Abstract
Sri Lanka practiced a feudal type of bureaucracy until it fell into the hands of Western imperialism. Many administrative changes in the British colonial period still influence the personnel management practices of the present public service. As the first constitutional reform of Sri Lanka, the Colebrook proposals of 1832 established the Ceylon Civil Service and introduced a centralized bureaucratic system. Constitutional reforms in 1912, 1920, and 1924 introduced many changes to the public service; the Donoughmore reforms of 1931 expanded and democratized bureaucratic functions, and the Soulbury reforms of 1947 were introduced on the threshold of independence in 1948. The long-anticipated nationally oriented public service dream, however, did not come true until 1972, when the first Republican Constitution was introduced. This categorically shifted the public service into the hands of the political authority. Meanwhile, the second Republican Constitution appeared in 1978 with a highly politicized bureaucracy from top to street level. As this chapter shows, the development of public service in Sri Lanka has followed the historical trajectory and path dependency of politico-administrative change. One of the major trends of Sri Lanka’s public personnel management is to test various changes in ways that leave minimal space for professionalism in a politically neutral public service.
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Notes
- 1.
John D’Oyly, George Turnour, William Tolfrey, R.C. Childers, T.W. Rhys Davids, and others were experts in the local languages and Buddhist literature, while Joseph Joinville, Edgar Layard, W.E. Wait, J. Emerson Tennen, H.C.P. Bell, Leonard Woolf and others did significant research on the history and the tradition of ancient Ceylon (Collins 1966, pp. 445–446).
- 2.
The Constitutional Council consists of the prime minister, the speaker, the leader of the opposition in parliament, one person appointed by the president, and five persons appointed by the president on the nomination of both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. There is also one person nominated upon agreement by the majority of the members of parliament, and he or she belongings to a political party or group which is different from that of either the prime minister or the leader of the opposition.
- 3.
The Parliamentary Council consists of the prime minister, the speaker, the leader of the opposition, a nominee of the prime minister who is a member of parliament, and a nominee of the leader of the opposition who is also a member of parliament.
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Priyantha, I.R., Dickwella, W.K.R., Gunasekara, R. (2019). Public Administration in Sri Lanka: An Analysis of Evolution, Trends, and Challenges in Personnel Management. In: Jamil, I., Dhakal, T., Paudel, N. (eds) Civil Service Management and Administrative Systems in South Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90191-6_9
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