7. Inclusive Governance for Enhancing Professionalism in Civil Service: The Case of Bangladesh

Public administration, as a field of study, has gone through a number of theoretical and practical challenges since its birth. And each time, these challenges have generated new questions and forced the field to search for its identity. Public administration has tried to be more democratic, more responsive and accountable, and in recent years, through focusing more on embracing private sector principles and methods, is trying to adopt a governance-oriented performance-based accountability system. This chapter acknowledges these trends and related challenges but draws attention to one specific issue, that is, a change in approach and new challenges that have not only contributed to the scientific advancement of the field but have also raised a number of “miss-questions” which have plagued public administration. These miss-questions have actually refused to die. This chapter focuses on one of these miss-questions, that is, the issue of specialists versus generalists, and makes an effort to explore how this has affected and is affecting the public administration system in Bangladesh. It shows that in Bangladesh, the issue of specialist versus generalist is still significant and has continued to play an important role in generating rivalry not only between the two groups, but also between different cadres in the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS). It seems to have affected the morale of the specialists and people belonging to different cadre services and has posed a challenge to the country in terms of attaining its goal of “inclusive” governance. The chapter, however, argues that as the Government of Bangladesh is generally embracing the principles of New Public Management (NPM), focusing on multi-sectoral collaboration in formulating policies and implementing programs, an opportunity has been created to incorporate the perspectives of both specialists and generalists in policy formulation and implementation.