Conflict resolution: benchmarking water utility performance

The water sector has economic and symbolic importance for citizens in developing countries. Water utility benchmarking is no panacea for improving water sector performance. Nevertheless, it can contribute to addressing four sources of conflict in the design and implementation of policies: cognitive conflicts (based on technical disagreements regarding how data might be analysed and interpreted), interest conflicts (where suppliers and demanders obtain different benefits and costs under alternative policies), values conflicts (involving ideology or personal preferences regarding water sector outcomes) and authority conflicts (stemming from jurisdictional disagreements over who has the last word). These potential sources of conflict characterise most politically‐charged situations, including water supply management. This article examines the extent to which water utility benchmarking facilitates conflict resolution. Without information on historical trends, current baselines and realistic targets, conflicts over reforms to improve sector performance can weaken systems that are already fragile, particularly those in developing countries. This article attempts to improve our understanding of the links between sources of conflict, government approaches for dealing with conflict and the role of water utility benchmarking as a complementary strategy for addressing policy issues. Benchmarking is one way regulators and managers can promote conflict resolution that allows participants to focus on performance. The principles apply to all sectors with significant state oversight. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Moving Policy Theory Forward: Connecting Multiple Stream and Advocacy Coalition Frameworks to Policy Cycle Models of Analysis

The stages/policy cycle, multiple streams, and Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) approaches to understanding policy processes, all have analytical value although also attracting substantive criticism. An obvious direction for research is to determine whether the multiple streams framework and the ACF can be refined and applied to other dimensions of policy‐making set out in the policy cycle model. This article argues that extending and modifying Kingdon's framework beyond the agenda‐setting stage is best suited to this endeavour. Doing so makes it possible to bring these three approaches into alignment and enhances our understanding, although retaining the core insights of each.     

A Knowledge‐Based Approach to Public Value Management: A Case Study of Change Implementation in Disability Services in Western Australia

This paper provides a knowledge‐based perspective to understanding public value management (PVM). As distinct from other approaches to public administration, PVM focuses on collaborative capacity building for the creation of public value. To develop the notion of PVM further, we explore the role of a knowledge‐based strategy in a case study of change implementation in 18 disability service organisations in Western Australia. Our findings show important inter‐relationships between knowledge management strategy, adopting a person‐centred approach to service provision, and sustainability of change implementation. We discuss the implications of the study for disability sector change management and for the further exploration of the strategic role of knowledge management capabilities in the study and practice of PVM in public sector administration. The paper explores the relationship between an organisation's knowledge capture and sharing systems and processes and its ability to implement change in a way that generates long‐term benefits for both public sector employees (e.g., engaging with key stakeholders to generate innovative solutions for serving client needs) and clients (i.e., increased well‐being through better service design and support).     

Three views of the expert's role in policymaking: Systems analysis,incrementalism, and the clinical approach

This paper compares three approaches to improving policymaking: systems analysis, disjointed incrementalism, and the clinical approach (elsewhere referred to as the planned change or human relations approach or organization development). It pays particular attention to the way in which these three approaches view organizations and the role of the expert in reform-mongering.It is suggested that systems analysis and incrementalism are quite compatible and that, in fact, systems analysis has, in large measure, accepted the incrementalists' view of the policymaking process. But this acceptance has served not so much to strengthen policy analysis as to increase awareness of its weaknesses.The clinical approach, on the other hand, holds out the promise of strengthening policy analysis, since it focuses on changing organizations, an area in which both systems analysis and incrementalism are weak and, as action-oriented approaches, hampered by their weaknesses. The potential contributions of the clinical approach are considered as well as the likelihood of an eventual synthesis.The first version of this paper was prepared for presentation to the Systems Analysis Group, Canadian Treasury Board.     

Out of tune or well tempered? How competition agencies direct the orchestrating state

This article analyzes the impact competition agencies have on the orchestrating role of states in domestic private regulation. I argue that these agencies can significantly affect interactions in the governance triangle through the way they apply a “logic of the market” to evaluate agreements between firms. The regulatory framework of European Union competition law has increasingly constrained the ability of firms to take into account broader interests when making agreements to foster social objectives. This logic of the market clashes with the ever‐increasing emphasis governments place on enabling firms to enter into such agreements. I analyze this tension through a case study of a pact of Dutch retailers to collectively introduce higher animal welfare standards for poultry. Using regulatory network analysis I trace the governance interactions between the governance triangle on the one hand (government, non‐governmental organizations, and firms), and the Dutch competition authority, Autoriteit Consument en Markt (ACM) and the European Commission on the other hand. Attempts by the Dutch government to instruct the ACM to be more lenient toward private regulation were blocked twice by the European Commission. As a result, the Dutch government abandoned private regulation as the preferred mode and proposed a bottom‐up process that would generate public regulation as a way to avoid conflict with competition policy. I argue that paradoxically enough the intervention of these non‐majoritarian competition agencies against the “will” of the governance triangle has potentially increased the effectiveness and legitimacy of orchestration processes.     

The Policy Effects of Internationalization: A Subsystem Adjustment Analysis of Policy Change

This article contributes to a better understanding of contemporary policy analysis and management by setting out the parameters for analyzing policy change induced by internationalization. It first maps the dynamics of policy change in domestic settings and then explores how internationalization has affected the dynamics identified. The central proposition of the article is that internationalization promotes the restructuring of policy subsystems in such as way as to form hospitable circumstances for swifter and deeper policy changes than would otherwise be the case. However, the analysis suggests that this is a two-stage process in that once its initial impact is felt, internationalization serves to entrench and stabilize reconstructed policy systems, thus constraining the scope for further change.     

Territorial Representation and the Opinion–Policy Linkage: Evidence from the European Union

A key feature of federal systems is the representation of subnational units by “territorial representatives” in policymaking at the federal level. How do such arrangements influence the linkage between public opinion and policy outputs? I argue that policymaking under territorial representation should be systematically skewed toward opinion in those states where citizens care about a policy issue and have a uniform view on it. This claim is tested using a novel data set of policy change in the European Union (EU), covering 211 policy issues and 6,506 observations of opinion–policy dyads. Results show that measures weighting opinion across member states by how much national citizens care about an issue are better predictors of policy change than EU‐wide mean opinion. Moreover, congruence between state‐level opinion and EU‐level policy becomes more likely, the more salient and clear‐cut opinion in a member state is. These findings refine our understanding of the opinion–policy linkage under territorial representation.     

Packaging Support for Low‐Income Families: Policy Variation across the United States

This paper addresses a gap in state‐level comparative social policy research by analyzing policies that support low‐income families with children. Variation in state policy “packages” is measured by considering three characteristics of 11 social programs. Individual measures of policy are found to be weakly and inconsistently inter‐correlated at the state level, but when cluster analysis is used to analyze multiple dimensions simultaneously, five clusters or regime types are identified that have distinctive policy approaches. These range from the most minimal provisions, to conservative approaches emphasizing private responsibility, to integrated approaches that combine generous direct assistance with employment support and policies that enforce family responsibility. A comparison of a subset of programs at two points in time (1994 and 1998) suggests that states made substantial changes in cash assistance and taxation policies after the 1996 federal welfare reforms. The magnitude and direction of these changes remained consistent with the state clusters identified in 1994. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

When Policies Undo Themselves: Self‐Undermining Feedback as a Source of Policy Change

Most studies of policy feedback have focused on processes of self‐reinforcement through which programs bolster their own bases of political support and endure or expand over time. This article develops a theoretical framework for identifying feedback mechanisms through which policies can become self‐undermining over time, increasing the likelihood of a major change in policy orientation. We conceptualize and illustrate three types of self‐undermining feedback mechanisms that we expect to operate in democratic politics: the emergence of unanticipated losses for mobilized social interests, interactions between strategic elites and loss‐averse voters, and expansions of the menu of policy alternatives. We also advance hypotheses about the conditions under which each mechanism is likeliest to unfold. In illuminating endogenous sources of policy change, the analysis builds on efforts by both historically oriented and rationalist scholars to understand how institutions change and seeks to expand political scientists’ theoretical toolkit for explaining policy development over time.     

Managing Value Conflict in Public Policy

Policy issues are often characterized by conflicting values. Conventionally, students of public policy have conceptualized government's response to value conflicts as a matter of "balancing" competing goals, or striking trade-offs among values. In this paper we argue that this way of managing value conflicts represents only one possibility from a larger and more varied repertoire of strategies that draw from more complex models of practical reasoning. Policy actors do sometimes try to strike a "balance" among conflicting values, but they often avail themselves of other strategies as well: they cycle between values by emphasizing one value and then the other; they assign responsibilities for each value to different institutional structures; or they gather and consult a taxonomy of specific cases where similar conflicts arose. We argue that each of these strategies can be rational in some institutional contexts, and that conclusion challenges the view that policy values must always be treated as commensurable for rational policy choices to be made. Government responds to value conflict in ways that are more varied and changing than existing views of public policy imply.     

Joblessness and poverty in America's central cities: Causes and policy prescriptions

Abstract

Two paradigms pervade the policy debate on the causes of urban joblessness and poverty: (1) a structural, nonvoluntaristic perspective emphasizing the roles of urban economic change, residential segregation, and spatial and skills mismatches, and (2) a rational‐choice, voluntaristic perspective contending that the generosity and ready availability of welfare programs have removed the incentive for poor persons to accept low‐paying jobs. This article brings together propositions of each paradigm into a comprehensive theoretical model. The study measured and tested key causal operators of the model for a sample of 67 large U.S. cities, with special attention to race and gender.

Results show that structural and welfare disincentive perspectives are not in conflict but rather operate side by side to reinforce joblessness and poverty. Race and gender, especially the role of urban space for women's work, are important. The article raises pertinent policy issues derived from the two perspectives and from the analysis.     

Arenas as Institutional Sites for Policymaking: Patterns and Effects in Comparative Perspective

In comparative approaches to the policy process, policymaking institutions are usually considered at the level of political systems. Countries, however, may vary not only in systemic institutions but also in types of policymaking arenas within specific domains. Systematic attention to this variation in policy arenas at both levels may complement existing theories of the policy process that focus on other explanatory variables and may increase the comparative potential of these approaches. As an explanatory variable, arena variation makes a difference to policy results in that it may increase or decrease the potential for policy change sought by policy entrepreneurs.     

To Revoke or Not Revoke? The Political Determinants of Executive Order Longevity

Though many scholars study the formation of policy, less attention is given to its endurance. In this article, I seek to determine what contributes to the longevity of policy by examining the case of presidential unilateralism. While scholars widely recognize presidents’ ability to unilaterally make policy with executive orders, they largely do not account for how these same orders can be easily changed by subsequent administrations. To address this deficiency, I develop a theory of executive order duration based on both time‐invariant characteristics of the order and time‐variant changes in the political climate it faces. Using survival analysis to examine all orders revoked between 1937 and 2013, I find support for the theory. This study has implications for understanding the endurance of executive orders and other policy instruments as part of the law as well as understanding the strategic actions of policy makers given the transient nature of these tools.     

The Tax Reform Agenda in Australia

This paper applies concepts developed in the Policy Agendas Project (PAP) literature to an analysis of Australian tax policy over the post war period. It argues that a major turning point in the Australian tax policy agenda occurred during the second term of the Hawke Government (1984‐87). Beyond this turning point, and despite the fierce partisan conflict concerning tax policy over the past two decades, there has been remarkaly little difference between Australia's two major parties at the level of substantive policy content. The Australian tax policy agenda over the post war period can be characterised by remarkable policy continuity punctuated by a period of change in the mid 1980s when structural change in the international political economy precipitated unprecedented domestic liberalisation.     

Motivational dilemmas in collaborative learning activities: The case of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)

Complex social and environmental problems—such as climate change, rural poverty, and over‐fishing—defy simple policy solutions. An increasing number of scholars, practitioners, and policy makers now agree that coming to grips with such problems requires more collaborative and adaptive forms of learning and decision‐making. Such approaches seek to involve a variety of stakeholders to learn about system‐level effects of past human decisions and adapt future management decisions to the lessons learned. While there are plenty of success stories at the local level, the collaborative learning approach has turned out to be difficult to implement at broader scales—in large public organizations and in society at large. This article provides an explanation for such shortcomings, arguing that the creation of collaborative learning systems is plagued by several motivational dilemmas. By systematically mapping out the institutional incentives of the potential participants in collaborative learning activities, it is argued that one can gain a better understanding of the likelihood that adaptive systems will actually work. These ideas are tested on the case of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). It is found that most Sida staff face conflicting incentives to engage in collaborative learning, but there are opportunities for management to strengthen such incentives. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Government alternation and legislative agenda setting

Recent studies of the legislative process have put forward a number of plausible hypotheses regarding the distribution of agenda‐setting power. These hypotheses have guided scholars in identifying those conflicts and actors that are crucial to explaining legislative change and the wording of legislation. However, this has not yet led to a better understanding of the choice of specific agenda‐setting rules. Why does the cabinet in some parliamentary democracies enjoy an undisputed role, while in others the parliament continues to play the role of co‐protagonist? This article attempts to answer this question by looking at some well‐known features of party systems. It is argued that in pivotal party systems, with limited government alternation, it is much more difficult to strengthen the government vis‐à‐vis the parliament. One factor prevents the procedural and institutional predominance of the cabinet under these circumstances: the lack of opportunities for, and expectations of, large and controversial policy change.     

Policy Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change: Multilevel Governance of Central Banking Reform

Recent studies on institutional theory and the public policy field called for efforts to pry open the black box of institutional and policy change. This article offers a response to this call. It demonstrates that historical and discursive institutionalist approaches are complementary to explain how and why institutional change occurs. In addition, it shows how these approaches can add value to and benefit from the public policy and administration fields that seek to explain policy change and success. In particular, it emphasizes the interactions between structure and agency that contribute to the change. The empirical finding is based on qualitative analysis of central banking reform in Turkey. It suggests that institutional and policy change is more likely to occur when policy entrepreneurs, with joint membership in domestic and transnational policy communities, mediate various ideas and discourse within and among these communities in a punctuated institutional equilibrium.     

Systems theory and policy practice: An exploration

Systems approaches in policy analysis have had a chequered history. Expectations that hard (quantitative) systems analysis would lead to better answers to policy problems have largely been disappointed. Yet systems theory has itself moved on, to embrace the concept of autopoiesis and a variety of soft systems methodologies. Collectively, these theories offer a way of analysing policy quite distinct from the institutionalist approaches which tend to dominate the theory and practice of policy-making. Rather than selecting instruments to fit a particular kind of policy problem (the conventional approach to policy design) systems analysis suggests that the nature of the problem cannot be understood separately from its solution. For policy problems characterised by complexity (such as those concerned with environmental management and regulation, and urban re-development) using systems concepts offers a way of rationalising aspects of existing practice and of suggesting directions for improvement.     

Towards a Real Sustainable Agri‐food Security and Food Policy: Beyond the Ecological Fallacies?

The recent rises in food prices represent the ‘tip of the iceberg’ and a ‘canary in the mine’ moment for world agriculture. They are underlain by a continuing ‘race to the bottom’ and speculative process whereby systems of resource production and exploitation are continuing to rely upon ‘infinite supply’ assumptions and narrow technological solutions to ‘feeding the world’. I argue here that these conditions are leading to a dominant policy framing that tends to marginalise diverse and place‐based agro‐ecological systems by creating a new legitimacy for bio‐economic rather than eco‐economic solutions. Government and policy‐making bodies need to redefine and widen their approaches to agriculture and agri‐food in ways that recognise its social, cultural, political and spatially diverse contribution in a post‐carbon world.     

Lessons from the past? Cultural memory in Dutch integration policy

This article explores the contribution that cultural memory studies can make to the debate about the role of ideas and the dynamics of ideational change in policy making. Cultural memory studies engage with the cultural dimensions of remembering, and analyse how shared images of the past are mediated and transferred across distance and time. Such research shows how the past may continue to influence the present by informing the frameworks through which groups and individuals interpret and give meaning to events and phenomena. Since policy makers operate within a cultural context, shared memories are likely also to affect the way they think about the nature and roots of policy issues and the appropriateness and feasibility of policy options. In this article, policy memory (the memory shared by policy makers about earlier policies) is identified as a subcategory of cultural memory. The role of cultural memory among policy makers is studied with reference to Dutch integration policies in two periods: the mid‐1990s and the early 2000s. On the basis of an in‐depth analysis of policy reports and parliamentary debates, references to the past and the role they play in the policy debate are identified. Different modes of dealing with the past are found in the two periods studied, reflecting the different political contexts in which the debates took place. In the 1990s, the memory of earlier policy was invoked in the mode of continuity – that is, policy change was legitimised (conceived) as part of a positive tradition. In the 2000s, memory was invoked in the mode of discontinuity. The same policies were reinterpreted in more negative terms and policy change legitimised by the perceived need to break with the past. Arguably, this reinterpretation of the past was a precondition for the shift in policy beliefs that took place around that time.