PUBLIC MANAGEMENT AND POLITICS: SENIOR BUREAUCRATS IN FRANCE

Why is new public management reform so difficult to implement in France? In order to answer this question, this article examines the changes that have affected the higher civil service since the late 1970s. Decision‐making networks have been considerably politicized, and public policies are now largely devised by ministerial cabinets staffs. Simultaneously, the tasks of career senior civil servants are increasingly technical and specialized. The management reforms undertaken since 2002 by an economically liberal government might have offered senior bureaucrats the opportunity to regain a more active professional role, but the reforms run counter to their political culture, since the large majority of them still share a leftwing political ideology. Reformers seem to have no other choice than to change the institutional system in order to resolve this contradiction.     

THE CITIZEN AND THE ADMINISTRATION IN FRANCE — THE CONSEIL DETAT VERSUS OMBUDSMAN DEBATE REVISITED

The purpose of this article is to reappraise, in the light of recent French experience with the 'Ombudsman', the prevailing orthodoxy, shared by élite opinion in both France and Britain in the 1960s' that the Ombudsman and a system of administrative courts applying 'droit administratif' (a body of autonomous rules separate from private law), were mutually exclusive modes of securing redress for citizens aggrieved by administrative action. The thesis is advanced that in the contemporary welfare state, irrespective of particular political, administrative and legal traditions, a system of administrative law and an Ombudsman are complementary not competitive institutions.     

LIVING WITH THE CONTRADICTIONS OF MODERNIZATION? EMOTIONAL MANAGEMENT IN THE TEACHING PROFESSION

The state education system in the UK has undergone significant transformation such that New Labour’s modernization policy embodies aspects of the marketized system, inspired by New Right thinking, with a concern for placing schools at the centre of the social inclusion agenda. In this paper, we explore the impact of the modernized agenda on teachers’ work and identify the tensions and contradictions which emanate from these policies. The research centred on interviews with teachers and headteachers in four school case studies and explores the changing nature of the profession by focusing on teachers’ emotional management. It is evident that at a time when a large proportion of what teachers do is subject to scrutiny and audit, the emotional and less definable elements of teaching have also increased but remain relatively unrecognized. The findings suggest that issues of emotional management bring into sharp relief the contradictions evident in the modernized agenda.     

INFORMATION‐SHARING AND CONFIDENTIALITY IN SOCIAL POLICY: REGULATING MULTI‐AGENCY WORKING

In recent years, there has been growing concern in the UK that local services aimed at risky or vulnerable people are ineffective, because of agencies’ persistent failure to share information about their clients. Despite considerable national policy effort to encourage better information‐sharing, previous research indicates that there are many cases where information is still not shared when it should be, or where it is shared when it should not be, with potentially devastating results. This article uses data from the largest empirical study of local information‐sharing yet undertaken to examine four policy sectors where multi‐agency working has come to the fore. It shows that variations in their information‐sharing and confidentiality practices can be explained by neo‐Durkheimian institutional theory and uses insights from this theory to argue that current policy tools, which emphasize formal regulation, are unlikely to lead to consistent and acceptable outcomes, not least because of unresolved conflicts in values and aims.     

NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT FOR THE ‘CLASSICAL CONTINENTAL EUROPEAN ADMINISTRATION’: MODERNIZATION AT THE LOCAL LEVEL IN GERMANY,FRANCE AND ITALY

The article is aimed at analysing New Public Management (NPM) reforms at the local level in Germany, France and Italy. The case selection is justified by the fact that these three ‘classical’ Continental European countries have largely been missing from comparative administrative research thus far. The article focuses on local governments, since in all three countries these are considered the NPM forerunners and are acknowledged to be more advanced in reform implementation than are upper levels of government. Against this background, the purpose of this contribution is twofold. On the one hand, we wish to show to what extent and with what effects the NPM agenda has been taken up at the local level in Continental Europe. On the other hand, taking a comparative perspective over time, we wish to ask whether or not there has been increasing convergence or divergence between the three countries as a result of these reforms.     

CO-OPTATION, COMMODIFICATION AND THE MEDICAL MODEL: GOVERNING UK MEDICINE SINCE 1991

Self-regulation and autonomy are traditionally treated as distinctive elements of how professions are governed in contrast to other occupations. For medicine, these elements provide a collective medium of governance (through the institutions of professional self-regulation) and an individual medium (through the practice of 'clinical autonomy'). Both are reinforced by the intellectual dominance of the so-called 'biomedical model' of health and illness. Analysts generally agree that, in many countries, both self-regulation and clinical autonomy are under significant challenge. But it is less obvious that, in the UK at least, the biomedical model has effectively been co-opted for managerial purposes to support the commodification of medical care. Thus ideas that have traditionally been considered as supporting medical dominance have transpired to be a source of weakness for the profession.     

THE HISTORY OF GOVERNANCE IN THE NETHERLANDS: CONTINUITY AND EXCEPTIONS

THE HISTORY OF GOVERNANCE IN THE NETHERLANDS: CONTINUITY AND EXCEPTIONS
W.J.M. Kickert
Reed Elsevier, 2004, 121 pp., €17.85 (pb) ISBN: 9059014359     

CONTRACTING IN THEORY AND IN PRACTICE: SOME EVIDENCE FROM THE NHS

The contract is the main mechanism for governing transactions within public sector'quasi markets'. This article explores the nature of the contracting process in the light of new empirical data from a qualitative study of the development of contracting for hiv / aids services within the National Health Service. These data are compared with four possible models of the contracting process emerging from the academic literature, classical, relational, regulated and pseudo contracting.
The White Paper on the nhs reforms uses a classical concept of contracting, in which purchasers are represented as making well informed and unrestricted choices between competing options. This bore little relation to the process observed within the four purchasing organizations studied. Instead, elements of all the models were observed, with the dominance of any one model varying with different situations, times and localities. Competition was only patchily evident, with purchasers more commonly encouraging co-operative relationships between providers to preserve stability. Attempts to utilize the contract process to mould and reconfigure services were often hampered by restrictions imposed by regulations and slow implementation of new mechanisms. Contracting was also adversely affected by rapid organizational change and lack of adequate information. It is concluded that contracting in the nhs is an evolving process and has yet to achieve its full potential as a management mechanism.     

CHANGE IN THE CIVIL SERVICE: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECTS

The type of civil service modelled on the principles of the Victorian reformers survived virtually unscathed into the post-1945 era of the welfare state and managed economy. Criticism of its qualities and performance resulted in a programme of changes associated principally with the Fulton Report (1968). This initial reform phase identified a shift to more active management of personnel, resources and policies as the primary need, but its practical effects were muted by optimistic assumptions relating to the rate of economic growth and the benefits to be derived from continued extension of governmental responsibilities. Since 1979 the context of civil service reform has changed, imposing much stronger pressure in favour of a managerialist view of civil service functions, of a career in the civil service, and of the ethos of the profession. Despite ambiguities of purpose and constraints within the political system the course of change is likely to continue in the direction, pointing towards a civil service substantially different at the end of the century from that which has been familiar in British thinking about the character and status of officials.     

PLAYING THE TRANSPARENCY GAME: CONSULTATION AND POLICY-MAKING IN THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION

The recent unveiling of a package of measures designed to make the work of the European Commission more‘transparent’is part of a wider effort to make EU decision-making more open and accessible. Yet, the Commission's transparency package was designed above all to cope with its chronic management problems. These include rigid lines of division between different spheres of the Commission, the strong loyalties of policy-concerned Directorates-General (dg s) to their specific‘clientele’, unclear rules governing access to information, and intense rivalries between dg s and the private offices of individual Commissioners. This article dissects the transparency package and uses case study material to highlight ways in which the transparency initiative seeks to provide antidotes to the Commission's management problems. It offers an early assessment of the transparency package's impact and examines the prospects for reform of the Commission under Jacques Santer.     

CHANGING AGENDAS AND POLICY COMMUNITIES: AGRICULTURAL ISSUES IN THE 1930s AND THE 1980s

Pluralists have argued that the political agenda is relatively open. If a group or party apply enough pressure then new issues should have access to the political arena. However, the theories of policy communities and the third dimension of power suggest that issues can be kept off the political agenda. Agriculture seems to provide an example where for forty years new issues did not emerge. Yet in the 1930s and 1980s pressures to change the agricultural agenda have existed. This raises the problem of how, if the agenda is controlled, new issues are debated. Traditionally, agenda change has been explained through the activities of pressure groups but this paper argues that this view is inadequate where a policy community exists. Therefore it suggests that agendas change when structural factors change perceptions and the dominant beliefs of the policy-makers no longer match reality.     

PLANNING AND CONTROLLING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE IN THE UK, PART II: THE EFFECTS AND EFFECTIVENESS OF THE SURVEY

Part I of this article [spring 19921 examined and explained the processes by which the Treasury plans and controls public expenditure through the Public Expenditure Survey. This second part analyses the survey's effects and effectiveness. Throughout we assess the survey by the extent to which the principal functions of planning, allocating, controlling and evaluating public expenditure are articulated and performed. We use four sets of criteria. Firstly, the survey is assessed as a means of regulating the interdependent relationships of the principal participants. Secondly, as a system for making decisions about public expenditure, the survey is judged by the extent to which it has enabled governments to achieve their broad spending objectives. Thirdly, the survey is assessed b the extent to which it provides directly for the participation of ministers collectively in tie process of decision-making, and how they decide the relative priority of both the total of public expenditure and its composition. And fourthly, its effects are measured by analysing the outputs of the system - the allocation of spending to departments and agencies. In the concluding section we address directly the question of whose interests are best served by the survey.     

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE: THE ROLE OF THE HR FUNCTION IN THE MODERN PUBLIC SECTOR

As the public sector has modernized and sought to become more efficient and cost‐effective, the effective and strategic management of people has received increasing prominence and there have been calls for the Human Resource (HR) function to play a more strategic role. However, not much is known about whether the role of the HR function has changed substantively. In this paper, we present empirical evidence from six matched‐pair public sector organizations in the UK to assess whether HR functional roles have changed, as envisaged, into a model more akin to the private sector. The findings highlight the complex and often contradictory nature of HR functional roles, and suggest that new and more strategic roles have not replaced traditional approaches but, rather, have been grafted on, giving rise to a variety of hybrid HR forms.     

PROFESSIONALISM AND PUBLIC POLICY MAKING IN GREECE: THE INFLUENCE OF ENGINEERS IN THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORMS

The influence of Professionals in the formulation of public policies has been an issue of scientific research in the past decade. In this article we deal with a less examined as of this issue. Professional influence is analysed in the context of Greek public policy, where the intensely centralized administration is dominated by the demands of political clientelism. Focusing on the case of the influence of peers in local government reform between 1974 and 1989, the article reveals the role of Trofessiondism in the hesitant decentraiization of functions and resources to local authorities and the initiation of institutions that have allowed the birth and development of new organizations at the central and the local level. Given the shift towards partydirected patronage and the intense party politiciza-tion of professional and trade organizations, the central state aparatus and the local authorities in post-dictatorship Greece, professional influence in putlic policies is seen to be closely related to the rise of professionals in party hierarchies. The catalytic role of professionals in the promotion of reform policies reducing organizational diversity and fragmentation is understood within the context of the contradiction between the need to adapt state structures and practices in a rapidl changing international environment and the preservation of traditional political and acyministrative forces in key positions of the power structure.     

IMPLEMENTING CHANGE IN HEALTH SYSTEMS: MARKET REFORMS IN HEALTH SYSTEMS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM,SWEDEN AND THE NETHERLANDS

IMPLEMENTING CHANGE IN HEALTH SYSTEMS: MARKET REFORMS IN HEALTH SYSTEMS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, SWEDEN AND THE NETHERLANDS
Michael I. Harrison
Sage, 2004, 256 pp., £21.99 (pb) ISBN: 0761961763