Between 1998 and 2009, the South African Revenue Service dramatically improved tax compliance.  The number of income-tax payers increased to 4.1 million from 2.6 million during the period.  Several internal organizational changes helped the revenue service persuade more South Africans to pay their taxes.  This case study tells the story of two of those changes in particular: the recruitment of a new cadre of managers from both within and outside the organization and a campaign to provide taxpayers with better service to encourage compliance.  The organization used diagnostic tests as well as informal recruiting to rebuild the ranks of upper and middle management, transforming the racial make-up of the organization while improving performance.  Meanwhile, in order to improve service for taxpayers, a team of managers and consultants separated back and front offices and introduced an annual "filing season" in which employees of the revenue service left their offices to help taxpayers file their returns.  In each of these changes, Pravin Gordhan, revenue-service commissioner from 1999 to 2009, played a central role, both determining policy and overseeing the details of implementation.

David Hausman drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Pretoria, South Africa in February 2010. Case originally published 2010. Additional text added in December 2013. 

Associated Interview(s):  Pravin Gordhan, Judy Parfitt

In the talks to end apartheid in South Africa, 19 parties sat at the negotiating table.  At least 10 of the negotiators had armed wings, and almost all had demands that they were prepared to back up with violence.  One in particular possessed the ability to destabilize the country: Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party.  To get him on board, negotiators employed a number of tactics, including splitting him from his backers, offering compromises and refusing to allow the momentum of the process to be slowed by his boycotts.  This memo examines the negotiators' efforts to manage Buthelezi's demands and draw him into a coalition, as well as the longer-term consequences of those moves. 

Daniel Scher drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town, South Africa, in February 2010. 

Associated Interview(s): Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Mario Gaspare Oriani-Ambrosini, Peter Smith

After Liberia’s 14-year civil war ended in 2003, the government began to overhaul its security sector. The Liberia National Police (LNP), whose capacity was ravaged and reputation tarnished during the war, sought to improve its services and build the community’s trust. Gender-sensitive reform at the LNP was high on President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s agenda, given low numbers of women in the security sector and high rates of sexual and gender-based violence. Between 2005 and 2011, LNP reformers Beatrice Munah Sieh, Asatu Bah-Kenneth, Vera Manly and others led innovative efforts to make the police service more inclusive and responsive. In particular, they sought to recruit female officers at a rapid pace and to launch a Women and Children Protection Section. By July 2011, although the police service still identified shortcomings in capacity and the justice system more broadly, it could boast an increased percentage of female officers (17%, compared with 2% in 2005), 217 specially trained officers deployed in 52 Women and Children Protection Section units across Liberia, more women in leadership positions, and improved responsiveness and public image. This case chronicles police reform in a post-conflict setting, examining the challenges of promoting diversity, building capacity, conducting community outreach and awareness, and delivering services to remote areas.

As South Africa worked to draft a post-apartheid constitution in the months leading up to its first fully democratic elections in 1994, the disparate groups negotiating the transition from apartheid needed to set the country’s internal boundaries. By 1993, the negotiators had agreed that the new constitution would divide the country into provinces, but the thorniest issues remained: the number of provinces and their borders. Lacking reliable population data and facing extreme time pressure, the decision makers confronted explosive political challenges. South Africa in the early 1990s was a patchwork of provinces and “homelands,” ethnically defined areas for black South Africans. Some groups wanted provincial borders drawn according to ethnicity, which would strengthen their political bases but also reinforce divisions that had bedeviled the country’s political past. Those groups threatened violence if they did not get their way. To reconcile the conflicting interests and defuse the situation, the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum established a separate, multiparty commission. Both the commission and its technical committee comprised individuals from different party backgrounds who had relevant skills and expertise. They agreed on a set of criteria for the creation of new provinces and solicited broad input from the public. In the short term, the Commission on the Demarcation/Delimitation of States/Provinces/Regions balanced political concerns and technical concerns, satisfied most of the negotiating parties, and enabled the elections to move forward by securing political buy-in from a wide range of factions. In the long term, however, the success of the provincial boundaries as subnational administrations has been mixed.

Tumi Makgetla and Rachel Jackson drafted this case study based on interviews conducted by Makgetla in Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa, in February 2010. A separate case study, “Refashioning Provincial Government in Democratic South Africa, 1994-1996,” focuses on the two-year mandate of the Commission on Provincial Government. Case originally published August 2010. Case revised and republished October 2012.

As of January 2008, South African citizens had to wait more than four months, on average, to get a government identity document. The delays in producing IDs, which disrupted lives by preventing citizens from working or accessing government benefits, reflected longstanding organizational problems at the Department of Home Affairs, the agency responsible for issuing the IDs. The processes at each stage of ID production were in disarray, and the department's staff lacked effective supervision. Backlogs developed; workers became demoralized. In 2007, the department began to tackle the problems. This was one component of an ambitious turnaround strategy that targeted the department's core business processes. In the ID production process, a team of consultants and department officials made individual and group performance measurable daily and weekly. The turnaround team avoided backlash by engaging the staff union, removing the threat of job losses as a result of restructuring, and consulting the workers in each section before making changes. The performance-management changes were informal: Managers evaluated employees' and sections' performance in meetings and on wall charts rather than through the formal performance-appraisal system. By the end of 2008, South African citizens received their ID booklets in an average of less than six weeks.

David Hausman drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa in February 2010. Case published April 2011. Case slightly revised and republished March 2013. 

Associated Interview(s):  Mavuso Msimang, Yogie Travern

Nitish Kumar was elected chief minister of Bihar, India's poorest state, in December 2005, when the state's government was weighed down by two decades of institutional decline, widespread lawlessness and a society deeply divided by caste and religion.  To win the election and to implement his reform agenda, he engineered a grand bargain whereby almost every distinct social group had a share in state-sponsored development.  This paved the way for more fundamental reforms in law and order, administration and infrastructure.  Although Bihar's more intractable issues remained in 2009, the state had begun turning the corner.  Two separate memos, "Clearing the Jungle Raj" and "Reviving the Administration," describe Kumar's efforts to improve law and order and administration in Bihar, respectively. 

Rohan Mukherjee drafted this case study on the basis of interviews conducted in Patna, Bihar, in July 2009. Two separate case studies, "Reviving the Administration" and "Clearing the Jungle Raj," describe Kumar's efforts to improve administration and reduce criminal activity, respectively. 

Associated Interview(s):  Chirashree Das Gupta