Emerging Challenges to the Public Capacity in the Era of Evolving Public Administration: Toward Collaborative Public Management

New paradigms of public administration have been introduced in government in order to cure administrative ills around the world. Various trajectories of public sector reforms have been actively introduced in many countries and the benefit of shifting to new paradigms of public administration has been well documented. However, the cost or the consequence of public sector reforms remains understudied. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to deal with the consequences of the paradigm change of public administration and government reform because the author sees that the public capacity has declined or at least not improved in recent years while a wide range of innovations have been carried out by many governments under the New Public Management and governance perspectives. This article first looks at the evolution of public administration and its implication, followed by a discussion on government reform and its unintended consequences, and governance change in South Korea. Then various issues on new challenges such as the lack of the public capacity, and new tasks such as capacity building and calls for curriculum development, will be elaborated, followed by conclusions.     

Institutional and management building in sub-saharan africa: the role of training

In this essay, I intend to argue that in Mexico public administration as a discipline has not achieved the necessary theoretical cohesion, because rather than understanding and explaining the state, the government and the administrative structure, it has devoted itself to justifying the proposals made from the heights of power. The challenge facing public administration in countries such as Mexico is that of seeking a more specific space for study and creation. I believe this space should result from a deep analysis of the institutional capabilities that must be generated, and from the design and implementation of public, non-governmental policies, with the participation of different, so to make real the transit to democracy. From a brief review of some decisions derived from the political project of the Salinas Administration, I argue that public administration's concerns are absorbed by the issues that are set over them from the summit of power, thereby impeding the necessary distance that scientific proposals should take. This paper includes, therefore, a brief analysis of the issues that, since the governmental relay in December of 1988, have hold the attention of Mexican scholars in this field. The aim is to show that public administration's theoretic-methodological development cannot be solid and long-term as long as public administration studies are forced to justify or do justify the governmental proposals. Finding in public administration a true social science, with the complete theoretic structure social sciences must have, is a concern shared in many academic fields around the world. However, the problem facing the discipline in Mexico might be set forth as that of the “object” of public administration, which makes the concern for the requirement of a scientific character secondary. This does not hide public administration's limitations and conditioning factors, even as a not “heavily” scientific discipline.     

Property rights and the challenge of the technological modernization of the mexican state

This article focuses on the technological challenges arising from two broader challenges of the Mexican state: growth and equity. In order to face the first one, Mexico needs safer and more comprehensive property rights, especially given the changing array of goods characteristic of contemporary economies. Mexico also needs to take into account the new context of a global economy, subject to rapid changes and highly dependent on information flows. Securing property rights and growing within a global economy call for the technological modernization of the Mexican state. The second challenge, equity, also requires of such modernization: nowadays policy-making in areas such as education, health, etc. requires complex analytical capacities and extensive data bases. That is more the case when the Mexican state needs to act through incentives and market signals instead of through the traditional mechanisms of command and control.     

The mexican financial crisis

In the period 1990-93 Mexico's economy experienced expansion and structural change. This was associated with economic opening, market deregulation, and large inflows of foreign capital. Mexico had dealt with the external debt problem through a Brady debt restructuring. This restructuring lowered the financial requirements of the public sector, improved market expectations, and set the stage for a decline in domestic interest rates.

In the early 1990s Mexico attracted fully one-fifth of all capital flows directed into developing countries. These inflows more than financed the current account deficit, and permitted Mexico to expand its official reserve holdings. The portfolio capital inflow bolstered the stock market, which appreciated in value. Mexico's entry into NAFTA provided another reason to be optimistic concerning economic and business prospects.

However, Mexico's external payments position was falling deeper into deficit. By mid-1994 it was possible to observe that the current account in Mexico's balance of payments had shifted further into deficit, and that the high unsustainable level of capital inflow was diminishing. Political violence and assassinations in 1994 caused foreign investors to look more carefully at investment prospects, and steadily rising interest rates in the United States created incentives favoring dollar rather than peso financial instruments. As peso interest rates began to rise, the Mexican government and commercial banks turned to dollar-indexed or outright dollar borrowing. By December 1994 this increased dollar liability position together with a runoff in foreign exchange reserves left Mexico in a difficult liquidity position. The December 20, 1994 devaluation failed to renew confidence in the viability of Mexico's payments position, and two days later the peso was floated. In the early weeks of 1995 a massive Mexican financial assistance package was provided by the United States, the International Monetary Fund, and others.

An analysis of the components of Mexico's GDP and balance of payments suggests that the financial disequilibrium was clearly evident by mid- 1994. Over the period 1993-94 domestic absorption had increased beyond the ability of the economy to sustain it. Parallel to this, the current account deficit had increased beyond the ability of foreign exchange resources to support this deficit. Failure by the government and central bank to take action in the third quarter of 1994 resulted in a runoff of foreign exchange reserves, speculative trading in the financial markets, growing skepticism concerning the viability of existing arrangements. Fiscal and monetary tightening early in 1995 produced an improved financial equilibrium, suggesting that similar action at mid-1994 might have avoided the near debt crisis that manifested itself in December 1994 jand the following weeks.     

Public administrators and policy legitimization: Policy analysis,politics and power

This article discusses the factors public administration faculty should incorporate into the curriculum in order to equip students to engage in the policy legitimization process. In order to produce leaders, public administration programs should emphasize the nature of the political system, an understanding of the legitimacy of subgovernments, the importance of coalition building and the psychological factors associated with policy choices.

Integration of policy analysis into the public administration curriculum requires that students be equipped with an in-depth understanding of both the political environment and the political process. This is true because public administrators are deeply involved in the stages of policy development, adoption, and implementation; activities which reach beyond the narrow confines of program management and into the realm of politics. Consequently, public administrators serve in a variety of capacities: as policy advocates, program champions, or as defenders of client interests. It is in these roles that public administrators move into the political arena. Policy analysis activities provide the discipline with the opportunity to move beyond an emphasis on a narrow concern with simply “managing” government and into the realm of policy choice, policy advocacy, political power and the exercise of leadership.

Public administration as a discipline, and teaching faculty in particular, face the challenge of increasing the relevance of the master's degree to policy leadership. Astrid Merget, past president of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, expressed this need for increased emphasis on policy leadership training quite eloquently in 1991:

“Our vision of the holder of a master's degree in our field is that of a leader, not merely a manager or an analyst. But we have not been marketing that vision.”⁽¹⁾

Merget attributes partial responsibility for the low public esteem of government service to the attitudes, teaching, and research activities of public administration faculty who have failed to link the “lofty” activities of government (environmental protection, health care, the promotion of citizen equality) with public administration. Accordingly, the academic standard of “neutrality” governing teaching and research acts as an obstacle to teaching the fundamentals of the goals of public policy. This professional commitment to neutrality places an emphasis on administrative efficiency at the expense of policy advocacy. The need, according to Merget, is to reestablish the linkage between policy formulation and policy management. Such a teaching strategy will enhance the purposefulness of public administration as a career. Failure to do so will relegate public administration programs to the continued production of governmental managers, not administrative leaders.

The integration of policy analysis into the public administration curriculum affords the discipline with the opportunity to focus on policy leadership and escape the limitation associated with an emphasis on program management. Teaching policy analysis skills cannot, and should not, be divorced from the study of politics and the exercise of political power. This is true because politics involves the struggle over the allocation of resources, and public policy is a manifestation of the outcome of that political struggle. Public policy choices reflect, to some degree, the political power of the “winners” and the relative lack of power by “losers.” The study of public policy involves the study of conflict and the exercise of power.

Teaching public administration students about the exercise of power cannot be limited to a discussion of partisan political activities. Public administrators serve in an environment steeped in the exercise of partisan and bureaucratic power.⁽²⁾ It is practitioners of public administration who formulate, modify and implement public policy choices. Such bureaucratic activity is appropriate, provided that it is legitimated by the political system. Legitimacy can be provided to public administrators only by political institutions through the political process.

Teaching public administration students about policy analysis and policy advocacy necessitates an understanding of the complexities associated with the concepts of policy legitimacy and policy legitimization.     

Mexico and Argentina: Economic reform and technocratic decision making

This article examines the Mexican and Argentine cases of market reform and argues that despite important differences in regime type and in recent economic and political trajectories, the decision-making process in the two countries came to display important common features. In both cases, economic crises and debt negotiations played key roles in propelling technocratic reformers into positions of policy predominance; both exhibited exclusionary technocratic decision-making styles in which small technocratic elites insulated themselves from both extra and intra state pressures. While policy isolation was no doubt necessary for the successful implementation of market reforms, this style may be counter-productive to political stability over the long term. Judith Teichman is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her articles have appeared in such journals asLatin American Research Review, Latin American Perspectives, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, andThe Canadian Journal of Political Science and in edited volumes. She is the author ofPolicymaking in Mexico: From Boom to Crisis andPrivatization and Political Change in Mexico and is currently carrying out a comparative study of the structural adjustment policy process in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile.     

Between Slow and Comprehensive Reformers: Comparing Government’s Funding Policies of Universities in Three European Countries

This article analyzes implications of political–administrative systems for public reforms in funding of higher education. A national comparison of government funding policies of universities in France, Norway, and England since the 1980s serves as the basis for analysis. The author challenges the common classification of political–administrative regimes where frequently early and comprehensive reformers become the benchmark of what characterizes a reform. The author shows how specific path-dependent mechanisms can be added to explain processes of change in countries associated with opportunities to prevent change (France), but also for countries that have been linked to comprehensive reform (England) as well as incremental reform (Norway).     

The public board as public administration (and citizens as administrative participants)

Service on public boards is described in a normative model of public administration. Further, public boards, such as the historic architectural review boards discussed here, provide unique oppportunities for students of government and public administration. The public board serves an important balance within the local government. Public boards provide expertise not easily purchased by government; public boards provide an important interface for citizens to their elected government and their career public administration; and public boards provide an important opportunity for citizens to involve themselves with their government. This citizen as administrative participant is not typically schooled in government or in public administration, but an opportunity exists for aggressive public administration programs.     

Agency conflict and the signalling snafu in the mexican peso crisis of 1994

In this paper I explore the role of signalling in the agency conflict that pits national governments against international lenders in the Mexican peso crisis of 1994. (The term international lenders includes domestic residents with the capacity to invest abroad.) I give evidence for the conventional conclusion that Mexico's underlying economic and financial situation did not warrant the humiliating treatment inflicted on it by the international financial markets. The humiliating treatment, however, was not a mindless overreaction to suddenly perceived changes in the country's political fragility. On the contrary, I show that the country's evolving political fiagility was recognized and compensated for as far back as 1991. It was rather the result of a rational reevaluation of the costs of the agency conflict that is inherent in the relationship between national governments and international lenders and the power of national governments through moratoriums, repudiation, or default to subordinate the claims of international lenders to those of domestic agents. I model the conflict as a government held option to default and introduce signalling by assuming that the Mexican government had monopolistic information on the economy's true situation. I then give evidence that the agency costs were reevaluated when it became clear that the Mexican government had been sending false signals to the international investment community and that these false signals had made it possible for Mexico to borrow close to or beyond the point where default was the optimal financial strategy.     

Decentralization or deconcentration: struggle for political power in poland (1)

This paper argues that the 1989 commitment to political and administrative decentralization has weakened over five years. As the point that it has become a rhetorical formula voiced by the governing political leadership when convenient, but in reality never realized. Two sets of factors contributed to such a state of affairs: (1) the inability of the center to reform itself, and (2) center's increasing commitment to regain the power lost over the last few years.

The first part of the paper lays a theoretical framework for analysis of pressures and barriers to decentralize. Second, examines the process of implementing in Poland, of local government and public administration reform over the 1989-1995 period. Finally, the third analyzes in detail the three most significant forces that central states utilized to gain control: (1) political; (2) power resources and (3) fiscal. It concludes by asserting that beyond 1990, while much of the program has been achieved in designing legislative and territorial aspects of the public administration and local governments reform, what was lacking was the political commitment to implement both.     

Public administration and public policy: old perspectives,new directions

Public administration has rather studiously avoided serious consideration of its ties to public policy throughout most of this century. The politics/administration dichotomy leaves a lasting legacy. Policy has a central place in the ongoing effort to explain what public administration is and how it functions. Policy defines the purpose of agencies, stipulates much of the detail about their organization, provides authority and legitimacy, and makes them important -- probably the most important--instruments of policy effectuation and evaluation. Public administration has traditionally displayed an interest in management; it has been studied, taught, and practiced as method, “how to.” This instrumentalist orientation has addressed successively different perspectives, all subsumed within the rubric of public administration. The first of these emphasized administrative reform, followed by an interest in scientific management. These left a legacy that largely treated administration as an end in itself, divorced from matters of policy. Further developments during the depression and post-war years gave prominence to human relations and decisionmaking. These newer orientations emphasized public administration's non-involvement with policy, although decisionmaking proved less inward-oriented and contributed some methodological insights for better understanding policy's ties to public administration. Decisionmaking's preoccupation with unifunctional organizations accountable to a single power center has proved a formidable obstacle to empirical investigations of policy/administration ties, however. This dilemma calls for new perspectives from which to study these ties; one promising perspective is the examination of administrative involvement in successive stages of the policy process.     

After pension reform: Navigating the “Third Rail” in China

Studies of pension reform in developing and transition economies tend to take for granted the capacity of states to implement ambitious and complicated new schemes for the provision of old-age income to pensioners. This article explains the fragmented, decentralized pattern of pension administration in China as an unintended consequence of pension reform. Policy legacies from the command-economy period, principal-agent problems in the reform period, and the threat of pension protests left urban governments largely in control of pension administration. The central government thus succeeded in its policy goals of pension reform but failed to gain administrative control over pension funds. Mark W. Frazier is assistant professor of political science and the Luce Assistant Professor of East Asian Political Economy at Lawrence University. He is the author ofThe Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace: State, Revolution, and Labor Management (Cambridge University Press, 2002). His current research focuses on how central and local governments in China compete over pension reform. The author gratefully acknowledges helpful comments from Mary E. Gallagher, William Hurst, Dorothy Solinger, Jaeyoun Won, and two anonymous reviewers fromStudies in Comparative International Development. Funds for this research were provided by the Luce Foundation, the University of Louisville, and Lawrence University.     

Generalists and specialists in executive politics: Why ambitious meta‐policies so often fail

This article contributes to the politics of policy‐making in executive government. It introduces the analytical distinction between generalists and specialists as antagonistic players in executive politics and develops the claim that policy specialists are in a structurally advantaged position to succeed in executive politics and to fend off attempts by generalists to influence policy choices through cross‐cutting reform measures. Contrary to traditional textbook public administration, we explain the views of generalists and specialists not through their training but their positions within an organization. We combine established approaches from public policy and organization theory to substantiate this claim and to define the dilemma that generalists face when developing government‐wide reform policies (‘meta‐policies’) as well as strategies to address this problem. The article suggests that the conceptual distinction between generalists and specialists allows for a more precise analysis of the challenges for policy‐making across government organizations than established approaches.     

The challenge of design of intergovernmental relations in economies in transition

The governments of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are at a crucial juncture in their movement from highly centralized command economies to more decentralized market economies. While there is a belief in these countries that decentralization brings greater economic efficiency, the reality is that such a transition is a difficult process. This paper examines what types of administrative reforms are needed for the decentralization process, how far along the countries are with respect to these reforms, and what reforms are missing. As we discuss, many of the necessary administration reforms are missing and we argue that more attention must be paid to these elements for successful decentralization of these governments.

This paper examines the recent experience and reform needs of the key administrative aspects of the design of intergovernmental relations in countries in transition in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union. There is a widespread realization in all of these countries that decentralizing government will help increase efficiency in the public sector just as privatization will improve efficiency in their economies. Decentralization of government operations is also attractive as a way to cement a democratic form of government. Despite the appearances of the existence of an already decentralized system, such as in the case of the Soviet Union, this experiment started in practically all cases with a lack of institutions and experience on how decentralized government operations should be organized.

As different as these countries are, there are many similarities in the reform process they are following in order to decentralize government structure. While the basic components of a decentralized system of government are emerging in many of these countries the structure of government has not fully evolved in a manner that can support such a decentralized system. Often, governments remain structured along a vertical hierarchy: information, budgetary authority, and revenue pass from the central government down to subnational levels of government while little communication or interaction exists at a horizontal level. In general, the assignment of revenue and expenditure has not been clearly defined among the two or three levels of government, central government transfers continue to occur in a relatively ad hoc manner, and the entire budgeting system still rests in many cases on more or less formal system of negotiations and bargaining among the different levels of government. There has been some change in this structure in certain countries. Over the last three years, both Poland and Hungary have legally increased the automony of subnational governments. In 1994 in Russia a new and more transparent system of intergovernmental grants has been established between the federal government and the regions. In 1994 also, Latvia introduced a more transparent formula-driven, transfer formula for the regional and municipal governments.

The focus of this paper is to develop a “blue print” for necessary changes in organization and administration of intergovernmental relations in countries in transition. While many experts have recently been discussing the public finance policy components of this new, evolving relationship among levels of government, less attention has been paid to the structural and administrative challenges and the information design issues that must be met in order to develop and support a system of intergovernmental relations.

The paper is organized as follows: First we review the major responsibilities and their allocation among levels of government, the assignment of revenue sources, and the system of transfers. We then turn to a discussion of the current experience of Eastern European and NIS countries in the context of the structural components of an intergovernmental fiscal system. Next, we analyze the organizational reforms that are necessary for the efficient functioning of a decentralized system of government in the economies in transition. Finally we “rate” the transition economies in relation to their current design of the system of intergovernmental relations and support mechanisms.     

Central Steering And Local Networks: Old-Age Care In Sweden

Recently, some European social scientists have claimed that the old legal-bureau-cratic model of administration has been replaced by a new paradigm in public administration, characterized by a strong emphasis on collaboration in local inter-organizational networks. The proponents of this policy network approach take a clearly voluntaristic view on policy implementation; network actors build consensus in negotiation processes, and the role of central government is restricted to that of goal-setter, facilitator and mediator. Thereby, phenomena like power and steering are overlooked. This paper gives an account of a major Swedish reform in the area of old-age care, whereby the boundaries between regional and local areas of responsibility for care of the elderly were displaced. By using a variety of control methods, central government was able to structure and steer the old-age implementation networks. The consequences of this central steering were different on different administrative levels: for the county councils, the reform has resulted in a specialization for the core areas of primary health care and hospital treatment, whereas the municipalities have had to diversify their areas of activity. Thus, to understand the effects of the reform, implementation networks must be viewed as both hierarchical and horizontal power structures, where national government, from a hierarchically superior position, can affect formally horizontal relations between actors by creating patterns of interdependence. Central government's steering has taken on less direct forms than the traditional ones, but indirect forms of steering can certainly be efficient, especially when several mutually reinforcing control methods are combined.     

E-Government for Lowering Administrative Burden: An Empirical Research on European Rural Businesses

Administrative burden reduction is in the policy agenda in European countries and international organizations. The objectives of this article are to measure administrative burden of rural businesses in three European case studies and to assess the use of semantic electronic government services for its reduction. The main findings are that rural businesses do not perceive the administrative burden significance for entrepreneurship; public administration could implement semantic electronic government services to reduce rural businesses’ administrative burden; and future administrative burden reduction policies should take into account the type and location of businesses to achieve an efficient business environment.     

Introduction

Italy is facing the difficulties and the challenges created by the current worldwide transformation of the economy, of government and civil society by crafting appropriate government policies and actions as well as adjusting organizational structures and procedures. This special issue shows a picture of a country undergoing a profound process of change at all levels of governments and main areas of public policy. The predominant features are the promotion of private enterprise and decentralization, while administrative reforms encourage the formation of a new administrative culture where the traditional centrality of administrative law no longer exists and public administration becomes more open and managerially oriented.     

Scale economies in local public administration

A renewed interest in decentralisation has profoundly affected local public governance around the world. Faced with an increasing number of tasks, Dutch municipalities have recently sought physical centralisation, merging into larger jurisdictions in order to target new policy areas more effectively and cost efficiently. Is such a policy of physical centralisation wise? We study economies of scale in local public administration, and find – given transfer payments from central government and current cooperation between municipalities and after controlling for geographical, demographic and socioeconomic variables – substantial unused scale economies of 17% for the average municipality. Between 2005 and 2014 the optimum size of municipalities increases from around 49,000 to 66,260 inhabitants, pointing at an increased importance of fixed costs relative to variable costs in local public administration.     

Weberian Public Administration Versus New Public Management in Eastern Europe: The Case of Romania

As a recent member of the European Union (EU), Romania aligned its public policies to Westernized models of civil service reform. This article critically analyzes the impact of Human Resource Management (HRM) models as compared to a Weberian Easternized public administration culture, which continues to display strong hierarchical relationships, rather than the “networked” governance favored by some Western European countries.

The focus will be on the development of HRM policies and practices, taking as a set of case studies Romanian central government organizations. The key problem to be addressed is to understand why such organizations remain locked in ineffective systems of personnel administration. Yet, Romania, along with other Eastern European states, has been exposed to international reform movements in public management through policy transfer. The article will look for evidence of New Public Management (NPM)-type practices, in addition to HRM.

Moreover, the countries of Eastern Europe are far from homogeneous, and so an understanding of both the institutional and cultural context is crucial to ascertain the acceptability of NPM. In the case of Romania, this article considers HRM developments in a multi-culturally influenced state, which has also experienced Socialist regimes. However, policy innovations have started to appear, not only as a consequence of the international diffusion of “good practice” and “policy learning, ” but also stemming from the demands of European directives. Thus, the aim of this article will be to assess the role of policy learning in relation to HR reform in the public service.     

Monetary mismanagement and inadvertent democratization in technocratic Mexico

Conclusion The interplay between political and economic reform in Mexico has atken a path not fully predicted by neomodernization theorists or their critics. The Mexican events during these last few years demostrate that economic growth and market reform are not necessarily correlated neatly with the advance of democratic practices, During the Salinas and Zadillo administartions, political opening was not the “ultimate consequence of economic opening” as two analysts of Mexican economics and politics argued several years ago.⁵⁶ It was not the case that an expansion of individual initiative and greater economic choice accompanying market opening led to the accelaration of democratic reforms in Mexico. Rather, limited democratic reforms were offered as the price of public asquiescence to the economic pain associated with Mexico’s recent cycle of economic crisis and reform. The gradual expansion of democracy in Mexico was not the consequence of market reforms but instead was the mechanism enabled the implementation of these reforms. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Southern Methodist University conference on the Economic and Political Challenges of Market Reform in Latin America, Dallas, TX, October 1997 and the XXI International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Chicago, IL, 24–26 September 1998. The author would like to thank the participants of the SMU conference and Philip Oxhom for their comments.