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ОглавлениеTWO
At the Apex
Reforming Cabinet Structures in Jordan
FATEMA ALHASHEMI
TONY GOLDNER
THE HIGHEST OFFICIALS OF the government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan are meeting in a cabinet session, the apex government decisionmaking body in the country. The topic of discussion is: Should chicken slaughterhouses be relocated from the vicinity of Amman, and if so, how? Hundreds of small, antiquated chicken slaughterhouses lie in and around the capital. They pose health and environmental hazards for nearby residential neighborhoods. What should be done with them? The prime minister and his ministers are asked to make a decision, yet they are provided with little information on the extent of the economic or social cost of moving or shutting down the slaughterhouses. After three separate cabinet discussions, no clear decision is made.
Jordan is hardly unique in experiencing problems with its apex mechanisms for policy coordination. Many countries struggle to ensure that the issues that come before cabinets have been properly vetted and that senior decisionmakers have time to focus on the important questions without being bogged down in administration. Yet, as a small country in a volatile region, the challenges confronting Jordan are particularly acute. The country has had to grapple with the geopolitical implications of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian dispute; external social and economic shocks from conflicts in Iraq and Syria; a heavy dependence on oil imports; austerity measures such as elimination of food subsidies; and the ongoing need for job creation. Having to take up valuable time in three cabinet sessions on the relocation of chickens provoked one former minister to remark, “The cabinet should not have been wasting one minute of its time on this!”1
This example, and many others, highlight the recurring challenge of upgrading policy formulation and decision support mechanisms. Senior officials had little time to focus on the policy decisions affecting their nation’s future and were, instead, burdened by a never-ending flow of decisions on minor administrative matters. The requisite institutional infrastructures that would provide high quality technical advice were not fully developed. There was no recognized and systematic process for decisionmaking and no procedures for following up on implementation.
This chapter explores efforts to reform cabinet decisionmaking since the mid-2000s. We first examine the political context of reform in Jordan. Next, we detail the institutional challenges of the public sector and outline the steps toward reform. Finally, we assess the impact of the reform efforts and glean lessons from Jordan’s experience.
In 2003, a reform team was charged with improving the system of cabinet decisionmaking. The minister heading these reforms at the time, Fawaz Zu’bi, was a capable and dynamic manager in both the public and private sectors. He went forward applying his motto, “It is important to ensure that the brain is working well, because if the brain is working well then the body will function as it needs to.”2 But reform had its share of challenges, such as institutional weaknesses, internal power politics, and broader political opposition. Would Zu’bi and his team succeed?
Cabinet in Crisis
Under Jordan’s constitution, authority and power is vested heavily in the king in his roles as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, head of state, and chief executive. The king appoints and dismisses the prime minister and the government. The cabinet is constitutionally responsible for public policies of the state, yet in practice political and decisionmaking power on key issues is heavily concentrated around the monarchy. This includes the Royal Court, advisers close to the king, the armed forces, and the security establishment.3 In recent history, the involvement of the Royal Court in shaping policy beyond these areas has oscillated between active engagement and a delegation of these responsibilities to the cabinet and the prime minister.
At the core of the challenge facing Jordan’s Council of Ministers is time management. Strategic policy development and delivery oversight is structurally “crowded-out” by the crushing compliance burden of administrative decisions, which are required under Jordanian law and regulations to go before the Council of Ministers. A former observer described the scene at one cabinet meeting:
The secretary of the cabinet had piles of paper in front of him. There was no substantive discussion of the agenda items and no documentation offering analysis. The secretary read out pre-drafted decisions, which were almost all agreed without discussion. The only substantive discussion [in that session] was when an issue was raised about two officials who were going for a conference to North Africa, and the issue at hand was about their stipend of 26 JD [about US$37]. Heated discussion took place about whether 26 JD was a reasonable amount or whether less should be given.4
This failing can be attributed to a number of legal, structural, procedural, and capacity constraints.
The first challenge was the sheer number of the administrative decisions that need to be taken. In many OECD countries, the average cabinet will address between 500 and 700 items a year. During 2003, Jordan’s prime minister and the Council of Ministers made a total of 22,500 decisions, of which 80 percent were administrative rather than policy in nature.5 The administrative issues related to the appointment, promotion, and retirement of senior government officials; the formation of official delegations for participation in overseas conferences; land acquisition; and decisions on compensation and payment for overtime work performed by officials, among other concerns. For a variety of reasons, successive prime ministers, cabinets, and parliaments have approved laws that mandate the taking of relatively minor decisions at the level of the Council of Ministers. Furthermore, many of these laws and by-laws called for administrative decisions to be made by the prime minister or the Council of Ministers on a case-by-case basis rather than through the routine application of guidelines.6
The second challenge was the legacy structure of the committee system perpetuated by successive governments. Despite the dramatic growth in the volume of administrative decisions that needed to be made as Jordan’s population grew and its social and economic systems became more complex through the 1990s and early 2000s, there was little innovation in cabinet decisionmaking processes and capabilities.
Prior to the reforms launched in the mid-2000s, there were no permanent, sector-based subcommittees to oversee the implementation of policies that spanned the mandates of more than one ministry. The Council of Ministers was supported by two permanent interministerial committees—the Development Committee and the Legal Committee. The first was a clearinghouse for all economic and financial policy proposals, and the second was responsible for the analysis and development of laws and by-laws submitted before the Council of Ministers for approval. While specific issues were handled by ad hoc committees, these committees (with some exceptions) tended to meet infrequently. They were subject to very low turnout, had weak secretariat support, and often would not arrive at decisions.7 Issues under their respective mandates would have to wait for cabinet meetings for final decisions. The committee reporting lines to the cabinet were often weak or unclear, leaving the cabinet answerable for their results but unable to control the quality or timeliness of their outputs.
Third, the secretariat functions supporting cabinet decisionmaking activities were designed, like a mailroom, to provide a processing function. They did not perform the type of independent advisory functions that the Council of Ministers increasingly needed to deal with the compliance burden efficiently and concurrently have the time and brainpower to make strategic policy decisions and oversee implementation activities.
A major shortcoming was the absence of policy advisory support, including functional or technical specialists who could provide analytical services and frame policy options for consideration. This sort of policy capacity did not exist in line ministries. While some senior officials were involved in policymaking, most often the secretary generals (the top civil service position within Jordanian ministries, equivalent to the British permanent secretary post) in line departments were perceived as administrators. As a result, the default means of advancing policy development was to look outside the ministries and the Cabinet Secretariat and to turn to a proliferation of committees that performed quasi-policy functions.
While two units under the cabinet secretary were mandated to manage administrative affairs, they did not provide any forward planning of Council of Ministers business. Consequently, the urgent often crowded out the important on weekly cabinet agendas. There was a lack of interministerial coordination before issues arrived at the cabinet room, along with insufficient follow-up and reporting back to the cabinet on the implementation of previous decisions.
There was no standard template for policy submissions to the Council of Ministers that would enable the secretariat to control the quality of analysis and recommendations brought before the cabinet.8 One internal review of business over a ten-month period revealed that of 684 decisions that came to that office only seven (less than 1 percent) were related to policy matters. The others were predominantly administrative or information related.
With a crowded and often unstructured agenda, coupled with written advice that often lacked detailed analysis and policy options, it is not surprising that ministers at that time reported feeling overwhelmed and poorly equipped to discharge their collective decisionmaking responsibilities. It was not uncommon for agenda items to be submitted a few minutes before a cabinet meeting was about to begin or simply be introduced during the meeting itself. Many decisions were, therefore, made without substantive discussion, and ministers were often presented with simple yes/no options. With respect to changes in legislative and regulatory language, ministers were frequently presented with a “before” and “after” text with little accompanying commentary or analysis.
By the mid-2000s, reform to Jordan’s central decisionmaking activities had to tackle a number of serious questions. How could the burden of administrative and compliance-driven activities be reduced? How could adequate technical support be strengthened to foster better policy decisions and thereby reduce reliance on ad hoc committees and councils? How could procedures be improved to provide a higher level of quality control and consistency in the decisionmaking process? How could coordination with line ministries be improved and, over the longer term, policy capacity in line ministries be developed?
Cabinet Decisionmaking Reform: The Beginning
In October 2003, Minister Zu’bi was tasked to lead the public sector reform agenda as Minister of Administrative Development in the government of Prime Minister Faisal al-Fayez. In his view, the Ministry of Administrative Development was weak, and its young staff were not empowered to move forward with the reform program. But the UK Department for International Development (DFID) was supportive of this reform program and of Zu’bi, encouraging him to move forward with it. At the same time, the political environment for reform was favorable.
With support from DFID, a £3 million public sector reform project was initiated and contracted to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). Though diagnostic work had been undertaken and some drafts for public sector reform developed, the reform work had been progressing slowly. In December 2003, after the new government was formed, DFID added a further £1.5 million to the project budget.
The reform team began by reviewing past efforts at reform. Minister Zu’bi explained, “We wanted to develop a fresh view on public sector reform, [but realized that it was important to look] at past experiences and see what lessons could be learned, and importantly to see how we could move forward.”9 An international consultant intimately involved in these efforts recounted a key lesson they drew from this exercise: “Reforms in the absence of genuine ‘buy-in’ would not achieve results.”10 All the key stakeholders had to be on board with reforms to implement them effectively.
As a result, a high profile interministerial committee for public sector reform was established. The idea was to appoint champions who would lead the reform program. The team of ministers was made responsible for leading specific components of the public sector reform program. Systematic secretariat arrangements were established to support the committee. Over three months, twenty-two meetings were held.
One weakness of this institutional arrangement was the fact that their decisions had no binding power, as the committee was outside the prime ministry and not a permanent committee attached to the cabinet. Attempts were made to transform the committee into a permanent committee of the prime ministry, but they were ultimately unsuccessful in the face of opposition from senior staff in that office. Speaking of the general public sector environment in which reform had to proceed, a consultant involved in these efforts noted: “If someone is brought on board, someone else will question why this new person is involved in the work and not him or her. If someone is left out of an initiative, they will resist it.” This theme would be repeated at multiple junctures downstream.
These challenges did not stop the committee from carrying out its mandate. They examined the overall machinery of government, identifying a number of problems at the intersection of cabinet policymaking, human resource policy, civil service law, and financial management. While the reform team adopted a comprehensive vision, the head of the committee, Zu’bi, explained that policymaking in cabinet was “at the heart of the issue.”
Members of the committee went to several countries to try to understand different cabinet models to identify the specific changes that could best improve the Jordanian system. In parallel, a comprehensive performance diagnostic was commissioned focusing on the Cabinet Secretariat and the functioning of the prime ministry. To overcome both the language barrier and sensitivities about divulging information about prime ministry functions to international consultants, a local Jordanian consulting firm, Al Jidara, was hired as a subcontractor to PWC.
The reform team’s efforts culminated in the identification of three priorities for cabinet reform:
1. Review the legal framework to reduce the administrative burdens on the prime minister, the Council of Ministers, and individual ministers.
2. Enhance the capacity of the Council of Ministers by streamlining administrative processes, strengthening the Cabinet Secretariat, establishing permanent, sector-based ministerial subcommittees, and restructuring the prime ministry (see box 2-1).
3. Strengthen policy capacity within ministries by enhancing the policy development skills of senior civil servants and improving human resources management policies and procedures.
Reform Plans Are Approved
These efforts bore fruit in the latter part of 2004. Recommendations were presented to the king and the prime minister, who signaled approval of the plan. To formalize and elevate the reform plans, a special White Paper was commissioned. In October 2004, a comprehensive public sector reform agenda, the “White Paper for Public Sector Reform,” was presented and approved by the government. All three priorities for reform of cabinet policy decisionmaking were spelled out in the White Paper. Three key institutional changes were also recommended to oversee the implementation of the public sector reform agenda:
Establish a public sector administration and development directorate in place of the existing line ministry on administrative development. Concomitantly, create the post of Minister of State for Public Sector Development, reporting to the deputy prime minister to oversee this unit.
Establish a government performance evaluation department inside the prime ministry. The Minister of Cabinet Affairs and Government was to be mandated to oversee this unit as well as units related to the secretariat, political development, and government communications.
Transform the interministerial steering committee on public sector reform into a permanent public administration cabinet subcommittee.
Minister Zu’bi explained the significance of this institutional arrangement: “The one big achievement I managed to bring about was to raise the profile of the Minister of Administrative Development from being one of the line ministers to effectively being third highest in the hierarchy after the prime minister and the Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs.” This arrangement originated from the rationale that any minister mandated to reform government needed to be granted the necessary authority over other line ministries. However, in practice, it was not as straightforward as that, as power within Jordan’s political culture is traditionally derived from multiple sources, including seniority, experience in government, and relationship with the king, among other factors.
The cabinet approved this new structure and, in October 2004 following a cabinet reshuffle, Minister Zu’bi left his post and the public sector. In preparation for his departure and to ensure that the efforts and momentum of the past would not be lost, the reform team drafted a detailed public sector reform work program. Their hope was that the incoming minister and cabinet would be guided by this document and be committed to the goals and targets put forth in the White Paper.
Moving Forward, or Not
Among other changes, the cabinet reshuffle of October 24, 2004, ushered in the arrival of Marwan Muasher as deputy prime minister and Minister of State for Prime Ministry Affairs and Government Performance. Muasher had been Minister of Foreign Affairs in the previous government, and he was now made responsible for the overall reform agenda and government performance.
Following the approval of the White Paper, Al Jidara began following up on PWC’s analysis and recommendations by mapping out the structure, mandate, and functioning of the different units in the prime ministry. It began developing a cabinet procedures manual, as well as preparing the job descriptions, recruitment criteria, and recruitment process for the government performance department (GPD) that was to be established in the prime ministry.
Concurrent with his efforts to oversee the upgrading of the prime ministry, Muasher also oversaw the development of the National Agenda during this period, of which the planned public sector reforms were one component. The National Agenda was a major initiative to provide a long-term vision for Jordan that encompassed a variety of political, economic, and social reforms. It specified broad strategies to serve as a guide for orienting government policies. It also laid out several key performance indicators to help evaluate government policies, actions, and institutions. The GPD was mandated to oversee the development of these indicators.
Starting in 2005, the concept of creating small policy and institutional development units emerged from the GPD mandate. These units were to be part of a new infrastructure to support policy decisionmaking. The concept envisioned a unit within each line ministry to undertake monitoring and evaluation functions of the ministry and all institutions under its authority. This analysis was to be used for policy formulation and identifying internal weaknesses. These periodic reports were also to be submitted to the GPD, which was to produce higher-level sectorial analytical reports that could be forwarded to the prime ministry and cabinet. The GPD, Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation (MoPIC), and Ministry of Public Sector Development (MoPSD) began cooperating to take this concept further.
Yet challenges to the reform process quickly emerged. Most notably, components of the institutional architecture envisioned for the reforms did not materialize. The public sector development unit, in particular, was short-lived within the prime ministry. Explanations differ for its relatively short existence. One was that the newly appointed Minister of State for Public Sector Development did not agree with this institutional arrangement, which would compromise his autonomy. Others noted that the institutional arrangement itself was not well organized in terms of reporting relationships, budgetary allocations, and staffing needs. The new minister focused his early efforts on building the directorate outside the prime ministry, thereby contradicting the original intent of having public sector reform as a center-of-government function.
Many internal and external observers have identified the frequent change of ministers as among the most detrimental factors in implementing reforms. Each new minister who came in did not feel bound by the strategies and decisions of their predecessors. This problem is further exacerbated by the lack of political parties within Jordan, which eliminates the discipline that a party platform can impose on individual ministers. As a result, civil servants and consultants involved in public sector reform efforts repeatedly found themselves dedicating substantial time to the task of reeducating new ministers in the hope of keeping reform momentum on track. Conversely, when new ministers proposed reforms that senior civil servants did not support, they became accustomed to stalling on the basis that ministers would not remain in office for long.
BOX 2-1. Recommendations to Enhance Capacity of Cabinet
Shorten the decisionmaking process in the prime ministry. The protocols for cabinet paperwork were deemed to be slow and cumbersome, with all documents first going to the secretary general of the prime ministry and then between various departments. Such a process meant that the secretary general was overburdened, and the process was slow. Line ministries and other public institutions could not predict when issues would be presented to the cabinet and when decisions would be sent back. A new mechanism was to be developed that would better organize the flow of correspondence to the cabinet secretary, secretary general, and other administrative units.
Introduce a cabinet procedures manual. To address inefficiencies stemming from ad hoc processes in place and insufficient quality control, recommendations were made to develop a comprehensive cabinet procedure manual. This manual was to provide step-by-step guidance on the process through which line ministries were to submit policy items to the prime ministry, templates to be used, timelines to be followed, work flow within the prime ministry before submission of items for cabinet discussions, necessary documentation and dissemination, and follow-up on implementation. This manual was finalized in 2006.
Establish permanent interministerial committees. To augment the efficacy of the cabinet decisionmaking process, recommendations were made to establish four to six permanent interministerial committees. These permanent committees would be mandated to take a cross-sectorial view on policy issues. Each committee was to be staffed with a secretary who was well-informed on the issues before discussion, who would document all minutes, and who would share the recommendations with the cabinet secretary.
Strengthen the cabinet secretariat. The administrative support units under the cabinet secretariat were weak and had no capacity for policy analysis. Recommendations were made to build capacity and to establish a team of policy specialists. The proposal entailed establishing a specific unit staffed with five to six sector specialists who would provide independent technical advice on policy issues and undertake quality control of the process. These specialists would be mandated to make recommendations on policy proposals, be available in cabinet meetings to provide technical advice, communicate with line ministries and departments, and act as secretaries to the permanent interministerial committees.
Restructure the prime ministry. The prime ministry itself required significant reorganization based on a functional approach. Having seventeen individual directorates in the prime ministry presented managerial and administrative challenges. The White Paper of 2004 noted that “there is potential for overlap between directorates in terms of responsibilities for quality control of policy submissions to the prime minister and the Council of Ministers; and for delays as documents are transmitted from one unit to another.” Diagnostic work was undertaken over the next two years to develop recommendations for restructuring and streamlining the relationship between the secretary general and the cabinet secretary.
While progress was made on some aspects of the government’s broader public sector reform agenda, efforts to strengthen the cabinet decisionmaking processes and restructure the prime ministry encountered direct resistance. Muasher was a strong advocate of the reforms in the White Paper, but other senior members in the prime ministry did not agree with some proposals. Opponents argued that there was no need for a separate technical unit for evaluation. They were concerned that this unit would replicate work by the line ministries and second-guess their recommendations. There were conflicting views on where such a unit should be located. Some senior voices from the prime ministry argued for its placement under the manager of the prime minister’s office (PMO). There was a perceived need to build the capacity of the office with a team of specialists who could advise on political, economic, and financial issues. The consultants proposed that it should be located under the Cabinet Secretariat, with the rationale that the unit could provide support to all cabinet members as well as the prime minister.
A former consultant noted that “everyone had incentives to oppose.” There were some groups who resisted the proposal because it restricted their direct interface with the prime minister; others who realized that this unit would have given more power to one division relative to their own; others who felt threatened when they realized these proposals would imply different staffing needs; and yet another group may have agreed with the proposals but did not want to be seen challenging other senior stakeholders.
Proposals to establish more permanent committees were perceived as too restrictive, since according to existing procedures, the prime minister appointed ad hoc interministerial committees as he deemed necessary. Work on the cabinet procedures manual proceeded at a slow pace due to a combination of meticulousness from some senior officials at the prime ministry and difficulties in arriving at a consensus on key issues.
In April 2005, a new government, headed by Adnan Badran, was sworn into office. The new prime minister, a liberal academic, filled his cabinet with Western-educated technocrats and private sector reformers. The government quickly came under attack from parliament on a variety of fronts, including “neglecting the country’s southern regions in appointments.”11 In July 2005, Prime Minister Badran was forced to reshuffle his cabinet.12
The Minister of State for Public Sector Development in Prime Minister Badran’s government continued to work with the team of consultants on the prime ministry and cabinet decisionmaking reforms, but little progress was made. He faced several challenges along the way, including continued internal opposition to the reforms from high-ranking officials within the prime ministry.
During this period, DFID decided to reorient its funding toward other priorities. The World Bank agreed to step in and provided a loan of US$15 million as part of a public sector capacity building project in June 2005. The loan met with immediate resistance by some in the new government who objected to having a sizeable share of the borrowed money go toward paying foreign consultants. As a result, the project was significantly reduced and eventually cancelled without any disbursements being made.
A former minister of state for public sector development attributes blame directly to the World Bank for not ensuring the continuation of the loan. In his view, stronger support from the World Bank and conditional assistance based on progress of public sector reforms would have provided reformers with the leverage they needed to counter domestic political opposition.
With the end of DFID funding looming, and wavering World Bank support, by mid-2005 financial support for the program itself became an issue. The contract of PWC/Al Jidara ended in mid-2005. In late September 2005, the UK Foreign Office decided to step in and finance ongoing work on the public sector reform through the Global Opportunity Fund. Al Jidara was awarded the contract to continue to engage a few of the key consultants and to continue the work that had begun under the PWC contract, specifically in the areas of human resource development, streamlining, service delivery, and reforms related to cabinet decision support and the prime ministry.
Broader Political Forces Exacerbate Challenges
A former minister of public sector development believed the absence of political will for reform was not a reflection of an ideological conflict with public sector reforms per se but rather a question of whether such reforms were really considered a priority. In his view, generating necessary support for these sorts of reforms was difficult because they are inherently intangible and their benefits are difficult to quantify. Senior officials, caught up with day-to-day challenges, tended to sideline or neglect such longer-term reforms. These problems were exacerbated by the rapid turnover in governments.13 Another former minister of state for public sector development believed that, in spite of all the rhetoric, there was no serious political will for reform on the part of several prime ministers.14
While the degree of political commitment may be difficult to judge, it is clear that reformers confronted some very real political challenges. The National Agenda included proposed changes in Jordan’s electoral law, raising critical issues—particularly those regarding the full enfranchisement of the electorate of Palestinian origin, as well as the potential political role of the Muslim Brotherhood. Such reforms were resisted also by Jordan’s traditional “East Bank” constituencies, including those living in predominantly rural communities who dominate the public workforce and are in positions of influence in the bureaucracy and parliament.15 The bureaucracy in Jordan has historically played an important role in maintaining political stability, and government employment is used as a reward for continued support and allegiance.16 Any reforms are perceived to threaten not only the well-entrenched bureaucratic elites but also a much wider support base.
While the proposed cabinet reforms did not threaten these fundamental interests, they may have suffered from collateral damage. Former ministers involved in cabinet decisionmaking reforms explained that the opposition did not delineate between the different components of the public sector reform. Rather, the opposition’s strategy was to characterize the overall public sector reform process as a liquidation of public institutions and to dismiss reforms as a “liberal agenda.”17
Even the National Agenda process led by the deputy prime minister suffered. The “old guard” comprised of “a collection of individuals associated with the public sector—government officials, ex-officials, army officers, and long serving bureaucrats”18 as well as “a handful of businessmen” launched attacks against the Royal Committee charged with developing the National Agenda framework. In Muasher’s view, these groups “opposed any widening of the decision-making process” inherent in the National Agenda initiative. He argued that there were no countervailing forces to match the traditional elite, due to lack of unity, organization, and communication with the public about the benefits of reform.19
The absence of strong political will to counter this resistance was compounded by the fact that the government leadership was not subject to any accountability vis-à-vis reform progress. According to a former minister, the mandates were not well-defined and there was no performance-based evaluation mechanism. Moreover, the quick turnover in government acted as a disincentive to embark on longer-term reform measures. Parliament was not seen as a strong proponent of these reforms. In Jordan, parliament tends to be dominated by groups supportive of the status quo and traditional interests.20 In the absence of a broad-based constituency within parliament that would support their agenda, the reformers themselves did not really engage parliament in the reform process.21
By late 2005, the momentum for reform had come to a near standstill. Then, on the evening of November 9, a series of bombings targeting three luxury hotels rocked Amman. Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for these attacks, in which sixty people were killed and more than 100 injured. In the following days, tens of thousands of Jordanians took to the streets in protest.
Responding to the new security threat, the king appointed another government within weeks. Marouf al-Bakhit—a former army strategist, ambassador to Turkey and Israel, and perceived security hawk—was appointed prime minister. Conservative loyalists were appointed in the upper house of parliament.22 Muasher left his post to embark on a new assignment as the minister of the royal court. Reforms would take a back seat to considerations of security and political stability.
Reform Plans See the Light of Day?
In 2006, the MoPSD was established in place of the former Directorate of Public Sector Development—a decision that essentially reversed one of the main accomplishments achieved under Zu’bi’s leadership. The reform team at the prime ministry was instructed to work through MoPSD since it was responsible for the reform file. A counterpart to MoPSD was assigned responsibility to oversee the reform work on the cabinet and prime ministry. By August 2006, new restructuring plans were approved by al-Bakhit. These plans built on the past PWC/Al Jidara work, but with some modifications. Officially, the Minister of Public Sector Development has to sign off on the document, but delays ensued.
In November 2006, there was yet another government reshuffle. Al-Bakhit remained in office, but the composition of the cabinet changed. Muhyieddeen Touq returned to government, this time as Minister of State for Prime Ministry Affairs. Having left in the mid-1990s, he was surprised to see that the prime ministry was facing many of the same old problems and that the structure of the office was outdated.
Plans for restructuring, along with a comprehensive cabinet procedures manual developed by Al Jidara, were presented to Touq in his early days in office. He was supportive of their recommendations and immediately briefed the prime minister. An ad hoc team, consisting of Touq, the Minister of State for Legal Affairs, the Minister of Public Sector Development, and the Secretary General to the Prime Minister, was tasked with reviewing the recommendations. They agreed to a restructuring plan that better distributed the workload within the prime ministry. The committee also recognized the importance of professional technical analysis, and thus proposed the creation of a policy analysis and decision support unit with technical specialists.
In August 2007, the government approved both proposals. Within one week, the cabinet procedures manual was distributed to all ministries. Touq and others tasked to move forward with the reform started the process of identifying individuals to manage and staff the units under the proposed restructuring.
Just as this process was underway, the government resigned, and the reform efforts were once again interrupted. A new government headed by Prime Minister Nader al-Dahabi took office in November 2007. During the Dahabi government, the new policy analysis unit reporting to the PMO was assembled and began providing research and support to the prime minister on domestic and international issues. The scope of this team’s resources did not allow it to provide detailed policy support on all policy proposals going before the cabinet, nor were the new process disciplines in the procedures manual fully implemented.
A Renewed Push: The Rifai Government Reforms of 2009–2011
In December 2009, the Dahabi government was replaced by a government headed by Samir Al-Rifai. As a former long-standing senior official at the Royal Hashemite Court, Al-Rifai was a close confident of His Majesty King Abdullah and the first prime minister from the king’s generation. His mandate emphasized a need to accelerate economic and social reforms with a stronger focus on transparency and accountability. The first act of the new government was to introduce a ministerial code of conduct, which provided for the disclosure of financial assets and business interests among other ethical requirements.
The government also began work immediately on a one-year government program for 2010. The government program, the first of its kind in the Jordanian context, was formulated around seven thematic goals and included specific projects and key performance indicators. Akin to policy manifestos developed by political parties in OECD democracies, these seven thematic goals were intended to be the foundation for policy development and implementation. The plan was presented to King Abdullah at a special cabinet session and published online within 100 days of the swearing-in of the Al-Rifai government.
In parallel with setting policy priorities and oversight at the cabinet level, Al-Rifai and a small team of officials and external advisers also set about another reform program within the prime ministry. Within the early months of the new government, a rapid-cycle diagnosis of the weaknesses and constraints in the cabinet decision support system was commissioned and involved one-on-one interviews with most members of the cabinet and a number of senior officials across government.
As had been identified as early as 2003, the prime ministry was overwhelmingly focused on administrative tasks and the formal movement of official documents and compliance-driven correspondence between the prime minister and the ministries. While the physical movement of paperwork was relatively efficient, the process of reviewing and making decisions was not. A bureaucratic culture of “reverse delegation”—pushing minor decisions up rather than down—was entrenched.
Despite the intent of earlier reform efforts, the advisory support provided to either the prime minister or the cabinet did not bring sufficient value-added. While the new policy analysis team established under the previous Dahabi administration was now providing some support to the prime minister, they were neither resourced nor empowered to review complex policy proposals going to the full Council of Ministers. Consequently, proposals would be put before the cabinet with little, if any, “whole of government” assessment of their potential implications.
Compounding this lack of policy analysis support, almost all ministers identified significant capability gaps in the decision support system within their ministry. Most important, they lacked dedicated policy specialists and legal advisers to drive the development of policy options. These advisory roles, where they existed, were typically donor-funded secondments to a ministry and, therefore, subject to the vagaries and timelines of external parties. Skilled policy analysts, often trained and funded by the donor community in Jordan, were also frequently attracted away to higher-paying jobs within the GCC.
With these insights in mind, Prime Minister Rifai launched several initiatives to upgrade policy analysis and advisory support. This effort began with support for the prime minister himself. Historically, the prime minister had been supported by an office director focused on scheduling and coordination; a small number of advisers; and administrative, protocol, and security personnel. Rifai upgraded the office director role to a chief of staff position to be occupied by an experienced senior civil servant with substantive policy experience.
Headed by the chief of staff, the new PMO structure included small teams specialized in key policy domains. The policy analysis unit established under the previous Dahabi government was the nucleus of this expanded and more structured policy advisory function. Training in policy analysis and development skills and new templates for the presentation of policy papers were institutionalized with the support of external consultants.
This new team at the PMO inevitably had some teething problems. Not surprisingly, it was perceived by some ministers as potentially complicating their access to the prime minister. Nevertheless, with the passage of time and positive collaborative experiences between ministers and PMO advisers, this dynamic changed. Most ministers came to see the PMO policy team as facilitating their agenda rather than competing for influence. In many respects, it provided the analytic capacity that ministers lacked from their own staff.
The media and communications function at the prime ministry—effectively the government’s official communications apparatus—was significantly under-resourced and physically isolated. It was relocated back to the prime ministry building, and a dedicated program of training and capability building was undertaken. The head of the unit doubled as the prime minister’s media and communications adviser as well as official government spokesperson. New strategic communications tools and forward planning of government announcements were institutionalized. Given the weaknesses in communications support capacity across the ministries, the unit was designed as a shared service platform supporting all ministers.
The third value-adding advisory function added to the prime ministry was a dedicated prime minister’s delivery unit (PMDU). Originally based on the “deliverology” approach pioneered by the Blair government in Britain, the unit was quickly pulled by ministers in the direction of a more conventional monitoring and evaluation function. This team moved quickly to collect data and prepare progress reports on projects across government. Data on over 2,000 individual government initiatives was also made publicly available through a dedicated website linking projects to the 2010 Annual Program. At the time, this was an unprecedented level of transparency at a project level, not just in Jordan but internationally. Despite early push-back from officials across the government about the workload created from additional data requests and the enhanced accountability, these reports were quickly relied on by ministers, cabinet subcommittees, and officials for understanding project status and roadblocks.
Fourth, a new, multidisciplinary unit for the development and delivery of infrastructure mega-projects was also installed at the prime ministry. This unit was born out of frustration at the lack of “joined up” planning and implementation of the Kingdom’s major infrastructure projects. Modeled on similar units found in the center of government entities and ministries of finance around the world, the unit reported to the newly created position of Minister of State for Mega Projects.
In addition to this multipronged approach to boost the advisory capacity of the prime ministry, a number of administrative reforms, attempted by previous governments, were relaunched to improve the efficiency of the Cabinet Secretariat in managing the agenda setting function and the flow of paperwork across government. Building on the analysis and recommendations from 2007 as well as international best practice procedures, a new cabinet handbook was formulated and approved by the cabinet. It mandated the presentation of policy options with supporting evidence (including cost estimates and implementation risks) rather than yes/no choices. It also mandated format requirements and deadlines for the submission of papers by ministries and circulation times to ensure that ministers had enough time to read and prepare for cabinet meetings.
To better quarantine the administrative burden on the cabinet and create more time and space for genuine policy discussion, Prime Minister Rifai also convened two cabinet sessions per week. One was dedicated to administrative and compliance-driven decisionmaking; the other to debate on strategic policy priorities and ideas brought forward by ministers.
Despite this bifurcation of cabinet business, urgent administrative business continued to consume the time and attention of ministers. To drive further discipline and coordination of cabinet business, the prime minister created a new position of Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs in July 2010 as part of a cabinet reshuffle. The former minister for planning and international cooperation was appointed to the position with a mandate to support the prime minister with the forward planning of cabinet business and the appropriate triaging of administrative decisionmaking into cabinet subcommittees.
By September 2010, most changes had been completed, and the focus turned to bedding down the new practices. Prime Minister Rifai’s determination to transform the capabilities of the prime ministry was met with the same internal and external resistance witnessed during previous reform efforts. It was amplified by the expansion of social media, which created a new platform for reform opponents to quickly spread misinformation.
At the same time, there were many supporters of the transformation program at the prime ministry, including experienced ministers who had served in previous governments and, by late 2010, could see clear improvements. Many younger staff, who were engaged in the transformation program, were also supportive, seeing these efforts as an investment in their own capabilities and in the decision support system. Ultimately, Prime Minister Rifai’s push to address the weaknesses in central decision support was born out of the realization, early in his tenure, that inadequate capacity in the prime ministry was itself a major barrier to broader economic and social reform.
The lack of broader economic and social reform boiled over at the end of 2010 and in early 2011 into what became known as the Arab Spring. Those events brought the Rifai government’s term in office to an end in February 2011, despite passing its budget and winning a record vote of confidence only weeks earlier. As before, this change in government disrupted progress to reform the prime ministry.
Marouf Al-Bakhit, who had served as prime minister between 2005 and 2007, was reappointed. He faced a very different context this time. His first priority was security and a renewed focus on political reform in response to the Arab Spring movement. Between February 2011 and October 2012, Jordan saw the rapid succession of three prime ministers until the appointment of Abdullah Ensour, who served a full four-year term.
Achievements and Ongoing Challenges
What was ultimately achieved in the reform of Jordan’s policy institutions and processes? If reforms are to be judged by forward-looking plans, procedural manuals, cabinet approvals, and new organizational charts, these reforms yielded achievements. If they are to be judged by concrete changes in the “way business is done,” the story is far less encouraging.
One achievement was the development of the National Agenda, which in principle served as a strategic framework to guide policy decisions for the decade to 2015. This initiative was followed by the Jordan 2025 national strategy. With these overarching strategic frameworks in place, MoPIC developed medium-term executive programs to guide international development assistance programming and coordination with government priorities. The introduction of these long-term and medium-term planning frameworks marked a small but important step in introducing a more programmatic approach to government and institutionalizing key performance indicators. The programs highlighted and tracked key goals, policies, and initiatives aimed at improving government performance and published them online.23
By the time the second National Evaluation Program (NEP) was launched in 2011, over 500 employees received training aimed at supporting policy mechanisms, such as strategic planning methodologies and performance monitoring and evaluation.24 But the effectiveness of this training remained questionable, and progress on developing and institutionalizing key performance indicators remained superficial and ad hoc.25
A second achievement is related to reductions in the administrative burdens. Efforts to delegate administrative decisionmaking led to the amendment of eighteen laws and six bylaws. By 2013, some additional laws were tackled, including the civil service statute.26 Staff at the PMO and a number of former ministers noted that these reforms have had a concrete and significant impact on the administrative burdens of the cabinet.
Some committees and subcommittees were also tasked with reviewing submissions before they were passed to the prime ministry. Those committees took the time to evaluate submissions before they reached the cabinet for approval, technically reducing the amount of time spent by the cabinet on each policy matter. However, no permanent and systematic arrangements were developed to ensure that future legislation would not require unnecessary referral of administrative decisions to the prime minister and ministers.27
There remains significant scope to further reduce these burdens. Additional amendments to laws and bylaws were proposed, but resistance was encountered from parliament and, on occasion, the ministers themselves. Proposed amendments to laws relating to citizenship, bonuses to government employees, and the travel of senior government officials did not receive parliamentary approval. The first matter was perceived to be too politically sensitive. Parliament also believed that the cabinet would be more likely to ensure proper use of funds than lower levels in the bureaucracy.
Interestingly, some ministers resisted efforts to reduce administrative burdens. One government sought to modify civil service bylaws to decentralize the power of the cabinet, the prime minister, and ministers over personnel issues and transfer them to the level of the secretary general. But some ministers formed a coalition to keep the power structure intact. Control over personnel issues was seen as a form of power and influence that they were unwilling to let go. This reform effort was later revisited, and a new system of delegating powers to the secretary general was adopted by the Council of Ministers by 2014. To enhance coordination between line ministries, an annual Government Leaders Forum was also started by the Ensour government between upper level management, including secretaries general and other agency heads, to exchange experiences and practices across the public sector. However, this new system has been utilized at the discretion of each minister, and the relationship between ministers and his or her secretary general depends largely on the willingness of ministers to delegate their own powers.28
The infrastructure to support the cabinet continues to remain underdeveloped. Units mandated to provide technical support became part of the new organizational structure of the prime ministry. As of 2018, the units are not “fully operational” according to the secretary general of the prime minister, as they were not staffed with qualified personnel. In practice, the cabinet procedures manual was not being fully utilized. Additional interministerial committees were established, but they faced challenges. The Public Sector Reform Committee, for example, was established at the prime ministry but met infrequently. This is indicative of a more general problem whereby ministers burdened by administrative issues of their own ministry were not able to fully assume their responsibilities in the interministerial committees.
Another achievement was the development of a comprehensive cabinet procedures manual. In addition to providing guidelines and timelines for cabinet decisionmaking, the manual stipulated that all requests for cabinet-level decisions were to be accompanied by policy and strategic analysis reports. This was followed in 2013 by more formalized guidance regulating codes of conduct and ethics for public jobs. This manual could have strengthened the cabinet and the policy analysis units at line ministries but implementation was limited.
Some progress was made toward establishing policy and institutional development units. Line ministries established, staffed, and operationalized special units that reported directly to the prime ministry and MoPIC. Following the initial collaboration between MoPIC, GPD, and MoPSD, disagreements emerged about staffing and the scope of work. The function of monitoring and assessing the impact of policies continued to be ad hoc, and no systematic method was adopted on when such assessments are meant to be conducted and submitted.29
Ultimately, Jordan’s Vision 2025, launched in 2015, echoed many of the issues identified in the White Paper from a decade before.30 The cabinet continued to be burdened by minor administrative decisions, and routine procedures were still sent up the chain of command instead of being resolved by middle management. The Council of Ministers continued to lack some key functioning supportive bodies. There was no systematic process for submission of policy items to the cabinet; there was insufficient technical analytical support for policy decisionmaking; and follow-up on implementation was weak.
Understanding Policy Reform in Jordan
Reflecting on Jordan’s experience, responsibility for this disappointing outcome could be laid upon many shoulders. The most obvious obstacle to an effective institutional development agenda is the continuous reshuffle of cabinet and ministers, which created sharp breaks in continuity and disincentives for reforms. Between 1999 and 2018, no fewer than twenty-six ministers managed the public sector development portfolio. The average life span of a government was between eight and nine months.
Each incoming government and minister did not feel obliged to move forward with decisions made by the last government. This, in turn, discouraged civil servants from taking initiatives seriously because they expected their ministers to be in power for only a short duration. The departure of Zu’bi—at the critical juncture after the preparation of the reform agenda but before implementation was firmly entrenched—may have had a particularly pernicious impact.
The institutional apparatus to manage reforms was also not vested with the necessary authority. The reform function was ultimately not institutionalized as a center of government function but, rather, lay outside the prime ministry in a line ministry. Though initial reformers directly attempted to address this issue in their proposed institutional design, a combination of power politics and limitations in design led to failure. Particularly in the context of frequent government reshuffling, there was a need for an overarching council or institution located in the prime ministry to oversee reform until its completion.
The international consulting firm brought on board to advise the public sector maintained a working model that constrained a sustained advocacy effort by its senior specialists. Its model—in line with models typically used by those agencies—was such that junior staff were maintained long-term “in country” for the “nuts and bolts,” while the specialized senior consultants were “flown in and out” for short periods of time, sometimes with extended gaps between trips. Junior staff had insufficient practical experience and were unable to garner the confidence of their public sector clients, while the senior consultants who had the requisite background were not in a position to maintain ongoing high-level dialogue with senior bureaucrats. Reform momentum was compromised in part because of this arrangement.
Some domestic reformers felt there were a number of weaknesses in the way donors and international organizations approached public sector reforms, which included failing to truly understand the depth of the challenges Jordan was facing and adopting a superficial approach to reforms; the limited value of recommendations; discontinuous or piecemeal engagement, which gave opposition groups time to overpower the process; insufficient use of donor leverage to support reformers; and ineffective relationships established with counterparts.
Despite the engagement of high-level political champions, senior bureaucrats were not always informed or included in the reform efforts. As a result, many of these officials did not feel ownership of the reform plans. This was particularly problematic in a context in which officials whose power or positions may have been directly threatened by reforms were nevertheless expected to implement them. Moreover, internal power politics created resistance by senior public officials and disincentives for implementation. In the absence of strong political leadership to overcome such frictions, they were allowed to fester and undermine the broader reform effort.
Opponents to reform were well-placed in the major state institutions and were able to generate significant opposition. While cabinet decisionmaking reforms per se may not have been perceived as a threat, these reforms were nevertheless part and parcel of a wider public sector reform program and had to proceed in an environment that was unfavorable to reform. The National Agenda raised broader fears of marginalization and loss of influence among core supporters of the Hashemite monarchy. A long-standing informal “contract” between the state apparatus and its trans-Jordanian support base was threatened by the broader public sector reform program.
These dynamics were exacerbated by a deteriorating international environment and domestic tragedy that brought security considerations to the forefront. In fact, the shift toward prioritizing political stability was exacerbated both in 2006 and following the 2010–2011 Arab uprisings. While the protests in Jordan did not escalate to the kinds of large-scale, anti-regime protests that occurred in places like Egypt and Tunisia, they were enough to propel the government into action. The constitution was amended, parliament was dismissed, and the government set aside US$500 million for public salary increases and food subsidies.31 Three prime ministers were introduced within a period of eighteen months. Instead of focusing on behind-the-scenes reforms, like restructuring the cabinet, the focus shifted even more heavily toward national security, as crises escalated in neighboring Syria and Iraq, and the Islamic State (IS) emerged as a new challenge on the global security agenda.
Against these forces, the reform proponents were unable to mount a cohesive counterattack. They failed to develop a strong public relations campaign to educate citizens and parliamentarians on the public sector reform program. In fact, the very nature of public sector reform—whose costs are felt in the near term whereas benefits accrue downstream—made it difficult for them to garner the necessary support.
Reflecting upon this experience, some who participated in the reform effort have argued that the overall public sector reform process suffered from lack of political will and absence of accountability mechanisms. While there were highly motivated individual proponents of reform, they did not have the necessary institutional backup or the sustained support of the top leadership to see these reforms through. Moreover, those ministers and senior officials who did not meet their commitments under the reform plans were not held accountable.
Conclusion
The Hashemite Kingdom deserves credit for addressing such an important set of public sector reforms. In a region where many policies are decided behind closed doors among limited numbers of advisers, Jordan recognized the importance of more effective, transparent, and formalized policy structures that improve coordination and ensure high quality technical analysis. These reforms were carefully thought through and advanced by some of the most capable ministers in government in a country that is widely acknowledged to have one of the best-performing public sectors in the region. Several leading bilateral and multilateral donors provided extensive technical inputs in support of this effort.
Yet in spite of these efforts, reforms did not take root and transform the operations of the cabinet and the PMO as anticipated. Significant strides were made in the initial period, at a time when public sector reform became an imperative in the context of the wider economic reforms. Incremental changes were made to improve existing systems and procedures. But the objective of broader and more systematic reform captured in the White Paper was not realized, and reform momentum was ultimately thwarted by a host of complications both within and outside of government.
In the end, several important questions are left unresolved. Are reforms in cabinet systems possible when they touch on politically charged issues at the core of government decisionmaking? Would Jordan’s reforms have survived in an environment with less frequent changes in government or in an environment where the “political economy” of reform was different? Was the timing simply unfortunate, in that promising reforms were set aside as key decisionmakers diverted their attention to a deteriorating security or economic environment? Did donors fail to ensure continued support for cabinet reform? Could these reforms have been implemented in a way that garnered more support and neutralized opponents? Did they receive adequate political support from the highest levels of government? Or are such reforms too dependent on a few talented individuals whose departure from government meant that they were bound to fail?
Reasonable observers can and do differ as to how such questions should be answered. However, what is clear is that the nature of these answers will have important implications within Jordan and the broader Middle East and North Africa region.
Notes
The authors would like to express their gratitude to Nithya Nagarajan for her excellent and extensive inputs into earlier versions of this case.
1. Interview with former Jordanian minister, November 2008, Amman, Jordan.
2. Interview with Fawaz Zu’bi, former Minister of Information and Communications Technology, May 2018, Amman, Jordan.
3. “The Constitution of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,” January 1, 1952, www.unodc.org/tldb/pdf/ Jordan_const_1952.pdf.
4. Cabinet meetings were divided into two sessions: one that is attended by the prime minister and one that is not. This description presumably pertained to the former. Former ministers characterized the portion of the meetings attended by the prime minister as very orderly.
5. Government of Jordan, “Better Government, Delivering Better Results: Policies and Programs for Public Sector Reform 2004–2009,” White Paper X/04 (internal document), October 2004.
6. Government of Jordan, “Better Government, Delivering Better Results.”
7. In 2004, the list of ad hoc committees included: Extension of Service Committee; the Regional Conflict Economic Impact Committee; Passports Law Committee; Anti-Corruption Committee; Assistance Funds Committee; Public Sector Reform Committee; Prime Ministry Legal & Administrative Procedures Committee; and the Prime Minister’s Visits to Governorates Committee.
8. Government of Jordan, “Better Government, Delivering Better Results.”
9. Interview with Zu’bi, May 2018.
10. Interview with international consultant, November 2018.
11. Shadi Hamid, “Democracy at a Dead End in Jordan,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Arab Reform Bulletin, May 2005, http://carnegieendowment.org/2005/05/11/arab-reform-bulletin-may-2005/7ku. For another reference to this issue, also see Curtis Ryan, “Reform Retreats Amid Jordan’s Political Storms,” Middle East Research and Information Project, June 10, 2005, www.merip.org/mero/mero061005.
12. Hamid, “Democracy at a Dead End.”
13. Salem Khazaleh, interview with Nithya Nagarajan, November 2008, Amman.
14. Tayseer Smadi, interview with Nithya Nagarajan, November 2008, Amman.
15. Khazaleh, interview.
16. Julia Choucair, “Illusive Reform: Jordan’s Stubborn Stability,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Middle East Series, no. 76, December 2006, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/cp76_choucair_final.pdf.
17. Smadi, interview.
18. Quotations from Marwan Muasher, The Arab Center: The Promise of Moderation (Yale University Press, 2008).
19. Ibid.
20. For historical overview, see Glenn E. Robinson, “Defensive Democratization in Jordan,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 30, no. 3 (August 1998), pp. 387–410. Election laws were one of the themes discussed in the National Agenda document, which noted “The Election Law should achieve … election of a politically representative parliament.” See Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, “National Agenda: The Jordan We Strive For 2006–2015,” Government of Jordan, 2005, p. 14, http://inform.gov.jo/Portals/0/Report%20PDFs/0.%20General/2006-2015%20National%20Agenda.pdf.
21. H. E. Hala Lattouf (Minister of Social Development and former secretary general in the Ministry of Administrative Development), interview with Nithya Nagarajan, November 2008, Amman.
22. Rana Sabbagh-Gargour, “Jordan: A Balancing Act that Keeps Political Change at Bay,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, November 2006, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/sabbaghgargour_nov06.pdf.
23. Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, “Executive Program 2007–2009,” Government of Jordan, p. 80, www.mop.gov.jo/EchoBusV3.0/SystemAssets/pdf/Executive%20Program%202007-2009en.pdf.
24. Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, “Executive Development Program 2011–2013,” Government of Jordan, pp. 66–80.
25. Ibrahim Saif, telephone interview with Fatema Alhashemi, June 7, 2018.
26. “Executive Development Program 2011–2013,” Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, pp. 66–80.
27. Saif, telephone interview.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, “First Section – Jordan Vision 2025,” Government of Jordan, p. 39, http://inform.gov.jo/Portals/0/Report%20PDFs/0.%20General/jo2025part1.pdf; Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, “Second Section – Jordan Vision 2025,” Government of Jordan, p. 77, http://inform.gov.jo/Portals/0/Report%20PDFs/0.%20General/jo2025part2.pdf.
31. Amendments to Articles 53, 55, and 67 of the constitution introduced some major changes to the cabinet, including in terms of its responsibilities toward the House of Representatives. However, none of these changes significantly affected the kinds of administrative reforms addressed in this case.
