What Makes a Key Player in Interorganizational Social Policy Networks? The Case of Uruguay

ABSTRACT

Networks of organizations involved in public policy implementation require strong interaction, concerted action and high degrees of collaboration to be effective. However, little is known about how different types of organizations involved in implementation of multi-sectoral social policies interact in these networks. In this article the relationship between organizational characteristics and network position is explored, as well as how the intensity of collaborations can also determine organizations’ involvement in networks. The nature of funding (public/private) and the remit of activity of organizations are found to determine their influence and importance in social policy networks. Furthermore, the network position of the organizations also depends on the level of intensity of their interactions. These results can guide public administrators when developing and promoting networks to involve a particular type of actor and also policymakers as to which types of ties are more aligned with the implementation of a particular policy.     

Evaluating public policy: The administrative role

If public administrators are not heavily involved from the beginning in the development of public policy, policy implementation and program evaluation may not be possible. The tasks and people needed for organizing policy change are identified and the roles of the public administrator in these efforts are discussed. This article describes three legislative efforts in which public administrators were heavily involved at the beginning stages of policy development; administrators helped to create programs that were subsequently more amenable to evaluation.     

Substantive Participation: A Model of Public Participation that Works for Citizens and Administrators

Decision-makers and affected parties engaged in solving contemporary governmental problems are recognizing that traditional decision-making strategies are insufficient. A participatory democracy approach to public participation has been offered as a potential solution to these problems; however, a more sophisticated understanding of this approach is needed. This study defines a more substantive brand of public participation, identifies barriers to its implementation, and provides recommendations for implementation. Models of substantive participation should empower and educate all stakeholders, reeducate public administrators, and establish new administrative structures and processes. These objectives as well as a discussion of particular barriers to substantive participation are outlined.     

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.     

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.     

EXPLAINING THE PRIVATIZATION BOOM: PUBLIC CHOICE VERSUS RADICAL APPROACHES

Public choice theories of bureaucracy, especially the budget maximization thesis, have been influential in stimulating the drive towards privatization in Britain and the USA. But these accounts are strangely silent about why changes in state agency practices have come about under'new right' governments. They apparently attribute the scope of change entirely to'virtuous' political direction overcoming previously inherent features of bureaucratic behaviour and democratic politics.
By contrast, a radical reconstruction of instrumental models of bureaucracy explains the privatization boom in terms of the primacy of bureau-shaping motivations in the welfare functions of policy-level bureaucrats. Privatization is seen as a development of earlier strategies (such as the separation of control and line agencies, the creation of'dual state' structures, and automation) by which the class interests of senior bureaucrats have been advanced at the expense of rank and file state workers and service recipients. An examination of divergences in the internal and social costs of public agency functions explains why legislators and policy-level bureaucrats (especially in control agencies) push ahead with the'inappropriate' privatization of public service delivery systems where overall social welfare is reduced.     

Ex-Offenders, the Labour Market and the New Public Administration

Policy makers are increasingly recognizing the importance of helping ex-offenders into employment. This article outlines the disadvantages faced by those with a criminal record in the labour market and evaluates several approaches to meeting the needs of ex-offenders seeking work. It finds that, despite recent policy developments, the changing nature of British public administration is undermining the ability of practitioners to respond appropriately to the needs of ex-offenders. The article concludes that the real concern of policy makers is to show that they are doing something about the social context of criminal behaviour while at the same time drawing attention away from the increasingly centralized and authoritarian nature of our public agencies.     

Do consistent government policies lead to greater meaningfulness and legitimacy on the front line?

We investigate the impact of policy consistency on frontline workers’ perceptions of policy meaningfulness and legitimacy. The results from an experiment involving 779 teachers indicate that policy consistency does have a positive effect on legitimacy and to a lesser extent on meaningfulness. However, the extent depends on policy content and the degree of autonomy. Overall, our findings emphasize the potential positive impact of policy consistency. Although this, to some extent, conflicts with the nature of political decision‐ and policy‐making (i.e., democratically elected governments have been mandated to change policy), our study suggests that policy consistency could be a valuable strategy for governments to strengthen successful policy implementation. This adds a new perspective to the continuing debate within policy implementation and street‐level bureaucracy research on how to account for the complex, messy and sometimes contradictory implementation of public policies.     

National security and domestic policy-making: the similarities and the critical differences

This analysis focuses on the discussion of whether (and how) national security and domestic policy-making processes are similar and/or different. Though many similarities are evident, it is the contention of this article that there are critical differences between national security and domestic policy-making that fundamentally affect the output from each of them. In addition, it is essential that public administrators develop a fuller understanding of national security policy-making processes since these processes do have theoretical, practical, and organizational impacts on institutional effectiveness, democratic processes, and governmental productivity. Let's remember that in the immediate post-Vietnam period many of us in the public management sectors--federal, state, and local-- dreamed of vast amounts of money being mainstreamed into the domestic coffers. Today that expectation is called the “peace dividend”. Little did we understand how much policy-making sophistication was embedded in the DOD. Therefore, as we move into the 1990s, this analysis reminds public administrators of their responsibilities to understand the national security arena in order to detect both the unique features as well as the broader generalizations attending this microcosm of public policy-making. All of us in public administration must make certain that this fertile laboratory of public policy is researched and investigated so as to ensure that the proper policy trade-offs are made in the 1990s.     

Implementation Studies: Time for a Revival? Personal Reflections on 20 Years of Implementation Studies

This paper presents a review of three decades of implementation studies and is constructed in the form of a personal reflection. The paper begins with a reflection upon the context within which the book Policy and Action was written, a time when both governments and policy analysts were endeavouring to systematize and improve the public decision-making process and to place such decision-making within a more strategic framework. The review ends with a discussion about how public policy planning has changed in the light of public services reform strategies. It is suggested that as a result of such reforms, interest in the processes of implementation have perhaps been superseded by a focus upon change management and performance targets. It is further argued that this has resulted in the reassertion of normative, top-down processes of policy implementation. The paper raises points that are important ones and indeed are reflected throughout all four papers in the symposium issue. These are: (1) the very real analytical difficulties of understanding the role of bureaucratic discretion and motivation; (2) the problem of evaluating policy outcomes; and (3) the need to also focus upon micro political processes that occur in public services organizations. In conclusion, the paper emphasizes the continued importance of implementation studies and the need for policy analysts to understand what actually happens at policy recipient level.     

The Autopoiesis of Administrative Systems: Niklas Luhmann on Public Administration and Public Policy

This article offers an introduction to Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems as it pertains to public administration and policy, as a first step towards both a critique and its empirical application to empirical reality. It reconstructs Luhmann's early writings on bureaucracy and policy-making and shows how this early, more empirical work grounded his abstract theory of social systems in general and the political system in particular. The article also introduces some central concepts of Luhmann's more recent work on the autopoietic nature of social systems and considers the latter's consequences for bureaucratic adaptiveness and governmental steering in the welfare state. One of the main benefits of applying Luhmann's theory to public administration, the article concludes, is that it conceptualizes the central concerns of public administration within a complex picture of society as a whole, in which both the agency that issues decisions and the realm affected by these decisions are included.     

Functional policy actions: Agency activities subsequent to budgeting

This study considers numerous non-budgetary measures of policy activity (called functional actions) that are conducted by agencies as they seek to implement their programs. Relationships found in earlier research among maturity, coalitions, and budgetary variables with the functional actions of agencies are extended here through a subsample test of the data and through the utilization of functional actions as independent as well as dependent variables. These functional actions are considered important because they directly affect the lives of citizens, seem manipulable by agencies, and represent a crucial first step in evaluating both the governmental and societal impact of agency programs. Data for eight federal agencies from fiscal years 1960 through 1971 were usedincorporating percentages and simple bivariate correlation coefficients. While the findings remain tentative,numerous implications are suggested for agency behavior and for the empirical study of public policy.     

Administrative Autonomy Among American State Agencies: An Empirical Analysis of Fragmentation and Functionalism

Abstract

Administrative (or bureaucratic) autonomy has been an issue discussed in many different political and policymaking settings. Since administrative agencies are actively involved in the formation and implementation of public policy the issue of administrative autonomy is an important contemporary issue. We measure the concept of administrative autonomy empirically and systematically among state administrative agencies along two general features or components: (1) fragmentation and (2) functionalism. Each of two features of autonomy is subdivided into institutional and perceptual dimensions. The former is based on organizational and position characteristics. The latter derives from attitudes of individual administrators. Data are derived from responses by over 1000 state agency heads from the 1998 American State Administrators Project (ASAP). Among the prominent findings are: (a) there are positive relationships between the institutional and perceptual dimensions for both fragmentation and functionalism, and (b) variations in institutional and perceptual dimension of administrative autonomy among different types of agencies and different selection methods of the agency heads.     

How Networks Explain Unintended Policy Implementation Outcomes: The Case of UK Rail Privatization

How a government secures the implementation of its policies is one of the most interesting processes in public administration. The tendency of scholars is to ignore implementation and how it impacts on the form of policy, something which invariably changes once resources have been allocated to implementing agencies and the policy detail is addressed. Traditional 'top-down' (Pressman and Wildavsky 1984, Mazmanian and Sabatier 1981) and 'bottom-up' (Elmore 1979, Hjern and Porter 1981, Hull and Hjern 1983) analytical frameworks give only a partial explanation of outcomes. In making the case for a netwrok approach, a typology of implementation networks is presented. The utility of this typology is evaluated in the context of one of the most complex privatization programmes attempted by any government: the privatization of British Rail (BR) between 1992 and 1997. In the case of the sale of one BR subsidiary train operating company, ScotRail, a variety of agencies with competing interests and acting in a politically-charged climate exchanged essential resources to deliver the policy, though not without generating unintended outcomes in the form of significant change to the policy and the agencies charged with implementing it.     

Integrated written and oral assignments for the MPA curriculum

The article describes an integrated approach to written and oral assignments throughout the MPA curriculum. Beginning with the program orientation and the lead course in the MPA program, a series of written assignments that blend theory and practice are used as the basis for later advanced work and special projects such as internships, major papers, or theses. A three-part assignment in the first course, an assessment center for developing interviewing and other skills, and a conscious attempt to develop linkages across courses in the MPA curriculum are the keys to implementation of the model.

The integrated writing and speaking model introduces students to research through preparation of an article review essay on some aspect of public policy or management. Another paper requires field work to analyze a particular aspect of the policy or management process. The third assignment produces a “usable product” for a level of government or public agency, such as a policy or management options paper. Written assignments are coupled with a formal assessment center conducted outside of regular classroom time. The field work helps students begin a networking process for obtaining clients for other projects in other courses and for internships, field papers, and jobs. Presentations of the final course “product” are via a poster session format that includes written, graphic, and oral presentations open to faculty and students, as well as the public agencies and/or governmental units for whom products are prepared.     

The professional as public servant: the decision-making dilemma

Administrative decision-making is increasingly complicated today by conflicting responsibilities that pressure decision-makers in different directions. Public servants are responsible to the law, Congress, administrative superiors, the agencies in which they serve, and the public. Those public servants who are members of a profession, attempting to apply special expertise and knowledge to the solution of public problems, face a set of even more complex responsibilities, governed as they are by their own professional codes of conduct whose tenets must be melded with the other obligations of governmental decision-makers.

Conscientious governmental officials are likely to base their decisions on their responsibilities to the public, in light of moral and ethical criteria as well as professional standards (where applicable), while recognizing their accountability to their organizational superiors. Civil servants who are members of a profession frequently find themselves making extremely complex decisions for which they must accept the responsibility for the application of their professional ethics in the context of their many other obligations.

The decision-making task of professionals who are also civil servants is often, therefore, an especially difficult and painful one. Cases of deep moral conflict will occur as they try to resolve their conflicting responsibilities.     

THEORIZING AND EXPLAINING VOLUNTARY ACCOUNTABILITY

Public organizations are not only subject to statutory obligations to give account, but they also commit themselves voluntarily to additional accountability practices. What motivates the organizations to do so? After all, such practices are costly to the organizations in a number of ways. This study argues that public organizations opt for voluntary accountability for two main reasons: they regard it as an appropriate practice and they respond to perceived legislative threats. Building on these explanations, hypotheses are formulated on the variation in the degree to which organizations voluntarily render account. These hypotheses are tested using new data on voluntary accountability of 103 independent agencies in the Netherlands. The study finds that more voluntary account is rendered by agencies which deal with more salient policy issues, by agencies which depend on public funds, and by agencies with more staff. Agencies without legal personality render less voluntary account.     

Governance,federalism and organizing institutions to manage complex problems

In managing complex policy problems in the federal system, state and local governments are organized into different arrangements for translating policy goals into policy outcomes. Air quality management is used as a test case to understand these variations and their impact on policy outcomes. With data from Clean Air Act implementation plans and a survey of state and local air quality managers, five separate institutional designs are identified: (1) central agencies; (2) top-down; (3) donor–recipient; (4) regional agencies; and (5) emergent governance. Findings indicate that some arrangements (donor–recipient and emergent governance) result in notably better air quality than others (central agencies, top-down). Specifically, when designed to allow bargaining between state and local officials, intergovernmental management is still the most effective approach to complex policy problems; but, in absence of this, conventional federalism arrangements are less effective than public agencies self-organizing around shared policy goals.     

Public administration in Marshall Dimock's textbooks

This article examines the relationship between Marshall Dimock's positive, broad-based concept of public administration and his approach to writing undergraduate textbooks. Analysis shows that both Dimock's American government and public administration textbooks provide a different slant on public agencies than that available in most current introductory volumes. In particular, his American government textbook is more positive in tone about agencies than are its modern counterparts. The public administration textbook has comparative material that rarely appears in introductory-level textbooks.

This article analyzes how Marshall Dimock's conception of public administration as an important area of study with links to policy and leadership anchored his textbook writing. In the 1950s Dimock co-authored two popular textbooks for basic undergraduate courses, one in American government and the other in public administration.⁽¹⁾

Scholars still debate what textbooks in either field should teach students about public agencies. Cigler and Neiswender argue that current American government textbooks portray administration in a negative light. All authors see bureaucracy as a problem of some sort, few explain the role administrators play in shaping policy and none discuss reasons to enter the public service.⁽²⁾ Cigler and Neiswender suggest that American government textbooks must change to aid accurate perceptions of the administrative role. In particular, they believe the texts must add material on the public service as a profession and compare American agencies with those in other nations.

Since public administration textbooks are a key way that majors in the field learn material, debate ensues on what material they should contain. Recent articles explore how textbooks define key terms such as policy and how they integrate the work of various theorists.⁽³⁾

While all widely-used textbooks deal with both the political environment and internal agency functions (e.g., personnel, finance), no consensus exists on how to allocate space between political and managerial concerns nor on exactly which subtopics should be covered. No consensus exists on how much space should be devoted to policy making and policy analysis with some textbooks covering this topic and others skimming it lightly.

One often cited problem with contemporary texts is the lack of a comparative focus and a concomitant need to internationalize the curriculum.⁽⁴⁾ The thrust of current proposals is that students need a more broad-based education to prepare them for global leadership.

Interestingly, Dimock's approach to public administration led him to write textbooks that in some ways surpass what is available today. While the majority of the topics he presents (and their ordering) are similar to current efforts, he offers unique emphases that deal with the above mentioned criticisms. Far from being an exercise in academic nostalgia, examining Dimock's textbooks is a useful way of giving current writers new insights.

To appreciate Dimock's approach to textbook construction we first have to identify the core concepts behind his approach to public administration education. Afterwards, we can analyze the treatment of public agencies in American Government in Action, relating it to Cigler and Neiswender's critique of contemporary textbooks, and -examine how various editions of Public Administration conceptualize the field.