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Egypt The Bureaucracy and Policy Implementation
Egypt's public bureaucracy was an enormous establishment
encompassing at least thirty ministries and hundreds of public
agencies and companies. There were ministries devoted to the
traditional tasks of governance, such as the Ministry of Interior,
charged with the maintenance of internal order, and the ministries
of defense, finance, foreign affairs, and justice. There was also
a multitude of ministries charged with managing the economy and
promoting development, such as the ministries of economy and
foreign trade, industry, international investment and cooperation,
irrigation, petroleum, planning, power, and reconstruction. Others
provided public services, such as the ministries of culture,
education, health, and manpower and training. There was also a vast
public sector. Under Nasser, 62 public authorities and public
service organizations responsible to various ministries presided
over about 600 public companies. Public authorities were holding
companies coordinating profit-oriented public sector firms of
similar function, whereas public service organizations were
nonprofit in orientation.
Below the politically appointed ministers and deputy ministers
was the civil service. It was ranked in six grades, the most senior
ranks being first undersecretary, undersecretary, and general
manager. Under the Nasser regime, efforts to reform and modernize
the traditional civil service raised the professional
qualifications of senior civil servants and opened the service to
wider recruitment from the educated middle class. But to curb
favoritism, seniority rather than performance was made the main
criterion for advancement. In addition, Nasser used the bureaucracy
to provide employment for university graduates. The reform of the
bureaucracy soon fell behind its expansion in size and functions,
making Egypt an overadministered society. Sadat pared back the
state's control over the economy but failed to restrain the growth
of the state bureaucracy and allowed its standards and efficiency
to decline. The bureaucracy mushroomed from 1.2 million at the end
of the Nasser era to 2 million at the end of Sadat's rule (20
percent of the work force) and 2.6 million in 1986.
The bureaucracy had a number of outstanding achievements to its
credit. The special ministries and agencies set up under Nasser to
build the Aswan High Dam, to carry out agrarian reform, and to
operate the Suez Canal had the budgets to recruit quality personnel
and carried out their missions with distinction. But by the Sadat
era, the bureaucracy and the public sector were afflicted with a
multitude of pathologies that made them more of a burden on, rather
than an instrument of, development. The Council of Ministers
generally failed to provide the strong administrative leadership
needed to coordinate the sprawling state apparatus, and therefore
its various parts often worked at cross-purposes. Many middle-rank
bureaucrats were statists at odds with the liberalization
initiatives from the top. There was a general breakdown in
performance and discipline in the public service; employees
generally could not be dismissed, pay was dismal except at the
highest levels, and most officials moonlighted after putting in
only a few hours each day at work. The excessive number of
employees charged with the same job made it impossible to
distinguish conscientious officials from timeservers. Under these
conditions, little responsibility could be delegated to lower
bureaucrats, and little initiative was expected of them.
Infitah-era policies also enervated government planning
and control of the public sector. Abolishing the public authorities
created under Nasser as layers between the ministries and public
sector firms was supposed to give the latter greater freedom of
management, but instead it brought a decline in financial
accountability without really allowing managers to respond to a
free market. The partial "privatization" of public sector companies
cost the treasury. Government investments in joint ventures with
the private or foreign sector often escaped the control of
government auditors and ended up in the pockets of the officials,
ex-officials, and private business partners who ran the companies.
The bureaucracy was afflicted with corruption. At senior levels
there were periodic scandals over embezzlement and acceptance of
commissions; at lower levels, petty graft was rampant. This
propensity toward corruption damaged the regime's effort to manage
its most crucial and costly welfare program. The theft of
subsidized commodities was facilitated by official collusion, from
the clerks of government retail outlets to the high officials of
the Ministry of Supply. The decline of the bureaucracy also had
deleterious economic consequences; the public sector suffered from
an erosion in management, while bureaucratic red tape remained an
obstruction to the private and foreign sectors. The latter often
had to pay off officials to negotiate the complex webs of
administrative requirements.
Data as of December 1990
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