TRANSACTIONS COSTS IN RURAL DECISION‐MAKING: THE CASES OF FUNDING AND MONITORING IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN ENGLAND

Public domain decisions in rural England have become more complex as the number of stakeholders having a say in them has increased. Transactions costs can be used to explore this increasing complexity. The size and distribution of these costs are higher in rural areas. Grouping transactions costs into four – organizations, belief systems, knowledge and information, and institutions – two of the latter are evaluated empirically: growth in the bid culture, and monitoring and evaluation. Amongst 65 Agents of Rural Governance (ARGs) in Gloucestershire, both were found to be increasing over time, but those relating to finance were a greater burden than those of monitoring: the latter can improve ARG performance. Increasing transactions costs in rural decision‐making appears to be at variance with ambitions of achieving ‘smaller government' through, for example, the Big Society. Smaller government is likely to be shifting the incidence of these costs, rather than reducing them.     

COMPARING RESISTANCE TO OPEN DATA PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT: PUBLIC EDUCATION IN BRAZIL AND THE UK

Much is known about governmental resistance to disclosure laws, less so about multi‐stakeholder resistance to open data. This study compares open data initiatives within the primary and secondary school systems of Brazil and the UK, focusing on stakeholder resistance and corresponding policy solutions. The analytical framework is based on the ‘Three‐Ps’ of open data resistance to performance metrics, corresponding to professional, political, and privacy‐related concerns. Evidence shows that resistance is highly nuanced, as stakeholders alternately serve as both principals and agents. School administrators, for example, are simultaneously principals to service providers and teachers, and at once agents to parents and politicians. Relying on a different systems comparison, in‐depth interviews, and newspaper content analyses, we find that similar stakeholders across countries demonstrate strikingly divergent levels of resistance. In overcoming stakeholder resistance – across socioeconomic divides – context conscientious ‘data‐informed’ evaluations may promote greater acceptance than narrowly ‘data‐driven’ performance measurements.     

PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN SPANISH LOCAL GOVERNMENTS. A CROSS‐CASE COMPARISON STUDY

This paper explores local government in Spain: the nature of and extent to which performance measures are developed and how they are used in some of the biggest Spanish local governments. The features of performance measurement in Spain raise the question of why non‐mandatory performance indicators are introduced and why specific initiatives are undertaken. A cross‐theory strategy allows us to build a wider explanation of the cases studied. This study shows that performance measurement systems are not neutral but conditioned by the environmental context of each local government to fit into its organizational structure. Spanish local governments are experimenting with different approaches – centralized/decentralized, top‐down/bottom‐up, internal/external use – to implement performance measures. A relationship between external use and the top‐down approach, and internal use and the bottom‐up approach can be found. Our results also show that the institutional image value of taking decisions under rational decision‐making models is the primary driver of implementation processes.     

Partnership for governance reform in Indonesia

This article responds to a critical examination by Gordon Crawford of the concept of ‘partnership’ in contemporary development aid discourse, using the Partnership for Governance Reform in Indonesia (the Partnership) as an example. The article contends that Crawford's deconstruction of the Partnership is highly questionable, as it is based on a selective inclusion of information which challenges many of his observations, up to a point where his conclusions become untenable. Power relationships and processes of opinion making and decision making are increasingly located in complex and transnational settings, characterised by shifting alliances among international as well as domestic stakeholders. Crawford approaches the power relationship between donors and Indonesians as if it were locked up in the Partnership, which makes a mockery of his case study. There is no empirical evidence suggesting that Indonesians are easily ‘mystified’ by their donors. Instead, the short three‐year history of the Partnership shows a process in which Indonesians have increasingly taken control of both day‐to‐day leadership as well as the development of longer‐term strategy. It is suggested that, instead of a focus on structure and agency, a more promising approach to grasping shifts in power between donors and local stakeholders would be to analyse the discourse in a partnership following a concept of organisational culture.     

NEW FORMS OF ADMINISTRATIVE LAW IN THE AGE OF THIRD‐PARTY GOVERNMENT

This article explores the democratic values underlying public services when they are outsourced. Building on Rosenbloom and Piotrowski's (2005a, 2005b) framework, we examine whether and how administrative law norms – that serve as central democratic governance and accountability mechanisms in the administrative state – are extended to the new (private) frontline service providers. Through a study of the regulation of the privatized welfare‐to‐work programme in Wisconsin, we find that new forms of administrative law are evolving in third‐party government. These forms differ from administrative law as it usually applies to public agencies in several important aspects. The findings highlight the active role of legislative and administrative mechanisms in the promotion of these new forms of administrative law; and they shed light on the transformations that administrative law norms undergo in the age of third‐party government.     

FRAMING AND COUNTER‐FRAMING NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT: THE CASE OF GERMANY

In this paper I explore the conflict between managerial and bureaucratic models of public sector management from the discursive perspective in institutional theory. Taking the under‐researched case of Germany, I conduct a textual analysis of seminal publications in the discourse on public sector reform and reveal the subversive framing conflict which accompanies the proliferation of private managerial models in the public sector. As the most general result, a frame which advocates the transfer of business‐like managerial practices clashes with a counter‐frame which opposes this managerialization. I elucidate how these competing frames are composed, which of their components are core and which are peripheral, how the frames relate to each other, and which broader discourses they exploit for legitimization purposes. The results imply that the often assumed superiority of managerial over bureaucratic control is constructed through discourse rather than being a law‐like regularity.     

A study of the operationalization of management controls in United Kingdom Private Finance Initiative contracts

Utilizing evidence from a United Kingdom (UK) road case study Private Finance Initiative (PFI) project, this article considers how the UK central government's infrastructure strategy is operationalized through accounting-based performance measures and incentive systems, and articulates how the adoption of such systems is moderated by trust practices. The findings indicate that initial government policy objectives, translated as performance indicators in the case study, failed to offer adequate incentives for contractors and created tensions. However, controls were later developed through inter-party trust practices for managing performance and relational risk. These findings have important implications for PFI policy and practice, including that negotiation can: (i) lead to pragmatic controls being introduced to foster cooperation and trust-building; and (ii) provide opportunities for adapting the monitoring and incentive mechanisms. This study also contributes to the previous literature where PFI control systems were largely regarded as inadequate for dealing with unforeseen conflicts between parties.     

ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP IN THE ENGLISH PUBLIC SECTOR: PARADOX OR POSSIBILITY?

Our study explores the possibility for the enactment of entrepreneurial leadership in the English public sector under the Labour government’s modernization agenda. To substantiate our analysis, we draw upon data gathered from leaders in three public sector arenas – the National Health Service, secondary schools, and further education (FE) colleges. Our study proposes a definition of public sector entrepreneurship that extends beyond existing literature. In essence, we contend that public sector entrepreneurship is characterized by the combination of three distinct agencies: ‘stakeholder’, ‘entrepreneurial’ and ‘political’. The public sector entrepreneur identifies market opportunities within the political landscape, optimizes the performance‐enhancing potential of innovation for the public sector organization, and carries stakeholders in a way that both permits risk and recognizes the stewardship of public sector resources.     

CELEBRATING ADVERSITY: INTER‐ORGANIZATIONAL DEPENDENCE AND PUBLIC SECTOR PERFORMANCE REPORTING IN THE AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL POLICE

Many aspects of public policy delivery involve complex networks rather than independent agencies. Yet little work has been done to understand the nature of performance measurements in settings where the performance of one agency is heavily dependent on the activities of other agencies. The issue of dependence has implications for operational and reputational risks. Our case study is focused on performance reporting by the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Our findings indicate that performance reporting remains heavily focused on input and process measures with relatively few output or outcome measures. Contrary to expectation, the AFP did not claim credit for success and attribute poor performance to other stakeholders. However, a higher than expected proportion of the dependent performance measures were positively framed.     

MINISTERIAL ADVISERS,POLITICIZATION AND THE RETREAT FROM WESTMINSTER: THE CASE OF NEW ZEALAND

Political advisers are an established third element in a number of Westminster‐styled jurisdictions, as they are in New Zealand’s institution of executive government. In this paper we report the initial findings of a research project focusing on the role and accountabilities of ministerial advisers in New Zealand. We locate these findings in the context of a growing body of international and comparative research on the role and accountabilities of non civil‐ or public‐service advisers within political executives and comment on the extent to which the findings affirm or refute the view that the ‘third element’ constitutes a threat to the continued application of Westminster principles and practices in New Zealand’s system of government – once described as more Westminster than Westminster. In doing so, we highlight deficiencies in standard conceptions of politicization and argue that there is a need to more clearly differentiate between its procedural and substantive dimensions.     

“Illiberal Spaces:” Uzbekistan's extraterritorial security practices and the spatial politics of contemporary authoritarianism

Research on comparative authoritarianism has tended to neglect spatial approaches to the politics of non-democratic states. This article argues that spatial theory offers a useful framework for exploring extraterritorial security practices designed to counter political opposition among migrant and exile communities. A case study of Uzbekistan explores how the state responded to the perceived security threats posed by rapidly growing communities of labor migrants and the activities of many political and religious activists in exile. The security services developed a network of extraterritorial intelligence and security mechanisms – including surveillance, detention, interrogation and forced returns – to pre-empt or respond to any perceived threats to the regime emanating from abroad. These security practices extended the state in complex ways beyond its borders, resulting in new “state spaces” that reproduced elements of domestic repression in other jurisdictions. The article suggests that such extraterritorial practices are typical of contemporary authoritarian regimes, as such states seek to manage the spatial challenges produced by mass global migration, international financial flows, and transnational processes of knowledge production.     

CHASING SHADOWS? PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT OF POLICY ADVICE IN NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS

Performance measurement is an integral part of the New Zealand model of public management, as it is for many other modern systems of governmental administration. This article examines data on performance indicators for the policy advice function in five government departments, for the years 1992 to 2005, to determine which types of indicators are used, and to gauge the extent to which they offer meaningful information about the quality of policy advice. As part of its managerialist drive in the early 1990s, the government developed conceptual material designed to improve policy advice and management in departments. In general, our findings indicate that these initiatives did not lead over time to the further development of genuinely meaningful measures of the quality of policy advice, and that the indicators that have been used meet narrow managerial rather than broader political needs.     

Joined-up government and privacy in the United Kingdom: managing tensions between data protection and social policy. Part II

The tension between the goals of integrated, seamless public services, requiring more extensive data sharing, and of privacy protection, now represents a major challenge for UK policy‐makers, regulators and service managers. In Part I of this article (see Public Administration volume 83, number 1, pp. 111–33), we showed that attempts to manage this tension are being made at two levels. First, a settlement is being attempted at the level of general data protection law and the rules that govern data‐sharing practices across the public sector. We refer to this as the horizontal dimension of the governance of data sharing and privacy. Secondly, settlements are also being attempted within particular fields of public policy and service delivery; this we refer to as the vertical dimension. In this second part, we enquire whether risks to privacy are greater in some policy sectors than others. We do this, first by showing how the Labour Government's policy agenda is producing stronger imperatives towards data sharing than was the case under previous administrations in three fields of public policy and services, and by examining the safeguards introduced in these fields. We then compare the settlements emerging from differing practices within each of these policy sectors, before briefly assessing which, if any, principles of data protection seem to be most at risk and in which policy contexts. Four strategies for the governance of data sharing and privacy are recapitulated – namely, seeking to make the two commitments consistent or even mutually reinforcing; mitigating the tensions with safeguards such as detailed guidelines; allowing privacy to take precedence over integration; and allowing data sharing to take precedence over privacy. We argue that the UK government has increasingly sought to pursue the second strategy and that the vertical dimension is, in practice, much more important in defining the settlement between data sharing and privacy than is the horizontal dimension. This strategy is, however, potentially unstable and may not be sustainable. The conclusion proposes a radical recasting of the way in which the idea of a ‘balance’ between privacy and data‐sharing imperatives is conceived.     

INVOLVING STAKEHOLDERS IN ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESSES

Who should be included in efforts to develop accountability systems for public organizations? What is the impact of involving various internal and external stakeholders in a collaborative process to determine performance indicators? Involving a variety of participants can result in information that is perceived as being more useful; however, significant groups of stakeholders may be excluded from the collaborative process. The reasons for nonparticipation range from poor timing or oversight to deliberate decisions to forego involvement. This exploratory research suggests that the benefits from a collaborative process of identifying measures of program impact are minimal and the utility of including a large number of participants is questionable. Finding more effective methods to increase the impact and utility of stakeholder involvement may become increasingly important in meeting executive and legislative mandates to determine government performance. The implications for further study are discussed.     

Decolonising online development studies? Emancipatory aspirations and critical reflections – a case study

Academics in high-income countries are increasingly launching development studies programmes through online distance learning to engage practitioner-students in low-income countries. Are such initiatives providing opportunities to critically tackle social injustice, or merely ‘mirroring’ relations of global inequality and re-entrenching imperial practices? Building on recent scholarship addressing efforts to ‘decolonise development studies’ and the complex power dynamics they encounter, we reflect on this question by analysing experiences of faculty and students in a United Kingdom-based online development studies programme, focusing particularly on perspectives of development practitioner-students working from Africa. We discuss barriers to social inclusivity – including the politics of language – that shaped participation dynamics in the programme as well as debates regarding critical development course content, rethinking possibilities for bridging counter-hegemonic development scholarship with practice-oriented approaches in a range of social contexts. Our analysis unpacks key tensions in addressing intertwined institutional and pedagogic dilemmas for an agenda towards decolonising online development studies, positioning decolonisation as a necessarily unsettling and contested process that calls for greater self-reflexivity.     

The Effect of New Legislation on the Disclosure of Performance Indicators: The Case of Spanish Local Governments

This article analyzes the effect of new accounting legislation on the disclosure of performance indicators in the financial statements of Spanish local governments. Based on agency and institutional theories, the article also assesses whether the disclosure of performance indicators is used to make the monitoring of local government performance easier for stakeholders or merely to project an image of good management. The results show that the enactment of new legislation has only led to a partial implementation, most local governments disclosing financial and budgetary indicators but very few providing indicators related to the performance of public services. The institutional theory (symbolic value) seems to be the rationale that best explains this pattern of disclosure.     

Applying a Dynamic Performance Management Framework to Wicked Issues: How Coproduction Helps to Transform Young People’s Services in Surrey County Council,UK

ABSTRACT

This article explores how a dynamic performance management (DPM) approach can give policy makers a more integrated, time-related understanding of how to address wicked problems successfully. The article highlights how an outcome-based approach to solving wicked policy problems has to balance three very contrasting objectives of stakeholders in the policy making process – improving service quality, improving quality of life outcomes and improving conformity to the principles of public governance. Simultaneous achievement of these three objectives may not be feasible, as they may form an interactive dynamic system. However the balancing act between them may be achieved by the use of DPM. Policy insights from this novel approach are illustrated through a case study of a highly successful co-production intervention to help young people with multiple disadvantages in Surrey, UK. The implications of DPM are that policy development needs to accept the important roles of emergent strategy and learning mechanisms, rather than attempting ‘blueprint’ strategic planning and control mechanisms. Some expectations about the results may indeed be justifiable in particular policy systems, as clustering of quality of life outcomes and outcomes in the achievement of governance principles is likely, because behaviours are strongly inter-related. However, this clustering can never be taken for granted but must be tested in each specific policy context. Undertaking simulations with the model and recalibrating it through time, as experience builds up, may allow learning in relation to overcoming barriers to achieving outcomes in the system.     

Analysing policy delivery in the United Kingdom: the case of street crime and anti-social behaviour

For all governments, the principle of how and whether policies are implemented as intended is fundamental. The aim of this paper is to examine the difficulties for governments in delivering policy goals when they do not directly control the processes of implementation. This paper examines two case studies – anti-social behaviour and street crime – and demonstrates the difficulties faced by policy-makers in translating policy into practice when the policy problems are complex and implementation involves many actors.     

PARALLEL,TRANSFER OR COLLABORATION STRATEGY OF RELATING THEORY TO PRACTICE? A CASE STUDY OF PUBLIC MANAGEMENT DEBATE IN GERMANY

The relationship between theory and practice is essential to ‘applied sciences' such as public management. However, the current debate on this topic lacks empirical substantiation. Here I develop a methodology for the indication of how the theory‐practice gap is actually addressed in a given subfield of management enquiry. I distinguish three archetypal strategies of relating theory to practice and develop several bibliometric indicators for them. Subsequently, I apply this methodology in a case study on the German public management debate from 1989 to 2005, a study based on bibliometric data of some 900 articles on public management. As will be demonstrated, in Germany, the theory‐practice divide is predominantly framed as a problem of knowledge transfer between scholars and practitioners. Reflections on the institutional structures of public management in Germany make it clear why the transfer strategy is chosen, thus proving the validity of the suggested indicators.     

Conceptual Issues in Inter-Agency Collaboration

Inter-agency collaboration – or partnership as it now commonly termed – is central to New Labour's agenda, but the general support for a partnership approach conceals disputes about definitions and approaches. This article begins by examining the shift to more complex and ambitious partnerships in health, social care and regeneration, which require new modes of governance. The three main modes – market, hierarchy and network – are briefly described and contrasted, and located within the recent history of public service development. It is argued that they are best seen as overlain and co-existing, resulting in a hybrid mode of governance which is characterised by tension and contradiction. The article goes on to discuss the issues this raises for real partnerships in trying to understand the collaborative imperative and the barriers to its effective achievement. Although the network mode has its attractions, there are complex issues of membership, management and culture which need to be addressed. It is concluded that hierarchy, markets and networks will co-exist better where each acknowledges its own limits and the strengths of others.