Corruption and marketization: Formal and informal rules in Chinese public procurement

The relationship between market liberalization and corruption has attracted scholarly attention in recent years. Conventional wisdom holds that increased economic marketization reduces corruption. China, however, provides evidence to the contrary; corruption has grown as its market‐oriented reforms progress. This paradoxical co‐development of the market and corruption begs the intriguing questions of how corruption has survived marketization and what explains the failure of government regulation. Extending the conceptual framework of institutional theory about formal and informal rules, and using public procurement in China as an example, this article shows that formal tendering rules and regulations may be modified, circumvented, or replaced by informal ones which facilitate corruption. The article identifies four corruption schemes through which procurement actors may distort competition processes and mechanisms under the guise of formal rules. Consequently, public procurement in China displays the structural outlook of market competition, but not its essential substance.     

Beyond public administration? HIV/AIDS policy networks and the transformation of public administration in Botswana

What impact has HIV/AIDS had on the structure of public administration and what further lessons do these changes hold for other policy sectors in Botswana? For long, Botswana has had the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS, bringing many developmental challenges. An under‐researched facet of HIV/AIDS is the effect it had on the public administration in Botswana. Whereas classical approaches to public administration suggest that it is ‘civil’ service organisations that lead in health administration, HIV/AIDS spawned a particular type of organisation, the policy network. In mitigating HIV/AIDS, the policy environment became more fragmented with networks for treatment, prevention, advocacy and research emerging. These networks are made up of entities from the public, private for‐profit and not for‐profit sectors. They participate in the agenda setting, formulation, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of HIV/AIDS policy. Traditional public administration theories cease to hold sway; private actors become engaged in ‘public policy’ and the other way round. Policy is carried out in horizontal arrangements; linking government, business and non‐governmental organisations in mutual inter‐dependences. Health care professionals share policy spaces with the media, social scientists and politicians. New challenges face public policy‐making including co‐ordination problems, fragmented accountability and shared policy spaces. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Civil Society and Violence in India's Northeast

The dominant view of India's Northeast highlights violence as a predominant feature and presents civil society as non-existent. Nevertheless, between a militarily-willed state and violent insurgencies lie very many formal associations and informal networks that organize the space for a civil society. The paper attempts to highlight the existence of such relatively lesser-known institutions of civil society in the region. However, there seem to be differences in the very nature of associations of civil society. Homogenous, intra-ethnic networks of civil society in the rural Northeast seem to be more vulnerable to violence and nationalistic fervour. In contrast, formal associations or inter-ethnic informal networks in the urban Northeast seem to handle conflicts and violence better. While the contents herein are expected to inform public discourses on a fragile region, they might also help challenge popular notions about the potential of an existent civil society in similar regions.     

Managing the Entanglement: Complexity Leadership in Public Sector Systems

Complexity in public sector systems requires leaders to balance the administrative practices necessary to be aligned and efficient in the management of routine challenges and the adaptive practices required to respond to dynamic circumstances. Conventional notions of leadership in the field of public administration do not fully explain the role of leadership in balancing the entanglement of formal, top‐down, administrative functions and informal, emergent, adaptive functions within public sector settings with different levels of complexity. Drawing on and extending existing complexity leadership constructs, this article explores how leadership is enacted over the duration of six urban regeneration projects representing high, medium, and low levels of project complexity. The article suggests that greater attention needs to be paid to the tensions inherent in enabling leadership if actors are to cope with the complex, collaborative, cross‐boundary, adaptive work in which they are increasingly engaged.     

Recentralization and vertical alignment in the French health‐care system

In foreign exemplars, key new public management (NPM) features such as decentralization and devolution of health‐care responsibilities had outcomes below expectations. Other NPM traits such as the patient as overseer of reforms or the empowerment of patient remained elusive. In France, the integration of public values such as greater participation of patients and local actors (NGOs and elected officials) and NPM‐driven private values such as performance evaluation has yet to be seen. Taking advantage of NPM's failings and austerity agenda, a French welfare elite regained control over health‐care policy decisions at the expense of regions and other local actors. NPM outcomes were below expectations. Austerity cures led to weakening of the regional decision spaces, which can be explained under the principal–agent relationship. Accountability shifted to managerial (the professionalization of hospital managers) and legal (governance via regulations) forms in a bid to restore central government control. A democratic recess results from the lack of public engagement in recent health reforms.     

Escaping the International Governance Dilemma? Incorporated Transgovernmental Networks in the European Union

This article investigates the role of transgovernmental networks of national regulators in addressing collective action problems endemic to international cooperation. In contrast to recent work on transgovernmental actors, which emphasizes such networks as alternatives to more traditional international institutions, we examine the synergistic interaction between the two. Building on the broader premise that patterns of “dual delegation” above and below the nation‐state enhance the coordinating role of networks of national agencies in two‐level international governance, the article examines the formal incorporation of transgovernmental networks into European Union (EU) policymaking. The focus on authoritative rule‐making adds a crucial dimension to the landscape of EU governance innovations while connecting to the broader study of transgovernmental networks in international governance. The article develops an analytical framework that maps these incorporated networks across different sectors in terms of function, emergence, and effectiveness. Two case studies of data privacy and energy market regulation are presented to apply and illustrate the insights of this mapping.     

Shadow peacebuilders and diplomatic counterinsurgencies: informal networks,knowledge production and the art of policy-shaping

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of informal networks in producing strategic knowledge and influencing policy responses to the 2011 post-election crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The analytical focus is on networks of shadow peacebuilders, defined as actors who are often not visible to the public and who promote a mix of altruistic and personal interests of their broader network by generating strategic narratives and influencing peacebuilding policy. As this article shows, shadow peacebuilders engage in diplomatic counterinsurgencies waged by means of diplomacy, politics, public relations and legal means. Strategic narratives are instrumental in legitimizing diplomatic counterinsurgency, inducing internal cohesion within the network and delegitimizing alternative narratives and policy solutions. Yet the production of strategic knowledge by shadow peacebuilders has its limitations. When the gap between strategic narrative and actions becomes too big, the network risks fragmentation and defeat by other networks that promote alternative strategic narratives and paths of action in the battle over control of peacebuilding policy.     

Policy networks,politics and decentralisation policies in Ghana

Policy‐making is a political process involving a network of actors with varied interests. This article uses policy network as an analytical framework to understand the politics of decentralisation policy‐making in Ghana from the perspective of interactions among interest groups. The article is based on a research study, which utilised semi‐structured interviews and documentary sources in its data collection. It argues that the lack of progress in decentralisation in Ghana can be explained by the politics surrounding government–interest group relations. The article also provides evidence to indicate how varied interests represented within the decentralisation policy networks affected politics and in turn influenced decentralisation policy‐making and outcomes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mixing God's Work and the Public Business: A Framework for the Analysis of Faith‐Based Service Delivery

Over the past thirty years, there has been a dramatic transformation in the way the American political process operates. There has been a growing public perception that traditional political institutions lack the capacity to meet existing challenges. This has led many observers to call for a rethinking of how government does its work. Numerous alternatives, including the use of faith‐based organizations, have been suggested. The current popular debate on the appropriate role of faith‐based organizations in public service delivery has shed little light on a number of important issues raised by engaging such actors in governance issues. The impact of using faith‐based institutions to design and implement public policy must be considered not only in terms of traditional evaluation standards, but also regarding potential long‐term impacts on the political process itself. This article outlines a theoretical framework for the evaluation of faith‐based organizations as “alternatives” to conventional governance structures. It identifies key practical and theoretical issues raised by such substitution, in both short and long range systemic terms.     

Evaluating Democratic Performance: Methodologies for Assessing the Relationship between Network Governance and Citizens

Network governance can enhance democratic practice by furnishing new routes for actors to deliberate, make, and execute public policy. But it is hindered by a lack of political oversight, limited democratic competence of new organizational forms, and informality of operation. Little research has been conducted on the democratic performance of governance networks, and the methodology is poorly developed. Quality-of-democracy studies of national governmental and political systems offer a starting point. Their criteria-based method is useful in accessing the democratic "hardware" of formal entities, such as partnerships and hybrids, but it does not enable data to be gathered on democratic "software"—the informal day-to-day practices of actors in networks. Interpretive approaches offer a way forward. Narrative analysis, qualitative interviews using a criteria-based instrument, and Q-methodology provide routes into democratic software. They enable the researcher to move beyond the analysis of institutional nodes and to understand the democratic performance of the wider governance network.     

‘If This Was a Normal Situation’: Challenges and Potentials for Deliberative Democratic Peacebuilding in Kosovo's Emerging Governance Networks

The link between public administration and conflict resolution is traditionally understood through the ‘democratic peace’ thesis, which holds that war is less likely in democracies than in non‐democracies. Limited success with post‐conflict democratisation missions has opened space for renewed research on three strands of ‘deeper democracy’: decentralisation, participation and deliberation. This article reports on the study of deliberative democratic practices in emerging governance networks in Prishtina. Through an investigation of three contentious issues in Prishtina's public spaces, research combines documentary sources with field interviews with governance actors to identify factors that enable and constrain the scope for deliberative decision‐making in governance networks. Case studies point to six main influences: ‘securitisation’, trust building, ‘mandate parallelism’, structural patterns of inclusion and exclusion, network structures and the properties of governed public spaces. In addition, two frames are found to be particularly resistant to deliberative engagement: Kosovo's status and ethnic identities. We formulate a tentative conclusion to be further investigated: in contexts where distrust is high, deliberative governance requires a rigid adherence to an overarching reference framework that can create discursive space within which relative deliberation can take place. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public Management Policymaking in Spain: The Politics of Legislative Reform of Administrative Structures, 1991–1997

This case study focuses on extending research knowledge about the politics of public management policymaking in Spain. The case involves legislating to change politically sensitive features of the central government and administration. The study explains such analytically significant event conditions as: an agenda‐setting process that made a policy issue of the formal, structural attributes of state administration, an alternative‐specification process that proceeded without complication, and a decisional process that lasted five years and in which political leaders' positions on the issue flip‐flopped. Broadly speaking, the case analysis demonstrates that when policy proposals take the form of legislation, the politics of public management policymaking in Spain are highly influenced by political stream factors, themselves reflecting Spain's parliamentary form of government and relations between statewide and regional political parties.     

Resilience in Public Administration: The Work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom from a Public Administration Perspective

This essay examines the remarkable careers of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, exploring polycentricity and human management of common property resources from the “no‐name fields” of public administration in the late 1950s, through the metropolitan public service industries and public choice approach to democratic administration in the 1960s and 1970s and the institutional analysis of common pool resource management of the 1980s and 1990s. It continues with the diagnosis of the self‐governing capabilities of socio‐ecological systems in the 2000s. Many continuities underlie focal shifts in attention. Their work will be related to developments in the public administration field along with illustrations of their pioneer example for public administration on research as a collaborative enterprise. The 2009 Nobel Laureate in economics, Elinor Ostrom has been working from an academic background and intellectual tradition that, particularly through her long‐term collaboration with Vincent Ostrom, is strongly rooted in the classical and prevailing institutional concerns that may be seen as core to public administration as an academic field of education and research.

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Measuring the Effectiveness of New Approaches to Housing Support Policy for Persons with Disabilities

Housing support policy for persons with disabilities who require access to 24‐hour formal or informal support is changing throughout Australia. This is consistent with international trends including: independent living in generic housing; facilitating choices about where and with whom people live; individualised home‐based support; and community integration. Are these trends leading to policies that are effective in the Australian context? This article presents a framework for analysing the effectiveness of new approaches to housing support using a rights perspective. The framework consists of four domains: client outcomes; administrative systems; service viability; and coordination between formal and informal carers. Applying the framework to six case studies found that they all aim to foster independence, while providing effective individualised, holistic housing support.     

The Role of Informal Institutions in U.S. Immigration Policy: The Case of Illegal Labor Migration from Kyrgyzstan

Immigration is a sensitive topic on the American political, social, and economic agenda. Globalization as well as the end of the Cold War have meant that people are on the move worldwide as never before. Millions of people from poor countries migrate to richer ones to provide better lives for themselves and their families through legal and illegal channels. Heated debates surround this subject. A dramatic divide persists between proponents, who equate immigration policy with civil rights, and opponents, who cite the burden of illegal immigration on public education and public welfare systems. The author argues that informal institutions involved in migration processes, such as migrant smuggling networks, explain why the current crisis persists. The role of informal institutions is examined by focusing on those who migrate from Kyrgyzstan to the United States seeking low‐wage labor. The author generalizes how formal and informal institutions interact in the processes of migration and how informal institutions decisively influence immigration‐related policies in the United States.     

Organisierte Interessen in der Landespolitik. Die Entstehung des INGE-Gesetzes in Hessen

In this case study we want to reduce the gap in research on the influence of organized interests at the federal state level. We analyse the “Gesetz zur Stärkung von innerstädtischen Geschäftsquartieren” (INGE) by applying social network analysis and statistical models. First, we show that the set of actors changes compared to the federal level. Second, we find that striving for influence pays off for non-state actors because influential actors find themselves close to the law. Third, we explain the degree of the actors’ influence. An OLS-regression shows that formal resources like governmental power as well as informal resources such as expertise and support increase influence. The use of informal resources is reflected in interactions in communication networks and specific network positions. Furthermore, we discuss this specific process of interaction between state and societal actors from the point of view of democratic theory.     

Transaction Costs and the Perceived Effectiveness of Complex Institutional Systems

This article studies factors affecting how policy actors perceive the effectiveness of political institutions involved in complex water governance systems. The ecology of games framework argues that participants are more likely to perceive institutions as effective when the benefits of solving collective action problems outweigh the transaction costs of developing political contracts within these institutions. The authors hypothesize that transaction costs are a function of conflict, type of participation, political knowledge, scientific knowledge, and actor resources. Survey results suggest that the importance of these different sources of transaction costs varies across study sites in the Tampa Bay watershed in Florida, the Sacramento–San Joaquin River delta in California, and the Paraná River delta in Argentina. Based on the observed differences, some initial ideas are sketched about the evolution of complex governance systems from fairly simple and informal rules and networks to well‐established tapestries of many formal institutions.     

David Cameron's ‘Problem’ with Women: Representing Women in the Coalition Government

Prior to the election in 2010 David Cameron pledged that his first cabinet would comprise one‐third women and would be the most family friendly ever. Since forming the Coalition Government, he appears to have a ‘problem’ with women. We argue that this problem stems from: the weak representation of women in cabinet and across government; the diminishing resources available to government actors to support gender equality policy; and women's exclusion from the key Coalition networks, both formal and informal, that determine government policy.     

A Preliminary Theory of Informal Accountability among Network Organizational Actors

Widespread government contracting for nonprofit social service delivery has resulted in extensive reliance on networks of service providers, which involve complicated accountability dynamics. The literature has tended to emphasize formal aspects of accountability in contract relationships, focusing on the specification of contract terms, performance measures, reporting relationships, and stipulated consequences. Far less attention has been focused on the interorganizational and interpersonal behaviors that reflect informal accountability. This article examines the informal norms, expectations, and behaviors that facilitate collective action and promote informal accountability among nonprofit network actors. The data are based on in‐depth interviews with nonprofit senior administrators in four major metropolitan areas. Based on this research, the authors propose a preliminary theory of informal accountability that links (1) the shared norms and facilitative behaviors that foster informal accountability for collective outcomes, (2) the informal system of rewards and sanctions used to promote and reinforce behavioral expectations, and (3) the challenges that may undermine informal accountability.