In Search of Society? The Limitations of Citizen‐Centred Governance

Democratic governments have spent much of the last two decades attempting to recalibrate their governance systems around a single focal entity: the citizen. The all‐pervasive rhetoric of citizen‐centred governance has seen policies conceived, delivered and evaluated in terms of the satisfaction levels achieved by individual ‘citizens’. This article argues that by disaggregating societal interests down to the smallest available individual unit – the citizen – policy makers have created unrealistic expectations of individual participation, leading to public distrust when ‘citizen‐centred’ rhetoric does not match reality. Simultaneously, the focus on individual outcomes has narrowed the policy‐making gaze away from wider society‐level measures that could create more robust policy options in the face of ‘hard choices.’ The result – paradoxically – is that the more government focuses on pleasing the individual citizen, the less trusting those citizens are of government's ability to deliver meaningful outcomes.     

The National Renewable Energy Target: An Example of Post‐Machiavellian Policy‐Making?

Since the election of the Rudd Government in 2007 intergovernmental relations have been a major feature of the political agenda. A ‘new federalism’ approach introduced a re‐invigorated Council of Australian Governments (COAG) focused on developing national policies that reflect coordinated and cooperative policy‐making processes. The establishment of COAG working groups provided the means for developing policies that reflect new levels of agreement between jurisdictions and a common approach to reform. The development of the 20% Renewable Energy Target has been one of the first initiatives of this new approach to policy‐making. This research analyses the process behind the development of the target and places it within the context of the post‐Machiavellian approach, and looks at the implications for future intergovernmental relations.     

What makes evidence‐based policy making such a useful myth? The case of NICE guidance on bariatric surgery in the United Kingdom

There is widespread skepticism among policy scholars and practitioners about the move to rationalize policy making: The naive vision of “evidence‐based policy” is often contrasted with the reality of “policy‐based evidence.” Yet, the language of evidence‐based policy making (EBPM) continues to dominate policy debate about complex and contested issues. In this paper, I explore this apparent paradox by looking at what makes EBPM such a useful myth for all sorts of policy actors. I do so with reference to the pioneering work of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), focusing specifically on its work in relation to bariatric surgery, a suite of controversial and drastic weight loss procedures. I show that the myth of EBPM has political, pragmatic, and procedural utility in practice, allowing the organization to set and administer guidelines on this uncertain, complex, and contested treatment in ways that sustain buy‐in and enable ongoing contestation.     

The wisdom of crowds: What do citizens forecast for the 2015 British General Election?

Who do you think will win in your constituency? Most citizens correctly answer this question, and groups are even better at answering it. Combining individual forecasts results in the ‘wisdom of crowds’ explained by Condorcet's jury theorem. This paper demonstrates the accuracy of citizen forecasts in seven British General Elections between 1964 and 2010, and reports what citizens interviewed in February and March forecasted for the election in May 2015. ‘Citizen forecasting’ predicts vote shares and winners in constituency elections, and seat numbers and governments in national elections. The paper also introduces a new method for predicting vote shares from citizen forecasts. Citizen forecasts are direct, accurate, and comprehensible. Pollsters should collect them and communicate their results more often.     

The Obama Administration and PBB: Building on the Legacy of Federal Performance‐Informed Budgeting?

The administration of President Barack Obama, like those of his immediate predecessors, is focused on trying to improve the quality of, and use of, performance data. The federal government has been pursuing performance‐informed budget reforms for more than 50 years. Most recently, the Bush administration reforms included the President’s Management Agenda and the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). The Obama administration reforms include: measuring the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; reducing or eliminating poorly‐performing programs; setting a limited number of short‐term, high‐priority performance goals; and funding detailed program evaluations. The administration is taking a more agency‐driven approach than the Bush administration, but continues to find it challenging to move beyond production of performance data to its use. There should be opportunities to show how performance information can be used for decision making, given the change in the political climate and the needs to reduce spending and the deficit. Historically, there has been little appetite in the Congress for evidence‐based decision making. The administration, however, can continue to demonstrate how federal agencies can use performance information to more effectively manage programs.     

Are There Hidden Costs Associated With Conducting Layoffs? The Impact of Reduction‐in‐Force and Layoff Notices on Teacher Effectiveness

Few studies examine employee responses to layoff‐induced unemployment risk; none that we know of quantify the impact of job insecurity on individual employee productivity. Using data from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and Washington State during the Great Recession, we provide the first evidence about the impact of the layoff process on teacher productivity. In both sites we find that teachers impacted by the layoff process are less productive than those who do not face layoff‐induced job threat. LAUSD teachers who are laid off and then rehired to return to the district are less productive in the two years following the layoff. Washington teachers who are given a reduction‐in‐force (RIF) notice and are then not laid off have reduced effectiveness in the year of the RIF. We argue that these results are likely driven by impacts of the layoff process on teachers’ job commitment and present evidence to rule out alternate explanations.     

Does the Motivation for Market‐Based Reform Matter? The Case of Responsibility‐Centered Management

Organizational theorists have long examined the implications of market‐oriented policies for public agencies. Current research often aims to understand the effects of policies imposed on organizations by external stakeholder groups, but few studies have attempted to gain a better understanding of what mechanisms cause agencies to select into these strategies. The purpose of this article is to understand, first, which factors make an organization more likely to adopt a decentralized, market‐based budgeting system—termed “responsibility‐centered management (RCM)—and, second, whether this type of system has implications for organizational performance. Using data on doctorate‐granting public and private nonprofit four‐year universities in the United States, the authors find that mission, resource dependence, and state party control influence the take‐up of RCM. In terms of effects, RCM creates winners for graduation rates (white students) and degree production (science, technology, engineering, and math departments), which raises questions of equity across groups.     

Crowd‐Out or Affordability? The Lifeline Expansion's Effect on Wireless Service Spending

Public subsidization of private goods often leads to crowd‐out, reducing private spending. This effect is intended for a policy such as the 2008 Lifeline phone subsidy expansion, which aimed to increase affordable access to services. I examine the effects of this policy on households’ self‐reported wireless phone service spending in the Consumer Expenditure Survey. Using state‐level variation in policy implementation and triple‐differences event study methods, I estimate that the expansion reduced households’ wireless service spending by more than 100 percent of subsidy payments. I document that the expansion led to a separate, competitive market for providers catering to low‐income households. Consequently, higher‐quality subsidized services crowded out lower‐quality unsubsidized options, saving households more than an equivalent cash transfer. This highlights how market segmentation and competition can magnify a targeted subsidy's impact.     

The effect of COVID-19 lockdowns on political support: Some good news for democracy?

Major crises can act as critical junctures or reinforce the political status quo, depending on how citizens view the performance of central institutions. We use an interrupted time series to study the political effect of the enforcement of a strict confinement policy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we take advantage of a unique representative web-based survey that was fielded in March and April 2020 in Western Europe to compare the political support of those who took the survey right before and right after the start of the lockdown in their country. We find that lockdowns have increased vote intentions for the party of the Prime Minister/President, trust in government and satisfaction with democracy. Furthermore, we find that, while rallying individuals around current leaders and institutions, they have had no effect on traditional left–right attitudes.     

Is Temperature Exogenous? The Impact of Civil Conflict on the Instrumental Climate Record in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Research into the effects of climate on political and economic outcomes assumes that short‐term variation in weather is exogenous to the phenomena being studied. However, weather data are derived from stations operated by national governments, whose political capacity and stability affect the quality and continuity of coverage. We show that civil conflict risk in sub‐Saharan Africa is negatively correlated with the number and density of weather stations contributing to a country's temperature record. This effect is both cross‐sectional—countries with higher average conflict risk tend to have poorer coverage—and cross‐temporal—civil conflict leads to loss of weather stations. Poor coverage induces a small downward bias in one widely used temperature data set, due to its interpolation method, and increases measurement error, potentially attenuating estimates of the temperature–conflict relationship. Combining multiple observational data sets to reduce measurement error almost doubles the estimated effect of temperature anomalies on civil conflict risk.     

The paradox of policy analysis: If it is not used,why do we produce so much of it?

This article explores the apparent paradox that our society invests heavily in policy analysis when empirical studies, political science theory, and common wisdom all suggest that analysis is not used by policymakers to make better policy decisions. It offers a critique of the traditional view of policy analysis and presents an alternative view derived from contemporary literature on the policy process and decisionmaking. The alternative view suggests that there are legitimate uses for analysis other than the problem‐solving use originally envisioned but apparently rarely attained. The two views imply different patterns of use of analysis by legislative committees—a contrast that I subject to an empirical test. An examination of quantitative data on policy analysis use by congressional committees from 1985 to 1994 lends support for the alternative view. The research has two implications. First, despite its scientific origins, policy analysis may be a more effective instrument of the democratic process than of the problem‐solving process. Second, the profession of policy analysis may be in better shape than many who are calling for fundamental changes to its practice seem to believe. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The Big Society in Australia: A Case of ‘Non’‐Policy Transfer?

The Big Society was a flagship policy initiative launched by the UK Conservative party, under the leadership of David Cameron, to win office in 2010. Closely associated with the ideas of Phillip Blond, the Big Society agenda seeks to introduce new forms of civic activism and revive wider civil society. There has been speculation that the Big Society agenda might take hold in Australia, and Blond has been active in promoting it in Australia. Using Dolowitz and Marsh's policy transfer heuristic, this article examines the likelihood of the Big Society being adopted by the Abbott Liberal Coalition. The article outlines a number of potential variants of the Big Society, and concludes that for a variety of reasons it is unlikely to be adopted by the Liberal federal government in Australia. The case also highlights both strengths and limitations in the Dolowitz and Marsh framework, arguing that it can be used in an innovative way to speculate on potential transfers, but is limited in accounting for why transfer may or may not take place.     

Do parties matter in internationalised policy areas? The impact of political parties on environmental policy outputs in 18 OECD countries, 1970–2000

This article analyses the extent to which national policies in the highly internationalised environmental sector are influenced by the policy preferences of political parties. The focus is on policy outputs rather than environmental performance as the central indicator of policy change. Based on a discussion of the relevant theoretical literature competing hypotheses are presented. For an empirical test, a dataset is used that includes information on the number of environmental policies adopted in 18 OECD countries at four points in time between 1970 and 2000. The results show that not only international integration, economic development and problem pressure, but also aspects of party politics, influence the number of policies adopted. The number of environmental measures increases if the governmental parties adopt more pro‐environmentalist policy positions. This effect remains robust even when controlling for the institutional strength of governments, the left‐right position of parties in government, the inclusion of an ecological or left‐libertarian party inside the (coalition) government, and the presence of a portfolio that deals exclusively with environmental issues.     

The Alternative Vote and Coombs Rule versus First-Past-the-Post: a social choice analysis of simulated data based on English elections, 1992–2010

This paper presents a social choice analysis, using simulated data based on English general elections from 1992 through 2010, of the properties of three voting rules: First-Past-the-Post, the Alternative Vote, and the Coombs Rule. More specifically, the paper examines (1) the plurality, anti-plurality, and Condorcet status of candidates in each election and the interrelationships among these statuses, (2) the effects of strict and partial single-peakedness of voter preferences, and (3) the identity of winners, Condorcet efficiency, and the relationship between votes and seats under the three voting rules. The analysis considers only the case of three candidates and, in the manner of basic social choice theory, the set of candidates and voter preferences over them are taken to be fixed.     

In the Shadow of Brexit: The 2019 European Parliament Elections as First‐Order Polity Elections?

European Parliament (EP) elections have traditionally been described as ‘second‐order national elections' in which campaigns are fought by national parties on national issues. We argue that the 2019 elections should instead be considered ‘first‐order polity' elections. It is not EU‐level party politics or policy issues that are debated, but rather the legitimacy of the EU itself. Firstly, the EP elections have transformed into an EU ‘blame game' in which national governments are punished or rewarded over their stance on European integration. Secondly, the 2019 election was about the EU's fundamental values, not only with respect to multiculturalism, but also gender equality and LGBTQ rights. Finally, these first‐order polity elections are driven in large part by traditional news and social media platforms. While this is a long way from the patterns of the early EP elections, they still fail in fulfilling the function of holding MEPs and European party groupings adequately to account.     

European Union transgovernmental networks: The emergence of a new political space beyond the nation‐state?

Abstract. Does the European Union (EU) represent a new political order replacing the old nation‐states? The assessment of the real character of political orders requires the identification of political key actors and of the specific structure of their interactions. Transgovernmental networks have been considered to be one of the most important features of EU integration. Unfortunately, the network structures, processes and the impact of these informal horizontal inter‐organisational relations between nation‐states are mostly unknown. The main objective of this article is to measure and explain the selective pattern of informal bilateral relations of high officials of the EU Member States’ ministerial bureaucracies on the occasion of an EU Intergovernmental Conference. The quantitative data used rely on standardised interviews with 140 top‐level bureaucrats. The statistical estimation of network choices is based on recent developments of exponential random graph models.