The state of training in public policy management in Ghana

This paper discusses the relevance and state of training in public policy management in Ghana. The author argues that the lack of an institutional base for policy analysis is evident in the abdication and paralysis of policy-making, as well as the inability of the management development institutions to institutionalize training programmes in public policy management. Recognizing politicians and bureaucrats as complementary actors in the policy process, it is argued that organizing training programmes for them could contribute to improved policy-making. The content, methodology, duration, target group and impact of current training programmes in public policy management are analysed. Although the dearth of relevant local reading material on policy issue is identified as a problem in the teaching of public policy in Ghana, reference is made to some available publications on local public policy issues which could supplement Western-biased reading materials. Other problems discussed are the heterogeneous background of course participants and the non-involvement of faculty members in policy making. The paper concludes with recommendations on policy preview workshops; seminars for politicians and senior bureaucrats; development of policy analysts; and complementarity among the local management development institutions.     

The Quality of Management and Government Performance: An Empirical Analysis of the American States

Government performance is an enduring concern for students of public management, public administration, and political science. Government's administrative arrangements and managerial behavior can profoundly influence programmatic content, activities, and outcomes; therefore, considering public management's effects is necessary for a true understanding of public policy and government performance. This article uses data from the Maxwell School's Government Performance Project to examine the relationship between state governments' managerial capacity and a measure of government performance (specifically, state policy priorities). We find that state management capacity has direct effects on state policy commitments: States possessing higher levels of management capacity tend to favor programmatic areas that distribute societal benefits widely (that is, collective benefits) as opposed to narrowly (that is, particularized benefits). Our analysis demonstrates that public interest group activity, government ideology, and citizen ideology each have significant, predictable effects on state policy commitments. Thus, our findings place managerial capacity alongside other more commonly studied state characteristics as an important influence on government activities.     

The Politics of Crisis Management: Public Leadership Under Pressure by Arjen Boin,Paul 't Hart,Eric Stern,and Bengt Sundelius

ABSTRACT

The article addresses two principal questions: how public management reforms develop in a context of high government turnover, and how, under these circumstances, features of the specific area of public management policy affect the dynamics of the reform and in particular its “technical feasibility.” The research questions are addressed through the case study of the Italian administrative context between 1992 and 2007, a period marked by tumultuous government turnovers. The article presents reforms in two policy areas of public management: civil service reform and innovation, over a three-period time span covering 15 years. The brief duration of political leadership represents a threat to the approval and implementation of policy interventions irrespective of the political salience of the issue and the need for legal enactment. Therefore, the success of a public management reform process in an unstable political context characterized by frequent government turnovers depends on meeting certain conditions for successful policy entrepreneurship: the a priori expertise of policy entrepreneurs, their ability to repackage the issue, keep a community of practice alive, and maneuver the dynamics of the legal process. However, implementation, being a less visible phase, suffers from greater discontinuity as “maintenance activities” necessary for the success of reform are disregarded. Thus, the consideration of the temporal dimension of the policy cycle and the area-specific effects on public management reform dynamics exerted by diverse levels of political salience and legal enactment represent the main contributions of this work to the theories on public management policy change.     

Policy planning in HM Customs and Excise Customs Policy Directorate. A trainer's perspective

Following the creation of flatter management structure, HM Customs and Excise reviewed the way they carried out the development of policy advice to decision takers. They wished to create a procedure to give an assurance of the quality of the work in the development of policy. With the aid of consultants, they identified a set of management tools and techniques to ensure that planning for policy development is carried out efficiently and effectively. These tools are: stakeholder analysis, to identify the key players and their interests in the policy to be developed; a policy family tree analysis to establish where a policy fits within wider government policy objectives; a project management checklist to enable decisions to be taken on resource allocation; an assessment of the priority to be assigned to the policy and its development; a high level assessment of the cost implications for business of complying with the policy; and the development of an evaluation plan to assess the success of the policy in delivering the policy objectives. HM C and E commissioned a successful training programme with the Civil Service College to help them deliver the quality in policy work they sought. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Public Admin. Dev. Vol. 17 : 223–234 (1997). No. of Figures: 4. No. of Tables: 0. No. of Refs: 0.     

The Failure of Success in Natural Resource Policy: Pacific Salmon Harvest Policy in New York State

Natural resource management policies like the Pacific salmon harvest policy developed by New York State often did not anticipate the extent of social, economic, and ethical concerns that would be generated, largely because the agency concentrated on biological considerations. The number of concerned stakeholders grew in proportion to both the success and failure of the initial policy. Had all participants been equally willing to recognize both the successes and the failures, development of a revised policy through group negotiations may have been possible, resulting in a cooperative mode of decision making. Instead, institutional mechanisms based on legislated process were ultimately the approach chosen for policy revision.     

Practitioner insights

As an analyst for the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), I design and carry out policy studies mandated by law or requested by members of Congress. In 2006, GAO received a request to study federal land management agencies’ use of ecosystem management. Procedurally, the analytical problem that I faced in designing a study to respond to this request was that the underlying policy problem was unclear and thus difficult to operationalize in a study. As the lead analyst, I used the policy sciences framework to assess the underlying problem and help design the study in the context of multiple federal policies and academic research. The policy sciences framework is useful for analysis of ongoing policy issues because it helps the analyst make sense of the activities, positions, and ideas in a particular policy arena. It helps the analyst create a map of the policy problem to better define the problem and identify possible policy alternatives.     

Policy design without democracy? Making democratic sense of transition management

This article explores the complex relationship between democracy and long-term policy design for sustainability. At one extreme, democracy can be framed as problematic for policy planning because of the myopia fostered by some democratic institutions, such as regular elections. Alternatively, democracy can be seen as an ally of long-term policy design to the extent that it can generate public legitimacy and accountability, and potentially foster more equitable and just outcomes. Recent debates on how to ‘manage’ policy transitions to sustainability have been curiously silent on democratic matters, despite their potential implications for democracy. To explore what democracy might mean for transition management this article considers empirically how actors engaged in the Dutch Energy Transition Program make democratic sense of their activities. The analysis finds that in practice transition policies promote implicit narratives or democratic storylines on how reforms should be developed, who should participate in these, and how they should be legitimised and accountable to the public. The dominant narrative, which espouses elite theory and technocracy, privileges epistemic matters over democratic considerations. Other democratic storylines draw on representative democracy and interest group pluralism. The paper considers some possible ways to foster more productive interfaces between the governance structures of transition management, and the polycentric context of contemporary democratic systems.     

URBAN PLANNING,POLICY AND MANAGEMENT*

Abstract: This paper deals with some important sources of confusion in discussions of urban issues. The first part distinguishes urban planning as a “future oriented” activity, from urban management which is primarily concerned with resource allocation. (The nature of urban development — interdependence and long life — makes a long-term perspective important.) When urban management aims to implement a plan the two are complementary. Urban policy covers a broader range of issues. The second part distinguishes four levels of debate about urban issues: ideological, political, operational and technical. Frequently debates in urban studies are not coherent because the participants are arguing at different levels and therefore make different assumptions about what is given and what can be varied. It is argued that the various levels form a hierarchy so that debates at any level need to assume particular positions with respect to higher level questions. Ideological issues include individual versus collective perspective, capitalist versus socialist, the appropriate role of markets and governments and the relative weight given to equity and efficiency criteria. The examples of political issues discussed are rationality versus group pressure as explanations of government behaviour, and whether planning is mainly a political or a professional activity. Operational issues include the appropriate level of government for carrying out urban functions and the role of statutory planning and other policy measures. Technical issues focus on predicting the effects of policy measures and external changes on cities. The different levels are illustrated by a discussion of policy towards inner city areas.     

Elk management and policy in southern Greater Yellowstone: Assessing the constitutive process

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, USA, is recognized globally as a model for land and wildlife conservation, management, and policy. A major policy problem in the region is the highly contentious winter feeding of elk (Cervus elaphus) on 23 government feed grounds in western Wyoming through cooperative management under several state and federal agencies. Numerous non-governmental groups and concerned citizens are also affected by elk management or seek to contribute to management policies. The long-term controversy shows that this issue centers on how management and policy should be made and who should be involved in decision-making—the constitutive policy process. This paper examines and appraises the constitutive process in this case, including how competency, authority, and control are allocated. It also looks at how institutions, analytic techniques, procedures, and people are structured, selected, and included or excluded in decision-making processes. Our data come from a multi-method approach over the past decade, including participant-observation, historical literature, interviews, media analysis, and technical reports. Our analysis shows that institutional dynamics severely constrain the scope of deliberations, the production of practical problem definitions, and the search for improvements in elk management. We recommend that participants focus on the constitutive level of policy making, i.e., the underlying structure and functioning of policy processes, learn how these elements function and affect processes and outcomes, and learn to configure them in ways that embody democratic principles, serve common interests, and resolve policy problems.     

An Evaluation Crucible: Evaluating Policy Advice in Australian Central Agencies

Policy advice is a core function of government that until quite recently remained outside the formal processes of performance evaluation. Evaluation, by its very nature, is designed to question both the effectiveness and relevance of government activities; applying it to policy advice opens up a traditionally confidential and politically sensitive arena. This paper reports on an evaluation experiment in Australian government — policy management reviews (PMRs) — that sought to evaluate the quality of central agency policy advice. It traces the development of the PMR model around interdepartmental committee processes, the bureaucratic politics that diluted the focus on policy outcomes, and examines how central agencies steered evaluation away from questions of public accountability towards arrangements for achieving more effective control of the processes underpinning production of advice. By targeting the process rather than outcomes of policy advising, PMRs sought unsuccessfully to adhere to the divide between management and policy and, in doing so, marked out the limits to performance evaluation.     

Cases and Controversies: How Novitiates Are Trained to Be Masters of the Public Policy Universe

Public policy schools were established 30 years ago to provide analytic and management skills to aspiring policy professionals. A centerpiece of policy management training has been the action‐centered teaching case, modeled after the cases long used in business schools. Though other aspects of public management teaching and research have been vigorously debated, little attention has been paid to the content of teaching cases.Taking these texts as a central element in policy student socialization, the authors ask what implicit lessons they convey. A close reading of 10 best‐selling cases from the Kennedy School of Government finds the policy world to be the domain of high‐level, lone protagonists beset by hostile political forces; collaborative problem‐solving is rare, street‐level actors insignificant, and historical, social, and institutional contexts of minimal importance. The article discusses the implications of this construction and raises questions about its appropriateness for the training of future public servants. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

我国矿产资源管理政策范式变迁研究

矿产资源是支撑国民经济发展的重要物质基础,系统探究矿产资源管理政策范式变迁历程、变迁机制与变迁逻辑,对优化当前矿产资源管理政策具有重要意义。基于政策范式变迁理论框架,以1986年到2019年年间中央层面颁发的511份矿产资源管理政策文本为研究对象,运用政策文献量化的分析方法,对我国矿产资源管理政策的范式变迁与演变逻辑进行研究。研究发现:自1986年《中华人民共和国矿产资源法》颁布实施以来,中国矿产资源管理政策范式经历了“规范化—市场化—集约化—战略化”四个阶段的变迁,每个阶段的政策问题、政策目标和政策工具各有侧重;理念转变和体制改革是推动政策范式变迁的主要原因,其变迁规律体现为政策问题由“基础性”到“战略性”、政策目标由“单一”到“多元”、政策工具由“严格管控”到“宏观调控”的演变逻辑。     

The Impact of Management Capacity on Government Innovation in Korea: An Empirical Study

ABSTRACT

A common assertion within public management is that management capacity drives policy outcomes. This study tests that argument, focusing on an important policy outcome—innovation. Data were drawn from the Korean government to examine the impact of government's management capacity for the adoption and implementation of innovation. The results confirm that both managerial behaviors and structures are drivers of government innovation. The adoption and implementation of innovative projects require full-scale management capacity, encompassing innovative leadership, a quality workforce, appropriate structures/systems, and the ability to manage external influences. These results suggest that public management capacity drives innovation in government by changing managerial behaviors and structures. Implications of these results for managing government innovation are discussed.     

Understanding participant perspectives: Q‐methodology in national forest management

Many policy practitioners and theorists have argued that value‐free, objective solutions to policy problems do not exist. While participant values and subjective viewpoints influence policy problems, empirically determining participant perspectives and preferences has been a daunting task. This paper demonstrates how Q‐methodology, a technique for systematically revealing subjective perspectives, can contribute to better problem identification and definition; estimation and specification of policy option; and selection, implementation, and evaluation of policies. Two case studies in national forest management are reviewed and demonstrate how Q‐methodology can (1) identify important internal and external constituencies, (2) define participant viewpoints and perceptions, (3) provide sharper insight into participant‐preferred management directions, (4) identify criteria that are important to participants, (5) explicitly outline areas of consensus and conflict, and (6) develop a common view toward the policy. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Disasters,Catastrophes, and Policy Failure in the Homeland Security Era1

The September 11 attacks triggered federal policy changes designed to influence emergency management in the United States, even though these attacks did not suggest a need for a wholesale restructuring of federal policy in emergency management. Instead, for several reasons, federal policy's emphasis on terrorism and emergency management significantly degraded the nation's ability to address natural disasters. The federal government sought to create a top‐down, command and control model of emergency management that never fully accounted for, positively or normatively, the way local emergency management works in practice. The Obama administration will have to address the questions raised by the reorganization of federal emergency management responsibilities. While the context in which these changes have occurred is unique to the U.S. federal system, there are interesting implications for emergency management in nonfederal systems.     

Innovation Policy in Italy (1993–2002): Understanding the Invention and Persistence of a Public Management Reform

The literature on the politics of public management reform in Italy broadly contends that the country's legalistic administrative tradition suppresses reform. This article questions and qualifies this line of argument on the basis of a newly reported case of public management reform that endured for more than 10 years. The study tracks and explains the emergence of the policy issue of “government innovation” and its persistence on the specialized policy agenda of the Ministry for Public Administration. The initial emergence of the government innovation policy in Italy and its directional stability is explained by applying event‐centric approaches to historical analysis, together with the institutional concept of policy subsystems. The article shows the need for modifying central arguments—both substantive and theoretical—about the politics of public management reform in Italy.     

Civil Service Reform as National Security: The Homeland Security Act of 2002

The events of 9/11 have influenced policy making in public administration. The Homeland Security Act of 2002, which created the Department of Homeland Security, contained language that empowered the secretary of homeland security and the director of the Office of Personnel Management to establish a personnel management system outside the normal provisions of the federal civil service. Why did civil service reform succeed as part of this legislation when previous attempts at large‐scale reform had failed? A case analysis of the enactment of civil service reform in the Homeland Security Act points to theories of policy emergence and certain models of presidential and congressional policy making. In this case, civil service reform became associated with national security instead of management reform. An assessment of the rhetorical arguments used to frame this policy image offers a powerful explanation for the adoption of the personnel management reforms in the Homeland Security Act. This case has implications for understanding how policy makers might approach future management reform agendas.