Toward More “Evidence‐Informed” Policy Making?

The quality of public decision making depends significantly on the quality of analysis and advice provided through public organizations. Champions of “evidence‐informed” policy making claim that rigorous evaluation practices can significantly improve attainment of cost‐effective outcomes. After decades of experience, performance information is more sophisticated, but evaluation practices and capabilities vary enormously. Public agencies gather and process vast amounts of information, but there has been little analysis of how this information is actually utilized for policy and program improvement. This article examines how government agencies use evidence about policy and program effectiveness, with attention to four themes: (1) the prospects for improving “evidence‐informed” policy making, (2) the diversity of practices concerning evidence utilization and evaluation across types of public agencies and policy arenas, (3) recent attempts to “institutionalize” evaluation as a core feature of policy development and budget approval, and (4) the relationships between public agencies and nongovernmental sources of expertise.     

Why do “teeth” need “voice”? The case of anti‐corruption agencies in three Australian states

Interactions between horizontal accountability agencies (e.g., anti‐corruption agencies [ACAs]) and social accountability actors (e.g., journalists, civil society activists, and complainants/whistleblowers) are recognized as important to horizontal agencies’ performance, but the reason(s) is not clear. This study therefore explores why horizontal accountability agencies need social accountability actors in performing their functions. The study analyses data from 30 key stakeholders in Australia, including ACAs staff members, social accountability actors, and other observers to report on the specific support roles social actors play to ACAs’ activities and operations. Through the conceptual lens of social accountability, evidence show that social actors play four key types of support roles to ACAs’ activities and operations: activate ACAs’ investigations; “amplify” ACAs’ operations; guard ACAs’ activities and operations; and defend ACAs’ independence and powers. These findings support the need for interactions and, also, affirm the potential for research into how these support roles can better be provided for effective anti‐corruption outcomes. The research is of value to public accountability agencies in Australia, and internationally.     

LOCAL REGIMES: Does Globalization Challenge the “Growth Machine”?

This article explores the possible impacts that globalization might have upon the nature of local governments and the economic development policies that they adopt. We begin by outlining the theory of how “corporate regimes” dominate most urban centers, why they implement skewed economic development policies, and why globalization appears to be exacerbating these problems. Research on state‐and‐local economic development outside urban centers indicates that several types of business development exist and that they differ significantly in their implications for improving conditions in a community. This suggests that other types of corporate regimes are possible. The logic of globalization points toward the need to establish more progressive corporate regimes willing to implement some of the reforms advocated by critics of the “growth machine.”     

Who “Wins”? Determining the Party of the Prime Minister

The prime ministership is the preeminent political post in parliamentary democracies. Yet few studies examine PM party choice, perhaps under the assumption that the choice is a simple function of party size. In this article, we argue that key strategic actors and the context in which government negotiations take place can play a critical role in PM party choice. We test our hypotheses using a mixed logit with random coefficients on an original data set comprising PM selection opportunities in 28 European countries. Our methodological approach allows us to incorporate qualitative concerns about heterogeneity and causal complexity into our analysis. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that the largest party is often disadvantaged when it comes to PM party choice, that some presidents play an influential role in choosing the PM, and that the value of being the incumbent depends on one’s performance in office and how the previous government ended.     

Managing Politics? Ethics Regulation and Conflicting Conceptions of “Good Conduct”

Concern for fostering trust in public institutions has prompted many governments to invest in systems of ethics regulation, embracing various dimensions of good governance. This article assesses the impact of ethics regulation on the conduct of English local politicians using Foucauldian perspectives on government, power, and resistance. The research finds that ethics regulation encountered problems when politicians resisted the models of political identity and behavior that it was perceived to promote. Particular concentrations of misconduct complaints were identified in which politicians believed that changes to political management structures, designed to make local governance more effective, caused a loss of voice for elected representatives. Ethics regulation itself sometimes served as a device for controlling others and effecting resistance. The article concludes with reflections on how far we should expect political conduct to be managed by such regulatory practices.     

Is There a “Workable” Race‐Neutral Alternative to Affirmative Action in College Admissions?

The 2013 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin case clarified when and how it is legally permissible for universities to use an applicant's race or ethnicity in its admissions decisions. The court concluded that such use is permissible when “no workable race‐neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity.” This paper shows that replacing traditional affirmative action with a system that uses an applicant's predicted likelihood of being an underrepresented racial minority as a proxy for the applicant's actual minority status can yield an admitted class that has a lower predicted grade point average and likelihood of graduating than the class that would have been admitted using traditional affirmative action. This result suggests that race‐neutral alternatives may not be “workable” from the university's perspective.     

“Big Questions” about Intergovernmental Relations and Management: Who Will Address Them?

Fiscal, administrative, and political tensions among the partners in the federal system have not eased, and perhaps have grown, since the demise of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in 1996. Yet no governmental organizational capacity exists to address big intergovernmental questions in an ongoing manner through nonpartisan or bipartisan research, data collection, deliberation, and policy formulation.     

“I Won't Back Down?” Complexity and Courage in Government Executive Decision Making

Senior government executives make many difficult decisions, but research suggests that individual cognitive limitations and the pathologies of “groupthink” impede their ability to make value‐maximizing choices. From this literature has emerged a normative model that Irving Janis calls “vigilant problem solving,” a process intended for the most complex decisions. To explore its use by senior public officials, the authors interviewed 20 heads of subcabinet‐level organizations in the U.S. federal government, asking how they made their most difficult decisions. The initial focus was on whether they employed a vigilant approach to making decisions that were informationally, technically, or politically complex. Most executives identified their single most‐difficult decision as one that required courage; they often made such courageous decisions after personal reflection and/or consultation with a small number of trusted advisors rather in ways that could be described as vigilant. The different approaches for making complex decisions, compared with those involving courage, are discussed and a contingency model of effective executive decision making is proposed that requires leaders (and their advisors) to be “ambidextrous” in their approach.     

Public Sector Labor Relations Scholarship: Is There a “There,” There?

Public sector union membership is thriving compared to the private sector. Moreover, public employee unions play a significant role in policy making at every level of government. Yet research on public sector labor relations is sporadic and uneven, perhaps negligible. Why so? This article surveys the literature on public sector unionism and seeks to answer that question. Its conclusion points to a course of action for renewing interest in this seminal field among public administration, management, and policy scholars.     

Weighing the “burden of ‘acting white’”: Are there race differences in attitudes toward education?

Recent reports by ethnographic researchers and media sources suggest that many African American students view academic success as a form of “acting white,” and that peer pressure reduces their level of effort and performance. This article analyzes the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 to answer three questions: (1) do blacks experience greater alienation toward school than non-Hispanic whites?; (2) do blacks incur social penalties from their peers for succeeding academically?; and (3) if so, are these “achievement penalties” greater than those for whites? Our analysis suggests the answer to each of the three questions is “apparently not.”     

Impact of “U.S. Veterans' Access,Choice and Accountability Act of 2014” on employee morale and work behavior: Does “creating an at‐will workplace” lead to better outcomes?

This study estimates the impact of job security rule changes on federal civilian employees' work attitudes and behavior (i.e., job satisfaction and turnover intention) by looking at recent U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)'s Veterans' Access, Choice and Accountability Act (VACAA) of 2014. The data for the analysis are derived from the 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2015 U.S. Federal Employee Viewpoint Surveys. A difference‐in‐differences quasiexperimental methodology was used to examine the effect of a job security rule change on VA employee job satisfaction and turnover intention. This study's results indicate that the overall effect of the introduction of a new job security rule at VA is a decrease of approximately 7 percentage points in employee job satisfaction and 8 percentage points in employee turnover intention, which are a substantial effect. This study contributes to both the theoretical and the empirical understanding of at‐will employment systems and public employee work morale and attitudes.     

Who Will Be the “Principled‐Principals”? Perceptions of Corruption and Willingness to Engage in Anticorruption Activism

Many anticorruption campaigns aim to encourage citizens to demand better control over corruption. Recent literature suggests that perceived high levels of corruption and government effectiveness in controlling corruption will limit citizens' willingness to actively oppose corruption. Using Transparency International's 2013 Global Corruption Barometer, we test these ideas across a 71‐country sample. We find that perceived government effectiveness tends to encourage anticorruption civic action, while perceptions of corruption being widespread tend to have the opposite impact in non‐OECD countries. Our analyses also suggest that the interaction between these perceptions is important; we find that, especially among those who perceive that the level of corruption is high, when confidence in the government's efforts grows, so does their willingness fight corruption.     

“Social licence to operate” and the human services: A pathway to smarter commissioning?

Externalised service provision is now an embedded feature of Australia's service delivery architecture. However, the lessons drawn from two decades of contracted service delivery suggest that “competition” is an imperfect platform for the delivery of public services, especially where issues of trust in government come into play. Could the concept of a “social license to operate” (SLO), which has been in use in the natural resources sector for over two decades, help to facilitate the conferral of greater trust, credibility and legitimacy upon governments, and externalised service providers in social policy spaces?     

Do Policy Makers Use Academic Research? Reexamining the “Two Communities” Theory of Research Utilization

Academics and policy makers in many Western countries are perceived as occupying separate communities, with distinct languages, values, and reward systems. However, data from a survey of more than 2,000 policy officials and 126 in‐depth interviews with public servants in Australia suggest that the “two communities” conceptualization may be misleading and flawed. More realistically, there is a range of interaction between policy and academia, with some individuals valuing and using academic research more than others. Furthermore, this relationship is complicated by the internal division between the political and administrative components of the public policy process.     

How costly is “clean”? An analysis of the benefits and costs of Superfund site remediations

The cleanup of hazardous waste sites under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund program is governed by a number of legislative and regulatory constraints. Congress passed legislation in 1986 directing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to pursue permanent remedies that embodied stringent cleanup standards. The agency has chosen to use conservative assumptions in risk assessments at hazardous waste sites, including a presumption that on‐site risks for hypothetical future residents should be calculated in the site remediation process. This article offers the first comprehensive assessment of the cost‐effectiveness of these Superfund cleanups. Our results reveal that many EPA Superfund remediations fail a partial benefit‐cost test. For a sample of the 150 Superfund sites, we find that at the majority of sites the expected number of cancers averted by remediation is less than 0.1 cases per site and that the cost per cancer case averted is over $100 million. The analysis demonstrates the importance of explicitly calculating the trade‐offs embodied in environmental cleanup decisions. © 1998 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management