintenance and overall training
in the use of new communication facilities.
The U.S. plan to jumpstart post-war Iraqi oil operations with a
management team that would incorporate both American and Iraqi officials must
first overcome the political questions.
In the interim, the Bush administration regards the civilian administrators
appointed to oversee oil operations as a short term measure. In the long run, the administration plans to
transfer authority and oversight of oil operations to a constituted
internationally recognized Iraqi authority. The Bush administration envisioned
a situation in which an Iraqi chief executive officer (CEO) would head a
multinational board of upto 16 persons.
The majority would be qualified Iraqi citizens –including vetted experts
who had served under Saddam Hussein. But
there would also be exiled Iraqis as well as Europeans and Americans. The group would oversee all operations at
Iraq’s oil ministry, from the rehabilitation of production facilities, to
export contracts and refining for domestic fuel needs. The administration would provide oversight
over Iraqi oil exports as in public trust.
The former, is potentially risky in light of the nationalistic
perceptions that the U.S. is perceived as merely being interested in the
control of Iraqi oil and wealth.
Since
Iraqi ministries have for several years been managed in non-Western traditions,
it is inconceivable that U.S. led administration would work within Arab-Iraqi
bureaucratic norms and practices.
Attempting to change bureaucratic behavior in the near future is likely
to be met with resistance. In many ways,
Iraqi bureaucrats like their counterparts elsewhere will most likely act in
self-interest and will resist external management power. As Kotter argues, any
management that tries to control others solely by directing on the basis of
power will be resented (Kotter, 1993, pp.
8-24). Without doubt, the interim
administration has to install confidence in the 55,000 employees of the
Ministry of Oil. Framing the U.S.
occupation as a moral imperative must be buttressed by partnerships and
empowerment of Iraqi civil servants.
Otherwise, organizational reforms are unlikely to receive employee
support.
Problems
must be anticipated if any success s to be achieved in reshaping the Iraqi
civil service to serve the Iraqi people as opposed to the Ba’ath party
elite. Historically, U.S. reconstruction
initiatives in other parts of the world met with different degrees of success.
Arguably, for Japan, U.S. occupation benefited from General Douglas MacArthur’s
skillful ability to balance the interests of both labor and capital and to create
a social environment conducive to electoral democracy. Unlike Japan, Iraq does not have a comparable
tradition of pre-war party politics and insulation of the bureaucracy from its
dictatorship (Pempel, 1998,p.98). Besides, MacArthur was able to foster
dependency relations with Japanese civil servants in the mission to create a
conducive climate for the private sector’s growth. It is the sense of symbiotic interdependence
between managers and the oil bureaucracy that will enable Iraq to reconstruct for
sustainable development.
Still,
mere imposition of American bureaucratic values and norms in the neighboring
Islamic Iran was disastrous during the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s U.S.
supported dictatorship. During 1953-68,
U.S. technical assistance to Iranian ministries and police (SAVAK) failed
because U.S. managers were ignorant of Iranian objectives and administrative
systems. It seems that U.S. planners
concentrated on ministries deemed as crucial in the promotion of U.S.
interests. Planners failed to factor in
the dynamics and interconnectedness of the various administrative units. Moreover, there was the attrition from the
civil service to the private sector when oil revenues rose as a result of the
1973 increases. Salaries were low and
therefore civil servants were not motivated enough to performs optimally. The import, therefore, is that a U.S.
supported administrative cadre that does not take into consideration the unique
circumstances of the Muslim world will face resentment and failure just as was
the case in Iran (Seiz, 1980; Sherwood,
1980; Siffin, 1980; Montgomery, 1980). The lesson from Iran, as Sherwood states, is
to post to Iraq advisors with reasonable knowledge of the Iraqi culture. Besides, the Iranian case illustrated that
technical collaboration is preferred to technical assistance. Should the Agency for International
Development (AID) be required to manage some of the Ministry of Oil capacity
building projects in Iraq, then it might also draw on previous experience in
neighboring Iran. As Sherwood suggests, AID must also remain apolitical.
Lessons from Iran also indicate that U.S. advisors needed to systematically
frame the problems of the Oil bureaucracy.
As all managers know, identification and articulating the bureaucratic problem(s)
is the first step toward solving it.
Currently, little is understood about the ills facing the Iraqi Ministry
of Oil. Emphasis is still on issues of
political economy and control of information processing. Again, relative
success is possible if the political environment is conducive to the
implementation of administrative and managerial reforms (Montgomery, 1980).
Pitfalls ahead: Seven
administrative sins that must be avoided
Assuming that the political environment in the
post Saddam Hussein Iraq is stable enough for the oil bureaucracy to function,
and meet its strategic missions as well as perform critical operating
tasks. There will be some dos and don’ts
that should interest public managers –especially those from the advanced
countries and Iraqi exiles who must take charge of Iraq’s most strategic
ministry. The list is not exhaustive or
a complete check list but rather an advisory note to help in the reconstruction
of Iraq. The order of the list is
arbitrary and does not indicate the relative importance of each variable.
1.The
U.S. bureaucracy as the ideal?
To
explain, examine the assumptions of the Bush administration in the pre-2003 war
diplomacy. When the United Nations Monitoring and Inspections Commission
(UNMOVIC) stated in its numerous reports to the Security Council that Iraq had
not given a full account of its past chemical weapons programs, several White
House and State Department officials interpreted the omissions to be part and
parcel of Saddam Hussein’s strategy of hiding vital information. The general failure to provide a full
disclosure of he whereabouts of past documents was construed to be a material
breach of UN resolutions demanding Iraq’s disarmament. Whether the documentation that verified
Iraq’s compliance was deliberately missing or not is irrelevant from our
perspective. Rather, we contend that
deliberations missed an important piece of the equation. A diagnostic assessment of the management of
Iraq’s civil service in general might have resolved the puzzle. Stated differently, strong evidence suggests
that the decline in management ethos, and ensuing poor record keeping and other
mundane administrative procedures in all government ministries were at the
heart of the problem. This does not
minimize any contrary evidence supporting administrative incompetence and
maladministration. Obviously, after
decades of war and diplomatic and trade sanctions, there was bound to be
weaknesses in civil service procedures.
Evidence suggests that the Iraqi civil service was inefficient and ill
performing by measures of comparable Middle Eastern bureaucracies. The point is, were Western analysts leaving
out the important variable of the peculiarity of Iraqi administrative
bureaucracy and system? We argue that
understanding these dimensions is vital to any post Hussein administrative
reforms.
Furthermore,
the Iraqi oil ministry cannot be structured along the lines of the Department
of Energy. But the Department of Energy-
with its more than 115, 000 employees spread across 35 states has some useful
lessons to offer. The department
succeeded in promulgating an encompassing mission statement –that includes
national security and efficiency in renewable energy and safe disposal of wastes. Still, the department has very high standards
of technical and managerial and research know-how that Iraq could borrow. The department has one of the best –developed
databases on energy logistics and has sophisticated computer modeling
techniques designed to facilitate decision making processes. Modernizing the Iraqi oil infrastructure with
management upgrades and initiating operations with state –of-the art systems
will be beneficial to all stake holders. On of the important lessons to be
shared is the department of Energy’s environmental programs which include clean
up and safety operations.
2.
Iraq and New Public Management
It
is most likely as has been evident in pronouncements of senior Bush officials
and conservative Think Tanks that there will be efforts to introduce “New
Public Management” into Iraqi bureaucracies.
New public management is about privatization and contracting out. It seeks to inject private sector business
practices into government operations.
Doing so, disregards the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of the
reform process. Most likely, Iraqi
public sector reforms require grounding in “reform coalition discourses” rather
than U.S. style management schools of thought.
Regional differences in public sector reform ideologies are well
articulated in Wollman’s extensive work (Wollman,
2003).
Iraq
has a long tradition of nationalization and state ownership of commanding
heights of its political economy.
Besides, several years of trade embargoes and wars denied it the
opportunity to develop a strong modern private sector. If privatization is desirable, it should be
monitored as away of prevention corruption (Prager,
1994,p.176). Therefore, to demand
immediate bureaucratic reforms and benchmarking is recipe for failure. Of course, Iraqis have great competence is
managing their own bureaucracies; the Interim administration’s plan must
incorporate a gradualist approach to introducing some of the new public
management thinking. Besides, how could
one possibly run the Ministry of Oil as a business when Iraqi supply has entered into concessionary oil agreements
with its Arab neighbors-Syria and Jordan. Still, Iraq’s Ministry of Oil cannot
function as a business enterprise when nearly all public goods including
security, infrastructure, and education depend on oil revenues? At a minimal, Osborne’s metaphor steering and rowing has to be combined with Denhardt’s dimension of service (Osborne and Plastrik, 1997; Denhardt and Vinzant, 2000).
3.
Perils of ignoring capacity building
It
has been said over and over again that Iraqis’ must manage their own oil
resources. Several years of economic and
political upheavals constrained the Ministry of Oil from increasing the skill
base particularly in management and technical fields. Few Iraqis were able to acquire the requisite
management skills for handling oil resources in a globalizing world. In recent history, AID developed and acquired
relevant experience in training for development (TFD) initiatives. Applied in the 190s and 1990s, the AID TFD
model in the Philippines and Kenya proved successful in identifying future
leadership in all sectors of the economy.
Through
TFD, competitive scholarships were awarded to the most qualified government and
private sector individuals who could then be trained in the best schools in the
USA and then return to head institutions in their home countries.
An
AID contracted out program, would eliminate the possibility of nepotism and
fraud in awarding federally funded scholarships. Thus, the greatest sin at this stage of Iraqi
reconstruction is to ignore training and capacity building for both the private
and public sectors.
4.
Avoiding overlaps and policy confusion
Experience shows that whenever several major
powers are focused on a specific country, a tendency for policy confusion and
management oversight will inevitably arise.
Clearly, Iraq is attracting massive attention from major powers and the
international financial institutions.
All manner of aid packages will continue to be made available to the
Iraqi government. Besides, the Ministry
of Oil will be subject to several studies and recommendations from hundreds of
consultants sponsored by different local and foreign interests and
stakeholders. Iraq has experience with
similar practices and operations. The
difference now is that a more diffused policy environment sexist. Moreover, the administrative ecology has
substantially changed. The challenge is
to organize ministerial policy management teams that can be responsible for
ensuring that aid conditionalities and reforms are met without jeopardizing
jurisdictional territoriality. With
several multiple players such as Iraqi business ventures, Ministries of
Finance, Foreign Affairs, Interior, Nationalized Oil Companies, Iraq’s Central
Bank, the IMF and World Bank, American Corporations, the European Union (EU),
the United Nations, OPEC, bilateral agencies from France, Japan, USAID, and the
Pentagon, among others, the concept of lead agency will evolve to ensure that
management of different tasks is efficiently coordinated. Consultative donor
and inter agency meetings are vital for resolving some of the inevitable turf
battles. Consultative forums are also a
good way of managing problems associated with redundancies and overlapping
responsibilities.
5.The
ghost of nation building
One of the sins that managers of Iraqi
ministries including that of Oil should avoid is disregard the nation building
task. Several decades ago, Milton Esman
observed that part of the function of bureaucracies in developing countries was
nation building (Esman, 1972). A causal look at the political ecology of
Iraq’s public administration and management affirms the truism. Through
recruitment and participation in other national endeavors, the Ministry of Oil
is an instrument for promoting both development and nation building. Previous Republican rhetoric that engagement
in nation building is not a foreign policy option must be discarded. Realities from many developing countries
point to the effect that government ministries are nation building tools and
that is something to work with and not undermine.
Nation
building tasks involve hiring and training people from all regions of the
country and ensuring that they work together in government ministries. Because of the spatial expanse of the oil
infrastructure, it is ideally suited for this function. The caveat is that an enabling legal framework
is essential. As Al Fadhal
proposed, Iraq needs a new set of laws
to manage complex societal and economic interactions (Fadhal, 2002). More
importantly, the pervading Ba’athist nationalistic extremism is incompatible
with present day realities of globalization.
6.
Images and Symbols of Iraqi Institutions
Symbols
matter in politics as well as in all professional endeavors. Because of the symbolism attached with the
figure of Saddam, the new administration has already begun replacing the former
president’s images n Ministry wall pictures and calendars. It seems that managerial safe ground is not
to replace Saddam’s images with those of his successors. Rather, the goal of enhancing professionalism
will entail moving beyond symbolism and promoting institutional capabilities. Support for professional associations and
redrafting of codes of conduct might energize ministry employees. The marked absence of professional
associations in the Ba’ath Party controlled regime meant the reduced level of
professional growth and failure to create conditions for rallying common
organizational ethos. As Al Sayyid warned, the growth of professional
associations and civil society organizations in the Arab world must always
confront informal and formal organizations (Al
Sayyid, 2000, pp. 68-70). The
reason for such an eventuality is that the earliest voluntary associations were
always grounded in religious overtures.
The caveat is that the vast majority of Iraqis are Muslims and it’s
unwise to hang pictures of American “liberators” on ministry walls. In a nutshell, cultural sensitivity and diversity
training are essentials for confidence building.
7.
Investing in organizational power
Considering
Iraq’s recent history, inevitably, any post Saddam Hussein administration is
about power relations with the Iraqi people.
At the bureaucratic level, the worst sin is to ignore the expertise of
the Iraqi officials, especially those in the vital oil sector. As Banfield
stated, organizational managers should invest power where it yields the highest
positive returns (Banfield, 1965).
That means that management will be required to shelve domination and
delegate to Iraqi managers who quite often are better prepared to handle
organizational and legal challenges confronting such a large and important
ministry. It is the empowered Iraqi
officials who are best placed to rejuvenate their oil sector. They stand the best chance of understanding
divisional redundancies established for purposes of rent seeking by officials
of the former regime. It is an abuse of
Iraqi expertise if the new administration insubordinates highly qualified
individuals to Western managers. Moreover, the principles of equal pay for
equal work are as applicable to Iraqi ministries as they are to Western
bureaucracies. Any differentials in
perks must be completely and fully justified.
Furthermore,
every society has its own management vocabulary besides the peculiar
organizational cultures. There are far
too many concepts and ideas that cannot be replaced with English terms. At the same time, the introduction of
electronic government operations and sophisticated software will result in the
need for greater information sharing and re-education. While we know that decade long embargoes
devastated the country’s ability to import modern office equipment, Iraqi
officials still managed to acquire a variety of high tech information archival,
retrieval, and management systems. But
there was hardly any room for organizational innovation. Even without the unfavorable socio-economic
environments, Iraq’s bureaucracy fitted into the regional characterization of
being lethargic, inflexible, and non-innovative (Jreisat, 2001). Relatively
speaking, senior and middle level state operatives showed flexibility in
absorbing newer technologies than the lower level cadres who for the most part
were resistant to any major changes. The
onus is upon expatriate managers of Iraqi oil to learn and employ these
whenever possible.
Conclusion
From
an empirical perspective, the emerging changes in the management of Iraq’s
Ministry of Oil offer an important case for the application of new management
techniques in a semi-modern globalizing and developing country bureaucracy. The
literature is rich in offering examples of problems associated with imposition
of Western bureaucratic models in other cultures. More importantly, public management
practitioners serving in non-western environments inevitably face peculiar
challenges including the unstable political and economic ecologies. The results could be predicted. Yet, if certain assumptions are taken into
consideration, the possibility of reforms and rejuvenation of Iraq’s strategic
ministries is an achievable long –term goal.
While debates among theorists and practitioners on the possibilities of
recasting Arab bureaucracies in the images of Western management and administrative
systems will continue, commitments that emerge will have significant
implications for the Middle East as a whole. Most likely, successful
administrative developments in Iraq will be emulated regionally. The actions that the U.S. led administration takes in reshaping the
Ministry of Oil will depend on a set of assumptions and principles primarily
mooted in Western philosophies. Our
assumption is that the U.S. administration seeks to facilitate the
modernization, democratization, and reform the Iraqi bureaucracy and to manage
its oil ministry on a trustee basis. To do so, we suggest a number of key areas
of concern. Most importantly, the administration should pay attention to issues
of stakeholder coordination and capacity building. At any rate, our assessment is that recasting
Iraq’s most important ministry in the image of American institutions has serous
limitations and requires considerable skill and strategy.
Finally,
from a theoretical point of view, the Bush administration’s bold move to occupy
Iraq and establish an interim administration is likely to rejuvenate
administrative development and comparative administration discourses. Certainly, there will be increased concerns
for the transplanting of Western management systems on a predominantly large
Islamic society. While not unprecedented
in substance, the sheer magnitude of the endeavor will generate possibilities
of theory building. A recapitulation of
the development, reconstruction, and modernizing administrative apparatus
within a globalized world will no doubt ensue.
Perhaps, for Middle Eastern public administration, the unfolding
systemic adjustment era, is a paradigm shift.
Reforming Iraqi bureaucracies is therefore a rich laboratory for further
comparative public administration and management theory refinement and development.
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