ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some observations about bureaucrats and bureaucracy from experiences that the author has had during her work with Sida, the Swedish International Development Agency. The author argues for the importance of delivering aid through more flexible mechanisms, which reduce power imbalances and improve accountability and transparency. In conjunction with this procedural flexibility, organizational incentives are required to address staff motivation. If bureaucrats are to be effective agents of change, then processes that engage, animate and activate the commitment to public service need to be introduced. Bureaucrats need to become participants, rather than the objects or instruments of other people's change strategies. Finally, the author calls for initiatives that rekindle the kind of passions – about inequality, about fairness, about improving the lot of poor and excluded people – that were the initial motivating factors for public-service employment.
