A failed state is a state that has lost its ability to fulfill fundamental security and development functions, lacking effective control over its territory and borders. Common characteristics of a failed state include a government incapable of tax collection, law enforcement, security assurance, territorial control, political or civil office staffing, and infrastructure maintenance. When this happens, widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of state and non-state actors, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, sharp economic decline, and military intervention from both within and without the state are much more likely to occur.
Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. These policies govern and include various aspects of life such as education, health care, employment, finance, economics, transportation, and all over elements of society .Theimplementation of public policy is known as public administration. Public policy can be considered to be the sum of a government's direct and indirect activities and has been conceptualized in a variety of ways.
Accountability, in terms of ethics and governance, is equated with answerability, culpability, liability, and the expectation of account-giving.
Advocacy is an activity by an individual or group that aims to influence decisions within political, economic, and social institutions. Advocacy includes activities and publications to influence public policy, laws and budgets by using facts, their relationships, the media, and messaging to educate government officials and the public. Advocacy can include many activities that a person or organization undertakes, including media campaigns, public speaking, commissioning and publishing research. Lobbying is a form of advocacy where a direct approach is made to legislators on a specific issue or specific piece of legislation. Research has started to address how advocacy groups in the United States and Canada are using social media to facilitate civic engagement and collective action.
Red tape is an idiom referring to regulations or conformity to formal rules or standards which are claimed to be excessive, rigid or redundant, or to bureaucracy claimed to hinder or prevent action or decision-making. It is usually applied to governments, corporations, and other large organizations. Things often described as "red tape" include filling out paperwork, obtaining licenses, having multiple people or committees approve a decision and various low-level rules that make conducting one's affairs slower, more difficult, or both. Red tape has been found to hamper organizational performance and employee wellbeing across countries and contexts by a meta-analysis and meta-regression in 2021, and especially internal red tape imposed by the organization itself on its employees was identified as particularly harmful. A related concept, administrative burden, refers to the costs citizens may experience in their interaction with government even if bureaucratic regulations or procedures serve legitimate purposes.
Watchdog journalism is a form of investigative journalism where journalists, authors or publishers of a news publication fact-check and interview political and public figures to increase accountability in democratic governance systems.
The Commission Against Corruption is the statutory independent anti-corruption body of Macau with the primary objective of combating corruption, bribery, and other illicit activities in both the public and private sectors. Established in 1999 under the Article 59 of the Macau Basic Law, the CCAC is headed by the Commissioner, who reports directly to the Chief Executive of Macau.
The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, (CSRA), reformed the civil service of the United States federal government, partly in response to the Watergate scandal. The Act abolished the U.S. Civil Service Commission and distributed its functions primarily among three new agencies: the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), and the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA).
Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain. Corruption may involve many activities which include bribery, influence peddling and embezzlement and it may also involve practices which are legal in many countries. Political corruption occurs when an office-holder or other governmental employee acts with an official capacity for personal gain. Corruption is most common in kleptocracies, oligarchies, narco-states, and mafia states.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) comprises the offices of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (PCA) and the Health Service Commissioner for England (HSC). The Ombudsman is responsible for considering complaints by the public that UK Government departments, public authorities and the National Health Service in England have not acted properly or fairly or have provided a poor service.
Internet vigilantism is the act of carrying out vigilante activities through the Internet. The term encompasses vigilantism against alleged scams, crimes, and non-Internet-related behavior.
Street-level bureaucracy is the subset of a public agency or government institution where the civil servants work who have direct contact with members of the general public. Street-level civil servants carry out and/or enforce the actions required by a government's laws and public policies, in areas ranging from safety and security to education and social services. A few examples include police officers, border guards, social workers and public school teachers. These civil servants have direct contact with members of the general public, in contrast with civil servants who do policy analysis or economic analysis, who do not meet the public. Street-level bureaucrats act as liaisons between government policy-makers and citizens and these civil servants implement policy decisions made by senior officials in the public service and/or by elected officials.
The Office of Ombudsman is a Hong Kong statutory authority, established on 1 March 1989, charged with ensuring that Hong Kong is served by a fair and efficient public administration that is committed to accountable, openness and quality of services. It operates mainly by investigating and giving recommendations to government departments.
Ralph P. Hummel was a professor of public administration at the University of Akron and a founding fellow of the Institute of Applied Phenomenology in Science and Technology. He is best known for his book The Bureaucratic Experience.
Civil service reform is a deliberate action to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, professionalism, representativity and democratic character of a civil service, with a view to promoting better delivery of public goods and services, with increased accountability. Such actions can include data gathering and analysis, organizational restructuring, improving human resource management and training, enhancing pay and benefits while assuring sustainability under overall fiscal constraints, and strengthening measures for performance management, public participation, transparency, and combating corruption.
The Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Bureaucratic drift in American political science is a theory that seeks to explain the tendency for bureaucratic agencies to create policy that deviates from the original mandate. The difference between a bureaucracy's enactment of a law and the legislature's intent is called bureaucratic drift. Legislation is produced by elected officials, but is implemented by unelected bureaucrats, who sometimes act under their own preferences or interests. Bureaucratic drift is often treated as a principal–agent problem, with the House, Senate and Presidency acting as principals and bureaucracy acting as the agent. The government seeks to control bureaucratic drift in a number of ways, most notably congressional oversight and procedural controls.
In public administration, administrative discretion refers to the flexible exercising of judgment and decision making allowed to public administrators. Regulatory agencies have the power to exercise this type of discretion in their day-to-day activities, and there have been cases where regulatory agencies have abused this power. Administrative law can help these agencies get on the path of following regulations, serve the public, and in turn, a reflection of the public's values and beliefs.
Anti-corruption comprises activities that oppose or inhibit corruption. Just as corruption takes many forms, anti-corruption efforts vary in scope and in strategy. A general distinction between preventive and reactive measures is sometimes drawn. In such framework, investigative authorities and their attempts to unveil corrupt practices would be considered reactive, while education on the negative impact of corruption, or firm-internal compliance programs are classified as the former.
Corruption is endemic in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is widely considered to be one of the most politically and economically corrupt nations in the world and international rankings reflect this. Transparency International's 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index scored Sierra Leone at 34 on a scale from 0 to 100. When ranked by score, Sierra Leone ranked 110th among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked first is perceived to have the most honest public sector. For comparison, the best score was 90, the worst score was 12, and the average score was 43. The 2018 Global Competitiveness Report ranked Sierra Leone 109th out of 140 countries for Incidence of Corruption, with country 140 having the highest incidence of corruption. Corruption is prevalent in many aspects of society in Sierra Leone, especially in the aftermath of the Sierra Leone Civil War. The illicit trade in conflict diamonds funded the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) forces during the civil war, leading to fighting between the Sierra Leone Army and the RUF for control of the diamond mines. Widespread corruption in the health care sector has limited access to medical care, with health care workers often dependent on receiving bribes to supplement their low pay.
