协商民主与政策执行网络

20世纪后期,西方政治理论的重要发展就是协商民主理论的兴起。协商民主是公共协商过程中自由、平等的公民通过对话、讨论、审视各种相关理由而赋予立法和决策合法性的一种治理形式。协商民主与政策执行网络之间存在着一定的内在关联。从协商民主的研究视角,我们可以看到公民社会的思想意识、精神状态以及公共利益、美德等价值观对于政策执行网络的重大意义。引入协商民主理论,倡导政策执行中的对话与协商、公民参与意识以及积极的公共精神,可以促进政府与公民、政治国家与公民社会在政策执行中的良性互动,由此也将促成政策执行网络的现实运行。     

治理主体多元化的困境与解决途径解读——基于公共行政话语理论的视角

十八届三中全会指出,全面深化改革的总目标是完善和发展中国特色社会主义,推进国家治理体系与治理能力的现代化。治理主体的多元化是治理理论的基本特征,是构建治理体系与提升治理能力的应有之义。作为一种批判性理论,福布斯与米勒的后现代公共行政话语理论是在传统环式民主失灵的前提下,在批判的基础上吸收了宪政主义与社群主义的菁华并结合后现代语境后提出了话语指向的后现代公共行政理论。后现代构成主义、碎片化与公共治理理论治理主体多元化,一些人的对话的反思性、对抗性与公共治理理论多中心主体参与的、更具回应性的政策制定与执行模式,都或多或少的在本体论与认识论上存有共通之处。作为话语理论的分析工具,公共意向性、公共能量场、独白性的交流等话语语言都有助于我们对治理理论展开分析。     

德性、规范和修正:探析公共政策诚信问题的三个维度

公共政策诚信所体现的主体道德选择和履约能力是政策公信力的核心性决定因素。公共政策作为一种非主体化的存在,其诚信问题体现于三个维度:诚信之德、诚信之范和诚信之正。现实中的"自利性"政策制定思维、"科层制"政策执行架构弊端和"非独立化"政策监督机制是存在于这三个维度中的政策诚信问题。构建"德性—规范—监督"三维一体的公共政策诚信之道,即诚信之德的基石:坚守"公共性"的政策价值基准,诚信之范的践行:树立"责任制"的政策执行原则,诚信之正的维护:构建"独立化"的政策监督机制,等等,是解决政策诚信问题的应对之道。     

政策执行视域下的协商式监督:认知、行动与支持

协商式监督是人民政协协商民主的重要组成部分,也是社会主义监督体系的必要构件。然而,协商式监督在实践中存在"有协商无监督、有议政难监督、有监督走形式"等问题。本文从政策执行视角出发,从认知、行动和支持三个维度剖析产生上述困境的原因,并提出相应政策建议。     

农村校车服务供给的公共理性困境及其选择

后撤点并校时代,农村校车服务供给面临种种公共理性困境,主要体现在以下五个方面:政府对校车服务供给程度的认识分歧、农民参与校车决策的制度障碍、校车市场的供需矛盾、校车服务的效率和公平难以兼顾、校车政策的执行偏差。借助于公共理性分析框架,农村校车服务若要实现有效供给,必须重视政策执行过程中的差异性与异质性。在政策讨论和对话的基础上,各方利益主体建构起公共理性的理念,为政府的权力理性、农民的意见表达和学生的伦理诉求尽可能提供各种可行渠道,最终实现农村校车服务的健康发展。     

关于近年来政策执行偏差问题研究述要

政策执行偏差是政策执行实效与政策预期目标的背离。政策执行偏差的典型政策执行形式有附加式、照搬式、象征式、选择式、替代式和抵制式。政策执行编差产生的原因包括这样几个方面:政策本身、政策执行主体、运行机制、管理体制和外在环境。对于政策执行偏差的治理和防治应着重于这样几个方面:提高公共政策素质、提高执行主体素质、健全政策执行机制、完善相关管理体制和优化政策执行环境。     

语言意义的他者伦理维度

语言的意义问题是语言哲学的中心问题。当代以经验论、意向性理论、存在论为代表的语言意义理论强调了语言意义的认识维度、存在维度,却没有直接说明语言意义的伦理维度。通过对当代语言意义理论的批判,可以揭示出语言意义的伦理维度。语言意义不但有伦理维度,而且是语言其他意义的根源。语言的伦理意义具有本源性,它是语言作为对话关系的直接意义。对话是他者呼唤我,我回应他者的责任关系。对话的责任关系是研究语言和意义的根本性条件。对语言意义他者伦理维度的揭示,有助于开创一种新的语言伦理学,它强调语言以对话伦理为场域,伦理以对话语言为基础。在对话的联结中,生成了责任主体,语言和伦理也在责任主体的生成中不断融合。     

试析公共政策评估及其规范

公共政策是社会公共权威做出的一定的社会生活的行为准则和行为依据。它是为解决公共问题,达成公共目标,经由政治过程所产生的策略。因此,一项公共政策的适当与否,成功与失败,直接关系到政策执行标的利益。影响到人们对政府的信任程度。所以,对公共政策执行后效果进行判断,以确定政策的价值———政策评估就尤为必要,而且事实上,对政策的评估正如政策本身的历史一样久远。公共政策是随着阶级社会的统治集团的出现而出现的(在形式上是各种各样的首脑的口头决定或成文形式出现的)。但真正形成一门科学还是在本世纪50年代。从政策事实上的存在…     

三维框架:乡村振兴战略中乡镇政府职能的转变

乡镇政府职能可以从纵向层级的"上下"维度、横向关系的"左右"维度和履职方式的"前后"维度来进行界定。在乡镇政府职能运行的实践中,乡镇面临拉力赛机制、科层制结构和经营型政权等三重桎梏。乡镇政府在这三重困境中寻求自洽的生存之道,最终形塑出策略性执行、官僚化运作、公司化行为等三种逻辑与特性,阻碍了乡镇政府职能的充分发挥。全面实施乡村振兴战略,促进乡镇政府职能转变的三维框架为:"上下"维度乡镇政府职能重心位移——执行性职能;"左右"维度乡镇政府职能关系重构——"政府+"多元主体共治;"前后"维度乡镇政府职能方式转型——基层治理能力现代化。     

“限塑令”执行因何遭遇阻滞？——基于修正后“模糊—冲突”框架的分析

"限塑令"历经长达十多年的执行期,政策效力减退趋势明显。以修正后的"模糊—冲突"框架为基础,构建政策属性分析维度,以中央政府以及省、市、县等三级地方政府颁布的相关政策为样本进行内容分析。研究发现:当政策经由中央政府传递至省、市级政府时,政策模糊性上升、冲突性下降,执行模式趋向试验性执行;当政策传递至县级政府时,政策模糊性下降、冲突性上升,执行模式趋向政治执行。政策模糊性变化所造成的信息交流阻滞、公众参与不足、基层简化治理,政策冲突性变化所带来的以政府管制为主的政策手段、倒错的激励结构以及下沉的执行压力,均体现了以压力型体制为制度基础的集权式执行方式,"限塑令"执行阻滞机理深刻嵌入在环境威权主义治理的政治逻辑与内在张力之中,帮助"限塑令"走出阻滞泥潭需要矫正各级政府的认知与行为。     

Mediterranean Security Revisited

At the dawn of the last century, the European and Mediterranean countries failed to reach a consensus on building a cooperative security system. This article is an attempt at revisiting the concept of the Mediterranean security system and assessing the conditions for restarting security dialogue in the region. Upon recognition of the need for taking into account the new dimension of risks along with the traditional dimension of threats, the article reviews the insecurity factors of the Mediterranean region and the lesson learned in the security dialogue of the Barcelona Process. Some proposals about rehearsing that dialogue are advanced in the concluding section.     

Building e‐government in East and Southeast Asia: Regional rhetoric and national (in)action

Among many regional policy initiatives taken by states in East and Southeast Asia in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis, one central project launched by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and taken up by its dialogue partners in East Asia, was promotion of information and communication technology. While part of ASEAN's 1999–2004 action plan focused on services for business, another part sought to put public sectors online, and to promote electronic government, or e‐government. Taking the 16 states and quasi‐states of East and Southeast Asia, this article evaluates progress at the action plan's mid‐point in January 2002. It begins by defining e‐government and reviewing three academic literatures on the information age, developmental states, and Confucian societies. It then describes the major policy initiatives taken by ASEAN and its partner states, and surveys implementation progress through an analysis of government homepages and sites. Its main finding is that e‐government activity in East and Southeast Asia is highly diverse, reflecting national strengths and weaknesses rather than regional capacity for policy change. The article argues for increased attention to national implementation strategies. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are innovative, participatory and deliberative procedures in policy making democratic and effective?

Abstract.  The overall project aims to establish a dialogue between normative democratic theory and research on policy formulation and implementation. This introductory article first notes the growth of various participatory and deliberative procedures in policy making, portrays the context of this growth and justifies the cases selected. It then presents the conceptual framework used for the study of these procedures, which mainly draws on participatory and deliberative democratic theory and the literature on the shift from 'government' to 'governance'. Based on this conceptual framework, the article focuses on four research questions the authors consider particularly important for the assessment of the contribution of the devices under scrutiny to democratic and effective decision making: questions of openness and access (input-legitimacy); questions regarding the quality of deliberation (throughput); questions of efficiency and effectiveness (output-legitimacy); and the issue of their insertion into the public space (questions of transparency and accountability).     

Health systems decentralization and human resources management in low and middle income countries

The aim of this article is to explore the experiences of human resources management in the context of health sector decentralization. The initial review of health sector decentralization covers issues relating to the context, content, formulation/implementation and impact of decentralization. The review of the literature on human resources management (HRM) and decentralization has identified a number of key points that are organized around the following HRM functions: HR planning/ staff supply, personnel administration and employee relations, and performance management. The importance of the management of change is also highlighted. The article concludes by emphasizing the need to include human resources as a key issue in health systems change and emphasizes the areas of policy dialogue and research. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Limits to Evidence‐Based Policy: Evidence,Emotion and Criminal Justice1

While ‘evidence‐based’ or ‘rationalist’ approaches to criminal policy may appeal to technocrats, bureaucrats and a number of academics, they often fail to compete successfully with the affective approaches to law and order policies which resonate with the public and which appear to meet deep‐seated psychological needs. They also often fail to recognise that ‘policy’ and ‘politics’ are related concepts and that debates about criminal justice are played out in broader arenas than the academy, the bureau or the agency. To be successful, penal reform must take account of the emotions people feel in the face of wrongdoing. Further, successful reform must take into account changes in public ‘mood’ or emotions over time and be sensitive to different political and social cultures. This article argues that criminal justice policies are more likely to be adopted if, in addition to the gathering and presentation of evidence, they recognise and deal with the roles of emotions, symbols, faith, belief and religion in the criminal justice system. It also recognises that evidence alone is unlikely to be the major determinant of policy outcomes and that the creation and successful implementation of policy also requires extensive engagement and evidence‐based dialogue with interested and affected parties. This necessitates a different kind of modelling for evidence‐based policy processes.     

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.     

Comitology: Little procedures with big implications

Comitology refers to a collection of procedures by which various committees of national experts moderate the Commission's powers of implementation under EU legislation. These procedures establish the rules which inform front‐line administrative operations and embrace a dimension of the implementation activity which has been largely ignored by the academic literature. The nature and incidence of the comitology procedure seriously challenge the notions of competence transfer and national interest which inform the key debates in integration theory. Comitology suggests a complexity and issue specificity to Union politics which confound the institutional determinism of both neo‐functionalism and neo‐realism, and support more recent integration theory derived from public management and international political economy which concentrate on policy outcomes, rather than institutional processes.     

Participation,Dialogue, and Civic Engagement: Understanding the Role of Organized Civil Society in Promoting Active Citizenship in the European Union

Abstract

This article looks at current policies concerning the civic and political participation of youths, women, migrants, and minorities in the European Union. It highlights the ways in which active citizenship and civic engagement have become a political priority for European institutions. Representation of local policy actors at the supranational level and strategies for the inclusion of civil society provide a platform for evaluating the impact of Europeanization at the national and subnational level. The article focuses on key discourses and narratives associated with specific policy frames (e.g. European citizenship, European social policies, and the European public sphere (EPS)). Some of the key questions addressed by the article are: What are the strategies that are employed, both by the European institutions in Brussels and organized civil society (OCS), to enhance participation and reciprocal communication? What vision of governance do practices such as active engagement and civil dialogue represent? Drawing on current theories of governance, our article contributes to the debate about the EPS by evaluating the role of OCS in bridging the gap between European institutions and national polities. Equally, our focus on traditionally marginal groups provides a platform for assessing the institutionalization of the ‘European social dimension’.     

Democratic Accountability in Decentralised Governance1

This article develops a conceptual framework for studying democratic accountability in decentralised governance, and discusses critical issues about democratic accountability from a citizen's perspective. First, the concept is discussed and adapted to make it useful for studying democratic accountability in different governance structures. Second, the article scrutinises conditions for democratic accountability in decentralised governance based on three models. Third, democratic accountability is discussed with reference to a case study of public reviewers operating in four municipalities in Sweden. The study indicates that municipal auditors and the local media have the greatest impact on municipal policy. On the whole, auditors improve local governments’ internal control and systems for steering and monitoring municipal policy, whereas the media sometimes alter the policy agenda without changing the policy. Auditors maintain and support an elitist democratic orientation of democratic accountability, and the media maintain this democratic orientation and in addition promote democratic dialogue. Viewed from a citizen's perspective, the traditional accountability system does not work satisfactorily. State inspectors and municipal auditors – two important public reviewers in the current system – could improve their work to make it more useful to citizens’ democratic control. Another way discussed to develop democratic accountability is to promote participatory policy and concrete means of accountability (e.g. on‐site visits, conducted tours and different forms of democratic dialogue). The formal way to improve democratic accountability implies more transparency, monitoring and control, which may also lead to distrust and scapegoat thinking (i.e. a surveillance society), whereas concrete modes of accountability, more associated with participatory and deliberative democracy, imply mutual responsibility and trust building. Strengthening participatory policy, active citizens, collective responsibility and democratic dialogue could be an alternative to the emerging audit society.     

Implementing Change in an Urban School District: A Case Study of the Reorganization of the Little Rock School District

In July 2005, the Little Rock, Arkansas, school district implemented a new policy to reorganize its management structure in order to create a more efficient bureaucracy. Using Richard Matland’s ambiguity‐conflict model of policy implementation, the authors examine the implementation of this school reorganization policy. Interviews and surveys were conducted with the superintendent and his executive assistants, school principals, teachers, and staff. In line with Matland’s model, the findings suggest that successful implementation is directly related to the policy characteristics of ambiguity and conflict. However, the authors point to the importance of recognizing particular characteristics for different groups of stakeholders within the policy implementation process. Discrepancies among groups of policy actors in the degree of policy ambiguity and policy conflict lead to strikingly different implementation strategies.