The Regional Hub of Civil Service in Astana (ACSH) is pleased to present the sixth issue of the International Journal of Civil Service Reform and Practice (IJCSRP). 

The latest issue of the Journal contains articles of scholars and practitioners in the area of civil service reform and development.

This edition begins with the article of Demetrios Argyriades and Pan Suk Kim, both professors of public administration and ethics in government, which look at the issue of how the “market model” of governance has failed to meet its objectives and produce the desired results, using the case of Greece as an example to illustrate their points presented in this paper. 

The next article, by Samra Ljuca, head of Training Department of the Civil Service Agency in Bosnia and Herzegovina, deals with the “return on investment” technique used to evaluate the mid- and long-term benefits and costs of training and capacity development programmes, and it presents examples from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The importance of regulatory policy improvement is the subject of an article by Saltanat Akhmetzanova and Karina Kopeshova, both from the Institute of Economic Studies in Kazakhstan, who review global trends and international practices in regulatory policy-making aiming at improving the quality of regulatory decisions. This article also presents some efficient instruments and processes towards improving the quality of regulatory decisions in Kazakhstan, as well as it provides recommendations on how to improve the process of evaluating their impact.

The last article in this edition, by Nadezhda Bogdan, Eugene Boyko and Irina Bushuyeva from the Siberian Management Institute in Russia, is a comprehensive analysis of the evolution and implementation of the concept of professionalism in the public human resources management in Russia. It reviews legal regulations and human resources management practices in the civil service and it identifies trends in the development of professionalism in public human resources management.

This edition closes with the review, prepared by the Editor-in-Chief of this Journal, on the book titled “Democratic Governance, Public Administration and Poverty Alleviation: Thematic Discourse and Geographical Cases” and published recently by the International Institute of Administrative Sciences.

The ACSH publishes the International Journal of Civil Service Reform and Practice - a practitioner-oriented, peer-reviewed biannual publication aimed at providing access to best practices and knowledge on civil service reform to its participating countries.

The key objective of the Journal is to serve as a bridge between experts of public administration and civil service professionals. Specifically, it strives to inform decision makers and practitioners in the ACSH participating countries on the most significant issues in the field of civil service development regionally and globally.  

We hope that the content of this edition of the Journal will be of value to anyone interested in the topics of models of governance and capacity building in the civil service.