. Staffing and capacity Trade ministries differ not just in shape but in size. The complement of personnel may range from fewer than a doz...
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Staffing and capacity Trade ministries differ not just in shape but in size. The complement of personnel may range from fewer than a dozen persons in the smallest countries to hundreds of them in the largest. One might naturally suppose that, all other things being equal, a government agency’s ability to achieve its goals will rise with the size of its staff. All things are not equal, however, and the preparation of the officials in a ministry is ultimately more important than their sheer numbers. A small group of well-trained and motivated officials have a much better chance of achieving their aims than a large body of people who lack the necessary skills and direction. It should also be acknowledged that the number of personnel assigned to a trade ministry, or indeed to any other governmental institution, will not be determined solely by that agency’s needs. All governments, whether developed or developing, operate under budgetary restrictions and civil service procedures that cannot be easily overcome, and will usually need to be treated as immutable in the short term. What sort of person should a trade ministry hire? One great irony of the trading system is that the best policy professionals are willing and able to violate regularly the system’s central premise. Adam Smith argued that specialization determines productivity in an enterprise, and if we were to apply this same division-of-labour V. TRADE POLICYMAKING INSTITUTIONS
53 logic to government we might propose a strict separation between the economists, lawyers, and other specialists who become public servants. That would be a distinctly bad idea in the field of trade policy, however, where the ideal policymaker is a “jack of all trades” whose perspectives are not limited by the title displayed on a diploma. A trade ministry should ideally be staffed by professionals from a variety of fields, but all of them should be encouraged to acquire a working knowledge of subjects outside their chief areas of expertise. It is just as important for an economist to understand the basics of trade law as it is for a lawyer to understand the laws of supply and demand, and people in both of these professions have much to learn from — and to share with — the political scientists, area specialists, information-management experts, or others who draw their pay from the trade ministry. That ideal is difficult to attain, as many trade ministries in developing countries must deal with serious capacity problems. This is especially true in smaller countries with commensurately small ministries, where it is not uncommon for the majority of the staff to be recent college graduates who have as yet spent little time outside of the classroom. Some among them may accept government positions because they are the only jobs in the capital city that require education but not experience, and they may plan to leave for better-paying positions in the private sector as soon as they have accumulated the necessary amount of training, skills, and contacts. This can create a cycle of frequent turnover, robbing the ministry of the knowledge, networks, and institutional memory that are so important to effective policymaking. The obvious answers to this problem are to increase staff salaries and to expand capacity through training and retention, but those solutions may be beyond the budgetary limits within which ministries must operate. They may also run into a well-known dilemma in capacity-building by which the efforts put into the upgrading of personnel will increase their potential value to another employer (public or private, domestic or international), thus accelerating the brain drain. Donors often solve this problem by requiring that the recipient of any training pledge to remain in government service for some minimal term as a prerequisite for receiving this support. Another difficulty is that, in the view of some critics, capacity-building programmes can sometimes be built more around the interests of the donors than the recipients. There are means by which trade ministries can enhance their human resources at minimal budgetary cost. Some donors will support the hiring of trade advisors for ministries, drawing upon consultants who may themselves be former officials in national governments or international organizations. Similarly, some countries and international organizations sponsor programmes by which officials from one country may be seconded to others on temporary assignments. Resources are also available for the outsourcing of specific tasks to international organizations or the consultants that they may hire. All of these alternatives are best seen as stop-gap measures, as it is in the best interests of a ministry to develop and retain the in-house capacities and to foster the institutional memory needed over the long term. A TPF should provide an assessment of the capacity deficits that may exist in the trade ministry and other government agencies that deal with trade, and make recommendations on how any skills gaps at might be closed. The trade ministry should take advantage of the training and other technical assistance programmes made available by international organizations and educational institutions (box 6).
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