Bioterrorism, Fear, and Public Health Reform: Matching a Policy Solution to the Wrong Window

During the 1990s, terrorist actions using biological weapons and the fear that rogue states possessed such weapons placed bioterrorism on the political agenda, a policy window widened by the September 11 attacks. Advocates for improving the U.S. public health infrastructure attempted to use this window to obtain the resources necessary for modernization. This article examines those efforts and identifies significant problems arising from a mismatch between the goals of public health policy entrepreneurs and the policy window used to address them. By defining bioterrorism as a security rather than a public health issue, policy entrepreneurs squander the opportunity to institute broad-based reforms that would improve not only the ability to manage a terrorist incident, but also meet other public health needs. The bioterrorism program proves a useful case study in how the goals of policy entrepreneurs can be displaced by attaching policy preferences to the wrong policy stream.     

The Politics of Administrative Reforms in Asia: Paradigms and Legacies, Paths and Diversities

Many Asian governments have embarked on administrative reforms of one kind or another, engaging in rhetoric that resonates with the global paradigms of "new public management" and "good governance." This article seeks to understand Asian administrative reforms against the background of international influence, policy diffusion, domestic politics, institutional dynamics, and administrative traditions and legacies. It is impossible to capture the whole range of national reform types within any neat and tidy Asian paradigm, but some common strands of national reform paths in the region can still be traced. Different problems and failures are found to be addressed by Asian reforms, reflecting diverse motives and resulting in varied outcomes. The "old" public administration regime has largely coexisted with the "new" public management approaches and tools.     

The "Ball of Confusion" in Federal Budgeting: A Shadow Agenda for Deliberative Reform of the Budget Process

The budget process is seriously flawed, as Irene Rubin suggests, but there is little prospect for its effective reform. Current economic and political conditions could open the window for reform, but the excessive partisanship that helped create these conditions also has reduced the pool of institutionalists who could lead reforms. More important is confusion about which reforms might be most effective. Most proposed reforms would create more rules, but they will not work unless politicians commit to meeting the goals such rules are intended to support. Those commitments could be produced by deliberation over critical issues that have been neglected in recent discussions of budget process reform: how the process could support macroeconomic policy making, how improved budget concepts could accurately measure finances and aid in dealing with upcoming policy challenges, how reorganization could enable intelligent priority setting, and how the process could be better aligned with the constitutional sharing of powers and the electoral system.     

Understanding NHS Reform: The Policy-Transfer, Social Learning, and Path-Dependency Perspectives

This paper utilizes three perspectives in analyzing health policy in the U.K. during the formulation of the "internal market" reforms of the late 1980s and early 1990s: policy transfer, social learning, and path-dependency. By doing so, it attempts to incorporate the most significant insights from each perspective to construct a framework for analysis that better illuminates the actors, processes, and constraints involved in health policy reform, as well as providing a means of assessing its importance. I suggest that the reform process in the U.K. was considerably more complex than most existing accounts suggest, and that notions such as "conjuncture" require caution in their usage in order to avoid confusion between the contingent and relatively permanent factors that allow reform to occur.     

The fable of policy entrepreneurship? Understanding policy change as an ontological problem with critical realism and institutional theory

How is policy change possible if policy entrepreneurs’ cognition, rationality and identity are conditioned by the very policy institutions they wish to change? To solve this paradox of embedded agency, we must avoid either voluntarism that inflates the role of actors to change policies as by existing policy entrepreneurship applications, or determinism whereby policy changes are decided by contextual forces. Instead, drawing on institutional theory, critical realism sees structures, institutions, and actions that constitute policy dynamics as existing in separate yet intertwined reality domains: structures (e.g., social relationships), and institutions (e.g., formal rules and norms such as institutional logics) in the Real domain, enable and constrain policy actors’ navigation of their social environments; the Actual domain represents the level at which events (actions) happen, as these actors constantly interpret varied institutions to adjust their structurally embedded actions when pursuing policy changes that can be observed in the Empirical domain. Put differently, structures and institutions are mechanisms in the Real domain that affect individual practices and events in the Actual domain, and only some of these events are realized in the Empirical domain as policy changes. We empirically illustrate this critical realist approach with a Chinese example on health care reform.

     

IMPLEMENTATION OF EVIDENCE‐BASED PRACTICE IN HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS: IMPLICATIONS FROM AGENT‐BASED MODELS

Much of the impact of a policy depends on how it is implemented, especially as mediated by organizations such as schools or hospitals. Here, we focus on how implementation of evidence‐based practices in human service organizations (e.g., schools, hospitals) is affected by intraorganizational network dynamics. In particular, we hypothesize intraorganizational behavioral divergence and network polarization are likely to occur when actors strongly identify with their organizations. Using agent‐based models, we find that when organizational identification is high, external change agents who attempt to direct organizations by introducing policy aligned messages (e.g., professional development emphasizing specific teaching practices) may unintentionally contribute to divergence in practice and polarization in networks, inhibiting full implementation of the desired practices as well as reducing organizational capacity to absorb new practices. Thus, the external change agent should consider the interaction between the type of message and the intraorganizational network dynamics driven by organizational identification.     

The New Managerialism and the Policy Influence of Consultants in Government: An Historical–Institutionalist Analysis of Britain, Canada and France

Following the rise of the New Public Management (NPM) in the 1980s, policymakers increasingly mobilized management consultants from the private sector in the course of reforming their bureaucracies. To describe this situation some coined the term "consultocracy," assuming that the emergence of the NPM created a growing demand for business management expertise in government circles that allowed consultants to penetrate the state and become powerful policy actors. Rather than taking these matters as given, I ask how has it been possible for consultants to become (or not) influential players in the process of administrative reform. It is argued that Britain, and to a lesser extent Canada, have been more likely than France to give rise to a "consultocracy" when implementing NPM reforms in the 1980s because in these two countries, management consultancy emerged earlier and is more strongly developed than in France because of its historical link with accountancy. Whereas French consultants only began to enter public administration in the 1980s, British and Canadian consultants have been involved in the last 30 years in the construction of the state's management capacities. Through their participation in these institution-building processes, they established networks of expertise with the state and acquired the experience of work in government. Over the years, this created opportunities for consultants to make their voices heard in the inner circles of decision-making and made possible the exercise of influence that they are now said to have on policy.     

“新公共管理运动”的困境与转型——新西兰公共部门改革的反思及参鉴

新西兰公共部门改革是"新公共管理运动"的先锋,作为"改革实验室"和"政策创新者",因其彻底性、持续性及成效性被誉为"改革的典范"。然而近年来,西方公共管理学界提出了若干质疑,甚至认为"新公共管理运动已经死亡"。本文在考察新西兰公共部门改革实践的基础上,对实践模式的局限性及时代转换的压力两方面的批判性反思进行了梳理和分析:其"公平"与"公共"价值已经失落?是"经济学帝国"的扩张?还是"新泰勒主义"的表现?亦或是随着改革主题的衰落,数字时代治理的来临。对这一改革的实践发掘和理论反思对于当前我国政府职能转换与行政改革具有重要的参鉴价值:首先,推进改革的政府需要具备必要的能力基础;公共部门改革的核心命题是转变理念,优化政府职能,提高政府的效率和效能;而改革能否顺利推进,取决于广大民众和政府之间的深入互动;此外,改革需要尊重地方政府的主动性,充分发挥其作用。     

The Many Faces of Accountability: Comparing Reforms in Welfare,Hospitals and Migration

Welfare reforms involve trade‐off between different accountability types, such as political, administrative, legal and social accountability. This variety of accountability types is used to investigate consequences of reforms in three different welfare services in Norway; social services, hospitals and immigration. The study finds that more complex, dynamic and layered accountability forms are emerging, but that there are some differences across reform areas. The reforms in immigration seem to change accountability relations the most in hospitals, administrative and political accountability is up against professional accountability, and we see that politicians lack overall capacity and have to rely on administrative accountability in social services. In order to analyze how reforms affect accountability relations one has to study both the formal and informal changes, as well as the relationship between politics and professionalism.     

TURBULENT TRANSITION AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANCE: RELATING POLICY OUTCOMES TO STRATEGIC ADMINISTRATIVE CAPACITIES

Much of the literature on public policy with its institutional and legislative emphases conveys the view that organizational effectiveness is primarily dependent on actors external to the agency. That is, laws prescribe programs and operating procedures; overlapping jurisdictions restrict innovative behavior; and the politics o f fund budgeting encourage complacency and incrementalism. This article proposes an alternative set of propositions explaining policy outcomes and agency performance as a function of internal administrative considerations. The propositions are empirically evaluated using data from Pacific Coast port authorities during the "container revolution" and environmental movement. The results suggest that variance in strategic performance can be attributed to (1) perceptions about intergovernmental relations and performance gap, (2) an agency micro-structure for strategic planning and policy analysis, and (3) a set of intervening administrative variables.     

Trends in the Higher Civil Services of Anglo-American Systems

The managerial reforms that have been implemented in the public sectors of many countries over the past decade are part of an international trend (Aucoin 1990, 134). Managerial reform in public administration can be seen as a Zeitgeist , a pervasive idea whose time has come. As Caiden (1988, 354) points out, effective administrative reform can be sustained only by a "crusading spirit" or the burning flame of idealism, and such a flame has blazed up in the past ten years. History may well show that the managerial reforms of the late 20th century had as dramatic an impact on public administration as the merit reforms of the late 19th century.
These managerial reforms have invariably involved an emphasis on giving the public better value for money, and have usually included the introduction of efficiency measures and corporate planning techniques, the improvement of financial management procedures, the assessment of performance in terms of results against goals, the adoption of private sector human resource management practices, and the use of management information systems and other management tools. The implementation of such managerial reforms has typically been heralded by the establishment of a unified elite group of senior executives in the higher civil service. This paper reviews the recent trends in the higher civil services of America, Canada, Britain and Australia, and considers how they exemplify the managerial approach to administrative reform.¹     

Learn,Frame and Deploy? Cross-National Policy Ideas and Comparisons in Turkey’s Health Reform

Comparative analysis in health policy not only helps us learn about the organization of health care systems and reforms in other countries but also addresses the difficulties of drawing cross-national policy lessons. This case study on the Turkish health reform of 2003 focuses on the national policy discourse to identify how cross-national ideas and comparative analyses are used by policymakers and other key stakeholders. Building on the ideational perspectives and Kingdon’s streams approach, it explores agenda setting and ideological framing activities. The results provide evidence for the political nature of the process whereby cross-national ideas were deployed in domestic policy battles.     

Policy Entrepreneurship,Policy Opportunism,and EU Conditionality: The AKP and TÜSİAD Experience in Turkey

This article examines the relationship between European Union (EU) conditionality for membership and policy entrepreneurship in a candidate country. In Turkey, EU conditionality opened a window of opportunity for policy reform by lowering the political costs of controversial reforms. The study demonstrates that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (TÜS?AD) responded to a window of opportunity by advocating a series of reforms that represented a bold challenge to the traditionally reform‐averse and Euro‐skeptic political culture in Turkey. The study finds a difference in the duration of both actors' commitment to reforms. To explain this difference, we distinguish between policy entrepreneurs, who are actors with a long time horizon, and policy opportunists, who are actors with a short time horizon. The policy implication of this finding is that the European Commission's expectations of the AKP government to deliver the necessary reforms may be too optimistic.     

The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure by Arjen Boin,Paul 't Hart,Eric Stern,and Bengt Sundelius

ABSTRACT

The article addresses two principal questions: how public management reforms develop in a context of high government turnover, and how, under these circumstances, features of the specific area of public management policy affect the dynamics of the reform and in particular its “technical feasibility.” The research questions are addressed through the case study of the Italian administrative context between 1992 and 2007, a period marked by tumultuous government turnovers. The article presents reforms in two policy areas of public management: civil service reform and innovation, over a three-period time span covering 15 years. The brief duration of political leadership represents a threat to the approval and implementation of policy interventions irrespective of the political salience of the issue and the need for legal enactment. Therefore, the success of a public management reform process in an unstable political context characterized by frequent government turnovers depends on meeting certain conditions for successful policy entrepreneurship: the a priori expertise of policy entrepreneurs, their ability to repackage the issue, keep a community of practice alive, and maneuver the dynamics of the legal process. However, implementation, being a less visible phase, suffers from greater discontinuity as “maintenance activities” necessary for the success of reform are disregarded. Thus, the consideration of the temporal dimension of the policy cycle and the area-specific effects on public management reform dynamics exerted by diverse levels of political salience and legal enactment represent the main contributions of this work to the theories on public management policy change.     

Managing economic reform: An alternative perspective on structural adjustment policies

The structural adjustment policies of international development organizations have been undermined in many developing countries by weaknesses in administrative capacity to manage economic reforms. If economic reform policies are to be implemented more effectively in the future, international organizations must take a broader view of the development process and assess more carefully the administrative and political capacity of the state to guide the decisions of public and private organizations toward development goals in four policy arenas. The experience of developing countries that were more successful at economic and social development during the 1970s and early 1980s, indicates the characteristics of development administration that policy analysts must assess in order to determine governments' capacity to implement economic reform policies effectively.     

The Implementation of Welfare Reform Policy: The Role of Public Managers in Front-Line Practices

This study examines the extent to which staff in local welfare systems have embraced new welfare reform goals and, if so, the extent to which local management practices contribute to the alignment of staff priorities with policy objectives. It looks at agency structure and several aspects of public management from a microperspective that prior research has linked to agency performance including training, performance monitoring, staff resources, leadership characteristics, and personnel characteristics. The research indicates that front-line workers in welfare offices continue to believe that traditional eligibility determination concerns are the most important goals at their agencies. It also finds that management practices and the structuring of agency responsibilities matter: To the extent that public managers want to redirect local staff to focus their attention on the new goals associated with welfare reform, they can create the conditions under which staff have clear signals about what is expected and could provide them with the resources and incentives to realign their priorities.     

UK Privatisation Revisited: Ideas and Policy Change, 1979–92

Privatisation in the UK was facilitated by the interplay of ideas, institutions, actors, and economic interests. The motivations of the programme were ideational and political, but the objectives were economic and administrative. Together these paved the way for the success of the policy. Although several rationales were at play in the unfolding of privatisation, the ideological predilection of the Thatcher governments underpinned this far-reaching policy reform. This explains why the Thatcher government did not reform nationalized industries within the public sector, but instead shifted them into the private sector. Privatisation succeeded because it was championed by new right policy entrepreneurs, was supported by interest groups prepared to support, or least not impede, such dramatic policy change, and when the public enterprise status quo was deemed in need of reform. Of course, ideas only act as a catalyst for policy change when an established policy agenda having withered, been worn-out or otherwise discredited, can then be successfully challenged.     

Regulatory Agencies—The Challenges of Balancing Agency Autonomy and Political Control

In this article we focus on the dynamic interplay between increase in autonomy of regulatory agencies and political control of those agencies. The general research issues are the weak empirical foundations of regulatory reforms, the complex trade‐off between political control and agency autonomy, the dual process of deregulation and reregulation, the problems of role‐specialization and coordination, and the questions of “smart practice” in regulatory policy and practice. The theoretical basis is agency theories and a broad institutional approach that blend national political strategies, historical‐cultural context, and external pressures to understand regulatory agencies and regulatory reform. This approach is contrasted with a practitioner model of agencies. Empirically the article is based on regulatory reform in Norway, giving a brief introduction to the reform and agency context followed by an analysis of the radical regulatory reform policy introduced recently by the current Norwegian government. We illustrate how regulatory reforms and agencies work in practice by focusing on two specific cases on homeland security and telecommunications.     

What Do Bureaucrats Like Doing? Bureaucratic Preferences in Response to Institutional Reform

How do bureaucrats respond to administrative reform in relation to their overall administrative goals? The authors test the bureau‐shaping thesis, which holds that bureaucrats’ preferences for certain kinds of roles and tasks motivate their support for bureau reform. Drawing on attitudinal and behavioral data from a survey of English local government officials, the findings underscore how bureaucrats with different interests and motivations sort themselves into job types. Their preferences drive support for reform, which, in turn, strengthens the executive structure of English local government. Drawing on the literature on bureaucratic responses to institutional reform, the authors offer a more nuanced portrayal of bureaucratic preferences in line with the bureau‐shaping model. A key conclusion: political principals need improved empirical awareness of bureaucratic preferences when undertaking public institutional reforms.     

Autonomous Policy Leadership: Steering a Policy Process in the Direction of a Policy Quest

This article attempts to make a contribution to the literature which reflects a growing interest in the conditions underlying radical policy reform. It advances a concept of autonomous policy leaders who can be distinguished from vote-buying politicians by their passionate commitment to "make a difference" by advancing a particular policy quest, with particular reference being made to the way such leadership was exercised by Roger Douglas, New Zealand Minister of Finance from 1984 to 1989. Although such leaders resemble the "policy entrepreneurs" described in "garbage can" models, their goals are more ambitious and the window of opportunity they are waiting for (with its characteristic mix of crisis, mandate, honeymoon and weakened opposition) much greater. They are also dependent on, and emerge from with, an advocacy coalition network which provides them with the backing and resources to redirect public policy. This redirection may produce a backlash from groups concerned that these policy elites may steer the policy process too far in a particular direction.