Bagehot Smiling: Gordon Brown's ‘New Constitution’ and the Revolution that Did Not Happen

The MPs expenses scandal that erupted in May 2009 has certainly rekindled interest in the next stage of constitutional reform and democratic renewal in Britain. This article examines how Gordon Brown's tenure as Prime Minister has differed from Tony Blair's in relation to the ‘new politics’ narrative. It argues that despite his long‐term personal commitment to major constitutional reforms, the role of crises in recalibrating the political opportunity structure and the manner in which electoral incentives can alter elite attitudes to institutional change that Brown's tenure can be characterised by optimism followed by timidity. Gordon Brown may have flown a few kites in relation to a written constitution, electoral reform, English devolution and the future of the House of Lords but he has left things far too late for a ‘constitutional moment’. Brown may have the political inclination but he lacks the capacity to deliver far‐reaching reform; Cameron is likely to have the capacity but not the inclination.     

Making Ends Meet After Prison

Former prisoners are at high risk of economic insecurity due to the challenges they face in finding employment and to the difficulties of securing and maintaining public assistance while incarcerated. This study examines the processes through which former prisoners attain economic security, examining how they meet basic material needs and achieve upward mobility over time. It draws on unique qualitative data from in‐depth, unstructured interviews with a sample of former prisoners followed over a two‐ to three‐year period to assess how subjects draw upon a combination of employment, social supports, and public benefits to make ends meet. Findings reveal considerable struggle among our subjects to meet even minimal needs for shelter and food, although economic security and stability could be attained when employment or public benefits were coupled with familial social support. Sustained economic security was rarely achieved absent either strong social support or access to long‐term public benefits. However, a select few were able to leverage material support and social networks into trajectories of upward mobility and economic independence. Policy implications are discussed.     

Regulating Rule‐Making via Impact Assessment

In their attempt to promote “better regulation,” governments have ended up with increasing regulation of rule‐making. Regulatory impact assessment (RIA) is a manifestation of this trend. This article draws on the positive political economy hypothesis that RIA is an administrative control device. Rational politicians—positive political economy argues—design administrative requirements to solve problems of political uncertainty. This is a rather abstract hypothesis but with clearly observable implications. Empirical analysis on Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the EU shows that the modes and level of control vary, with almost no evidence supporting the positive political economy hypothesis in Denmark and Sweden and more robust evidence in the other cases, especially the United States and the United Kingdom. The EU scores high, but control has both a political component and an infra‐organizational dimension. In between the extremes I find modest levels of political control in Canada and the Netherlands.     

Evidence‐Based Policy‐Making: The Elusive Search for Rational Public Administration

Evidence‐based policy making has been criticised as a revival of the ‘rationality project’ in which democratic politics is regarded as rent‐seeking and a deadweight loss to society. In response, the evidence‐based policy movement has failed to articulate a defence in which the rationality animating the policy process is situational and contextual rather than unique and authoritative. This article traces the movement's motto –‘what works?’– to the American pragmatist movement, whose influence on Harold Lasswell and New Labour in the UK was substantial. This article argues that the ambition for evidence‐based policy‐making should be seen in terms of the transition from a single, unique and universal rationality toward multiple rationalities that vary according to different policy making contexts. Interpreted in such terms, evidence‐based policy making can avoid several of the main criticisms, and offer strong potential to contribute to solving policy problems.     

Brexit: The EU Policy‐Making State Hits the Populist Buffers

There seems to be an emerging conventional wisdom that the Brexit vote resulted from specific domestic factors in Britain, such as divisions within the ruling Conservative party, the rise of UKIP, strong reaction to increased immigration, all set against the backdrop of globalisation and its adverse effects. The end result was a populist revolt. The argument presented here is somewhat different. Whilst accepting that the above factors were certainly very important, it is argued that it is important to examine the key role of the EU itself in the creation of the current crisis within the EU. The construction of an EU policy‐making state has run far ahead of what voters at the national level want, leading to a central paradox within the EU, namely that the European elite which runs the EU has introduced some very beneficial public policies, yet that elite has become increasingly out of touch with its peoples.     

Strategic Thinking,Shared Meaning‐Making and the Interpretive Turn in Policy ‐ A Case Study

Governments' demands for results in a complex and rapidly changing policy environment call for more strategic and nuanced ways of approaching policy. Drawing on the work of the British interpretive ‘turn’, evidenced in the network governance literature and the differentiated polity critique of Westminster narratives, and of Liedkta on strategy as design, this paper suggests that shared strategic narratives, more consciously applied to policy development and implementation, could deliver better results; that consensus from shared meaning‐making may have depth, and that it could emphasise the transformative over the conservative forces of individuals' traditions and beliefs. Data for the paper came from a micro‐study on the implementation of SmartGate automated border processing system in New Zealand.     

Responses to the Clean Power Plan: Factors Influencing State Decision‐Making

In 2015, President Obama introduced the Clean Power Plan (CPP), a federal plan aimed at reducing the production of carbon pollution from power plants. In response, some used legal action to try and stop the plan, while others supported the plan and proceeded with plans for its implementation. This research investigates responses taken by state government in terms of legal remedies and planning for implementation, and what explains those responses. Findings suggest that partisanship plays a key role. Specifically, the partisanship of the attorney general is correlated with the legal response, and the governor with implementation planning. Coals, and perhaps renewables, also seem to play a role, even controlling for partisanship. There is only weak evidence for the effect of policy experience and none for the estimated cost of the policy. The article concludes by discussing the implications of these results for the future of climate policy in the United States.     

Cluster‐Based Policy Making: Assessing Performance and Sustaining Competitiveness

Tremendous changes in technology, political and social frameworks, as well as the impacts of globalization, have put pressure on countries to become competitive. One strategy for creating an engine of economic growth is the creation of clusters. These clusters, be they naturally or artificially conceived, hold the promise of becoming the economic weapons of a country. Many studies have been done to understand the factors behind the successes and failures of clusters. One of the reasons behind the inconsistent success of existing cluster policy frameworks in managing cluster performance is the fact that clusters often are at different levels of development, and it will require different strategies to create, enhance, and sustain their competitive advantage. This paper aims to propose and demonstrate a more holistic framework designed to understand key cluster dynamics that drives cluster performance, which then will enable policy makers to work toward ensuring sustainable cluster development.     

Simulation and Managerial Decision Making:A Double‐Loop Learning Framework

Systems approaches present opportunities for public managers and policy makers to view policies and programs in a broader context. This article presents a framework to explain how simulation modeling promotes double‐loop learning in management teams by building and exploring collective mental models as well as by enhancing accuracy of the mental models. The authors discuss the types of problems that may benefit from simulation modeling and illustrate how double‐loop learning occurs in the process of dynamic hypothesis testing. Using a case from New York State's Division of Disability Determination, the article shows how simulation modeling built confidence in a management team's decision by providing the team with tools to share and examine multiple hypotheses about a declining trend in initial disability recipients in the state between 1998 and 2004.     

NSW Workers’ Compensation Reform: A Parody of Evidence‐based Policy Making

The characteristics and evolution of evidence‐based policy making in Australia and other mature democracies have been mapped extensively in this journal. This article advances research on the use of evidence in policy making, examining changes in the New South Wales workers’ compensation system from 2012 to 2014. This analysis of two phases of policy change, legislative implementation and statutory review, highlights the limitations of building integrated, coherent evidence‐based policy in a contentious policy area. The article finds that the collection of wide and detailed evidence will not satisfy requirements of evidence‐based policy without political will, transparency, and accountability.     

Ministerial Advisers and the Politics of Policy‐Making: Bureaucratic Permanence and Popular Control

The advent of ministerial advisers of the partisan variety – a third element interposing itself into Westminster's bilateral monopoly – has been acknowledged as a significant development in a number of jurisdictions. While there are commonalities across contexts, the New Zealand experience provides an opportunity to explore the extent to which the advent of ministerial advisers is consistent with rational choice accounts of relations between political and administrative actors in executive government. Public administration reform in New Zealand since the mid 1980s – and in particular machinery of government design – was quite explicitly informed by rational choice accounts, and normative Public Choice in particular. This article reflects on the role of ministerial advisers in the policy‐making process and, on the basis of assessments by a variety of political and policy actors, examines the extent to which the institutional and relational aspects of executive government are indeed consistent with rational choice accounts of the ‘politics of policy‐making’. The reader is offered a new perspective through which to view the advent, and the contribution of ministerial advisers to policy‐making in executive government.     

The Productivity Consequences of Political Turnover: Firm‐Level Evidence from Ukraine's Orange Revolution

We examine the impact of political turnover on economic performance in a setting of largely unanticipated political change and profoundly weak institutions: the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Exploiting census‐type panel data on over 7,000 manufacturing enterprises, we find that the productivity of firms in the regions most supportive of Viktor Yushchenko increased by more than 15 percentage points in the three years following his election, relative to that in the most anti‐Yushchenko regions. We conclude that this effect is driven primarily by particularistic rather than general economic policies that disproportionately increased output among large enterprises, government suppliers, and private enterprises—three types of firms that had much to gain or lose from turnover at the national level. Our results demonstrate that political turnover in the context of weak institutions can have substantial distributional effects that are reflected in economic productivity.