ABSTRACT
I had two objectives in writing this book. The first was to document a successful financial reform in Africa from firsthand experience and with sufficient passage of time to see its impacts and how it fared. This has rarely been done. The second objective was to distill from this experience analytical frameworks that could guide other countries in financial reforms. The field of public financial management (PFM) does not have adequate frameworks-an issue I discuss here and in chapter 10. The PFM field has generated many lists of lessons, but absent analytical frameworks these lessons remain unconnected dots-findings relating only to a particular country’s reform. Frameworks help practitioners connect the dots and provide a means of integrating different countries’ experiences to guide future reforms. Because public finance is an applied activity with elements of both theory and practice, it is difficult to develop frameworks that meet the rigor of theory and the relevance of practice. This challenge was well articulated by Hugh Dalton, who served as a minister of the Crown in the United Kingdom for eleven years and was chancellor of the exchequer for two turbulent years, 1945 to 1947, when his country was recovering from World War II:
Every writer who aims at organizing a general discussion of public finance must be conscious of a conflict between two personalities, those of the practical and of the analytical man. And, in seeking to resolve this conflict, he is in danger of getting the worst of both worlds, missing both the perfection of theory, boldly guided by pure reason and the wisdom of statesmanship, cautiously guided by administrative officialdom. . . . Studies in public finance have . . . a special fascination, but for the same reason, an excess of abstraction is apt, in this sphere, to seem especially unreal and an excess of conventional rule-of-thumb especially half-witted.1
