Joined-Up Government in The Netherlands: Experiences with Program Ministries

Over the last 15 years there have been many experiments with joined-up (also known as whole of) government practices, aimed at horizontal coordination to overcome the fragmentation of vertical governmental structures due to departmentalism and New Public Management. These practices were initiated to address wicked problems and to better interact with society at large. Now that there are signs that the rhetoric of joined-up government is winding down and many joined-up government developments are being dismantled, it is time to evaluate this approach. This is especially appropriate as some suggest that the overall impact of these developments may be relatively small, despite (overly) optimistic claims made in the past. In this article we take experiences with joined-up government in the Netherlands as the departing point for a critical discussion of this approach. By comparing the Dutch experiences with those in other countries, we will draw a picture of the challenges and dilemmas of horizontal coordination in the vertical world of government.     

The Unintended Consequences of Structural Change: When Formal and Informal Institutions Collide in Efforts to Address Wicked Problems

Significant restructuring of bureaucracies has occurred to facilitate joined-up working. This article draws on new institutionalism to explore the rationale behind the use of structural change for the promotion of joined-up working. It argues that a strong institutionalized myth has emerged which has created isomorphic pressures in the public sector to instigate structural changes in the name of vertical integration. These combine with informal institutions in ways that can be both productive and unproductive, highlighting the need to find a balance between formal institutional change and informal institutionalized practices, which often go unacknowledged as a powerful influence on policy.     

Strategic Commissioning in the UK: Service Improvement Cycle or Just Going Round in Circles?

This article explores the drivers of the development of strategic commissioning over the last two decades, its limitations, and the implications of its rapid spread. It suggests that the differences between government departments have allowed scope for local variations, which have been exploited by local government, leaving room for more innovation than would have been possible under an entirely ‘joined-up’ government agenda. The forms taken by this new approach to strategic commissioning were consistent with continual pressure from central government to find ways of promoting externalisation of public services. Although this underlying drive was often resisted, particularly at local level, but always re-emerged. The article ends by exploring the implications of this analysis for public services in the era of fiscal austerity under the new UK Coalition government.     

Strategizing Public Sector Human Resource Management: The Implications of Working in Networks

Networks have come to the fore as a means by which government can achieve its strategic objectives, particularly when addressing complex or “wicked” issues. Such joined-up arrangements differ in their operations from other forms of organizing as they require collaborative effort to deliver the collaborative advantage. Strategic Human Resource Management is concerned with the matching of human resource practices to the strategic direction of organizations. It is argued that the strategic direction of government has been towards network involvement and that, as a result, a reconfiguration of Human Resource Management practices is needed to support this new direction. Drawing on eight network case studies findings are presented in relation to the roles government is expected to play in networks and conclusions are drawn about what types of human resource management practices would best support those roles. Implications for Strategic Human Resource Management are posited.     

Being Strategic in Partnership – Interpreting Local Knowledge of Modern Local Government

Broad and international literature exists on networked governance which has both described and informed recent transformations in local government. Reforms in the UK have led to the development of strategic partnerships to join up services and solve wicked issues. In Scotland, these are referred to as Community Planning Partnerships. Evidence from numerous studies has highlighted the partial nature of this transformation, particularly around community engagement, with some of the pioneers of this work now questioning earlier assumptions. This article presents an interpretive policy analysis of strategic partnership in Scotland to add three themes to this literature. First, to demonstrate the historical contingency of ‘joined-up government’; second, to explore the practices and meanings used by policy actors to understand ‘strategic’ and ‘partnerships’. Finally, the article problematises strategic partnership working, suggesting that in and of itself it creates effective barriers to community empowerment and even engagement.     

British National Party: Contemporary Perspectives

The coalition government has set out plans to dismantle the regional tier and return powers to localities and Whitehall departments. These changes will have significant implications for the way in which transport policy is formulated and delivered in England. When in power, New Labour introduced a range of measures to strengthen governance arrangements for promoting a more joined-up and decentralised approach to transport policy, including Regional Funding Allocations (RFAs). This paper examines the opportunities and limitations of the RFA process and considers the consequences of removing these regional structures for transport policy in England. We conclude that important progress made in recent years to develop effective arrangements for identifying transport priorities at the sub-national tier could be derailed by the Coalition's intention to remove regional governance structures in their entirety.     

Towards pluralism and partnership in management development in local government

'Joined-up government' has been a policy thrust characterising much of the first term of the Labour government. The last four years have seen a flourish of area-based and local partnership initiatives. Information and IT are seen as crucial to facilitate joined-up government and improved service delivery at both central and local level. Ambitious targets are thus set to make all dealings with government deliverable electronically by 2005. This article examines data sharing in a local partnership, using as an example the preparation of the Children's Service Plan 2000-2003 in the city of Sheffield, setting out the national policy background, with particular reference to children's services plans; introducing the project; discussing the results obtained in the data collection exercise, and concluding that the organisational and cultural change necessary to share information effectively require time, and above all a period of relative stability to mature and take hold.     

Health scrutiny,democracy and integration: Part of the same jigsaw?

Set against the major restructuring of decision-making processes within local government and the wider modernisation agenda for public services, this paper suggests that the scrutiny process (specifically in relation to local authority health scrutiny) can be described in two analytically different, but not necessarily contradictory, ways. It could be seen as a process to increase the levels of local democracy or as a form of integration across different organisations/sectors. The article is informed from the first half of a three-year evaluation that includes interview and observational data from in-depth case study research in five local authorities and their associated Primary Care Trusts (PCTs). The research highlights examples of health scrutiny in terms of both democratic input and integration/joined-up working by organisations from different public sectors, to facilitate scrutiny reviews and resulting changes. It is suggested that further evaluation of the continued development of health scrutiny will be required to examine the potential longer-term impacts on local governance issues, partnership working and the health of the local population.     

A Lipskian analysis of child protection failures from Victoria Climbié to "Baby P": a street-level re-evaluation of joined-up governance

This paper explores the issue of joined-up governance by considering child protection failures, firstly, the case of Victoria Climbié who was killed by her guardians despite being known as an at risk child by various public agencies. The seeming inability of the child protection system to prevent Victoria Climbié's death resulted in a public inquiry under the chairmanship of Lord Laming. The Laming report of 2003 looked, in part, to the lack of joined-up working between agencies to explain this failure to intervene and made a number of recommendations to improve joined-up governance. Using evidence from detailed testimonies given by key personnel during the Laming Inquiry, the argument of this paper is that we cannot focus exclusively on formal structures or decision-making processes but must also consider the normal, daily and informal routines of professional workers. These very same routines may inadvertently culminate in the sort of systemic failures that lead to child protection tragedies. Analysis of the micro-world inhabited by professional workers would benefit most, it is argued here, from the policy-based concept of street-level bureaucracy developed by Michael Lipsky some 30 years ago. The latter half of the paper considers child protection failures that emerged after the Laming-inspired reforms. In particular, the case of ‘Baby P’ highlights, once again, how the working practices of street-level professionals, rather than a lack of joined-up systems, may possibly complement an analysis of, and help us to explain, failures in the child protection system. A Lipskian analysis generally offers, although there are some caveats, only pessimistic conclusions about the prospects of governing authorities being able to avoid future child protection disasters. These conclusions are not wholeheartedly accepted. There exists a glimmer of optimism because street-level bureaucrats still remain accountable, but not necessarily in terms of top-down relations of authority rather, in terms of interpersonal forms of accountability – accountability to professionals and citizen consumers of services.     

Overcoming the Desire for Misunderstanding through Dialogue

The emotional and psychological aspects of joint working are examined in this article, providing a powerful explanation for the continuing difficulties in achieving joined-up government. Drawing on the sociology of community, psycho-dynamics of inter-group behaviour and theories of identity and difference, the author argues that New Labour's vision of an inclusive, consensual, community is inherently flawed; that conflict is a necessary and fundamental aspect of social relations. Indeed, ‘splitting’ and ‘exclusion’ are features of geographical, professional and occupational communities. And concepts such as ‘relationships-in-the-mind’ are valuable in understanding how identities are formed and maintained, and how patterns of conflict, hostility, misunderstanding and non-cooperation develop. Splitting and exclusion are important processes in building group identity, but they can also significantly undermine attempts to develop collaboration between agencies. The answer is for groups to engage in ‘conflictual dialogue’, addressing openly the misunderstandings created by group identities.     

Politics of Risk-Taking: Welfare State Reform in Advanced Democracies,by Barbara Vis

This article considers the impacts on the public regulation of private business of three key transformations in public management: “towards more targeting of resources” (through more risk-based regulation); “towards a stronger service ethos” (through more customer-centricity); and “towards increased integration” (through more joined-up regulatory organization). Empirical evidence is presented from a program of research focusing on local authority regulation of the businesses sector in England and Wales. The article concludes by reflecting on how such transformations, which are of wide international significance, might be viewed, particularly from a public interest perspective.     

Leading and Managing at the Boundary: Perspectives Created by Joined Up Working

Based on a process of action inquiry, this article reflects on the capacities that chief executives need in order to engage effectively with ‘joined-up’ working. It begins by examining the paradoxical feelings that chief executives can hold about their roles – feeling both powerful and powerless at the same time, for example. By adopting the notion of boundary, it is possible to understand more about the complexities that chief executives need to work with. These boundaries are emotional as much as they are structural. They imply a duality in the role as the chief executive works with the shifting relationships between the organisation and its external world, between organisational and political leadership, and between ‘knowing’ and ‘not knowing’. To be able to work at the boundary, there is a premium on the capacities for sense-making through systemic analysis, for maintaining personal perspective and for seeing leadership as synonymous with learning. In the end, leading at the boundary challenges the chief executive to think from time to time about what he or she stands for as a person.     

‘You're Just Treating Us as Informants!’ Roles,Responsibilities and Relationships in the Production of Children's Services Directories

Local authorities in England are required to make directories of services available to practitioners working with children and young people. This is against a background of continuing reforms intended to ensure that services are joined-up around the needs and choices of children, young people and their families. There are high expectations that more of these services will be delivered by organisations from theVoluntary and Community Sector (VCS), especially services for groups or communities that public sector agencies find hard to engage. This article reports and comments upon a regional study focusing on the production of children's service directories involving service providers and commissioners, as well as the producers of directories, in a series of facilitated workshop activities. The study highlights tensions between local authorities and service providers around how information about services is controlled, edited and accessed. We argue that current approaches to the provision ofdirectories are unlikely to have the transformational effects predicted by policy makers. This is partly because local authorities' traditional position (supported by the prevailing technologies) has meant that they have tended to monopolise the roles and responsibilities which in turn maintains their control of directory content. They do so in the face of increasing dissent from new and established providers. Moreover, current models of service directories fail to meet the emerging information needs of a range ofstakeholders including service providers, service commissioners and service users. Inconclusion we propose some questions to improve visibility and governance in the creation and maintenance of service directories.     

CONTROLLING LOCAL GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE: THE CASE OF NORTHERN IRELAND

The purposes of this paper are twofold, namely to outline the basic features of local government finance in Northern Ireland and to discuss how this financial system has been affected by the concerns of central government to control public expenditure. It will be argued that there has been no radical revision of the local government financial system but that central government used traditional methods of moral suasion and capital controls to induce councils to restrict their spending. The reasons for this include the small size of local expenditure and the political risks involved in further curbing local government in Northern Ireland.     

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.     

Devolution and Local Government: Evidence from Scotland

Devolution in Scotland has had a major impact upon local government. Local government, at both political and managerial levels, perceives central government in the shape of the Scottish Executive to be closer (geographically and politically) and more open to local government in terms of access to ministers and civil servants. However, Scottish central–local relations continues to be characterised by a sense of mistrust of local government, especially among civil servants and a continuing desire for central control of key policy agendas. Equally, the policy process continues to display features of fragmentation across major policy areas. Moreover, Westminster has not yet departed the scene of Scottish politics in both financial and policy terms but also in the enduring presence of a Westminster ‘political culture’     

Managing Middle Earth: The Evolving Role of Local Authority Chief Executive Officers in Auckland,New Zealand

New Zealand is often seen as a ‘test-bed’ for public sector management reform. Indeed, much has been written about the machinery and operation of central government, yet little attention has been paid to the actors and institutions of local government. This article, using evidence obtained through a series of semi-structured interviews with serving and former Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in the Auckland region, examines the impact upon local authority chief executives of two major reforms within local government. Firstly, the impact of sweeping managerial reforms in 1989, and then secondly reforms to reinvigorate and reinvent the scope and scale of local authorities in the period since 2002. The article argues that whilst local government CEOs in New Zealand are managerially strong, these skills need to be refocused to ensure maximum benefit for local government can be gained from post-2002 reforms.     

Is Bigger Really Better? A Comparative Analysis of Municipal Mergers in Australian and Japanese Local Government

While structural reform by means of municipal mergers has been employed in many different countries, council consolidation has been especially marked in Australian and Japanese local government. This suggests that much can be learned by examining amalgamation through the analytical prism of comparative analysis. In this article, we investigate structural reform through municipal amalgamation in Australian and Japanese local government by examining the aims of amalgamation, the methods employed by public policy makers and the outcomes which were achieved. From this comparative analysis, we attempt to draw some broader lessons for local government policy making aimed at local government reform.     

WAS LOCAL GOVERNANCE SUCH A GOOD IDEA? A GLOBAL COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The idea of local governance has gained much prominence but can elected local government be sustained in a role as network coordinator alone? To investigate this question this article focuses attention on four societal roles that local government systems undertake. They can support political identity, underwrite economic development, facilitate social welfare provision or act as a lifestyle co‐ordinator through the practice of community governance. Tying our investigation to the embedded societal roles of local government in different systems opens up the opportunity for a global comparative perspective. It also supports an argument that a sustainable system of local government is likely to be one that is able to combine societal roles to a substantial degree and those systems left with community governance as their key societal function are particularly likely to find themselves pushed to the sidelines of governing arrangements.     

Decentralisation and recentralisation in the historical development of the local government system in zimbabwe

Local government as an institution constitutes one of the many resources at the disposal of central government for achieving certain ends. The local government system is therefore a means directly related to some perceived ends although in certain cases it can also be pursued as an end in itself. In many countries including Zimbabwe the ends of local government are often unclear and multidimensional including the promotion of local democracy and participation in national politics and development; providing structural framework for the provision of local services, promoting local administrative efficiency and in rather few cases, providing a framework for local economic development.

In many countries local government system is used to either strengthen a top-down hierarchical approach or a bottom-up or horizontal approach to administration and national economic development. Such goals of local government inevitably result in different types of philosophy, administrative theories and strategies, decentralisation models, organisational structures, centre-local relations and the nature of powers ceded to local government by central government. The main theme of this paper is that within the context of Zimbabwe, there has been a major discrepancy between the largely territorial goals or ends to be achieved by post colonial local government transformation and its continuing functional organisation inherited from colonialism. This contradiction is described in the title as decentralisation and recentralisation.