Square-pegs for Round Holes? What’s the Problem Represented to be in Public Sector Reform in Zambia?

Abstract: Efforts to reform the public sectors of Zambia have been ongoing since the 1990s with objectives to ensure efficient and high-quality provision of public goods and services to all citizens and battling persistently high levels of poverty. Outcomes have however been mixed at best. This study assesses how reforms to the public sectors of Zambia have been framed in terms of what problem representations underpin the solutions prescribed in reform programmes driven by international financial institutions. The questions of the What’s the Problem Represented to be?- analysis by Carol Bacchi will be answered to establish the problem representation, the assumptions that constitutes its conceptual logic and effects produced by it. The analysis is applied to three interrelated reform programmes produced by the World Bank and the Government of Zambia. A theoretical framework operationalizes two perspectives, form over function (good governance) and function over form be used inductively to pinpoint the rationale of the problem representation as well as how it may be thought of differently The study finds that reforms have been prescribed according to a conviction that a particular form of governance can replace a failing one, based on the problem representation of Bad governance, or lack of good governance, as a constraint on economic growth and use of public resources for poverty reduction. It is also found that fixed convictions silence complexities of the realities of individuals living in poverty and may disrupt positive momentums of functions that are not aligned with the forms proposed by the good governance agenda.