I would say that there's no easy answer to this question: it depends which type of state, which type of public administration (including civil service) and also which type of conflict the country comes from and which type of state and public administration (including civil service) the country heads for after the conflict. Will there be a political transition or not (it's often the case after a conflict, but not necessarily)? Merit-based civil services and more generally speaking Weberian bureaucracies are more efficient than other types of public administration (see here: Rauch and Evans, for instance). 1) So recruitment is a very important issue. 2) If a political transition takes place too (and let's hypothesize here that this would be the case), then this is more complicated because it is difficult to change the political staff and the administrative staff at the same time (otherwise one risks a total collapse of the state). So usually, what happens is that the administrative staff is less replaced than would be necessary (= one keeps the old staff). 2) This brings to the second topic: a good/fair policy of replacement of old staff (linked with the older regime and the conflict) by a new staff (less or not linked to the old regime). The problem is often that the old staff has administrative competences but is politically compromised while the new one is not or much less compromised but doesn't have as much administrative competences... so a balance must be found to have enough competent staff which is not too much linked to the previous regime. Here, lot's of publications on the German unification, on the East-European transitions in the 1990's, on the South-African experience (Committee of Peace and Reconciliation). It is important to have a good policy, which distinguishes political crimes from the "simple" participation in the public administration of the regime involved in the violent conflict: not every civil servant working for a former regime is criminal from the point of view of penal law. This is important for the sake of reconciliation: setting up a new public administration shouldn't look like an act of vengeance. 3) If the country is multicultural (= there are several cultural/ethnic/religious groups), it can be an interesting idea to look towards the idea of representative bureaucracy (lots of literature here too) to use the new post-conflict public administration as a tool of reconciliation. This means recruiting 1st) according to merit, but 2nd) also trying to give each cultural group the possibility to be part of the central administration: thus the composition of the public administration displays that the new state is the state of all and not just one group. This can contribute to enhancing the legitimacy of the new post-conflict state. Those are just ideas, since, again, it depends which state, which public administration and which conflict.

Thanks Magali,

Your ideas are very useful. I'm from Syria, which is facing a violent conflict since more than 2 years. I prepare to achieve an study about this issue, so I'm interested in countries' experiences.

Dear Issa,

Glad you liked the answers. I thought you were speaking about Syria, but wasn't sure. And I do not know the Syrian case very well (or just from what I read in the media and what some colleagues specialist of Syria tell me). But having done research on the German Unification and the creation of civil service in the New German Länder, I have touched upon some of the issues that your country could face once the conflict is over (of course, it depends on depends on how it ends, etc.). A question is also the form of the Syrian state after the conflict: if ethnic/religious issues remain important and if groups correspond to different areas of the country, maybe a federal form of the state can be a good solution. For me, it is difficult to think the type that a public administration takes without taking into account the type of stake in which it is supposed to perform.

But good luck with your study!! :-)

Dear magali,

Thanks ... I'll take your notes in my study !

Here are a couple of resources that may be of help. First, is the book edited by Derick W. Brinkerhoff, Governance in Post-Conflict Societies: Rebuilding Fragile States (Routledge 2007) (just translated into Chinese too). Second, is an article Derick and I co-authored, attached.

Article Governance Reforms and Failed States: Challenges and Implications