When Are Nudges Desirable? Benefit Validity When Preferences Are Not Consistently Revealed

Cost-benefit analysis, as a tool of general use in policy analysis or as a mandated analytical process in some rulemaking, provides protocols for assessing the relative efficiency of policy alternatives. However, inconsistent and apparently irrational decisions by consumers in some situations call into question the validity of inferring the values that consumers place on outcomes from their observed choices. It also opens the door for “nudges” that change the architecture of choice to promote more “rational” consumer choice. Differences between decision utility and experience utility and the willingness of consumers to pay for reductions in temptation provide conceptual bases for thinking about the efficiency of nudges. However, assessment of nudges and their role in behavioral public administration should also recognize that heterogeneous preferences can result in increases in utility for some and decreases for others. Therefore, nudges require systematic assessment like other policy instruments.     

Knowledge for Governance,Governance of Knowledge: Inclusive Knowledge Management in Collaborative Governance Processes

ABSTRACT

Different ways of knowing (WOKs) present in governance processes easily give rise to controversies and conflicts and forestall collective action. To resolve these conflicts it is necessary to understand what constitutes a WOK and how we can organize inclusion through collaborative governance. This paper argues that WOKs contain different knowledge elements: they contain different bodies of factual knowledge, formulate specific knowledge questions, and prefer different methods and knowledge institutes. WOKs also encompass different frames, interpretations, or normative perceptions of reality. And finally, different WOKs make use of different sources and types of organizing capacity.

Realizing successful collaborative governance processes means organizing inclusion of these different components of knowledge. This paper investigates the implications of this knowledge diversity for realizing collaborative governance processes and the challenges for inclusive knowledge management—through an in-depth case study of a collaborative governance process between the Netherlands and Flanders.

We conclude that realizing inclusion between various WOKs and their knowledge components contributes to the overall success of a collaborative governance process. However, managing inclusive knowledge is as much a matter of conscious strategies as it is the result of an emergent interaction process between stakeholders, experts, and officials within various WOKs. Furthermore, although knowledge inclusion facilitates successful negotiation between stakeholders, it doesn't guarantee a successful outcome of these negotiations.     

Many Hands Make Light Work: The Role of Collaborative Management in Improving Environmental Information Management by Local Authorities

ABSTRACT

What is the role of collaborative management (CM) in enhancing environmental outputs? Does CM enable local municipalities to be better environmental performers? The present article addresses these two questions by means of a study of all urban localities in Israel (80% response rate). The aims of the study are to contribute to current research in two main ways. First, by addressing the question: Does CM enable local municipalities to be better environmental performers? In doing so, the study expands the very small number of studies conducted to date that examine performance and policy outputs of collaboration versus collaboration processes and procedures. Second, the study contributes to enlarging the very small number of relatively large N studies on collaborative public management that examine policy outputs. The main finding of this study highlights the important and positive role of CM in regard to local authorities’ environmental outputs.     

On Developing an Inter-Agency Trust Scale for Assessing Governance Networks in the Public Sector

ABSTRACT

This article presents the development and validation of a psychometric scale for assessing public sector inter-agency trust. The instrument is grounded in contemporary trust theory and methodologically adapted from a measure developed for private sector alliances. Tested using four discrete studies of governance networks, each addressing transboundary environmental issues such as climate change and fisheries, the scale exhibits reasonably valid psychometric properties while also enabling visualized analysis of networked trust distributions. Based on this work, we outline further research needs with a view to stimulating greater trust research in governance networks and facilitating more collaborative and innovative policy outcomes in the public sector.     

Asia's rise and the politics of Australian aid policy

Abstract The economic rise of developing Asia has given impetus to debates over the geographic orientation, strategy, organisation, and collaborative relationships of the Australian aid programme. This paper examines these debates, Australian government responses, and the politics underlying these responses. It points to, among things, the different ways in which the Labor Party and the Liberal–National Coalition have dealt with these issues, reflecting their different constituencies and foreign policy philosophies. The paper also assesses the future trajectory of Australian aid policy, in particular, the extent to which it is embracing the Chinese model of aid.     

Business as a Collaborative Partner: Understanding Firms’ Sociopolitical Support for Policy Formation

While many scholars have discussed the merits of collaborative governance, especially for addressing complicated modern policy challenges, the literature has paid less attention to how business can serve as an effective collaborative partner during the formation of mandatory policies and regulations. Drawing on scholarship in the management sciences and combining it with literature in public administration and public policy, the authors elaborate on four distinct types of business responses to proposed regulations based on degrees of political activity and social responsiveness: defensive, reactive, proactive, and anticipatory. They then characterize the reasons why proactive firms are more likely to be valuable collaborative partners with policy makers and public managers: their engagement may avoid costly stalemates that frequently hinder policy making and help develop cost‐effective, flexible policy approaches to complex social problems.     

Wire-Walking: Risk Management and Policy Experiments in China from a Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Policy scientists have long examined how policy innovation has emerged and diffused by focusing on the interaction between agents and policy programs. In contrast, this article focuses on how uncertainty in policy environments has affected the fate of policy innovation in an authoritarian state. Using original data from China’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily,it is found that the central government’s decision to promote sensitive policy experiments is a function of the perceived risks in the policy environment. The U-shaped relationship between the promotion of sensitive policy innovation and inflation reflects the wire-walking behavior of China’s central government. The central authority in China tends to promote fewer sensitive political experiments when inflation increases and resumes promoting experiments when the inflation rate passes a certain tipping point. It is also found that the central authority intentionally regulates the promotion of political experiments during important political events.     

A Comparison of State Traditions and the Revival of a Nuclear Power in Four Countries

Abstract

The British, American, French and Finnish governments are seeking to promote investment in a new generation of nuclear power plants. Nuclear power programmes are delivered through networks of international companies through which government must manage. This is consistent with the concept of governance. Governments can advance their policy goals by using a variety of policy instruments to shape and organize governance networks. This is known as metagovernance. The paper considers the extent to which the selection and deployment of the policy instruments used to metagovern is informed by the prevailing tradition of government. The paper examines how the British, American, French and Finnish governments have tried to metagovern. It is shown that whilst governing traditions do inform the selection and deployment of the policy instruments used to metagovern, the composition of the network, and the nature of the policy problem also plays a role in shaping government action.     

Collaborative Innovation,New Technologies,and Work Redesign

Stakeholders agree on the need to promote innovation in work organization in public services. This article deploys the concept of collaborative innovation to discuss employees' and managers' experiences of a major technology‐driven work redesign project within National Health Service pharmacy services in Scotland. The authors draw on extant literature on New Public Management (NPM) and collaborative approaches to innovation to frame more than 40 in‐depth interviews with managers and employees. They find that key components of collaborative innovation—related to joint problem‐solving, interdisciplinary working, and mutual learning—were important to the success of the redesign project and had positive impacts on job quality for some employees. The authors argue that researchers and policy makers should look beyond NPM‐driven models that have dominated some areas of the public innovation literature to consider the potential added value of collaborative innovation to improving both work and service delivery in the public sector.     

Marketing the Political Message

Abstract

The potential for Americanisation of UK political campaigning is discussed with a particular focus on message development and dissemination. The paper recognises that there is difference between policy and message development, arguing that it is through the latter that British parties have most to learn from their transatlantic counterparts. Contextual differences in operation mitigate wholesale migration of American know-how, restricting technology transfer to fund-raising techniques and the incorporation of opposition and market research techniques into the development and dissemination of the message. Parties should focus their research on how to make their messages more easily understood and where to disseminate them, but they should use a process that maintains the integrity of their content (i.e., the underlying policy).     

Towards a New Political Economy of Behavioral Public Policy

The dominant normative framework in behavioral public policy postulates paternalistic intervention to increase individual utility, epitomized by the so‐called nudge approach. In this article, an alternative political economy of behavioral public policy is proposed that sits within, or at least closely aside, the liberal economic tradition. In short, rather than impose utility maximization as the normative ideal, this framework proposes that policy makers provide an environment that is conducive to each person's own conception of a flourishing life, while at the same time regulating against behaviorally informed harms and for behaviorally induced, otherwise forgone, benefits.     

Europe as a Beacon of Democracy? Citizenship Policies Relating to Youth and Migrants in Portugal

Abstract

This article aims to compare discourses about national and European policies on active citizenship and democratic participation, with a particular focus on youth and migrants. For this purpose we analysed official documents of public institutions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in order to assess how the process of Europeanization has influenced national policies with regard to increasing political participation and citizens' civic awareness. Additionally, we conducted interviews with policy makers and NGO leaders in order to integrate and compare different levels of discourse and thus identify potential dissonances. Analysis of the documents shows that there is a strong concern to match national policy priorities with those established by international organizations. Notwithstanding positive perceptions, NGO leaders and policy makers criticize the ways policies have been implemented, stressing the need to adopt a strategy that bridges the gap between the prescribed and the real, as well as the importance of overcoming the hegemony of economic factors in policy decisions. In this regard, NGO leaders criticize the cynicism of political leaders and policies motivated by demographic and economic concerns. In relation to European identity and integration, NGO leaders argue that Europe must be collectively constructed; yet, policy makers stress that the failure of the Constitutional Treaty in 2005 resulted from a deficit in the negotiation process. In sum, this article suggests that it is necessary to promote greater involvement of civil society in the design and implementation of policies which, in turn, may contribute to the strengthening of shared democratic principles.     

Second Best Governance? Governments and Governance in the Imperfect World of Health Care Delivery in China,India and Thailand in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to assess the usefulness of conceptions of different modes of governance for understanding policy outcomes by studying the experience with hierarchical and non-hierarchical governance modes in the health care sector in China, India, and Thailand. The paper shows their experience with non-hierarchical modes to have been largely disappointing and that all three, but especially Thailand, are in the process of reverting to a more hierarchical mode of service delivery. The conclusion from this study is that non-hierarchical governance is not a substitute for or an improvement upon hierarchical governance in health care due to the many market and government failures that afflict the sector and affect the ability of different governance modes to function effectively. The hierarchical mode of government is also imperfect but less so than the alternatives in delivering health care.     

Consuming Part-time Nationalism: China as an Immigrant in the Global Society

If Chinese foreign policy is to continue enjoying legitimacy, one must not allow globalization to overwhelm, penetrate, or obscure the boundary of the Chinese state. However, if the contemporary goal of Chinese foreign policy is to globalize, the process of integrating unavoidably questions the very foundation of Chinese foreign policy. By reinterpreting and psychologizing China's foreign policy, this paper tackles the discursive strategy, pertaining to nationalism, to make China's entry into globalization emotionally more manageable and less felt as a loss of identity. While there is worry that Chinese nationalism, if mismanaged, may lead to confrontation with the United States, nationalism today is no longer the same nationalism as before. Most importantly, the commercialization of nationalism and the bifurcation of its meanings have granted some agency to individual Chinese to interpret and practice nationalism as each sees proper. This citizen agency exists in various forms with those in the countryside ready to answer the call by the government and those in the cities acting more spontaneously. These individuals can together, without them necessarily planning collectively, bring out interpretations and practices that are difficult to anticipate beforehand.     

Collaborative leadership in EMU governance: a matter of cognitive proximity

Abstract

Collaborative leadership has stood at the heart of European politics since its inception. Yet EU scholars have only recently started to examine the concept and mainly from an institutional perspective. This article conceptualises the phenomenon of collaborative leadership from an actor-centered perspective. It explores a central condition for successful collaborative leadership identified in the literature: the existence of shared beliefs among the leaders involved. To do this, the article focuses on four events in the history of European Economic and Monetary Union. Using the method of cognitive mapping, the study establishes the extent of congruence in the beliefs on European integration and fiscal and monetary policy of the four leadership trios overseeing these events. On the basis of a survey of leading experts in the field, the article reveals that the level of cognitive proximity in leaders’ beliefs aligns with the perceived success with which the trios exerted collaborative leadership.     

Shadow peacebuilders and diplomatic counterinsurgencies: informal networks,knowledge production and the art of policy-shaping

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of informal networks in producing strategic knowledge and influencing policy responses to the 2011 post-election crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The analytical focus is on networks of shadow peacebuilders, defined as actors who are often not visible to the public and who promote a mix of altruistic and personal interests of their broader network by generating strategic narratives and influencing peacebuilding policy. As this article shows, shadow peacebuilders engage in diplomatic counterinsurgencies waged by means of diplomacy, politics, public relations and legal means. Strategic narratives are instrumental in legitimizing diplomatic counterinsurgency, inducing internal cohesion within the network and delegitimizing alternative narratives and policy solutions. Yet the production of strategic knowledge by shadow peacebuilders has its limitations. When the gap between strategic narrative and actions becomes too big, the network risks fragmentation and defeat by other networks that promote alternative strategic narratives and paths of action in the battle over control of peacebuilding policy.     

Long‐term care reform and the role of housing finance

Abstract

The Clinton administration's recently announced home and community‐based care proposals have potentially important implications not only for long‐term care policy, but also for housing policy in the United States. This article attempts to draw out some of those implications. The first section examines problems inherent in the current “medical/welfare” system of financing long‐term care, which constrains consumer choice by limiting the supply of providers to control costs and by increasing medical professionals’ control over the types of services provided in the name of quality control. The medical/welfare dominance of long‐term care policy has resulted in an overreliance on nursing homes as providers, resulting in both escalating costs and continued consumer dissatisfaction.

The second half of the article looks at recent market and policy developments in response to consumer demand for lower cost alternatives to nursing homes. These alternatives promote more consumer autonomy and control in supportive housing arrangements. A more comprehensive services and housing policy could promote these developments in an approach that combines the security of public financing of supportive services with the benefits of consumer choice, market competition, and legal protections that characterize housing markets. In such a scenario, housing finance institutions—including government agencies, lenders, developers, and investors—could play a pivotal role in the long‐term care debate not only by unlocking substantial financial resources but, equally important, by transforming the provision of long‐term care services to promote consumer choice and autonomy.     

Factors influencing state progress in the implementation of Public Law 99-457, Part H

Policy implementation has been an infrequently studied process although it has become increasingly evident that the implementation processes of policy development, policy approval, and policy application can shape and delay prospective implementation of legislation. The current study analyzes the implementation of P.L. 99–457 (Part H) the Education for the Handicapped Amendments of 1986. This law provides the states with planning money from the federal government to design a comprehensive interagency, multidisciplinary program of services for children with handicapping conditions and their families. Ratings were taken from key administrators and citizens knowledgeable about the law on state progress in implementing the fourteen requirements of the law and also on proposed influential conditions that might affect that implementation. Additional demographic information was obtained for the fifty states. The factor that seemed to be most influential in a subset of 35 states was the prior presence in the state of systems for interagency planning and development. Neither prior history of early childhood services, available resources, wealth of the state, or geographic region appeared to have a significant influence on policy development. There was some indication that different factors might become influential in the next phase of implementation, policy approval. It appears that progress in state policy development may be linked to the special requirements of the legislation itself and to prior availability of institutional structures that make mandated collaborative efforts more possible.     

Collaborative Decision Making in Urban Regeneration: A Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective

In this paper we examine the processes and participants in urban regeneration with a view to identifying the nature of collaborative decision making in a particular policy arena. Recognizing that the environment in which public managers operate is a complex nexus of agency, structure, environment, and feedback processes, we apply a complex adaptive systems (CAS) framework comprised of agents, rules, outcomes, decision factors, and processes within the public policy arena—in this case urban regeneration in Ireland—in order to explore collaborative decision making in the public domain. The CAS framework draws particular attention to self-organizing features of the system under study and to the emergence of agents, order (“rules”), and outcomes. Using this framework, we found that three of the six urban regeneration projects (“systems”) in our study featured the emergence of project specific agents as important facilitators of collaborative decision making and as key contributors to the expansion of system scope.     

Assembling E‐Government Research Designs: A Transdisciplinary View and Interactive Approach

There is a growing recognition in the field of e‐government that improving the quality and impact of research requires taking into account their complex contexts and drawing on more interdisciplinary and collaborative research. Limited attention so far has been directed toward the conduct of such research, particularly in contract‐based research arrangements for developing e‐government policy. A four‐nation study of public e‐procurement policy is used here to make transparent the process of designing and conducting transdisciplinary and interactive research. Further sharing of research designs and accounts is needed to advance theory, policy, and practice, and to develop a history of ideas in the e‐government research field.