CORE EXECUTIVE STUDIES IN BRITAIN

Discussions of core executive operations in Britain have focused on a limited controversy about whether monocratic control is exercised by the premier or whether more collegial decision making persists in Cabinet. An extended typology of institutionalist views is examined, including the prime ministerial clique interpretation, models of ministerial government, segmented decision making, and bureaucratic coordination. This restricted debate reflects normative anxieties about Britain's unbalanced constitution, party-structured legislature and an inadequate rational policy process inside the executive. New directions for core executive research are examined, including the analysis of decisional studies, more disaggregated and differentiated accounts of the core executive, coalition politics in the core executive, and the analysis of leadership influences.     

POWER AND INTERACTIVE POLICY‐MAKING: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF POWER AND INFLUENCE IN 8 INTERACTIVE PROJECTS IN THE NETHERLANDS

A number of countries use forms of interactive policy‐making to increase the influence of citizens on decision making. Since there has also been an increase in citizen participation in The Netherlands over the last decade, in this paper, we provide a comparative analysis of 8 interactive projects initiated by the Dutch central government. The central aim of the paper is to understand processes of power in interactive policy‐making. We do so by raising two central questions: (1) how do power processes influence the setting‐up of a project, the negotiations within a project and the translation of the results of interactive projects into formal decision making circuits?; (2) to what extent and under what conditions do citizens and other stakeholders obtain influence in interactive projects, especially in defining problems, selecting solutions/instruments and realizing outcomes? Our findings show there is relatively little translation of the outcomes of the projects in regular decision making.     

HOW POLICY NETWORKS CAN DAMAGE DEMOCRATIC HEALTH: A CASE STUDY IN THE GOVERNMENT OF GOVERNANCE

This article examines a detailed case study of implementation networks in England using the example of the relocation of the Norfolk and Norwich hospital, which became a flagship PFI project for the Labour government after 1997. The case study illustrates the workings of the new order of multi‐layered governance with both local and national networks from different policy areas interacting. However, it also sheds light on the governance debate and illustrates how in the world of new public management, powerful actors, or policy entrepreneurs, with their own agenda, still have the facility, by exercising power and authority, to shape and determine the policy outputs through implementation networks. It is argued that, whereas policy networks are normally portrayed as enriching and promoting pluralist democratic processes, implementation networks in multi‐layered government can also undermine democratic accountability. Four aspects here are pertinent: (1) the degree of central government power; (2) local elite domination; (3) the fragmentation of responsibility; and (4) the dynamics of decision making which facilitates the work of policy entrepreneurs. All these factors illustrate the importance of ‘the government of governance’ in the British state.     

AN INFORMATION PROCESSING PERSPECTIVE ON DECISION MAKING IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Two decades after the introduction of the punctuated equilibrium model, information processing theory now offers one of the most comprehensive analytical perspectives on decision making in public administration and policy research. This article applies information processing analysis to the decision making process in the European Union (EU). Towards this end, the article inquires into the organizational foundations of information processing at successive levels of administrative and legislative decision making and shows how this analytical perspective can be used to gain a better understanding of policy dynamics at the supranational level. The article argues that information processing in the EU is likely to produce distinct policy dynamics in key respects. It identifies promising avenues for future research and discusses some of the issues this evolving theoretical framework should address in order to allow for a more comprehensive exploration of this analytical perspective in the context of the EU.     

REFLECTIONS ON THE TRUE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SCOTT REPORT FOR GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY

The immediate impact of the Scott report was slight because it had no conclusion and led to no ministerial or other resignations. Reasons for this inconclusiveness were examined, including conventions of the judicial process, the difficulty Scott had in defining the offences he was examining, the slipperiness of those offences as constitutional conventions and Scott's lack of grasp of administrative processes.
Yet his report is a mine of information on problems of accountability in the area of government defence sales. It was atypical in that three departments pursuing four policies between them and with another department as policeman had a locus in the process. Given the nearly 100,000 licences being processed at one time, it was a large, complex and fragmented administrative activity which might easily have resulted in more mishaps than it did.
Despite its special features the author argues that it does provide evidence of six areas of difficulty in government accountability which are also of (growing) relevance outside the area Scott surveyed: how one finds who is responsible for policy and policy change; how accountability is secured where confidentiality is justified for national security or other reasons; how one gets operational accountability for executive operations within departments; the accountability of junior to departmental ministers; of junior to more senior civil servants; and of civil servants to ministers.     

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 DYNAMICS OF POLICY CHANGE: WBBYING AND WATER PRIVATIZATION

The privatization of the water industry was one of the most controversial and turbulent privatizations of the 1980s. The government undertook the project somewhat reluctantly, then the first plans had to be withdrawn, but eventually, the privatization of the industry was successfully completed in 1989. In this article, we first set out to provide a thorough account of the process of privatizing water, based on primary sources and exhaustive interviews. In doing so, we identity some major problems of established theories of British policy making: the process of water privatization clearly does not conform to any single model of policy making. Instead, individual 'episodes' of the policy process conform to different models. Arguing that existing theories of British policy making may have focused too narrowly on routine decision-making processes, we propose that a theory of the transformation of policy communities is required to understand the dynamics of radical policy change in Britain.     

The Core Executive, Modernization and the Creation of PESC, 1960-64

The period between 1957 and 1964 was one of immense yet underestimated political and administrative change. It culminated in what many have seen as a golden age in Whitehall. This is reflected by the wealth of records now available for the study of government and policy networks. The period is thus an ideal one for collaboration between historians and political scientists.
The decisional case study examined in this article focuses on the early years of the Public Expenditure Survey Committee, as viewed from the perspective of welfare policy. The drive to 'modernize' government started with attempts to 'roll back the state' and to hive off the implementation of policy to executive agencies, very similar to those pursued in the 1980s by Mrs Thatcher and Next Steps. The reasoned rejection of such a policy was symbolized by the creation of PESC, a centralized attempt to allocate resources rationally. PESC itself, however, was initially a failure. External circumstances, such as the breakdown of political and administrative networks within the core executive, and internal tensions, including the Treasury's covert attempt to impose its own departmental interest, led the Cabinet Secretary to conclude that the prioritization and strict control of forward expenditure commitments was 'not possible'. This case study demonstrates how future studies of the core executive might be broadened and deepened.     

BEYOND POLICY NETWORKS: POLICY FRAMING AND THE POLITICS OF EXPERTISE IN THE 2001 FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE CRISIS

For the past decade, the policy community/issue network typology of pressure group interaction has been used to explain policy outcomes and the policy‐making process. To re‐examine the validity of this typology, the paper focuses on the UK government's response to the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) crisis, and in particular the decision to pursue contiguous culling rather than vaccination to overcome the epidemic. Rather than illustrating the emergence of an issue network in agricultural policy, the decision‐making process of the FMD outbreak demonstrates continuity with prior crises. In addition, the politicization of scientific expertise is identified as an emerging trend in crisis management. Policy framing is used to explain the impetus behind the contiguous cull decision, concluding that the legacy of previous policy choices conditioned the crisis response to a far greater degree than contemporaneous pressure group action.     

REINTERPRETING THE WESTEAND AFFAIR: THEORIES OF THE STATE AND CORE EXECUTIVE DECISION MAKING

This article applies four theories of the state to the analysis of a major policy crisis, the Westland affair of 1985–6. The pluralist governmental politics model offers a narrowly political account stressing that multiple actors were involved, and that policy emerged from a complex sequence of individual decisions, with plenty of room for misunderstandings and slip-ups. The instrumental Marxist view by contrast emphasizes the penetration of government by business interests and the closed, elite character of decision making. The policy entrepreneur explanation offers a 'new right' account: the affair was born from a clash between a spending minister using public monies to pursue personal interests, and central actors and agencies seeking to limit the commitment of state expenditure. Finally, the 'symbolic politics' interpretation analyses the crisis as the interaction of four ideologically resonant 'games'– about leadership challenges, leaking of government 'secrets', executive-Parliament relations, and mass media 'battles'.     

Transport Policy Paradigms at the Local Level: The Norwich Inner Ring Road

It has been claimed that transport policy in the UK, once a quiescent area, has been opened to battle between competing advocacy coalitions and that the late 1980s and early 1990s saw a policy paradigm shift. This article examines one detailed historical case study, the plans to complete an inner road in Norwich and the subsequent collapse of the scheme. The aim is firstly to examine the complex decision making processes and subsequent politics of this scheme and secondly to relate the local issue to the idea of a paradigm shift in national roads policy. The complexity of decision making in a multi-actored arena, where sovereignty is located locally but is circumscribed by central government 'guidelines', suggests that the assertions of those who argue in terms of a paradigm shift in policy may be exaggerated.     

The core executive and small states: Is coordination the primary challenge?

This article interrogates three key arguments derived from the functional approach to studying the core executive: (1) that coordination is the primary problem that confronts executive decision‐makers; (2) that improved coordination will lead to better governance; and (3) that linkage problems dissipate as policy systems consolidate. Drawing on the experience of hitherto understudied small states, including 112 interviews with political elites, we show how the effects of country size create governance challenges in the form of leader dominance, patronage systems and capacity constraints. Our findings support the call to broaden the focus of functional analysis beyond its traditional emphasis on coordination. For scholars of small states we synthesize existing empirical findings and provide a theoretical justification for future work using an adaptation of the core executive approach.     

ORGANIZING THE CORE EXECUTIVE FOR EUROPEAN UNION AFFAIRS: COMPARING FINLAND AND SWEDEN

Examining core executive organization for EU affairs in Finland and Sweden, this article uncovers how change agents used European integration deliberately to strengthen their role in the domestic settings through taking control of EU policy co‐ordination. In both countries, EU membership was an exogenous factor that enabled the offices of the PM to secure a more powerful position and advance their own institutional agendas. This strengthened their leadership role and weakened the respective foreign ministries, whose legitimacy in EU co‐ordination was undermined by the discourse that matters pertaining to this co‐ordination should be treated as domestic policy instead of foreign policy. This discourse proved instrumental in the organizational reforms and core executive restructuring. Both countries also provide evidence of intra‐Nordic organizational learning since the Finnish co‐ordination system was based on lessons drawn from Denmark whereas the subsequent Swedish reform was inspired and legitimized by changes in Finland.     

MANAGING EUROPE FROM AN IRISH PERSPECTIVE: CRITICAL JUNCTURES AND THE INCREASING FORMALIZATION OF THE CORE EXECUTIVE IN IRELAND

This article analyses the management of European Union (EU) business by the Irish core executive. More specifically, it investigates the demands placed by EU membership on the Irish system of public administration and how the system has responded to these demands. Employing an institutionalist analytical framework, the article maps the formal and informal organizational and procedural devices or structures used to manage EU affairs in Ireland, as well as dissecting the key relationships that govern this management process and the role of the domestic agents actively involved in the EU’s governance structure, the cadre or boundary managers. The article also explores in a dynamic way the development of the capacity for the management of EU affairs in Ireland over time. Using the concepts of path dependence and critical junctures, we illuminate how key system‐management decisions became locked‐in over time and we isolate the triggers for significant adaptational change, be they domestic or external. Adaptation to EU business in Ireland was path‐dependent and consisted of gradual incremental adjustment. This system of flexible adaptation generally served Ireland well as the EU’s policy regime expanded and evolved, but in response to the shock rejection of the Nice Treaty by the electorate in 2001, significant formalization of the Irish system occurred with the establishment of new processes and rules for managing relations between the core executive and the EU.     

Analysing Local Policy Agendas: How Dutch Municipal Executive Coalitions Allocate Attention

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of the allocation of attention to policy problems on the local level, focusing on the executive agenda of six municipalities in the Netherlands over a 25-year period. It reveals that there is specifically a local politics of attention, showing differences between national and local policy agendas in specific policy areas. We did not find evidence that the political composition of the local executive coalitions leads to agenda differences, revealing the more problem-oriented and pragmatic nature of local politics. We did find evidence of an effect of institutional arrangements between national and local government on shifting patterns of attention, such as due to decentralisation. This shows that the local politics of attention is limited in scope and conditioned by the functions of local government and the institutional arrangements of policy making in the Dutch decentralised unitary state and that rearrangements affect these patterns of attention.     

How policy agendas change when autocracies liberalize: The case of Hong Kong, 1975–2016

This article considers how autocrats decide to expand or narrow the issue diversity of their policy agenda during a period of political liberalization. Prior studies have two competing perspectives. First, political liberalization increases the social and political freedom that enhances information exchange, and thus expands issue diversity. Second, political liberalization decreases government's control of the legislature and thus narrows the issue diversity. This article offers a novel theoretical perspective by combining these two countervailing theories. Specifically, it predicts a diminishing marginal benefit of information exchange and an increasing marginal bargaining cost. As such, this article argues that issue diversity follows a negative quadratic (inverted‐U) relationship as the regimes liberalize. The analysis of a new and unique dataset of Hong Kong's legislative agenda (1975 to 2016) offers support for this theory. This study sheds light on policy‐making in authoritarian regimes and democracies, and advances the theory of information processing.     

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY POLICY-MAKING IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

ABSTRACT

This research examines the evolution of information technology policy formation and policy-making in the People's Republic of China. The paper analyzes, from an institutional and a macro perspective, the basis and formation of the IT policy in China, the policy makers, and the effect of corresponding policy initiatives which contributed to the development and prosperities of China's telecommunication service sector. Embedded in the backdrop of P.R. China's political history and the world trend of liberalization, deregulation, privatization and the entry of the WTO deal in telecommunications community, this paper reveals the unique features of socialist China in transforming its IT industry from a monopolized government sector into managed domestic competition and ultimately opening up to the international investors.     

OPEN SYSTEMS AND CLOSED NETWORKS: POLICY NETWORKS AND THE EMERGENCE OF OPEN SYSTEMS IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

New information and communications technologies (ICTS) continue to consume an increasing proportion of local government expenditure. Contemporary explanations of why and how these technologies are introduced into organizations, however, are limited to accounts of strategic decisions taken by individual organizations. This article offers a new understanding of why and how ICTS are introduced into organizations by developing the emergent concept of policy networks to analyse the adoption of open systems in local government. In developing this analysis, the article advances the policy networks concept by arguing for a range of sectoral sub-networks which have emerged around the broader ICT network. Following from this, it identifies the principal actors in the local government ICT network, and their relationships. Finally, it presents a case study of the network in action, in the form of an analysis of the adoption of open systems technology in one metropolitan borough council.     

The UK BSE Crisis as a Failure of Government

This paper uses the BSE ('mad cow disease') crisis as a case study of the workings of the British core executive during a crisis event. Using the evidence from the Philips Inquiry, which reported on the BSE/vCJD crisis in 2000, the study analyses the patterns of decision making and the structures of institutional and resource dependence. It concludes that the lack of co-ordination between and within institutions and what was acknowledged to be the mismanagement of expert advice raise serious questions about the executive's ability to manage serious crises. The findings concur with scholarship indicating executive fragmentation and lack of accountability. Consecutive British governments have sought to diminish the centre's responsibility for managing public policy without putting an effective alternative mechanism in place.