Cornwall's Devolution Deal: Towards a More Sustainable Governance?

This article considers the devolution deal signed by Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly in the summer of 2015. It asks if the deal constitutes a more sustainable approach to governance, concluding that while there are some factors that help to enhance sustainability, other areas urgently require more attention. These claims are made through an analysis of a model of sustainability which emphasises the importance of networks and feedback loops envisaging civil society as an adaptive organism. This helps to show that although power is significantly dispersed in some aspects of the ‘Cornwall Deal’, this latter does little to alter the highly centralised nature of governance across England, or provide spaces where local actors can feed back into central policy.     

Likely effects of devolution on the redistributive character of policy agendas

This article assesses two competing views of the effects federal devolution may have on the future of health, education and welfare programs in the United States. One school of thought argues that devolution of social policy to the state and local level will have negative consequences for the less affluent. A contrasting view maintains that devolution will spur innovations at the state and local level, which in turn will lead to more effective and efficient social programs. Dileo analyzes presidential and gubernatorial speeches over a period of 5 years to assess the state of U.S. social policy. He concludes that the federal government is generally more supportive of redistributive policies than are the states.     

Citizen political knowledge and accountability: Survey evidence on devolution in Kenya

Devolution complicates citizens’ ability to assign responsibility for the provision of public goods and services to different tiers of government. Misattribution of responsibility limits the effectiveness of electoral accountability in the nested principal–agent relationships comprising voters, politicians, and bureaucrats. This raises two important questions. First, how do citizens learn about the functions of different tiers of government under devolution? Second, how do levels of political knowledge condition citizens’ evaluations of subnational governments? Using cross‐sectional and panel survey data from Kenya (2014–2018), this article shows that voters accumulate knowledge through exposure to government services, and that gender and partisanship mediate knowledge accumulation. In addition, exposed citizens are more likely to give positive evaluations of subnational politicians, despite the fact that such exposure may reveal subnational governments’ low capacity, ineffectiveness, and governance gaps. These findings advance our understanding of the dynamics of political accountability under devolution.     

Working the Spaces in between: A Case Study of a Boundary‐Spanning Model to Help Facilitate Cross‐Sectoral Policy Work

Since the 1990s, ‘joined‐up government,’ ‘whole‐of‐government,’ and ‘horizontal governance’ approaches have emerged in many industrialized countries, resulting in the devolution of government functions to diverse policy networks. From these shifts, complex systems of networked actors have emerged, involved in designing, implementation, and influencing policy. Arguably, networked approaches to policy may solve some problems. However, as with all paradigm shifts, new problems have emerged. Specifically, skill and knowledge gaps have opened up, reflecting the need for new collaborative and networked relationships that can increase the capabilities and agility to work in these ways. In response to these gaps, we developed the Power to Persuade initiative. Power to Persuade is an annual symposium and online forum, aimed at deepening knowledge and awareness of current problems faced by policy networks, and providing the skills and knowledge to overcome them. In this paper, we discuss how Power to Persuade works within the spaces in between as a vehicle for relationship building and better policy.     

Unravelling the ‘devolution paradox’: Citizen preferences for self-rule and for shared rule

Recent survey research has revealed a ‘devolution paradox’: some citizens who favour stronger regional governments inconsistently desire policy uniformity across regions and state-wide intervention in policy provision. It is argued and empirically shown that preferences for regional authority can be broken down into preferences for self-rule – that is, for autonomy for the region – and for shared rule – that is, for collaboration between regional and national governments. Drawing upon the International Constitutional Values Survey, which includes 4,930 respondents from 142 regions in eight countries, it is also shown that preferences for self-rule and shared rule have different impacts. Preferences for self-rule translate into a preference for regional reform that strengthens regional autonomy, whereas preferences for shared rule drive preferences for fiscal transfers from richer to poorer regions. These results are important because they can explain why citizens who are in favour of more regional authority may support an apparently ‘paradoxical’ set of policy outcomes.     

Why a nudge is not enough: A social identity critique of governance by stealth

Policy makers can use four different modes of governance: ‘hierarchy’, ‘markets’, ‘networks’ and ‘persuasion’. In this article, it is argued that ‘nudging’ represents a distinct (fifth) mode of governance. The effectiveness of nudging as a means of bringing about lasting behaviour change is questioned and it is argued that evidence for its success ignores the facts that many successful nudges are not in fact nudges; that there are instances when nudges backfire; and that there may be ethical concerns associated with nudges. Instead, and in contrast to nudging, behaviour change is more likely to be enduring where it involves social identity change and norm internalisation. The article concludes by urging public policy scholars to engage with the social identity literature on ‘social influence’, and the idea that those promoting lasting behaviour change need to engage with people not as individual cognitive misers, but as members of groups whose norms they internalise and enact.     

Devolution,Evolution, Revolution … Democracy? What's Really Happening to English Local Governance?

The Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill 2015–2016[HL] was introduced into the House of Lords as Bill No. 1 in the 2015–2016 parliamentary session. The Bill forms a critical element of the government's high‐profile policy of devolving powers and responsibilities to local areas within England. The transition from first‐generation ‘city deals’ to second‐generation ‘devolution deals’ within five years provides a sense of the pace and development of the reform agenda but there is also a strong sense that something is missing. ‘Missing’ in the sense of an understanding of the specific type of devolution on offer, ‘missing’ in the sense of how an explosion of bilateral new ‘deals’ will be offset against the obvious risks of fragmentation and complexity, and ‘missing’—most importantly—in relation to the democratic roots that might be put in place to counterbalance the economic thrust and make the reform agenda sustainable. It is in exactly this context that this article argues that the full potential of the current devolution agenda will only be realised when the Conservative government fulfils its September 2014 commitment to wider civic engagement about how England is governed.     

The governance of public affairs

• Government and governance are frequently treated as synonyms. Governing is what governments do in formulating and implementing policies. A burgeoning political science literature uses the term governance in a different way to describe the growing tendency of governments to govern in partnership with a range of non‐state actors and, as a purported consequence, the marginalization of governments within policy‐making processes. Here, some writers go so far as to talk about ‘governance without government’. In a forthcoming book, Rethinking Governance: Bringing the State Back In, Stephen Bell and I argue that this dominant ‘society‐centred’ perspective on governance is flawed. In our view whilst governments are indeed now more likely to forge relationships with a larger range of non‐state actors, they nevertheless remain the central players in governance arrangements. Indeed we argue that governments have been strengthened through the relationships they have developed. This article reviews some of the extant literature on governance and specifies the basic terms of our ‘state‐centric relational’ approach.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

EU public affairs and the White Paper on Governance

The White Paper on Governance process[This analysis covers the period up to and including the publication of COM (2001) 428 of 25.7.2001, ‘European Governance: A White Paper’.] began life as a search for an issue by a new Commission President. The issue is packaged as enhancing/modernising democracy in the EU and legitimising EU institutions, and searches for further avenues of civil participation. The process ‘sells’ the concept of ‘democratic deficit’, though reveals a highly open and accessible system which is already severely overloaded by interest representation. Rather than escalating a ‘lobby free for all’, the opportunity could be taken to strengthen governance by organising EU interest representation. This could be done by accrediting associations that are able to meet strict criteria of representativity as ‘governance partners’, making them sufficiently attractive to their members to work through them rather than bypassing them, and which would strengthen their ability to contribute to EU governance as policy capable organisations. These associations could find a place in a revamped and reorganised Economic and Social Committee, which would be engaged at a much earlier stage in the EU policy process. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

New Modes of Governance and the Participatory Myth

One of the most common arguments about ‘new governance’ is that it is characterised by heterarchy rather than by hierarchy, creating horizontal modes of governance among a multitude of actors – public and private – involving all relevant stakeholders. Often implicitly and sometimes explicitly, this argument is linked with a normative democratic claim that praises the particular participatory features of ‘new governance’ as compared to ‘old governance’. Using as a case study European occupational health and safety policy, characterised by a shift from ‘old’ to ‘new governance’ since the 1990s, this article warns us that one should be very reluctant in making normative claims on new governance. The analysis of new governance modes such as comitology, agency networking, and social dialogue in this field shows that more horizontal and heterarchical governance does not mean automatically more participatory governance in terms of involving civil society actors and all stakeholders.     

Governance through civil society? An Anglo-Italian comparison of democratic renewal and local regeneration

Abstract

The UK has become a prime case for the implementation of the ‘new governance’ of partnership between central government and civil society. This perspective has become central to New Labour policies for both local socio-economic regeneration and democratic renewal in the United Kingdom. However, limitations in its redistribution of power, its transparency in the policy-making process, including the representativeness of civil society participants, and, in the effectiveness of its outcomes have all been alleged by academic critics. These issues are explored by contrasting a robust, British case of local, participatory governance in Bristol with a quite different, and more conventional approach to democratic renewal in the Italian city of Naples. Despite similar problems of socio-economic dereliction and similar schemes of regeneration in the two cases, the Italian approach emphasized the exclusive role of a renewed constitutional democracy, while in Bristol central government agencies promoted an accentuation of local trends to participation by local civil society organizations. Applying an analytical framework composed of national policies and regulations, institutional rules and norms, and the collective ‘identity’ factors identified by social capital theory, governance changes are here treated as ‘exogenous shocks’ and/or as opportunities for choice. However, over and above differences in these institutional frameworks the key factors are shown to be the longer-standing political cultures influencing local actors and their own repertoires of action; with repertoires influenced by objective validations of previous policy choices, or economic or electoral successes. The study finds that the achievements of the ‘inclusive’, participative governance approach do not significantly exceed those of an exclusivist, ‘neo-constitutionalism’, as practised by a more autonomous local government in Naples. Thus, on this evidence, enhanced civil society engagement still requires greater freedom from central government direction.     

Introduction: Issue Congruence and Political Responsiveness

It has long been realised that democratic governance requires a two-way flow of influence. Governments must be able to respond to what people want and people must be able to react to what governments do. These preconditions for democratic governance have been central to two research traditions on political representation. One of these, the responsible party approach, views policy change as a consequence of ‘electoral turnover’, while the other, the dynamic representation approach, focuses on policy change that occurs in ‘rational anticipation’ of electoral repercussions. The aim of this volume is to evaluate the state of political representation in contemporary Europe and to advance our understanding of the topic by presenting fresh insights both on the extent to which there exists issue congruence between voters and parties and the degree to which there is dynamic representation in the policy responses of representatives. This introduction describes in some detail the nature of the two approaches and then briefly summarises the contributions made in the remainder of the volume.     

On The Receiving End: The Governance of the Police in Britain

Based on direct observation over a five‐year period, the article paints an intimate picture of how the police in Britain are governed. It analyses the complexity of the economic and political environment in which the police have to work: the insecure funding platform; the stream of initiatives, targets and official guidelines; the delicacy of handling community sensitivities; the inherent opaqueness of the national ‘tripartite’ system of governance; and the constant challenge of making balanced judgements under conflicting pressures. The central theme that runs through the article (which follows on logically from two previous articles published in Political Quarterly) is that of a ‘managerialist’ political class, with a distinctive ideology and mode of control, trying to get a policy grip on the real world of service delivery: in this instance, policing. Unlike the previous two articles, which had a top‐down focus, the emphasis here is primarily on how the thicket looks to those who have to navigate their way through it.     

The importance of input and output legitimacy in democratic governance: Evidence from a population-based survey experiment in four West European countries

The study of subjective democratic legitimacy from a citizens’ perspective has become an important strand of research in political science. Echoing the well-known distinction between ‘input-oriented’ and ‘output-oriented’ legitimacy, the scientific debate on this topic has coined two opposed views. Some scholars find that citizens have a strong and intrinsic preference for meaningful participation in collective decision making. But others argue, to the contrary, that citizens prefer ‘stealth democracy’ because they care mainly about the substance of decisions, but much less about the procedures leading to them. In this article, citizens’ preferences regarding democratic governance are explored, focusing on their evaluations of a public policy according to criteria related to various legitimacy dimensions, as well as on the (tense) relationship among them. Data from a population-based conjoint experiment conducted in eight metropolitan areas in France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom is used. By analysing 5,000 respondents’ preferences for different governance arrangements, which were randomly varied with respect to their input, throughput and output quality as well as their scope of authority, light is shed on the relative importance of different aspects of democratic governance. It is found, first, that output evaluations are the most important driver for citizens’ choice of a governance arrangement; second, consistent positive effects of criteria of input and throughput legitimacy that operate largely independent of output evaluations can be discerned; and third, democratic input, but not democratic throughput, is considered somewhat more important when a governance body holds a high level of formal authority. These findings run counter to a central tenet of the ‘stealth democracy’ argument. While they indeed suggest that political actors and institutions can gain legitimacy primarily through the provision of ‘good output’, citizens’ demand for input and throughput do not seem to be conditioned by the quality of output as advocates of stealth democratic theory suggest. Democratic input and throughput remain important secondary features of democratic governance.     

Should Love Conquer Evidence in Policy‐Making? Challenges in Implementing Random Drug‐Testing of Welfare Recipients in Australia

The Australian Government announced in its 2017 budget that it would trial random drug‐testing of recipients of the Newstart Allowance and Youth Allowance in three locations from January 2018. The Prime Minister described it as a policy ‘based on love’, but that sentiment is hard to find in the policy rhetoric, which situates it in a suite of measures designed to ‘ensure taxpayers’ money is not being used to fund drug addictions which are creating significant barriers to employment'. The policy may make it harder for people to buy drugs with their welfare payments, through income management, but research suggests it will not help them overcome addiction and its costs will exceed any savings it generates in income support. Furthermore, the policy perpetuates ‘medicalisation’ of the problem of long‐term unemployment by suggesting it stems from deficiencies in individuals that can be ‘treated’, despite evidence to the contrary. Finally, the policy claims to close loopholes in enforcement of mutual obligation requirements without addressing structural weaknesses in the welfare‐to‐work model. Each of these issues will pose challenges for those charged with implementing the policy.     

Devolution as Process: Institutional Structures,State Personnel and Transport Policy in the United Kingdom

Abstract. Devolution has been described as a key ‘global trend’ over recent decades as governments have decentralised power and responsibilities to subordinate regional institutions. UK devolution is characterised by its asymmetrical nature with different territories granted different institutional arrangements and powers. This paper seeks to examine the role of state personnel in mobilising the new institutional machinery and managing the process of devolution, focusing on transport policy. The research presented shows a clear contrast between London and Northern Ireland, on the one hand, and Scotland and Wales, on the other, in terms of the effectiveness of political leaders in creating clear policy priorities and momentum in transport.     

Softening the surface but hardening the core? Governing renewable energy in the EU

Abstract

Soft law and governance captured the attention of scholars in the 2000s, and new policy challenges and the novel introduction of ‘harder’ elements now drive a (re)turn to these discussions. This article explores the extent to which dynamics leading towards ‘harder soft governance’ (HSG) appear in the EU’s renewable energy governance by comparing the 2020 and 2030 Renewable Energy Directives. Document analysis and interviews reveal a surface-level softening because the new 2030 directive contains no binding national targets for the Member States. An entrepreneurial Commission has been seeking to introduce ‘harder elements’ at the core by focusing on implementation, allowing for potentially deeper influence on the national energy mixes though the Energy Union. Two main factors drive these changes: the evolving international context of climate change governance, as well as re-configurations of the actors in the EU. Future research should explore the effectiveness of emerging HSG in detail.     

Network Governance and Public Participation in Policy‐Making: Federal Community Cabinets in Australia

The Australian Labor Party's (ALP) 2007 Policy Platform asserted ‘Labor will pursue new and innovative measures designed to foster greater participation and engagement of the Australian population in the political process’ ( Manwaring 2010 ). As such they seemed to have a clear commitment to a more participatory form of democracy. This commitment appeared to be reflected in two initiatives they introduced in power: the 2020 Summit (on this see Fawcett, Manwaring and Marsh 2011 ) and federal community cabinets. More broadly it could be argued that Labor were following a trend identified internationally as a move from government to governance, more specifically to ‘network governance’ (Rhodes 1997) in which governments encouraged greater participation in policy‐making, recognising that governments could at best steer, not row. Indeed, as Marinetto contends ( 2003 : 593), this idea has taken on a ‘semblance of orthodoxy’ in discussions of public policy.     

Devolution Paradox and the US South

There is an inherent trade-off in federalism regarding representation and equity. With the devolution of responsibilities to regional governments offering increased representation, there comes the inequity of services provided by some governments and not others. However, citizens in these federations may want the best of both worlds—desiring regional control but without the regional policy variation. This tension, dubbed ‘the devolution paradox’ in a study of federal countries in Europe, was less apparent in one key group of regions—those with historic ties through language, culture, or experience. This article examines US respondents to identify whether the devolution paradox is evident in this country and looks specifically at the South, a region with long-standing distinctiveness. We find that there is evidence of the devolution paradox among the American public and that the South is indeed different.     

Streams and stages: Reconciling Kingdon and policy process theory

Use of metaphors is a staple feature of how we understand policy processes – none more so than the use of ‘policy stages’/'cycles’ and ‘multiple streams’. Yet even allowing for the necessary parsimony of metaphors, the former is often criticised for its lack of ‘real world’ engagement with agency, power, ideology, turbulence and complexity, while the latter focuses only on agenda‐setting but at times has been utilised, with limited results, to understand later stages of the policy process. This article seeks to explore and advance the opportunities for combining both and applying them to the policy‐formation and decision‐making stages of policy making. In doing so it examines possible three, four and five stream models. It argues that a five stream confluence model provides the highest analytical value because it retains the simplicity of metaphors (combining elements of two of the most prominent models in policy studies) while also helping capture some of the more complex and subtle aspects of policy processes, including policy styles and nested systems of governance.