The Comparative Historical Analysis of Public Management Policy Cycles in France,Italy, and Spain: Symposium Introduction

In recent studies of public management reform in France, Italy, and Spain inspired by historical institutionalism, the Napoleonic tradition is cast as a causal factor whose overwhelming strength explains how these countries' reforms proceed and finish. This symposium pursues the same research interest in the politics of public management reform and goal of understanding how reforms begin, proceed, and finish in these countries. However, the features of this research project include (1) a focus on instances of public management policymaking, (2) original research on public management reform episodes in each country, and (3) explanatory research arguments that place causation within events. Based on a comparison of explanatory research arguments developed in each case study, the symposium's conclusion extends earlier institutional processualist accounts of causal tendencies of public management policymaking and offers a critique of the historical institutionalist studies mentioned earlier.     

Explaining Public Management Policy Change: Germany in Comparative Perspective

Public management policies have changed significantly in numerous countries in recent times. Policy entrepreneurs remain active in this policy domain, which encompasses government-wide rules and routines in the areas of expenditure planning and financial management, civil service and labor relations, procurement, organization and methods, and audit and evaluation. Case-oriented comparative research provides policy entrepreneurs with historically and theoretically informed knowledge useful in designing or improvising change strategies in this domain. This article focuses on the case of public management policymaking in the German federal government during the 1980s and 1990s. A coherent explanation of the careers of the overbureaucratization issue in the 1980s and the lean state issue in the 1990s is provided, along with an explanation for marked changes in selected public management policies in the 1990s. Analysis of this case is also harmonized with findings about public management policy change in the U.K., New Zealand, and Australia. Limited generalizations about the process of public management policy change are proposed. Policy entrepreneurs can factor these generalizations, plus analysis of the Germany case, into their prospective, situational analysis of the process of public management policy change.     

Comparative nationalism: the Basques in Spain and France

Abstract. Little research on peripheral nationalism goes beyond the case study approach. Comparative studies provide greater understanding of national self-identification by comparing different ethnic groups, yet encounter difficulties in rigorously delineating specific non-group causal factors. This study adds to our insights into peripheral nationalism by comparing self-identification within the same group but in two different political systems. Study of the Basques in both Spain and France permits a comparison of the same group, thus imposing an analytical control on ethnicity, under two different sets of state policy directions. Utilizing survey data, this investigation found sharp differences in national self-identification in the Basques in Spain and France. The argument is advanced that, even when other explanatory factors are considered, this difference in Basque identification should be understood in light of the different policy stances taken over time by the central governments in Paris and Madrid toward their respective Basque minorities. While initially counter-intuitive, it is suggested that toleration and non-repressive policies toward such minorities may actually serve in the long term to decrease peripheral national identification.     

Competency, Bureaucracy, and Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis

Competency can be considered a central theme in contemporary public service reforms. This article analyzes the development of competency frameworks for senior public servants at the national–government level in three countries (the U.S., the U.K., and Germany). By tracing the development of competency as an idea, it is shown that competency reforms drew selectively on management ideas, and by tracing the nature and time-patterns of competency reform developments in the three countries, it is shown that competency came onto the reform agenda at different times and by various routes rather than by a simple pattern of international policy transfer or business-to-government transfer. It is argued that the adoption of competency frameworks took place at critical junctures for preexisting public service bargains or agreements in each case and that they were shaped by the particularities of institutional context. However, although competency is arguably central to public service reform, it is far from clear that the competency frameworks in these three cases contributed to the declared aims of many contemporary public service reformers.     

The Public Salience of Foreign and Security Policy in Britain,Germany and France

The salience of foreign affairs to general publics is an important but often neglected parameter for the role of public opinion in foreign and security policy. This article explores the determinants of foreign affairs' public salience and probes into the respective patterns in Germany, Britain and France. Building on the theory of news values, the article proposes to distinguish between issue-specific and country-specific influences on the public salience of foreign and security policy. The data suggest that broad international crises on the scale of 9/11 or the Iraq war go along with distinct cross-national peaks in the salience of foreign affairs to general publics. At the same time, the effects of constant issue logics are refracted by country-specific factors: most notably, the latter account for the much higher overall salience of foreign affairs to the British public than to the German and French publics since late 2002.     

Fiscal Policy Cycles and Public Expenditure in Developing Countries

The paper studies empirically the fiscal policy instruments by which governments try to influence election outcomes in 24 developing countries for the 1973–1992 period. The study finds that the main vehicle for expansionary fiscal policies around elections is increasing public expenditure rather than lowering taxes, and public investment cycles seem particularly prominent. Institutional mechanisms which constrain discretionary expenditure policies and which strengthen fiscal control are therefore worthwhile considering to prevent opportunistic policy making around elections.     

Soldiers and Wayward Women: Gendered Citizenship,and Migration Policy in Argentina,Italy and Spain since 1850

Policies that regulate peoples international movement and their state membership have historically made distinctions based on perceived sexual differences, but little is known about the process by which this has happened. This paper explores how and with what consequences migration and nationality policies have been gendered in two quintessential countries of emigration (Italy and Spain), and in a country of immigrants (Argentina) over a 150-year period. I argue that these migration and nationality policies have reflected the dynamics of the political fields in which they have been crafted. Especially before the Great War, laws and official practices that showed a disproportionate interest in men as soldiers and workers, and in women as mothers and as morally suspect subjects mirrored a dynamic of competition over migrants among these countries. A subsequent harmonization of policies reflected a dynamic of accommodation to the realities of a settled emigrant population and dual nationality. In addition, the administrative mechanisms coupled with these laws have operated differently with respect to men and women. The consequences of these laws and mechanisms have persisted even when the letter of the law has ostensibly become gender neutral.     

德国、荷兰、西班牙政府公共服务情况的比较研究

德国、荷兰、西班牙三国在公共服务方面有其共同点,同时由于三国在价值观念、政治体制以及经济发展水平上存在差异,三国在公共服务制度和公共服务模式上也存在差异。但是,控制社会保障支出规模,降低公共服务成本,实行公共服务的社会化、市场化管理正成为三国公共服务改革的基本趋向。     

Party Systems and Social Policy: A Historical Comparison of Italy and Germany

The article shows how the development of social policy in Italy and Germany was influenced by their respective party systems. Its focus is on the differences between systems of unemployment protection in the two countries after World War II. Due to many similarities between the two states, in particular the dominant presence of Christian democratic parties in both national governments at the time, this divergence cannot be adequately explained by standard theories. The article shows that it is crucial to take the widely different party systems into account: seven parties and ideological polarisation in Italy as opposed to three parties and moderate ideological differences in Germany. These generated different political dynamics and, consequently, different policy output.     

Corporatism, Public Policy and the Labour Movement: A Comparative Study

This article identifies two dimensions which distinguish corporatism, especially as defined by Philippe Schmitter, from pluralism. Noting that most discussions of corporatism have emphasized one dimension and neglected the second, the article seeks to determine, empirically, whether the two dimensions are as closely associated as the concept suggests. The finding, for the cases studied, is that they are inversely rather than positively correlated. The search for an explanation of why this might be the case leads to two conclusions. First, that the management of labour-capital conflict in advanced capitalist countries has relied less on inter-group and group-state interaction than corporatist theory would suggest. Second, that Schmitter's conceptualization of corporatism is seriously flawed and that other corporatist writers avoid these flaws only at the cost of drastically reducing the concept's distinctiveness from pluralism.     

公共政策网络管理：机制、模式与绩效测度

政策网络管理应重点研究七个基本问题和应注意十个重大问题,政策网络管理存在工具、互动和制度三种观点和个人权威控制、专制控制、结果控制、文化或集团控制、声誉控制五种控制机制,具体管理模式可以从行动者、认知和制度三个维度和政策管理、过程管理和网络宪政三个层面进行架构,并可根据不同的网络环境选择不同的网络管理行为.网络行动者的数量、管理能力与技巧、网络的开放性、利益冲突、网络管理成本是影响政策网络管理有效性的重要因素,网络管理的绩效也可根据不同的网络结构选择不同的评价指标进行定量到定性的评价.     

International Constraints and Domestic Choices: Economic Convergence and Exchange Rate Policy in France and Italy

As tensions in the European Monetary System demonstrate, international capital flows can have a decisive influence on countries' economic policies. The external constraint of high international capital mobility led the countries of Western Europe in the 1980s to attempt to stabilize their exchange rates and converge toward low levels of inflation. Yet this process was not uniform: French governments pursued a rigorous anti-inflationary policy of high interest rates and a strengthening currency, while Italian governments had difficulty controlling inflation and maintaining the lira in the European Monetary System. This difference is best explained by comparing political institutions and policymaking processes in the two countries. Particular attention is given to political leaders' access to economic policy tools and their capacity to design and implement long-term goals.     

公共管理定式中的公益内涵：比较、辨析、界分

公共管理的范畴及属性决定了公共管理的目标在于诉求公共利益,并成为公共管理的核心价值,因而公共利益在公共管理定式中具特定的内涵。公共利益与共同利益、国家利益、社会利益在概念上有许多相似之处,然则其内涵有差异,不能同一而用。比较、辨析、界分公共管理定式中的公共利益内涵,并从法治层面厘清国家利益与社会公益之界限,防止假国家利益之名侵犯社会公共利益发生,这对转型期中国社会发展有着重要的意义。     

A Comparative Analysis: New Public Management — The Way Ahead?

A set of measures constituting 'New Public Management' (NPM) has been adopted worldwide (Pollitt 1995). This article describes their implementation in the State of Victoria. In particular, the article assesses the reforms within the context of Pollitt's eight elements of NPM reforms that have taken place in management in the public sector in Victoria and, to varying degrees, in all OECD countries. It argues that the evaluation of the success of NPM in Victoria should be addressed by independent evaluations of the impacts of the changes within the political, executive and operational spheres of government, and on consumers and the public service itself. The article offers some lessons for those in government following Victoria's example of the implementation of NPM.
Good governance is critical to ensuring that challenges to society are dealt with adequately (OECD 1995:5).     

公共政策在公共管理中的价值实现及作用

公共政策分析是公共管理学科的一个重要分支,分析公共政策在公共管理中的价值实现及作用对准确判断政策分析和公共管理之间的关系,并进而促进公共政策分析的发展有重要意义.从公共政策、公共管理的概念,终极目标,研究方法和角色定位等角度揭示公共政策在公共管理中的价值实现及作用,进而对政策科学的发展提出了遵循其内在规律的建议,即:公共政策学科发展应追求实效,追求对实际社会现象的改良效果;坚持科学的方法、理性的思路,坚持借用并融合自然科学的研究方法要素;应实现对社会利益分配的制衡与和谐;应体现公共部门管理的完美等,有利于实现公共政策学科的理性化和科学化.