NORMATIVE POLITICAL SCIENCE

The bad news is that critics of the quantitative movement in policy and political science are right (so far). Widely accepted quantitative models of politics promote cynicism and counter-productive uses of government power. Mainstream social science provides a perverse basis for policy analysis. The good news is that there is no sound scientific reason for the schism between so called "empirical" and "normative" theories of politics. Traditional theories of politics, which show how government power can be used to serve the public interest, can be quantified and tested as empirical theory. The resulting scientific normative theory provides a constructive foundation for policy analysis.     

Sharpening a Knife Cleverly: Organizational Change, Policy Paradox, and the "Weaponizing" of Administrative Reforms

Prior research has leavened substantially our understanding of how, why, and with what consequences public organizations respond to pressures for administrative reforms. Left underdeveloped theoretically, however, is the hypothesis that agency actors may also assess the ability of administrative reforms both to advance their policy goals and to become "weapons" in battles within agencies for advancing them. To illustrate this possibility, this article analyzes how the Clinton administration's National Performance Review and related Defense Reform Initiative interacted with its efforts to "green" the U.S. military in the post–Cold War era. Analysis of this clash between defense and environmental values indicates that (1) agency actors did evaluate the potential impacts of administrative reforms on their policy goals before supporting or opposing them; (2) they tried to hijack those reforms as weapons for advancing their policy goals in intraorganizational battles; and (3) the "weaponizing" of these reforms produced policy complications and consequences that proponents neither anticipated nor welcomed. Thus, reform in the administrative domain created unanticipated consequences by spilling over into the policy domain and being hijacked, weaponized, or otherwise miscarried or used opportunistically in intraorganizational policy battles. The study concludes by arguing that these dynamics merit more attention than they have received from either administrative reform proponents or researchers seeking to develop theories of administrative reform.     

仲裁机构在事业单位分类改革中的困境及建议——以北京仲裁委员会为例

北京仲裁委员会(北仲)发展的成功经验是坚持民间化方向,实行事业单位企业化管理。北仲在本次分类推进事业单位改革中遇到的最大困境是没有与其性质、职能相近的事业单位分类类型和适应其发展的相关政策。为了更好地发展我国仲裁事业,建议在事业单位分类推进改革中,增加一种事业单位类型,类似2007年事业单位改革方案中的公益三。     

Reinvention and retrenchment: Lessons from the application of the New Zealand model to Alberta,Canada

Is New Zealand a model for “reinventing” government and cutting spending? The government of Alberta, Canada, consciously replicated significant elements of the New Zealand model to attain fiscal balance and public sector reorganization, including the core element of restructuring institutions to change individual behavior. Despite broad similarities in policy content and outcome, differences in the specific content of policy and the politics of policy implementation led to differences in the sustainability of reform and the location of budget cuts. Alberta's Progressive Conservative party emphasized expenditure cuts where both the New Zealand Labour and National parties emphasized government reorganization and the introduction of market mechanisms. Contrasting these efforts to balance budgets and reinvent government suggests that there is considerable variation in the “model,” and that left governments in general are probably more likely to pursue and succeed at the reinvention of government, while stinting fiscal balance. Right governments, on the other hand, are more likely to achieve short-run fiscal balance at the expense of successful reinvention. In turn this suggests that while the partisan orientation of the reforming party matters, neither has an ideal policy mix for long-term fiscal stability. Alternation of governments may provide the best policy mix.     

Campaign competition and policy responsiveness in direct legislation elections

Many scholars, pundits, and reform advocates argue that more competitive elections are needed to produce policy outcomes that better reflect voter interests. We challenge this argument. Using a model of direct legislation elections, we prove that greater electoral competition is neither necessary nor sufficient for more responsive postelection policy outcomes. Instead, we find that more competition increases responsivenessonly if the additional competitors are both sympathetic to voter interests and sufficiently credible to affect voter behavior. If either condition fails to hold, then increasing competition will make votersworse off, if it affects them at all. We conclude that enhanced voter competence, and not more competition, is the key to greater responsiveness.     

Föderalismus und wohlfahrtsstaatliche Entwicklung. Österreich und die Schweiz im Vergleich

Starting from the stylised fact that federal institutions are held to be inimical to welfare state expansion, this paper examines the ways in which federalism has shaped the dynamics of welfare state development in Switzerland and Austria. A comparison of these different federal polities reveals that the welfare breaking effect attached to federalism crucially depends on the extent of vertical power separation. In both countries economic competition among constituent units did not fuel a race to the bottom in social standards. In Switzerland, the most important reason connected to federalism for why federal social policy was delayed and downsized was policy-preemption by the cantons and their considerable influence on the federal policymaking process. In contrast, the Austrian Länder neither had major social policy competencies nor an effective veto power which allowed them to block the centralisation of public policy. Instead, federalism is subordinate to the partisan arena at the central state level which itself is dominated by political parties quite favourable to welfare state expansion.     

Does agency competition improve the quality of policy analysis? Evidence from OMB and CBO fiscal projections

Public management scholars often claim that agency competition provides an effective institutional check on monopoly authority, and hence, leads to improvement of administrative performance in public sector agencies. This logic was central for creating the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 1975 to challenge the policy information provided by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). We challenge this conventional wisdom by demonstrating that CBO has failed to enhance the quality of U.S. fiscal policy analysis on its own terms; nor has it spurred improvements in OMB's performance. Our empirical results indicate that the quality of OMB's fiscal projections has often deteriorated since the establishment of CBO as a rival bureau. We also show that both public and private information is being shared by these agencies to produce a similar caliber of task outputs. The broader implications of our study indicate that although politicians face incentives to employ agency competition in governmental settings, this type of bureaucratic strategy does not necessarily enhance the quality of administrative performance. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Policy Reform and the Problem of Private Investment: Evidence from the Power Sector

Development economists frequently emphasize the importance of good infrastructure for economic growth. Can governments attract private capital in infrastructural investments through policy reform? We address this question by showing that, in the case of electricity generation, a simple legislation enabling independent power production increases private investment in electricity generation by more than an order of magnitude. Contrary to the conventional wisdom on the importance of constraints on executive power for credible commitment, we find that such constraints neither draw private capital nor condition the effectiveness of policy reform. We also find that both domestic and foreign investment increase with IPP reform. Evidence for these claims comes from an instrumental variable analysis of power sector reforms and private electricity generation in all developing countries for the years 1982 to 2008. Simple and politically uncontroversial policies can generate positive results in developing countries.     

The stability of stated preferences for public goods: Evidence from recent budget games

We have investigated the stability of the individual response in recent budget games based on survey data, which is an important requirement for the reliability of this instrument. Budget games have gained popularity due to the problems encountered with alternative methods to determine preferences for public goods, such as the analysis of actual public expenditure date using median-voter theory or similar approaches. The short-term test-retest correlations (within an interval of one month) turn out to be rather low, typical around 0.3. No explanation of the test-retest differences could be found from the usual socio-economic and political characteristics of the respondents or from information characteristics of the survey design. Also, the pattern of budget-game outcomes for different countries and different periods is rather similar. The cumulative evidence suggests that the survey response to budget games is generated to a large extent by very general notions on the (un)desirability of public goods: defence is bad, education and health care are good. This implies that outcomes are often not related to the actual level and structure of public expenditure or revenues. As a result, the individual responses, even to the more sophisticated budget games, are subject to large uncertainty margins. Our results should warn researchers and, even more important, policy makers against giving too much weight to stated preferences for public expenditure or taxation levels obtained from budget games. Of course, further research is needed to obtain the precise limits of the instrument, including laboratory experimental economics.     

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.     

Special Issue on electronic media,markets and civil society in East and Southeast Asia: Introduction

Abstract

The government of Hong Kong has been trying to reform the territory's health care financing system since the early 1990s and is finally on the verge of succeeding. The objective of this paper is to assess the reform efforts and explain the causes of repeated failures and eventual success. It will argue that the government's fortunes changed only after it abandoned the core reform goal and decided to pursue peripheral objectives. It will explain the abandonment with reference to the peculiar political system in Hong Kong that makes it difficult for the government to adopt substantial policy reforms in the face of even moderate opposition. The reason for the government's policy incapacity is the existence of liberalism in a non-democratic setting, which allows the government to neither suppress opposition nor mobilize popular support. This has been illustratively evident in its health care reforms when its proposals to improve the system's fiscal sustainability invariably met an early death because they imposed costs on employers, the population or both. The current proposal has fared better not only because it addresses a simpler peripheral problem but also because it offends almost no one and pleases many among the powerful.     

Public health,human rights,and the beneficence of states

Conclusions The HIV/AIDS pandemic, now well into its third decade and spreading in states as diverse as Belarus, Ukraine, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, has shown us that we truly are sharing an interconnected world. As we struggle to deal with both ongoing and emerging threats to public health, and to reach just balances of the rights of individuals and communities, it is critically important not to lose sight of the many states where neither the rights of citizens nor the well-being of the community drive policy. Secretive, rights-violating regimes make poor global citizens in a world where new threats can emerge from obscure corners of the world (like occupational exposures in the butchering of masked palm civets or chimpanzees) and spread fast and far. The mishandling of public health threats in such states may be due to incompetence, malfeasance, official denial, censorship of science, bureaucratic inertia, or the desire not to lose face on the global stage. This is true for state failure in an array of other arenas, including economics and development. But public health failures are likely to have effects beyond state borders, and to affect us all. And this may be reason for some hope: outbreaks like SARS cast a bright light on ineffective responses, and may be one more reason for the citizens of the world who live in free societies to be concerned over the fate of those who do not.     

Engaging in Small Talk: Nanotechnology Policy and Dialogue Processes in the UK and Australia

This article discusses the phenomena of nanotechnology, and notes that despite high investment levels for global research and development, the public presently understands neither the implications of this emerging technology nor how it might be best governed. It considers the notion of the public interest and its place in the public policy cycle, and notes some of the specific challenges posed by this new technology. Adopting a comparative jurisdictional approach, this article maps a range of policy and dialogue activities currently underway within the United Kingdom and Australia and concludes that policy dialogue is an essential component of public policy development for all emerging technologies. While the Australian government is currently beginning this process, compared to countries such as the United Kingdom, such efforts here are still embryonic. A fuller engagement in wide‐ranging public debate is suggested as a part of protecting the public interest.     

Issue Redefinition, Venue Change and Radical Agricultural Policy Reforms in Sweden and New Zealand

This paper compares radical agricultural policy reforms in Sweden and New Zealand in the 1980s and 1990s to establish which factors bring about such types of policy reforms. Ruling out a number of alternative explanations for reform found in the public policy and political economy literature, we focus on the role of reform strategies. We show that the redefinition of agricultural policy – from a matter of finding the balance between budgetary costs and farmers' income to considering agricultural policy as part of macroeconomic policies – was important, particularly in Sweden. Change of policy venue is the other reform strategy identified, which was crucial to the successful introduction of the reform. In both countries, ministers of finance deliberately shifted agricultural policymaking to arenas in which they were able to control the reform process.     

Public service reform: A comparative west European perspective

This article compares recent public service reforms in Britain, France and Germany in terms of reform origins, the trade‐off between managerial and administrative values in the overall reform orientation and the balance within managerial reform between public choice and business management strands. An explanation is advanced of variations in national reform profiles which draws on elements of both political economy and historical institutionalist approaches. Particular importance is attributed to the composition of French and German administrative reform policy communities, and to the resilience of collectivist ideals of public service within the respective memberships, as compared with Britain.     

Defining Executive Power: Constitutional Reform for Grown-ups

Australia is well endowed with constitutions. It has seven, one for the commonwealth and each of the six states, and nine if the documents establishing self-government for the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory are included. This gives plenty of scope for constitutional reform: that is, changing the most important rules which specify how a political community is governed. In the event, public debate over constitutional reform in Australia has been sporadic and concentrated on a narrow range of issues. Perhaps this is as it should be. Constitutions should reflect broad public acceptance of the basic rules governing the operation of government, and if the system is running smoothly, there is little reason for change. Only when events occur that demonstrate that there are shortcomings in the structure of government should constitutional reform be considered.     

FLYING BLIND? EVIDENCE FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM AGENDAS,IMPLEMENTATION AND OUTCOMES IN LOW INCOME COUNTRIES

Although considerable resources and attention have been allocated to recent ‘good governance’ public management reform in low income and fragile states, there is little evidence as to what degree this agenda has been implemented nor as to whether it has led to improved services and outcomes for populations. To address this lacuna, we conduct a review of the large but almost entirely qualitative literature on good governance reform in the 49 countries classed as low income by the United Nations. We find only a small number of documents that link good governance public sector reform agendas with implementation. Fewer still assess outcome. We conduct an empirical analysis of the relationship between reform agenda (using data from the literature review), implementation, service delivery and outcomes, as measured by performance on Millennium Development Goals indicators. We report that there is little, if any, empirical evidence that reform enhances service delivery. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public Sector Management Reform: Convergence or Divergence?

This collection of articles is yet further evidence of an emerging consensus around the world of the need to improve the performance of the public sector. This is happening across countries at different stages of development, with widely divergent cultures and different forms of economic organization. Gu Jiaqi, in discussing reform in China, refers to the public demanding that governments act with fewer inputs and with best outcomes. The recently published book, Reinventing Government, which appears to have captured the attention of both law–makers and the bureaucracy in the US (with some good reason), notes that Americans are demanding "more performance for less money" (1992, 2). In Australia, administrative reform was launched under the umbrella of a Financial Management Improvement Program which sought to change attitudes in the public sector to be much more concerned with outcomes and constantly relate these outcomes to the resources being applied to achieving them.
There seems to be little doubt that there is a common language in the area of results. While this is of considerable interest, of greater interest is the variety of means that are being pursued to achieve these ends. This note raises some questions about the compatibility of some of the means and the ends. It suggests that some of the means identified in these articles may be counter–productive.     

THE POLITICS OF MICROECONOMIC REFORM: STRUCTURING A GENERAL MODEL1

Abstract: This paper examines the current endeavours to render the Australian economy more economically efficient. While the case for microeconomic reform is clear in economic theory, Australian public policy analysts are less sanguine about the possibilities for its long-term success. This paper seeks to develop the parameters of a simple general model to explain both why microeconomic reform proposals are dominant today on the Australian policy agenda and, more importantly, what the conditions are for their success or failure. This general model provides a framework that will allow further elaboration in case studies of particular episodes of microeconomic reform.
The paper concludes pessimistically; micro-economic reform has been subsumed into the normal political agenda contests of Australian party politics. The pressures of such "politics" inclines Australian reforming towards incrementalism, rather than the Simon-style rationalism implicit from micro-economics. This mode of policy implementation will inhibit microeconomic reform in the longer term.     

Understanding the historical turn in the policy sciences: A critique of stochastic, narrative, path dependency and process-sequencing models of policy-making over time

This article evaluates four general models of historical change processes which have emerged in various fields in the social sciences – namely stochastic, historical narrative, path dependency and process sequencing – and their application to the study of public policy-making. The article sets out and assesses the merits and evidence for each, both in general social research and in the policy sciences. The article suggests that more work needs to be done examining the assumptions and presuppositions of each model before it can be concluded that any represents the general case in policy processes. However, since neither the irreversible linear reality assumed by narrative models, nor the random and chaotic world assumed by stochastic models, nor the contingent turning points and irreversible trajectories required of the path dependency model are found very often in policy-making, these models are likely to remain less significant than process-sequencing models in describing the overall general pattern of policy dynamics.