Public transportation policy making in France as an implementation problem

Public transportation policy is analyzed as the output of a complex social system of interdependencies and power relationships linking the central state bodies to various economic and political organizations. The interest groups structure the system by controlling the implementation process. The system works because of cheating—violating the public regulations, but the interest groups need state regulation to protect their privileges.The study of governmental projects is a particularly stimulating form of political analysis. Because it emphasizes both the process and the contents of the activities of public authorities, which is to say the goods and services produced by the State, such a study deals with problems having specific impact on and distinct meaning for individuals. It also allows one to avoid overly abstract speculation on the nature of the State by placing the discussion on a more scientifically fruitful level, that of the effective interactions and exchanges among institutions and groups.Our objective will be to demonstrate the importance of the implementation sequence of public policy, particularly in terms of its effects on the understanding of the definition of alternative solutions. We will concentrate on the way in which an ensemble of systems effects, induced by governmental action conditions both the perception of the problem to which this action is supposedly responding, and the elaboration of decisions to solve the problem. The method employed will be that of suggesting a form of analysis which will discern those fields of force and interaction processes with which decision makers, in this case public authorities, are confronted. The method employed should thus be useful in understanding the process of decision making.     

Demand for masters of public policy in public service

This piece was written to assist those who lead schools of public policy and administration in evaluating their pedagogies and examining their curricula. The perspectives contained in this piece reflect those of the author, who has spent the last 35 years practicing and leading public policy research and analysis in the Congressional Research Service (CRS)—the public policy agency created by the U.S. Congress for its exclusive use. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of CRS or the Congress.     

Organizational reform within government: accountability and policy management

The article considers, from a United Kingdom perspective, the ways in which relations between Government Departments and Agencies are organized to ensure clarity of roles and effective accountability; and also looks at the ongoing need for effective policy management at the centre of Government. It describes the progress of the Next Steps programme, examining its successes and perceived weaknesses. In particular, it rehearses the debate running in the UK on the question of Ministerial accountability, and considers the distinctions between responsibility and accountability, and between policy matters and operations. (© 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)     

Public accountability: Effectiveness, equity, ethics

This article tests a wide range of government activities against requirements for public accountability. The article explores the incentives for ethical behaviour by public officials; the need for more outcome focused performance indicators, tensions between parliamentary and managerial accountability; the standards of accountability applied to public providers of services can be applied to private providers; the utility of spelling out service requirements in advance; the impacts on accountability of the convergence of the public and private sectors; the need, where responsibility for programs is collaborative, for a clear governance framework, tensions between representative and participative democracy, and trends towards more participative and collaborative leadership.     

Public choice in private markets

He has written widely on social and economic issues.     

Employment service: Public or private?

This paper deals with the relative performance of private and public employment services. For this purpose, two behavioral models are developed which take into account that private and and public employment agents not only pursue different aims but also face different restrictions, in particular since a public employment agency lacks the right to reject applicants. While analysis of the necessary optimality conditions yields tentative conclusions about the advantages and disadvantages of both types of employment service, empirically testable hypotheses result from the predicted responses to increases in unemployment and in the cost of service, respectively. These predicted behaviors are likely to be considered unfair by society, causing dissatisfaction with both private and public employment agencies.     

The New Public Service: Serving Rather than Steering

The New Public Management has championed a vision of public managers as the entrepreneurs of a new, leaner, and increasingly privatized government, emulating not only the practices but also the values of business. Proponents of the New Public Management have developed their arguments largely through contrasts with the old public administration. In this comparison, the New Public Management will, of course, always win. We argue here that the better contrast is with what we call the "New Public Service," a movement built on work in democratic citizenship, community and civil society, and organizational humanism and discourse theory. We suggest seven principles of the New Public Service, most notably that the primary role of the public servant is to help citizens articulate and meet their shared interests rather than to attempt to control or steer society.     

Varieties of accountability: How attributes of policy fields shape parliamentary oversight

This article demonstrates how attributes of policy fields shape parliamentary oversight across policy fields. Building on the accountability literature, the study develops the argument that parliamentarians will more likely oversee policy fields where cooperative forms of governance are more present, since these policies are more difficult to assess and have a higher need of legitimation. Using the example of policy evaluation demand by members of parliament in Switzerland, the study suggests that parliamentarians seek more control in a policy field, where public activities are more often delegated to nopublic actors or the need for legitimation is particularly high. Both effects increase with the policy field's closeness to science. These findings could be very relevant in order to understand how attributes of policy fields shape political institutions.     

Public enterprise reform: Managerial autonomy,accountability and performance contracts

The underlying assumption in this paper is that autonomy and accountability are both fundamental prerequisites for the effective functioning of state-owned enterprises. The paper first examines the traditional, dichotomous approach to the autonomy-accountability conundrum. This approach posits the relationship as process oriented, pervasive, quantitative and based on a priori controls. A more recent view of control and accountability as a posteriori, qualitative, strategic, results-oriented and non-zero sum is then briefly analysed. The paper presents a review of the theory and practice of performance contracts (PC) as tools to implement the latter approach. Three basic models of PCs—Senegal's contrat plan, Pakistan's signalling system and India's memorandum of understanding—have been analysed, comparing the negotiating process, major players, substantive elements and results. The contrat plan is more of a legal document, at least in formal terms, than the other two. None of the three models, however, provides any sanctions in case of a violation of the contract by the governments. Although the Indian and Pakistani PCs appeared to be more successful than the Senegalese contracts, the relationship between financial performance and performance contracts remains far from conclusive. In all the three countries, the contracts have failed to provide a single window through which government-enterprise interface can be effectively managed. Thus the problem of multiple principals and single agents remains unresolved.     

Problems,politics, and policy streams in policy implementation

We apply Kingdon's multiple streams framework (MSF) to policy implementation to reflect a nested process separate from but interdependent with policymaking. Then, we generate a hypothesis concerning the conditional nature of problems, policies, and politics stream impacts on policy implementation. We test our hypotheses with state‐level implementation of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, using a pooled data set of 10 years of toxic releases data. Findings suggest an important interaction occurs among problems, policies, and politics during the policy implementation process. More specifically, when any of the three is held at median levels, only marginal differences in outputs occur; however, when all three are increased to extreme levels, substantive differences emerge. Conclusions connect policy implementation to larger issues of MSF theoretical development and suggest implications for governance.     

The political economy of accountability in Timor‐Leste: Implications for public policy

With a view to establishing the likelihood of the occurrence of state capture and different forms of corruption and the feasibility of their management and prevention, important aspects of the historical, social, economic, political and governance context of Timor‐Leste are examined. This context is found to be conducive to various forms of state capture and systemic grand and petty corruption, and to be resistant to conventional short‐term technocratic anticorruption remedies. While the latter are likely to have public relations benefits that may be helpful to the maintenance of political stability in the short run, it is argued that significant anticorruption progress is a long‐term endeavour, achievable principally through: sustained impartial service delivery that undermines beliefs in patronage; hastening—through general education and the creation of a conducive legal environment for business—the emergence of leaders of integrity and the growth of a middle class; and the establishment of the rule of law. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public versus private ownership: The federal lands case

“Privatization” of public lands has been urged on the grounds that it will provide a more efficient allocation of the nation's resources. However, there are some public policy objectives which private ownership and free markets are not equipped to achieve. Historically, these objectives have motivated legislation authorizing retention of some land in public ownership. Indeed, land in both forms of ownership is required to achieve a full range of both public and private goods and services. However, since inefficiencies in the allocation of resources will occur under either form of ownership, careful monitoring of economic activities in both sectors is more likely to achieve improvements than arguing for exclusive reliance on only one system of property rights.     

Public policy evaluation in France

The future of public policy evaluation in France seems at once promising and uncertain. Although the signs of development are evident-increasing numbers of evaluations, aroused public and parliamentary interest, active administrative involvement-the process is not uniform, codified, or generally rigorous. The administration itself is the chief initiator of evaluations, possessing the greatest resources, yet only in a small minority of instances are the ideal conditions of evaluation met. Strong political pressure would almost certainly be essential to move the government toward the institutionalization of an effective appraisal system.     

公共利益:服务型社会治理模式的核心价值

服务型社会治理模式与以往统治型和管理型社会治理模式的根本不同在于,前者是建立在“公共利益”核 心价值基础之上。服务型社会治理模式中公共利益的实现途径:以政治制度化作保障;政府建设植入新公共服务理念;培 育伦理性的公共行政文化;构建共同治理的社会机制。     

Public sector versus private sector: the case of Uganda

The article reviews the case for privatization in Africa, with special reference to Uganda. It argues that enterprises supplying goods and services other than infrastructure are best left to the private sector, but considers the relative merits of local performance contracts to expatriate management contracts. (© 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)