Exploring How Institutional Arrangements Shape Stakeholder Influence on Policy Decisions: A Comparative Analysis in the Energy Sector

In recent years, there has been an expansion of efforts to include stakeholders in administrative policy making. Despite significant potential to improve policy decisions, empirical evidence suggests that not all participatory processes provide meaningful opportunities for stakeholders to shape policy and may even give the most powerful stakeholder groups disproportionate influence over policy decisions. This article argues that the institutional arrangements for stakeholder engagement—the rules and norms that determine which stakeholders can participate and how—affect stakeholders’ influence on policy decisions. This article uses state energy efficiency policy making as a context in which to compare how different institutional arrangements shape the ways in which stakeholders engage in and influence the policy process across two states, Connecticut and Maryland. Findings highlight that institutional arrangements can be used to increase participation, mitigate undue influence of industrial stakeholders, and increase the influence of public interest stakeholder organizations.     

How and Why Bureaucrats Control their Governance Structure

This article assumes that bureaucrats, like other actors, follow their interests. However, it is also recognized that bureaucrats in political environments face a multilevel game situation with unstable property rights, where priorities between institutional position and more pecuniary goods, e.g. budget maximization, especially in reform situations have to be made. Thus, bureaucrats realize that in order to obtain the latter, the precondition is a secured institutional position and that this position has to be obtained through a bargaining process involving transaction costs, externally due to negotiations with the political principals, and internally through union organization. Empirically, the phenomenon it examined in the case of the Danish day care system which went through a reform period during the late eighties and early nineties. It suggests that although demand for day care rose significantly during this period, day care workers (and their unions) worked for – and succeeded in – securing their institutional position.     

How Structural Variations in Collaborative Governance Networks Influence Advocacy Involvement and Outcomes

Collaborative governance is intended to solve complex problems and promote democratic outcomes by connecting ground‐level stakeholders with government. In order for these goals to be met, however, participants must have meaningful influence and opportunities for voice. Using national survey data from Continuums of Care (CoCs) mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, this article investigates what structural characteristics of collaborative governance networks are related to promoting stakeholder inclusion and voice through policy advocacy involvement. Specifically, it investigates which network characteristics are associated with (1) the frequency of advocacy involvement by the network, (2) providers' engagement in and influence over that advocacy, and (3) the CoC having stronger relationships with policy makers. Findings show significant relationships between greater network capacity and network advocacy, and between network governance structure and provider engagement and influence in that advocacy. Networks have stronger relationships with policy makers when providers are more engaged, providers have more influence, network capacity is higher, and direct advocacy tactics are used.     

政策性与公益性:中部农村的双层治理结构与逻辑

村组两级组织分别建立在熟人社会-半熟人社会的社会基础之上,承担着政策性和公益性两种不同的治理功能。村级组织遵循现代公共规则和生活逻辑,通过内化自己人和精英吸纳与角色规约机制实现治理;而村民小组主要遵循生活逻辑,通过内化自己人的机制实施治理。     

Balancing Regionalism and Localism: How Institutions and Incentives Shape American Transportation Policy

Public policy decisions are increasingly made by regional governance efforts that involve diverse decision makers from multiple government units within a geographic region. These decision-making bodies face competing pressures to represent regional and local interests. We study how decision makers balance preferences for regionalism and localism within metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), the policymaking entities that are responsible for implementing U.S. federal surface transportation policy at the regional level. Our model of regional governance relates variation in regional policy outcomes to the incentives of MPO decision makers and the institutional environments in which they interact. Analyzing data from a sample of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, we find that MPOs dominated by elected officials produce more locally focused policies, holding other factors constant, while MPOs dominated by nonelected public managers produce more regionally oriented policies. Contextual factors, as well as the regional governance institutions themselves, further shape the balance between regionalism and localism.     

The Institutionalization of Private Governance: How Business and Nonprofit Organizations Agree on Transnational Rules

This article assesses the recent trend of cooperation among antagonistic private actors that results in the creation and implementation of issue-specific transnational norms and rules and the subsequent shift from public to private forms of governance. Many political scientists agree that authority also exists outside of formal political structures. Private actors increasingly begin to make their own rules and standards that acquire authority beyond the international system. This observation is often referred to as private transnational governance as opposed to public or international governance. Although the concept of private governance gains prominence in academic debates, it is not clear how private governance on the global scale is constructed and maintained or what specific or general conditions are necessary for private governance to emerge. Based on the review of common theoretical propositions, this article develops an integrated model along which the necessary conditions for the emergence of private governance can be assessed and understood. As most research has hitherto focused on institutionalized cooperation between business actors (self-regulation), this article takes a closer look at those transnational systems of rule that result out of the enhanced cooperation between profit and nonprofit actors (coregulation).     

Caucuses in Collaborative Governance: Modeling the Effects of Structure,Power, and Problem Complexity

ABSTRACT

This article explores societal culture as an antecedent of public service motivation. Culture can be a major factor in developing an institution-based theory of public service motivation. In the field of organization theory, culture is considered a fundamental factor for explaining organization behavior. But our review of the literature reveals that culture has not been fully integrated into public service motivation theory or carefully investigated in this research stream. This study starts to fill this gap in the literature by using institutionalism and social-identity theory to predict how the sub-national Germanic and Latin cultures of Switzerland, which are measured through the mother tongues of public employees and the regional locations of public offices, affect their levels of public service motivation. Our analysis centers on two large data sets of federal and municipal employees, and produces evidence that culture has a consistent impact on public service motivation. The results show that Swiss German public employees have a significantly higher level of public service motivation on the whole, while Swiss French public employees have a significantly lower level overall. Implications for theory development and future research are discussed.     

Policy Networks, Policy Communities and the Problems of Governance

This article reviews and evaluates the literature on policy networks and policy communities that has emerged in the comparative public policy field. It argues that these concepts are important innovations because they suggest a renewed attempt to be both encompassing and discriminating in describing the policy process: encompassing because they refer to actors and relationships in the policy process that take us beyond political-bureaucratic relationships; discriminating because they suggest the presence of many communities and different types of networks. Yet if the concepts are going to continue to make a contribution, some problems must be resolved. The article suggests three that are particularly important: network and community concepts encounter obstacles in incorporating the influence of ma-cropolitical institutions and the power of political discourse; they have some difficulty in accommodating the internationalization of many policy domains; they have not addressed well the issues of policy innovation and policy change.     

政策能力与国家公共治理

最近二三十年以来,由于市场经济放任模式一再出现危机以及失灵现象,国家公共政策能力问题摆到了政府和学者们的面前。政策能力成为当前各国政府关注的热点,也成为学术研究的重点。然而。政策能力并不是孤立的’它与国家能力、行政能力之间存在着内在的关联性。它们之间既存在上下结构关系,又存在着相互的联动关系。这三个方面的能力共同构成了所谓的公共治理能力。不同国家对政策能力自然具有各自的评价标准,更应具有形成这方面能力的支持系统。论文对以上这些复杂的关系做一尝试性的梳理。     

Structure and Process in Federal and Consociational Arrangements

Daniel J. Elazar uses the concepts of structure and processto distinguish between federal and consociational arrangements.While the distinction is appropriate and useful, it does havelimitations, and in some respects may be slightly misleading.It is argued here that under certain circumstances, politicalstructures can play an important role in defining or promotingcon-sociational arrangements, even if such structures were originallythe result of social forces. An additional point made is thatin both federations and consociations, the relationship betweenstructure and process is essentially reciprocal. It is suggestedthat more attention be paid to the differences in the kindsof structures found in the two forms of governance and, in turn,how they might be linked to differences in process. At thisstage, it appears that consociations are much more confederalin form, which has certain consequences for the manner in whichconflict is both structured and resolved.     

The Science–Policy Nexus in Collaborative Governance: Use of Science in Ecosystem Recovery Planning

Across many social–ecological systems, policy makers and scholars increasingly call for science to inform policy. The science–policy interface becomes especially complex as collaborative approaches include multiple stakeholders working together across jurisdictions. Unfortunately little is known about how much and how science is used in collaborative governance for social–ecological systems. This exploratory study examines instrumental, conceptual, and symbolic use of science in a science‐rich collaborative planning case in the Puget Sound, USA. It also examines the influence of science, relative to other factors, in collaborative planning, and what factors affect it. Results from a survey and document analysis indicate the prevalence of conceptual use of science, with relatively little symbolic use. Some factors promoting conceptual and instrumental use discourage symbolic use. Overall, while science is seen as influential in this science‐rich context, its influence is balanced by local stakeholder preferences and contextual information.     

以公共价值为基础的政府绩效治理——源起、架构与研究问题

政府绩效管理兴起二十多年来,已由西方国家应对财政和信任危机、提高行政效率的工具拓展为各国政府改革和创新的重要内容,新公共管理的实践价值和理论优势在其中都得到了充分体现。但其理论缺陷和实践中的困惑,特别是在公共价值方面的冲突使学术界的探索从未停止过。本文通过对中国、美国、日本等国的实践案例考察,从制度变迁和公共行政学术史两个层面的质性研究,提出了以公共价值为基础的政府绩效治理理论体系框架。文章首先从"公共性"、"合作生产"和"可持续"三个方面对新公共管理背景下的政府绩效管理进行了反思,认为公共价值对政府绩效合法性具有本质的规定性。其次,初步论证了以公共价值为基础的政府绩效治理的两个基本命题——政府绩效是一种社会建构、产出即绩效;认为只有来源于社会的政府绩效才能获得合法性基础,也只有根植于社会的政府绩效才能产生其可持续提升的需要,这是政府绩效管理的根本动力;而在政府绩效价值建构基础上的科学管理,才能保证政府产出与社会需求的高度一致,充分体现科学管理的价值。再次,从这两个基本命题出发,以价值管理和管理科学理论为基础,构建起了以公共价值为基础的政府绩效治理模型,并对模型中政府绩效的价值建构、组织管理和协同领导系统等主要内容进行了阐述。最后,从模型如何"落地"、政府绩效管理的价值分析和研究拓展等方面提出了未来的研究方向。     

Knowledge for Governance,Governance of Knowledge: Inclusive Knowledge Management in Collaborative Governance Processes

ABSTRACT

Different ways of knowing (WOKs) present in governance processes easily give rise to controversies and conflicts and forestall collective action. To resolve these conflicts it is necessary to understand what constitutes a WOK and how we can organize inclusion through collaborative governance. This paper argues that WOKs contain different knowledge elements: they contain different bodies of factual knowledge, formulate specific knowledge questions, and prefer different methods and knowledge institutes. WOKs also encompass different frames, interpretations, or normative perceptions of reality. And finally, different WOKs make use of different sources and types of organizing capacity.

Realizing successful collaborative governance processes means organizing inclusion of these different components of knowledge. This paper investigates the implications of this knowledge diversity for realizing collaborative governance processes and the challenges for inclusive knowledge management—through an in-depth case study of a collaborative governance process between the Netherlands and Flanders.

We conclude that realizing inclusion between various WOKs and their knowledge components contributes to the overall success of a collaborative governance process. However, managing inclusive knowledge is as much a matter of conscious strategies as it is the result of an emergent interaction process between stakeholders, experts, and officials within various WOKs. Furthermore, although knowledge inclusion facilitates successful negotiation between stakeholders, it doesn't guarantee a successful outcome of these negotiations.     

How Politics Shapes the Growth of Rules

This article examines the impact of politics on governmental rule production. Traditionally, explanations of rule dynamics have focused on nonpolitical factors such as the self‐evolvement of rules, environmental factors, and decision maker attributes. This article develops a set of hypotheses about when, why, and how political factors shape changes in the stock of rules. Furthermore, we test these hypotheses on a unique, new data set based on all Danish primary legislation and administrative rules from 1989 to 2011 categorized into 20 different policy domains. The analysis shows that the traditional Weberian “rules breed rules” explanations must be supplemented with political explanations that take party ideology and changes in the political agenda into account. Moreover, the effect of political factors is indistinguishable across changes in primary laws and changes in administrative rules, a result that challenges the depiction of the latter rule‐making process as more or less disconnected from the political domain.     

Collaborative Behavior and the Performance of Government Agencies

ABSTRACT

While collaboration among individuals, work groups, and organizations is central for understanding the performance of public agencies, most studies have focused on collaboration between organizations or sectors. We develop a model that focuses on two types of collaborative behavior: between persons (both horizontal and vertical) and between work units. We empirically test our hypotheses using data on work collaboration and perceptions of public agency performance from the United States federal government. We introduce a method for estimating the impact of different types of collaborative behavior that also accounts for nonlinear effects and a dependent variable that takes ordered values. We find that intra-organizational collaborative behavior has a large impact on organizational performance and that horizontal collaborative behavior between workers has the greatest impact among the specific types.