Public administrators and policy implementation--a social work perspective

Professional social workers in both macro and micro settings are vitally concerned with public policy, particularly that of social welfare policy, and its implementation. They are keenly aware of the quality and quantity of services and other end products of policy implementation. Social workers serve as public administrators and staff many public and private agencies that form the delivery system network. They are also concerned with social problem-solving as is the public administrator, and see themselves as behavior change agents. Their generalized value perspective addresses the political conflicts arising from the nature and causes of poverty and inequality, the role of government in society, and the nature and methodology of the decision-making process. Organization and administration become means to ends, not ends in themselves.

The conclusions arise that public administrators will have to assume more governmental responsibility, rather than less. This is seen as a natural evolutionary outgrowth of the need to regulate increased conflict fueled by growing interdependence and rapid societal change. While public agencies are continuing results of governmental intervention, they are condemned to operate in the midst of paradox.     

Social policy as nation-building: identity formation,policy feedback,and social citizenship in Ghana

Beyond economics-centric discourses about issues like “social investment,” in recent years scholars have argued that social programs, like education, healthcare, and income support arrangements, can be instrumental in the construction and reconstruction of national identities and solidarities at both the ideational and the institutional level. Drawing on this scholarship, this article makes a direct contribution to the comparative politics and policy literature by examining the trajectories of nation-building and social policy development in Ghana. It extends existing scholarship by providing an in-depth study of Ghana while using that case to further explore the understudied connection between social citizenship, identity formation, and policy feedbacks from existing social programs.     

Beyond social regulation? New instruments and/or a new agenda for social policy at Lisbon?

The consistent failure to match EU market integration with social policies provoked the development of new modes of European governance for welfare provision in the early 1990s. Based on policy co-ordination rather than integration, these new governance modes were consolidated as the 'Open Method of Co-ordination' (OMC) at the Lisbon Summit in 2000. This article analyses the scope and limits of the OMC, locating it in the context of broader trends and tendencies in governance and social provision. Indeed, the perceived 'success' of the OMC may reflect a deeper trend in social policy across western Europe and beyond, towards 'active' welfare policies. In many ways the OMC is consistent with the influential 'regulatory state' vision of the EU. Yet by 'activating' welfare the OMC may challenge market liberal theories of European economic regulation. The first seeks to integrate economic and social policies while the latter is premised on their separation.     

Timber access in the Indian Himalaya: Rethinking social capital in public policy

Timber access in Himachal Pradesh (India) is formally regulated by state policy. However, actual access is determined through a complex network of informal social relations developed and maintained over time, which form a critical resource that allows particular forms of capital accumulation. This essay shows that the nature of policy execution in India necessitates the development and use of this type of social capital. However, existing social hierarchies compartmentalise social space and create differential opportunities for social agents to establish and nurture such networks. While supporting critiques of currently popular understandings of social capital that draw on Putnam and Coleman, this essay makes a case for the relevance of Bourdieu's conception of social capital in understanding the process of social differentiation.     

From universal system of social policy to particularistic? The case of the Baltic States

This paper compares the system of social maintenance and insurance in the Soviet Union, which was in force in the three Baltic countries before their independence, with the currently existing social security systems. The aim of the paper is to highlight the forces that have influenced social policy transformation from its former highly universal, however authoritarian form, to the less universal, social insurance-based systems of present day Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.It will be demonstrated that the welfare–economy nexus is not the only important factor in the development of social programs. Rather, social policy should be studied as if embedded in the political, historical and cultural aspects of a given society. The people’s attitude towards distributive justice will be highlighted as being one of the most important factors for either social policy shortcomings or expansion.This paper takes steps to combine quantitative and qualitative data.     

Adapting to democracy: Societal mobilization and social policy in Taiwan and South Korea

Democratic transition and institutional change do not necessarily guarantee greater political inclusion, particularly when it comes to the policy influence of civil society groups. Rather, political inclusiveness requires strategic adaptation among societal actors. Actors need to seize upon opportunities endemic to political change. This article provides a comparative analysis of health care reform in democratizing Taiwan and South Korea, focusing on two social movement coalitions, the National Health Insurance Coalition in Taiwan and Korea's Health Solidarity. Both movement coalitions were critical in shaping welfare reform trajectories in Taiwan and South Korea during the late 1990s, despite having been shut out from earlier episodes of health care reform. I argue that these groups (1) strategically adjusted their mobilization strategies to fit specific political and policy contexts, (2) benefited from broad-based coalition building, and (3) effectively framed the issue of social welfare in ways that gained these movements ideational leverage, which was particularly significant given the marginal place of leftist ideas in the postwar East Asian developmental state model. Joseph Wong is assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He is the author ofHealthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea, published by Cornell University Press. Wong received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The author thanks Edward Friedman, Jay Krishnan, Ito Peng, Richard Sandbrook, Linda White, along with the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks also to Uyen Quach and Nina Mansoori for their research assistance.     

The Mutual Obligation Policy in Australia: The rhetoric and reasoning of recent social security policy

Since 1997, the Australian Federal Liberal Government has introduced policies which have sought to reduce rates of unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment. The policy, known as Mutual Obligation, increased the expectations on unemployed people in return for their social security payment. At the same time, previous labour market programmes and government assistance schemes were scrapped or privatised. This article explores the justification of the term 'Mutual Obligation' by examining both the language and the underlying principles of the policy. By defining the problem of unemployment in terms of flaws in the previous social security system, the stage is set for the government to introduce policies which remedy those flaws by emphasising self- reliance in favour of government assistance. Further, by invoking notions of fairness and mutuality, the article argues that the term 'Mutual Obligation' masks both the extent and the strength of the obligations imposed on unemployed people.     

The geopolitical economy of social policy in the Philippines: securitisation,emerging powers and multilateral policies

Recent geopolitical and economic changes have altered global social policy formation. The Bretton Woods multilateral development agencies (MDAs) have selectively incorporated ideas emerging from developing country states and decision makers, with a recent increased acceptance of social transfers as part of renewed efforts at poverty alleviation based on social risk management. There has been an instance in the use and promotion of conditional cash transfer (CCT) policies by MDAs. CCTs were a product of the emergence of a neo-structuralist welfare regime (understood as an ideal type) in Latin America – an attempt to reconcile neoliberal strategies of development with aspirations for guaranteed minimum incomes. The Bretton Woods and regional development bank MDAs have facilitated the adoption of CCTs in other developing countries, including the Phillipines. Here, a combination of actions by national political actors and MDAs has resulted in the implementation of a securitised and compliance-focused version of CCTs derived from the Colombian security state. Although poor Philippine households welcome income assistance, CCTs have acted to enforce further state monitoring without altering the national-based political and economic processes that replicate poverty.     

Children's rights as residual social policy in Nicaragua: State priorities and the Code of Childhood and Adolescence

In enacting a legislative Code of Childhood and Adolescence in 1998, the Nicaraguan state formally endorsed the ideal of children's rights as being a central concern of public policy. Yet, the state has done little to fulfil this commitment. In part this is the result of severe fiscal constraints, which have led to reduced public expenditures and the downsizing of social services, especially those directed towards children and youth. In part, however, there are also indications of state reluctance to actively implement the principles of change as outlined by the Code. This has been reflected in the government's reactionary response to fears of growing youth violence, and its unwillingness to collaborate with local civic groups in dealing with youth crime. We surmise therefore that, while the Code may have served to enhance state legitimacy, the cause of children's rights remains a residual policy issue in Nicaragua.     

Development policy and the evaluation of community self-help: The harambee school movement in Kenya

This attempt to objectively assess the costs and benefits of involvement in the harambee education movement for individuals and families is directed at policymakers and is an exercise in policy analysis. Evaluative studies of this nature are essential to the improvement of the of the overall quality of policymaking. Despite general agreement that harambee education projects involving secondary schools differ in many ways from types of self-help projects, few attempts have been made to assess the long-term social impact of the harambee education movement. For nearly 2 decades Kenya's harambee movement has flourished and has been largely viewed as a positive contribution to national development. Between 1969-79, the total value of contributions to self-help projects rose from around $6 million to almost $27 million, demostrating the substantial inputs of local communities to the economic growth of the country as a whole. Policymakers, after initial reservations about independent self-help, in recent years have come to rely on such activities as complementary to the government's efforts. Self-help activities aimed at expanding educational opportunity are the most significant in terms of both monetary resources expended and the scope of human involvement. Benefits are difficult to extimate. The growing number of students in harambee schools does not necessarly indicate that the majority of these students are acquiring marketable skills or that their consequent levels of academic training will prepare them to complete successfully in the job market with the average student educated in government-sponsored schools. The evidence, in fact, clearly points in the opposite direction. Yet, politicians, policymakers, and citizens continue to regard harambee activities for expanding educational opportunities atall levels as necessary contributions to Kenya's development program and to individual achievement. The direct cost to government for harambee education can be compared with the direct private expenditure on this type of ecucation. The 1976 annual private investment in harambee education was $45 million. The most direct benefits from harambee efforts are reaped by wealthier regions and communities in Kenya. The greaes social benefits derived from the government's policy toward the harambee school movement are political benefits. By symbolically drawing linkages between its national development strategy and independent self-help activities, the government can elicit the tacit support of rural communities. Direct social costs of such a policy are minimal. The indirect, long-term costs may result in disastrous, unintended consequences as the pool of educated and unemployed youths expands and as resulting ethnic and class inequalities sharpen and crystallize.     

The contradictions of neo-extractivism and social policy: the role of raw material exports in the Brazilian political crisis

This article explores how contradictory development tendencies within Brazil’s primary sector have contributed to the country’s enduring political crisis. I show that President Rousseff, when dealing with declining royalty payments from natural resource exports and a decrease in tax revenue from imports, financed social policies in ways that her opponents branded as unconstitutional to remove her from power. After documenting the central players within the political crisis, namely those who have been under investigation in Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash), I illustrate how the ongoing corruption scandals plaguing Brazil have their roots in the country’s raw material export industries.     

Joined-up government and privacy in the United Kingdom: managing tensions between data protection and social policy. Part II

The tension between the goals of integrated, seamless public services, requiring more extensive data sharing, and of privacy protection, now represents a major challenge for UK policy‐makers, regulators and service managers. In Part I of this article (see Public Administration volume 83, number 1, pp. 111–33), we showed that attempts to manage this tension are being made at two levels. First, a settlement is being attempted at the level of general data protection law and the rules that govern data‐sharing practices across the public sector. We refer to this as the horizontal dimension of the governance of data sharing and privacy. Secondly, settlements are also being attempted within particular fields of public policy and service delivery; this we refer to as the vertical dimension. In this second part, we enquire whether risks to privacy are greater in some policy sectors than others. We do this, first by showing how the Labour Government's policy agenda is producing stronger imperatives towards data sharing than was the case under previous administrations in three fields of public policy and services, and by examining the safeguards introduced in these fields. We then compare the settlements emerging from differing practices within each of these policy sectors, before briefly assessing which, if any, principles of data protection seem to be most at risk and in which policy contexts. Four strategies for the governance of data sharing and privacy are recapitulated – namely, seeking to make the two commitments consistent or even mutually reinforcing; mitigating the tensions with safeguards such as detailed guidelines; allowing privacy to take precedence over integration; and allowing data sharing to take precedence over privacy. We argue that the UK government has increasingly sought to pursue the second strategy and that the vertical dimension is, in practice, much more important in defining the settlement between data sharing and privacy than is the horizontal dimension. This strategy is, however, potentially unstable and may not be sustainable. The conclusion proposes a radical recasting of the way in which the idea of a ‘balance’ between privacy and data‐sharing imperatives is conceived.     

Joined-up government and privacy in the United Kingdom: managing tensions between data protection and social policy. Part I

The Labour government that came to power in the United Kingdom in 1997 made much of its commitment to ‘joined‐up working’, by which it meant horizontal integration between policies and co‐ordination across services. The particular manner in which it pursued this commitment has led to growing pressure for the sharing of citizens’ personal information among public service agencies. Yet at the same time, Parliament was engaged in implementing the European Data Protection Directive with a new Data Protection Act and the Government was honouring its manifesto commitment to bring the European Convention on Human Rights – including its enshrined right to private life – into domestic law. Government has therefore been obliged to find ways of managing the potential tension between these commitments. There are two analytically distinct dimensions to the arrangements through which this is being attempted. First, the horizontal dimension consists in initiatives that apply across all policy fields, and includes the establishment of cross‐governmental guidelines for implementing data protection law as well as the development of national policy on sharing personal data between public services. In 2002, the government published a major policy paper on data sharing and privacy. By late 2003, its approach to the need for legislation had changed sharply. The second analytically distinct dimension, the vertical dimension, consists in the laws, codes and norms developed in specific policy fields to govern relationships between data sharing and privacy within those fields. This two‐part article discusses these arrangements. Part I analyses the horizontal dimension of the governance of data sharing and privacy. Part II (published in the next issue) examines the vertical dimension in three fields in which tensions between data sharing and privacy have come to the fore: community safety, social security and NHS health care. Four options for the governance of data sharing and privacy are analytically distinguished: (1) seeking to make the two commitments consistent or even mutually reinforcing; (2) mitigating the tensions with detailed guidelines for implementation; (3) allowing data sharing to take precedence over privacy; and (4) allowing privacy to take precedence over data sharing. The article argues that, despite its strong assertion of (1), the government has, in practice, increasingly sought to pursue option (2) and that, in consequence, the vertical dimension has become much more important in shaping the relationship than the horizontal dimension. The articles argue, however, that option (2) is a potentially unstable strategy as well as being unsustainable.