Is Public Management Neglecting the State?

Public management is a domain of research that is now roughly three decades old. Researchers in this area have made important advances in understanding about the performance of public organizations. But questions have been raised about the scope and methods of public management research (PMR). Does it neglect important questions about the development of major institutions of the modern state? Has it focused unduly on problems of the advanced democracies? Has it made itself irrelevant to public debates about the role and design of government, and the capacity of public institutions to deal with emerging challenges? This set of eight short essays were prepared for a roundtable held at the research conference of the PMR Association at the University of Aarhus in June 2016. Contributors were asked to consider the question: Is PMR neglecting the state?     

A preliminary theory of dark network resilience

A crucial contemporary policy question for governments across the globe is how to cope with international crime and terrorist networks. Many such “dark” networks—that is, networks that operate covertly and illegally—display a remarkable level of resilience when faced with shocks and attacks. Based on an in‐depth study of three cases (MK, the armed wing of the African National Congress in South Africa during apartheid; FARC, the Marxist guerrilla movement in Colombia; and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTTE, in Sri Lanka), we present a set of propositions to outline how shocks impact dark network characteristics (resources and legitimacy) and networked capabilities (replacing actors, linkages, balancing integration and differentiation) and how these in turn affect a dark network's resilience over time. We discuss the implications of our findings for policymakers. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Do Networks Really Work? A Framework for Evaluating Public‐Sector Organizational Networks

Although cooperative, interorganizational networks have become a common mechanism for delivery of public services, evaluating their effectiveness is extremely complex and has generally been neglected. To help resolve this problem, we discuss the evaluation of networks of community-based, mostly publicly funded health, human service, and public welfare organizations. Consistent with pressures to perform effectively from a broad range of key stakeholders, we argue that networks must be evaluated at three levels of analysis: community, network, and organization/participant levels. While the three levels are related, each has its own set of effectiveness criteria that must be considered. The article offers a general discussion of network effectiveness, followed by arguments explaining effectiveness criteria and stakeholders at each level of analysis. Finally, the article examines how effectiveness at one level of network analysis may or may not match effectiveness criteria at another level and the extent to which integration across levels may be possible.     

Measuring Network Structure

Networks have been a research issue in public administration for many years. Because of the difficulty of measuring networks, they have often been treated as a metaphor, a conceptual scheme, or a management technique (networking). The work on networks in public administration is almost all of the case study and rarely of the comparative case variety. This article presents the results of two studies of networks using social network analysis as a technique for studying structural relationships between organizations. This technique is utilized to show both the research and practical potential of network analysis as an evaluation methodology for organizations that jointly produce a service. In the first study, the network provides mental health services to seriously mentally ill adults. In the second study, the network attempts to prevent young people from abusing drugs and alcohol. The two studies were undertaken for different reasons. The first was an elaborate comparative study of four mental health networks and the relationship between network design and performance. The second was a much simpler consulting effort to help a local prevention partnership create linkages to other community organizations. However, in both of the studies the goal was to measure the structural ties in the network based on various types of relationships that exist in a given field of practice. These linkages are ties that bind the network together and become data that can be used to compare networks on their degree and type of integration. The article makes the argument that links in a network are one way that scholars can compare networks in similar or different policy domains. At the same time, the article argues that analysing linkages in an organization's network is an effective and practical means of determining how well integrated any given organization is in a network.     

Organizational Versus Individual Attribution: A Case Study of Jemaah Islamiyah and the Anthrax Plot

Recent studies have taken an important first step in examining which terrorist groups, based on their organizational characteristics and the characteristics of the environment in which they operate, are more likely to pursue chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. This approach, however, assumes that individuals who perpetrate events act on behalf of the organization to which they primarily belong. Using the case of Jemaah Islamiyah's alleged attempt to develop the pathogenic bacterium Bacillus anthracis, or anthrax, the authors demonstrate the importance of including individual-level variables to the analysis. In particular, the attendance by several key Jemaah Islamiyah members at an Al Qaeda-affiliated training camp is argued to set a chain of events into motion that ended in their involvement in the anthrax cultivation program.     

Dark Networks as Organizational Problems: Elements of a Theory 1

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we try to understand and interpret why and how dark networks manage to survive despite massive control efforts by nation states, thus demonstrating a high degree of resilience. We approach this question from an organizational perspective looking at the (organizational) changes dark networks undergo in adapting to attempts to destroy them. We draw on insights based on the analysis of how Al Qaeda changed after the massive control efforts by some of the world's most powerful nation states since their attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001. In order to develop more general propositions, we contrast the Al Qaeda case with the development of the organizational structure behind the cocaine trade from Colombia to the United States after it had become the object of massive control efforts by the U.S. during the 1990s. Through the analysis we inductively develop a theoretical framework for the analysis of dark networks. Central to this framework is the assumption that dark networks, which are resilient, manage to rebalance differentiation and integration mechanisms in their internal structure and adjust to the new requirements in their task environment based on the actors, their linkages and resources available in order to persist and maintain some capacity to act. We further identify drivers and facilitators stemming from larger societal and political problems that create the motivation for new people to join dark networks. The analysis shows that control efforts that are directed towards the organizational extinction of dark networks will be likely to fail as long as the central problems behind their existence are not tackled. We conclude by sketching out an agenda for future organizational research on covert and illegal networks and organizations.