EVALUATION AND DEVELOPMENT: PROCEEDINGS OF THE 1994 WORLDBANK CONFERENCERobert Picciotto and Ray C. List (eds)World Bank Operations Evaluation Department, Washington, 1995, ISSN 1011-0984, 267 pp.

Both evaluation and development, in their modern guises, began in the aftermath of theSecond World War. In half a century of practice a great deal of experience has been collected,and the papers in this volume provide a stocktaking of that experience. The topics areapproached very much from the evaluation angle, and most papers have a strongly practicalaspect.The volume includes the 16 papers presented at the conference, the comments of the

discussants and summaries of the ¯oor discussions. The papers are grouped into ®ve thematicareas: the roles and challenges facing development evaluation; conceptual frameworks avail-able for development evaluation; the capacity of evaluation instruments to assess developmentimpacts; the consequences of the participating agenda; and building evaluation capacitythrough changes in structures and processes.In the ®rst area the three papers by Chelimsky, Sandstrom and Choksi take an uncritical

view of the usefulness of evaluation techniques. While this might be understandable from thepresident of the American Evaluation Association and two senior World Bank o�cials, it doesget the volume o� to a rather complacent start. Indeed, and again unsurprisingly, the wholevolume is dominated not just by Bank perspectives but also by authors who work in the UnitedStates. It would be di�cult for a student to get a comprehensive view of the area if this was theonly source they used. However, in a useful preface the editors attempt to place the papers incontext, and a careful reading of the book, especially of the discussions, provides some anti-dote to the Bank's conventional wisdom. In relation to the discipline of evaluation, many ofthe papers are critical of what has been achieved so far, but in a generally constructive tone.The papers on participation and frameworks for evaluation are especially interesting. This is arevealing and therefore useful set of papers, and beyond the opening section there is a genuinesense of critical debate.

COLIN LAWSONUniversity of Bath

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT IN GOVERNMENTTim Irwin, Yvonne Fortin, Sylvie Troja et al.OECD, Paris, 1996, ISBN 9 264 15293 8, 110 pp.

This short collection of papers provides a summary overview of processes currently under wayto develop government performance management systems in Australia, the Netherlands, NewZealand, Sweden and the USA (with glimpses of Ireland and the UK through commentarieson the main papers). The papers are uniform in terms of focusÐthe perspective is from theposition of a minister or senior civil servant inventing an information system which will allowmore e�ective evaluation of both output and outcome performance in a large department. Thevariations between countries are interesting, but there are su�cient common themes to give thevolume coherenceÐthere is no editorial overview.The papers use many of the technical terms now current among those engaged in discussing

public sector reform. The book is not didactic in style and generally the writers assume thereader has considerable familiarity with concepts such as benchmarking and some familiaritywith the variety of forms of government in `western' countries. Problems of identifying andagreeing performance indicators, especially for service quality, are frequently mentioned,though examples are rarely given. The reader seeking more information on such problems withoutcome performance indicators could usefully refer to Smith (1996) as a recently publishedcompanion volume.The general approach is post-privatization; actual or internal simulated markets are rarely

mentioned. Accountability beyond the bottom line of the budget is the central concern.This accountability is primarily upwards to central government rather than to clients. Client

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# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Publ. Admin. Dev. 18: 93±96 (1998)

accountability and the decision-making autonomy of front-line managers receive occasionalmention. The dilemma of service delivery managers being expected to be accountable simul-taneously to both a centralized formal political process and heterogeneous client groups is aneglected issue.Overall this book demonstrates that in terms of the reforms discussed, in the past 15 years

have been largely wasted in the `west'. It is a succinct, frank record of the tentative state of theart in somewhat overdue, top-down experiments in improving performance in the publicsector.

Smith, P. (ed.) (1996). Measuring Outcome in the Public Sector, Taylor and Francis, London.

JOHN CAMERONSchool of Development Studies

University of East Anglia

THE PRIVATIZATION CHALLENGEPierre GuislainThe World Bank, Washington, DC, 1997, 399 pp.

This is a fairly long book but arguably one that is not long enough because its scope is veryambitiousÐit sets out to span the privatization experience in over 100 countries throughoutthe world, whether big or small, developed or less developed, western or former communist.

The text builds upon the author's previous work and is claimed to be `primarily a referencedocument for professionals and policymakers who design or take part in privatization pro-grams'. It is not addressed to academics who tend to be interested in more narrowly de®nedaspects of privatization, but neither is it a `hands on' manual for practitioners. It can, perhaps,best be described as a hybrid which sets out to inform the reader what should be done andwhat may or may not be needed in designing a privatization programme.

The author notes a host of problems that the would-be privatizer might encounter andindicates, mostly via rather brief illustrations, how individual countries have set out to resolvethem. This is ultimately less than satisfactory since it involves a lot of generalization of the`¯exibility is important' kind (p. 146) and insu�cient indication of whether and why anyparticular approach is better or worse than others.Some of the illustrations are somewhat ambiguous and/or inaccurate, such as the reference

on p. 98 to debt write-o�s in the UK (unusually for a book on privatization, this countryreceives little attention). This is arguably inevitable given the need to cover so much ground inso little space. Nevertheless, there is a distinct element of repetition; for example, a section on`property rights' commencing on p. 46 and one on `exercise of ownership rights' commencingon p. 91 indicate problems with the book's structure. There are also excessive small-printfootnotes, in total exceeding 350 (with 120 in chapter 7 alone), which occupy roughly 45 of the300 pages of text. This is both tedious and ultimately an unsatisfactory way of communicatingsome of the detail missing in the main text, bearing in mind that the audience is intended toconsist of practitioners.There is a lengthy but useful appendix which lists privatization legislation by country, but the

bibliography (should they be references?) is modest for a book with this breadth of coverage.There is also a notable lack of tables and ®gures.Overall, therefore, whilst this book contains a great deal of information which might be

useful to those involved in setting up and executing privatizations, they are unlikely to welcomethe e�ort involved in distinguishing for themselves the wheat from the cha�.

PETER CURWENPolicy Research Centre

She�eld Business School

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# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Publ. Admin. Dev. 18: 93±96 (1998)