Shadi Baki and Alfred Drosaye confronted a civil service in disarray in 2008, following a devastating 14-year civil war during which 250,000 people were killed, Liberia’s infrastructure was all but destroyed and government services collapsed. Despite the disintegration of the government, the civil service payroll more than doubled to 44,000 from 20,000 before the war, saddling the government with an unaffordable wage bill. Furthermore, the government had little sense of who was actually on the payroll and who should have been on the payroll. Rebel groups and interim governments put their partisans on the payroll even though they were unqualified or performed no state function. An unknown number of civil servants died or fled during the war but remained on the payroll. After delays due to an ineffective transitional government and moderately successful but scattered attempts to clean the payroll, Baki and Drosaye at Liberia’s Civil Service Agency set out in 2008 to clean the payroll of ghost workers, establish a centralized, automated civil service personnel database, and issue biometric identification cards to all civil servants. Cleaning the payroll would bring order to the civil service, save the government money and facilitate pay and pension reforms and new training initiatives. This case chronicles Liberia’s successful effort to clean up its payroll following a protracted civil war and lay the foundation for organized civil service management.

 

 

Associated Interview(s):  Shadi Baki, Alfred Drosaye

On 28 August 2006, Guyana held its most peaceful election in decades. In previous polls, inefficiencies in the electoral process had fueled rumors of electoral fraud by the ruling party, inflaming violent tensions between Guyana’s two main ethnic groups, the Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese. Ethnicity and party affiliation had long been linked in Guyanese politics. In the run-up to the 2006 vote, the elections commission, international donors and civil society groups worked together to thwart election-related violence. The commission rebuilt trust in the voter registry, decentralized administrative processes, improved field communications and better coordinated security plans. Recognizing the media’s role in fomenting violence, the commission established a Media Monitoring Unit and urged media outlets to cooperate to draft and abide by a new voluntary code of conduct. At the same time, civil society groups instituted a series of peace-building initiatives that included high-level dialogues and grassroots forums. These efforts helped ensure a free and fair election, with results accepted by all parties. Although violence reemerged in 2008, these reforms provided a foundation for renewed counter-efforts before the 2011 elections. This case offers insights to reformers seeking to break the cycle of electoral violence in ethnically divided societies.