Legacies of state-building and political fragility in conflict-ridden Yemen: Understanding civil service change and contemporary challenges

Abstract

Constitutional, economic and administrative reforms have generated debates about their unintended consequences in poor and developing countries, and the best way to steer them towards better outcomes. In-depth case study analysis helps in tailoring future reforms and enriches academic literature on countries faced with the complex and intertwined problems of fragility, traditional actors, state building and donor involvement. This paper aims at examining the legacies of state-building and civil service reforms in Yemen by providing a narrative of motivations, outcomes as well as the involved politics and actors. Yemen's state institutions have evolved from times of colonization and isolation to pass through centralization in the two-state era, reunification, decentralization and reorientation towards merit-based bureaucracy. Yemen's reform experiences did not result in well-performing administrative and civil service institutions while they were often ad hoc, rushed or born out of political circumstances and donors' pressure. Alongside the devastating civil war, contemporary state-building challenges result from legacies of reform failures. Current problems are exacerbated by long-standing policies of patronage, but they are also a reflection of the difficult reality of dominance of tribal elites, lack of capacities, interference from regional powers, and disagreements about the future shape of the Yemeni state.