Exorcising the ghost of the politics-administration dichotomy: an institutional theory of administration policy making

This article takes implementation theory one critical step further. It argues that administrative policy making is a separate, distinguishable process, not a stage in or component of the legislative policy-making process. In addition, it argues that the institutional setting for policy making has a major influence on policy ideas, choices, and actions. Administrative agencies form a distinct institutional setting for policy politics, and setting influences policy outcomes. The implications of the institutional perspective for understanding policy making, policy analysis, and the legitimacy of public organizations are examined.

The ghost of the politics-administration dichotomy haunts implementation theory. Although numerous scholars have declared the dichotomy dead,⁽¹⁾ administrative policy making is still seen as a component or step in the policy process that is dominated by elected officials. For example, Kelman recently examined the different institutional settings of policy making.⁽²⁾ Elected officials, in his view, are and should remain the primary source of policy ideas and choices while administrators remain responsible for translating these ideas and choices into practice. Other scholars underscore the lack of effective control by legislators and elected executives. But even those who acknowledge administrative initiative and autonomy see administrators as servants, however weak their masters.

This article takes implementation theory one critical step farther. It argues that administrative policy making is a separate, distinguishable process—not merely a stage in or component of legislative policy making. Policies can and do originate in administrative agencies. These innovations gather supporters and critics, are tested and refined, and can become part of the routine with little, if any, involvement by elected officials or political appointees. Legislation and executive orders commonly ratify existing administrative policies rather than initiate administrative involvement.

In addition, the institutional setting for policy making has a major influence on policy ideas, choices, and actions. Administrative agencies form a distinct institutional setting for policy politics. The institutional setting, it is argued, influences policy outcomes. Administrative policy making is not, however, an entirely discrete process. It intersects with legislative policy making at important and predictable points. The two policy processes, legislative and administrative, are loosely and variably coupled.⁽³⁾ The central distinction is that administrative policy making is dominated by the ideas, norms, routines, and choices of nonelected public employees, whereas legislative policy making is dominated by the perspectives of elected officials. Administrative policy making can occur in the bureaucracies of the President or of Congress.

The argument that these two processes—legislative and administrative—are distinct does not, however, deny their essential overlap. The overlap between these two fundamentally different policy settings has fostered the delusion that there is only one policy setting with legislative and administrative components. Clearly elected officials influence administrative policy making, and, just as clearly, administrators influence legislative policy making.⁽⁴⁾ Nevertheless, their interaction remains obscure without a clearer perception of the profound differences between the two settings. As stated, the importance of administrative policy making seems obvious and uncontroversial, but its implications are strongly resisted.⁽⁵⁾

Public administration and implementation theories have not adequately recognized the importance of administrative policy making in modem welfare states.⁽⁶⁾ Before more fully developing these ideas, four examples of administrative policy making are briefly reviewed.     

More Is Better: Consensual Forecasting and State Revenue Forecast Error

Abstract

The subject of this research is the question of whether revenue forecasts, which require consensus within the institutional framework of federal system governments, are more accurate than in states where forecast decision-making rests solely in the executive branch or in the legislative branch. Results are reported from a 1999 survey of various revenue forecasters in the 50 states. The methodology includes considerations of the following as independent variables: split-government legislatures; frequency of state's forecasts; whether a separate council of economic advisors was included; budgetary balance requirements; the availability of outside expert advice from universities; and the extent of a period of economic stability in the state. The results indicate some effect, which although not substantial, in terms of state budgets still constitute significant dollar amounts.     

Is Local Development Good Politics? Local Development Expenditures and the Re-Election of Governors in the Philippines in the 1990s

Abstract

Are incumbent governors who put more weight on development spending likely to be re-elected? To answer this question, an economic model of a re-electionist local chief executive is introduced and validated with a panel data of provincial governors who ran for another term of office during the election years 1992, 1995 and 1998 in the Philippines. It is found that incumbent governors improve their re-election chances with higher spending on economic development services, other things being constant. Moreover, governors who are members of political clans also have higher development spending especially when faced with rival clans. Thus, elections are still an effective disciplining device, more especially when rivalry is intense among political clans. The policy implication then is to enhance political competition rather than just ban political dynasties to improve the performance of elected officials under decentralization.     

Analysing Local Policy Agendas: How Dutch Municipal Executive Coalitions Allocate Attention

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of the allocation of attention to policy problems on the local level, focusing on the executive agenda of six municipalities in the Netherlands over a 25-year period. It reveals that there is specifically a local politics of attention, showing differences between national and local policy agendas in specific policy areas. We did not find evidence that the political composition of the local executive coalitions leads to agenda differences, revealing the more problem-oriented and pragmatic nature of local politics. We did find evidence of an effect of institutional arrangements between national and local government on shifting patterns of attention, such as due to decentralisation. This shows that the local politics of attention is limited in scope and conditioned by the functions of local government and the institutional arrangements of policy making in the Dutch decentralised unitary state and that rearrangements affect these patterns of attention.     

Policy analysis: past,present, and future

This article reviews three themes in the past, present and future of policy analysis—policy analysis as a paradigm for policy advice, the fragility of public policy analysis organizations, and the emergence of ideologically based policy analysis organizations. The policy sciences have evolved from the rational model and the efficiency emphasis to an increased sensitivity to political factors in policy settings and to softer forms of analysis as legitimate ways of understanding policy issues. The article traces the growth of policy analysis staff in both the legislative and executive branches of the Federal Government. The article closes with a consideration of the implications for policy analysis education of the trends described above.

Commenting on the state of policy analysis is like trying to describe Southern California. Continuing claims and counter claims have been made about the area's demise. Yet, people from many backgrounds continue to flock to it and proclaim native status. Observers agree there is something important there but they warn that its future is potentially imperiled.

This is a selective roadmap to the past and present of policy analysis with some added perspectives on its future.⁽¹⁾ Three themes are developed in the discussion. One is the durability of policy analysis as a paradigm for policy advice. The second is that, despite this durability, government policy analysis organizations are fragile entities. The third is the challenge to policy analysis brought about by ideologically oriented policy movements. Rather than drawing a tight boundary around policy analysis, this discussion defines the field as those activities which are undertaken, ostensibly at least, in support of decision making about prospective actions for addressing public problems. The key distinguishing points are that the activities—whether labeled policy analysis, policy research, policy design, implementation analysis, program analysis, regulatory analysis, or something else—are: (1) decision oriented, (2) problem driven, and (3) forward 10oking.⁽²⁾ Specifically excluded from this categorization are both retrospective evaluations and traditional academic research. As the diverse set of labels listed above suggests, policy analysis presently comes in many forms and is produced in a variety of institutional settings.     

Privatization in developing countries: ideal and reality

In both developed and developing countries, governments finance, produce, and distribute various goods and services. In recent years, the range of goods provided by government has extended widely, covering many goods which do not meet the purist's definition of “public” goods. As the size of the public sector has increased steadily there has been a growing concern about the effectiveness of the public sector's performance as producer. Critics of this rapid growth argue that the public provision of certain goods is inefficient and have proposed that the private sector replace many current public sector activities, that is, that services be privatized. Since Ronald Reagan took office greater privatization efforts have been pursued in the United States. Paralleling this trend has been a strong endorsement by international and bilateral donor agencies for heavier reliance on the private sector in developing countries.

However, the political, institutional, and economic environments of developing nations are markedly different from those of developed countries. It is not clear that the theories and empirical evidence purported to justify privatization in developed countries are applicable to developing countries.

In this paper we present a study of privatization using the case of Honduras. We examine the policy shift from “direct administration” to “contracting out” for three construction activities: urban upgrading for housing projects, rural primary schools, and rural roads. The purpose of our study is threefold. First, we test key hypotheses pertaining to the effectiveness of privatization, focusing on three aspects: cost, time, and quality. Second, we identify major factors which affect the performance of this privatization approach. Third, we document the impact of privatization as it influences the political and institutional settings of Honduras. Our main finding is that contracting out in Honduras has not led to the common expectations of its proponents because of institutional barriers and limited competitiveness in the market. These findings suggest that privatization can not produce goods and services efficiently without substantial reform in the market and regulatory procedures. Policy makers also need to consider carefully multiple objectives at the national level in making decisions about privatization.     

NGOs as Incubator of Participative Democracy in South Korea: Political,Voluntary, and Policy Participation

Abstract

This article is designed to examine the roles of Non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) in South Korea as an incubator of participative democracy and to review the evolution of their relationship with governments. The study is comprised of four parts. First, related literature on NGOs will be examined from three different perspectives: state‐civil society perspective, voluntary social service perspective, and policy perspective. Second, this essay will survey emerging roles of NGOs in promoting organized citizen participation in the three areas: political participation, voluntary social service participation, and policy participation. Third, recent governments' institutional efforts to support NGOs will be reviewed briefly. Finally, this paper will conclude with the implications for the future of government‐NGOs relationship in policy‐making processes.     

An Analysis of Institutional and Political Factors Affecting State Capital Expenditure

Abstract

This article examines state government spending patterns for capital projects during the late 1970s and early 1980s as a function of some of the institutional arrangements and procedural characteristics of state legislatures. The analysis is informed by the literature on distributive policymaking, which argues that lawmakers seek to send targetable benefits, such as capital projects, to their constituencies in pursuit of personal electoral benefits. Using a pooled, cross‐sectional time‐series approach, the authors find that states with a large number of seats in the lower chambers of their legislatures devoted a somewhat smaller portion of their state budgets to capital projects than did states with smaller lower chambers, ceteris paribus. Contrary to some log‐rolling models, the number of appropriations bills employed by a legislature seems to discourage capital spending, as does membership turnover in the upper chamber. This indicates that the capital budgeting process is not nearly as dominated by the executive branch as is commonly believed.     

Institutional resilience of Taiwan’s semi-presidential system: the integration of the president and premier under party politics

Over the past three decades, the semi-presidentialism has been adopted in most new democracies. It is also the constitutional order in most democracies, which can be divided into three categories: established, post-Leninist, and postcolonial democracies. Semi-presidentialism is a political system with dual executive branches. Moreover, because of these dual executive branches, the constitutional order of semi-presidentialism might be similar to a presidential system if the president is the de facto head of government. It might also be similar to a parliamentary system if the prime minister is the de facto head of government with the support of the parliamentary majority. Taiwan has been considered as a semi-presidential country since 1997. According to Taiwan’s constitutional amendments, its president is directly elected, and the premier (prime minister) and cabinet are responsible to the legislature. Dual executive system in Taiwan has been effective and flexible. I attempt to examine the institutional resilience of Taiwan’s constitutional function, which means that, in properly responding to social movements, its government has continued to function well. In addition, the president has been able to continue serving in office in spite of political crises. A vague constitutional design and a presidentialized party system are two reasons for this.     

Intermunicipal cooperation,public spending and service levels

ABSTRACT

Local governments can increase size in particular policy fields through cooperation with other local governments. This is often thought to improve efficiency, but there is little empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis. We study the case of the Netherlands, which has been a veritable laboratory of intermunicipal cooperation (IMC), using panel data for 2005–2013. We find no evidence that IMC reduces total spending of the average municipality. Indeed, IMC seems to increase spending in small and large municipalities, leaving spending in mid-sized municipalities unaffected. In one specific field, tax collection, spending may be reduced through IMC. Spending in this field is low, which may explain why total spending is unaffected. Instead of lowering spending, municipalities may have used possible cost savings as a result of IMC to improve public service levels. We do not find evidence substantiating this hypothesis, however.     

Institutional design and legislative conflict: The Russian Supreme Soviet-a well-oiled machine, out of control

This article develops a comparative institutional framework for evaluating the new legislatures of the former Soviet Union, and demonstrates that the conventional wisdom about the Russian Federation Supreme Soviet is wrong. It was not a totalitarian, Soviet institution whose omnipotent and malevolent Chair singlehandedly dominated policy outputs and controlled the membership. Rather, the Supreme Soviet's non-partisan, committee-centered design enabled the committees to dominate the legislative process and to virtually exclude conflict, even on such objectively contentious legislative issues as the annual budget. However, the non-partisan design denied the legislature the mechanisms for controlling the Chair on non-legislative, political issues, particularly in relations with the executive branch. On legislative issues, the Supreme Soviet was a well-oiled machine, but on political issues it was out of control, thus leading to the legislature's demise. This article demonstrates the utility of an institutional framework for comparing post-communist legislatures, and the necessity of disaggregating legislative and political issues when evaluating legislative performance.     

Merging county administrations – cross-national evidence of fiscal and political effects

ABSTRACT

While many central governments amalgamate municipalities, mergers of larger county administrations are rare and hardly explored. In this article, we assess both fiscal and political effects of county mergers in two different institutional settings: counties act autonomously as upper-level local governments (Germany), or counties being decentralised branches of the state government (Austria). We apply difference-in-differences estimations to county merger reforms in each country. In both cases, some counties were amalgamated while others remain untouched. Austrian counties (Bezirke) and German counties (Landkreise) widely differ in terms of autonomy and institutions, but our results are strikingly similar. In both cases, we neither find evidence for cost savings nor for staff reductions. Instead, voter turnout consistently decreases in merged counties, and right-wing populists seem to gain additional support. We conclude that political costs clearly outweigh fiscal null benefits of county merger reforms – independent of the underlying institutional setting.     

Controlling “Uncontrollable” Agency‐Influenced Spending in the United States

Abstract

The present study is a comparative investigation of implicit and explicit parameters that exist to constrain agency actors from the rational pursuit of increasing agency‐influenced spending over time. The underlying assumption is that agencies that are relatively free from the constraint of budget structure and process will exhibit higher levels of related proportional spending. In particular, state mandatory spending is investigated through application of the tenets of institutional theory to the growth and expansion of Medicaid, which has been charged with inducing “uncontrollable” spending. Findings from a panel data analysis of states indicate that beyond the often‐cited drivers of Medicaid costs, states that are less restrictive in terms of budget rules exhibit higher proportional levels of Medicaid spending. The primary implication of the study is that a vigorous inquiry into the drivers of state expenditures must consider the institutional constraints that hinder programmatic growth and spending influenced by agencies implementing policy.     

SEEKING TALENT AT THE VOTING BOOTH: ELECTIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF CAMPAIGNING IN THE LATE QING AND EARLY REPUBLIC

Abstract

Early twentieth-century Chinese governments experimented with competitive elections for legislative office. In the hundred years since these elections, historians and others have argued over whether they are best understood as “failures” for producing weak, easily manipulated government or as “successes” that heralded the potential for Chinese democracy. An examination of print media discourse from the time of these elections, however, reveals a profound discomfort with voting that was independent of, and prior to, the seating of any elected government. In particular, the repeated condemnation of election “campaigning” pointed to a series of philosophical and intellectual problems presented by elections as a form of selection. By analyzing complaints about “campaigning” as a discourse with a particular resonance within the political culture of the late Qing and early Republic, I push beyond considerations of “success” or “failure” to analyze the tensions between expectations for, and the actuality of, early twentieth-century elections.     

The Effect of New Legislation on the Disclosure of Performance Indicators: The Case of Spanish Local Governments

This article analyzes the effect of new accounting legislation on the disclosure of performance indicators in the financial statements of Spanish local governments. Based on agency and institutional theories, the article also assesses whether the disclosure of performance indicators is used to make the monitoring of local government performance easier for stakeholders or merely to project an image of good management. The results show that the enactment of new legislation has only led to a partial implementation, most local governments disclosing financial and budgetary indicators but very few providing indicators related to the performance of public services. The institutional theory (symbolic value) seems to be the rationale that best explains this pattern of disclosure.     

Executive-legislative competition in agenda setting: an analysis of longitudinal changes in South Korea

The historical patterns of executive dominance in national policymaking have undergone a rapid transformation in South Korea. In the context of an emerging institutional rivalry between the executive and legislative branches in forming national policies, this study examines a causal nexus among the agenda power parity, jurisdictional complexity, and the scope and diversity of the national agenda space. A series of data analyses on various original measures of the key variables reveal that the two dimensions of the national agenda space have been reshaped via different causal processes. While the rise of the legislative power in agenda setting and the complexity of legislative jurisdictions tend to increase the scope of the national agenda space, democratic transition subsumes the influence of all other factors in increasing the diversity of the national agenda space.     

Interlocal collaboration and local climate protection

ABSTRACT

The influences of state government have been curiously absent from most studies of collaboration among cities. Extant research on city collaboration which promotes on climate and environmental sustainability issues focuses primarily on local-level institutions, politics, and processes. Thus, the role of states to constrain or facilitate collaboration among local governments needs to be more fully accounted for. Building on transaction cost and institutional collective action theory and drawing on data from a national survey of US cities, we investigate the influences of city-level factors together with the hierarchical effects of state rules and policies on the extent to which mechanisms for interlocal collaboration are employed in pursuing climate protection and renewable energy development goals. The results confirm predictions that multilevel intergovernmental forces influence the extent to which cities collaborate. These results have both theoretical and practical implications for understanding interlocal collaborations.     

The Fiscal Effects of Aid in Ethiopia: Evidence from CVAR Applications

ABSTRACT

This article explores the fiscal effects of aid in Ethiopia using the Cointegrated Vector Auto-Regressive (CVAR) methodology to model complex long-run and short-run dynamics. We use national data for 1961–2010, including a measure of aid capturing flows through the budget as measured by the recipient. The data suggests three main conclusions on the long-run equilibrium. First, government long-term spending plans are based on domestic sources, treating aid as an additional source of revenue. Second, both grants and loans are positively related to tax revenue. Third, aid is positively associated with spending, with a particularly strong relation between capital expenditure and grants. Overall, our results show that aid in Ethiopia had beneficial fiscal effects.     

Administrators and professionals in local government

This article evaluates the shift to an executive and scrutiny model in local government by assessing the changes at Devon County Council. Interviews were used to evaluate support for the changes and identify the key issues and problems. Most members had little enthusiasm for the reforms, support for the changes was dependent on the loyalty of Liberal Democrat backbenchers towards the leadership and central government's legislative agenda. The analysis revealed substantial problems with the operation of the reformed structure and suggested that the changes might fail to deliver the benefits expected by central government.