Local Government and Local Governance: 1944–2011

Abstract

Since the establishment of the tri-partite system of state education after the Second World War, the once simple relationships between central government and local government and the individual school have become increasingly complex. This article considers the key governance issues for schools and colleges in England and how they have been affected by the redistribution of power between central government and local government. The principal foci are the main legislative changes and the impact they have had on the respective powers and responsibilities of central government, local government and schools and colleges. The radical developments since the formation of the coalition government in May 2010 have accelerated the shift of power to central government from local government and by the end of the first term of the coalition the local authority will have little more than a vestigial role in the provision of secondary education and a diminishing role in primary and special education. As academy status becomes the norm (as it already is for secondary schools in some authorities) central government will be dealing directly with autonomous schools and academy chains. With more schools directly employing staff and with funding levels set nationally, the pattern and nature of public education will have been irrevocably changed.     

President Gloria Macapagal‐Arroyo's anti‐corruption strategy in the Philippines an evaluation

Fighting corruption has been one of the priority issues for President Gloria Macapagal‐Arroyo for the past five years. Faster‐paced and result‐oriented implementation of anti‐corruption projects did bring some tangible results. There are new laws and executive and administrative orders related to anti‐corruption which have been passed. New strategies during her second term such as strengthening anti‐corruption agencies, more social value formation at the national level, and the use of e‐procurement in the government system, show encouraging signs for success. However, despite the effort and achievement, the public perception of corruption and sincerity of the government performance in fighting corruption remains unchanged or has even worsened. Is it due to lack of political will? Does this mean that the government is losing the war on corruption? The answers are complex, but two important reasons are the slow progress to improve the country's economy and the ineffectiveness of the government which has resulted in a negative public perception. The government needs to gain more public confidence so that the anti‐corruption reforms will strengthen good governance and make it accountable.     

Partnerships and public procurement: building social capital through supply relations

As one means of dealing with an increasingly interdependent or shared power 'noone in charge' world (Bryson and Crosby 1992) and adapting the public sector to the demands of the global economy, successive administrations in the UK have aimed to develop a more strategic approach to public procurement by emphasizing inter–departmental co–ordination and establishing long–term partnership relations with suppliers. This has proved to be a difficult task, however, as the operating framework and culture of the public sector have hindered the development of interorganizational relationships and trust. By focusing on the co–operative processes and interaction within central government departments and between departments and the private sector, this paper aims to analyse and identify the obstacles to, and opportunities for, implementing long–term supply relations and facilitating departmental co–ordination. While the paper argues that partnership relations can build social capital, it also shows that these resources can have both positive and negative effects for public procurement. To conclude, lessons for developing collaborative arrangements in public procurement are identified.     

Balancing revisability and robustness? A new institutionalist perspective on local government modernization

This article focuses upon one particular aspect of new institutionalist thinking – that which analyses the scope for, and constraints upon, deliberate interventions in institutional change. New institutionalist insights are used to illuminate the challenges faced by the British Labour government in its programme for modernizing local government. The focus is upon two core concepts: robustness and revisability – a pairing which highlights the potential contradictions that exist within the new institutionalist approach to design. It is argued that New Labour struggled to achieve a balance between these key design criteria during its first term, with revisability increasingly sacrificed in favour of robustness. In its second term in office (since June 2001), Labour has sought to rebalance robustness and revisability, largely through the principle of 'earned autonomy'. In this context the values informing the institutional redesign of local government have become less clear and more contested, and there has been a progressive shift from commitment-based to control-based strategies for change.     

The Role of Non -Economic Drivers in Development Planning: The Case of South Korea and Turkey

ABSTRACT

The relationships between economic growth and planning strategies have been debated in different disciplines of social science. However, the emphasis has been more on structural and theoretical assumptions of planning and economics at the expense of other important non-economic and institutional factors that include social, cultural, political, and administrative dimensions. To explain the different approaches and outcomes of development planning, one needs to examine other factors that influence the nature of these plans and why they have been adopted. Using rigorous systematic and thematic review of government reports, academic publications and data from international organizations, this comparative study reveal the unique role non-economic factors play in countries’ development. It has been revealed that these factors not only influence the nature of planning strategies adopted by governments but also affect how these plans are implemented. Since South Korea and Turkey have achieved impressive economic growth over the last half a century, they have been selected as a case study to examine the role non-economic factors in their respective developments.     

COMPETING TRADITIONS OF GOVERNANCE AND DILEMMAS OF ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOUNTABILITY: THE CASE OF DENMARK

This article offers a study of the changing role of the state in Denmark under the condition of the overall transformation from government to governance with particular emphasis on the corresponding transition from process accountability to performance accountability. It is argued that although new modes of governance have been introduced, and new interpretations of accountability have been proliferated, neither conventional modes of governance nor older interpretations of accountability disappear. Thus, what we see is a co-existence of competing traditions of governance and different and sometimes contradictory interpretations of administrative accountability, which create potential dilemmas and contradictions for the individual civil servant. Employing an interpretative approach to governance and public administration, the article analyses the constitution of competing traditions of governance and interpretations of accountability, and the way in which these competing traditions and interpretations lead to accountability dilemmas for the individual civil servant.     

Strategic Commissioning in the UK: Service Improvement Cycle or Just Going Round in Circles?

This article explores the drivers of the development of strategic commissioning over the last two decades, its limitations, and the implications of its rapid spread. It suggests that the differences between government departments have allowed scope for local variations, which have been exploited by local government, leaving room for more innovation than would have been possible under an entirely ‘joined-up’ government agenda. The forms taken by this new approach to strategic commissioning were consistent with continual pressure from central government to find ways of promoting externalisation of public services. Although this underlying drive was often resisted, particularly at local level, but always re-emerged. The article ends by exploring the implications of this analysis for public services in the era of fiscal austerity under the new UK Coalition government.     

State, administration and governance in Germany: competing traditions and dominant narratives

The article explores the evolution of competing views on state, administration and governance in Germany from an historical perspective, with an emphasis on the last five decades. To understand the governance discourse in Germany one has to start from different notions of the state. The first part therefore offers a brief, somewhat polemic, overview about different state traditions in Germany in the twentieth and twenty–first centuries. The second part looks at how discourses about the proper role, the appropriate structures and processes of the public sector and its interactions with its environment have changed during the history of the Federal Republic. The analytic focus is on the different narratives about administrative policies, understood as the various scenarios, assumptions and arguments on which competing policy–suggestions for the public sector have been based. The article argues that it is not sufficient to interpret the ups and downs of different discourses and Leitbilder as more or less erratic, post–modern fashions and fads. Instead, the line up of the central catch–phrases, from democratic via active and lean to the activating state, reflect learning processes, driven above all by the political competition creating a continuous demand for 'better', more appropriate narratives to guide and explain current policies.     

Governments,NGOs and agricultural development: Perspectives on changing inter‐organisational relationships

There are divergent interests in involving NGOs in public sector programmes of agricultural development. Some commentators seek to foster popular participation through such involvement, while others view it largely within the logic of public sector cutbacks. Using material primarily from Latin America, and also from Africa and Asia, the potential gains and risks inherent in a range of NGO‐government relationships are considered. Strengths and weaknesses in NGO development strategies and practice are reviewed, and potential public sector contributions discussed. While closer relationships between NGOs and governments seem likely to emerge in the context of current public sector reform, the form these relationships will assume is less clear and will probably be highly diverse.     

‘Executive ombudsman’ in an American city—a mechanism for handling complaints

Community Politics has been a political strategy of the Liberal Party, now the Liberal Democrats, since 1970. It involves a critique of traditional representational relationships and argues for a participatory democracy based upon deliberation to build consensus out of competing interests. Whilst the associated campaigning techniques have made the third party an important force in local government, this article uses new empirical evidence to assess the success of the strategy in transforming representational relationships and extending popular participation in local government. It is argued that its success in respect of these objectives has been limited, principally because of popular disenchantment with political parties and the inherent tensions and limitations that accompany popular participation in deliberative democratic structures.     

Turnaround Management Strategies in Local Authorities: Not Only for Poor Performers

In the past four decades, UK government policymakers have sought to improve the performance of local government by trying to achieve organisational turnaround and bring laggards up to the standards achieved by the leaders. Both the Conservative Party and New Labour led new public management reforms aimed at modernizing and improving local government authorities by adopting standards from the private sector. Given the pressure to improve, failing local authorities have been pushed to adopt a unique set of strategies known as turnaround management strategies (TMS). However, this paper, based on qualitative data and a survey of 126 senior local leaders, shows that TMS have been implemented to a high extent among both poor and excellent performers. The paper concludes that regardless of their objective performance ranking, English local authorities are characterised by a self-perception of underachievement. As a result, high performers continuously implement radical changes.     

Generalists and specialists in executive politics: Why ambitious meta‐policies so often fail

This article contributes to the politics of policy‐making in executive government. It introduces the analytical distinction between generalists and specialists as antagonistic players in executive politics and develops the claim that policy specialists are in a structurally advantaged position to succeed in executive politics and to fend off attempts by generalists to influence policy choices through cross‐cutting reform measures. Contrary to traditional textbook public administration, we explain the views of generalists and specialists not through their training but their positions within an organization. We combine established approaches from public policy and organization theory to substantiate this claim and to define the dilemma that generalists face when developing government‐wide reform policies (‘meta‐policies’) as well as strategies to address this problem. The article suggests that the conceptual distinction between generalists and specialists allows for a more precise analysis of the challenges for policy‐making across government organizations than established approaches.     

The Europeanization of UK Government: from Quiet Revolution to Explicit Step‐Change?

In this paper we review – from a UK perspective – how the UK government and its policy process have adapted to European integration. Has adaptation been a quiet revolution, a step‐change, or both? In exploring this question we draw upon the conceptual literature of Europeanization. We employ it to shed light on the longer‐term pattern of UK adaptation as well as to put into context the domestic changes currently under way. Our argument is that a step‐change is under way in the Europeanization of the UK government. However, at the end of the paper we will reflect on how this development remains over‐shadowed by broader circumstances: the continued weak public support for the EU and the divisions which emerged with key EU partners from the UK's policy over Iraq.     

Coping with the Cuts? The Management of the Worst Financial Settlement in Living Memory

The scale of the cuts to local government finance, coupled with increasing demand for services, has led to unprecedented ‘budget gaps’ in council budgets. Arguably, two competing narratives of the trajectory of local government have emerged in which contrasting futures are imagined for the sector – a positive story of adaptation and survival and more negative one of residualisation and marginalisation. Drawing on case study evidence from three English local authorities, the paper distinguishes and provides examples of three strategic approaches to managing austerity – efficiency, retrenchment and investment. It demonstrates how and why the balance of these strategies has shifted between the early and later phases of austerity and considers the extent to which the evidence of the case studies provide support for either the survival or marginalisation narrative. The paper concludes by arguing that a third narrative – responsibilisation – captures more fully the trajectory of local government in England.     

Trust in the leadership of governors and participatory governance in Tokyo Metropolitan Government

This article examines the relationship between the trust in leadership of political leaders and citizen participation by analysing data on Tokyo residents. Among the four variables we used to designate types of, or attitudes towards, public participation, only actual participation has a positive influence on trust. The normative recognition of participation is associated with a critical attitude towards the government. As the unclear needs of citizens have the greatest impact on trust, citizens’ trust is built through relationships between citizens and not between citizens and their government. The importance of positive actions from the local government such as public officials and political leaders that stimulate citizen awareness to the point where citizens take interest in public administration, practice participation, and enlarge participation opportunities, is increasing. We also need to consider the limitations of citizen ability to understand public issues and reflection of their needs, and the limitations of participatory governance on the decision-making process.     

What Should We Do? Public Attitudes about How Local Government Officials Should Confront Fiscal Stress

Despite strong scholarly interest in the topic of fiscal stress, little attention has been paid to understanding how the general public thinks local governments should respond to situations where declining revenues endanger service levels. This study reports findings from a survey of 660 residents undertaken between November 2006 and January 2007 in the US state of Michigan to examine their support for eight potential strategies to cope with fiscal stress in five different local government services. We find that the public has a surprisingly nuanced perspective about these strategies and on their use for different services. Our findings may provide local policymakers with some insights about how to respond to fiscal stress.     

A replication of “Contracting out: For What? With Whom?”

In the 1980s, governments around the world adopted New Public Management ideas about inserting competition into government as a way to improve the performance of public organizations. In many nations, contracting out was one method of making governments more businesslike. Yet, there have been few studies of how government contracting behaviors have changed since the early 1980s. We replicate Ferris and Graddy's classic 1986 study of local government production and sector choice to assess how public procurement has changed over the past 35 years. Our findings show that today, contracting out is more commonly used across 25 local government service areas. In contrast to the original study, much of the growth has been in government-to-government contracts. For profit firms are also winning more contracts for high transaction cost work, while nonprofits are receiving fewer government contracts in nearly every service area. Our analysis suggests that contracting out remains of the highest importance in 21st-century governance and that additional research is needed on how to manage contracts to achieve the best value.     

Neoliberal governing through social enterprise: Exploring the neglected roles of deviance and ignorance in public value creation

This article makes a case for paying greater attention to how informal relationships between government officials and civil society practitioners impact processes of public value creation. Drawing on data from a five‐year qualitative longitudinal study, we illuminate how civil society practitioners deviate from the formal objectives of social enterprise policies in order to create what they see as having public value. Through a process of theory elaboration, we demonstrate how government officials’ wilful ignorance of, or informal collaboration in, such deviance, precipitates forms of public value that are consistent with wider political objectives. Our analysis adds nuance and granularity to the debate on public value by drawing attention to the arcane ways it may be informally negotiated and created outside of the public sphere. This opens up new empirical and theoretical opportunities for understanding how deviance and ignorance might be symbiotically related in processes of public value creation.”     

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND THE INFORMATION POLITY

Within the debates in Britain about changes in contemporary public administration insufficient attention has been focused to date upon the significance of new information and communication technologies. In particular, the operational importance of computer networks to government organizations, and of the information flows supported by them, have hitherto been given scant attention. A primary focus for understanding the current transformation processes in both services and organization occurring in public administration should be upon the role and significance of these new information flows. Informational capabilities are increasing throughout government organization and have considerable implications for the reforging of that set of organizations which comprise British public administration and for the relationships between and within them, as well as for the quality of publicly provided services. The shifts occurring in contemporary public administration can be usefully analysed and understood by reference to the new concept of the 'information polity'.     

Public administrators in interactive democracy: a multi-paradigmatic approach

ABSTRACT

Currently, interactive forms of democracy that bring local politicians into dialogue and collaboration with relevant and affected citizens are mushrooming. While some research has investigated how interactive democracy affects citizens and politicians, we know little about what interactive democracy means for public administrators. This article presents the results of a case study of role perceptions and coping strategies among public administrators assisting a new type of interactive political committee in two Nordic municipalities. Guided by a multi-paradigmatic conceptual framework featuring public administrators’ roles and coping strategies in interactive governance, the study shows that individual public administrators identify with different administrative roles, and that political and administrative leadership sentiments condition their choice of coping strategies. Moreover, the coping strategy that public administrators select to handle intra- and inter-paradigmatic role dilemmas can have dire consequences for the interplay between interactive democracy and local representative government.