The Policy Sciences: The Challenge of Complexity

This essay reviews some of the recent criticisms of positivist science. It interprets this criticism, more generally, as directed towards the complexity of social science phenomena and the difficulty of dealing with complexity epistemologically and methodologically. Rather than ignoring complexity, changing the subject matter or explaining it away, we argue that complexity may be acknowledged and studied systematically withn the context of post-positivist approaches. The essay than proposes several strategies for conceptualizing and researching complexity (at a "meta-level" from substantive policy research) that are based in systems theory.     

Service Delivery: The Audit Dimension

Reporting of performance information on public sector services has increased substantially in recent years. The audit of such information, however, is still relatively uncommon. In 1989 the Audit Office in New Zealand was confronted with a legislative requirement to audit Statements of Service Performance (SSPs). This paper backgrounds New Zealand's shift in emphasis from program effectiveness audits to the audit of non-financial performance information, describes the development of audit methodology in this area and identifies lessons learned.     

The Art of Service v The Science of Measurement: Measuring and Managing Service Delivery

Mantras such as 'If you can't measure it you can't manage it' have become standards of management practice. At no point are the logic or assumptions that link measurement to performance questioned. Formal measurement has its place in the broader art of service leadership. But so do the other aspects of assessment, including personal experience of the service, observation, frontline input, customer meetings and a raft of informal monitoring activities. When conducted properly, these other ways of knowing are just as reliable, valid and manageable as any quantitative system. More quantification is not necessarily better. Service leaders must stand back and understand when to use the science of measurement and when to develop the art of management.     

中国城市化：特征识别、现实挑战及公共政策取向

城市化的典型特征表现为工业化带动、市场主导和特定历史条件下的外部影响。特殊的国情使得中国城市化进程不同于其他国家,表现为开放性、经济转型和资源耗散三大特征。当前中国城市化的关键在于实现城市经济的集聚效应,培育城市的创新能力,引导城市和郊区统筹发展、加强城市成长管理。     

City Managers,Career Incentives,and Municipal Service Decisions: The Effects of Managerial Progressive Ambition on Interlocal Service Delivery

City managers play an influential role in brokering intergovernmental service arrangements on behalf of their jurisdiction, yet their motivations for doing so are not well understood. One argument, drawn from theories of bureaucratic entrepreneurship and ambition theory, suggests that cities with managers who are motivated to advance their careers will parlay more interlocal service delivery as means of capturing economic efficiencies. Such strategies serve to build their personal resumes of career achievements. An alternative argument suggests more altruistic motives, including a desire for increased social equity and valuing the common good of the region, compel city managers to pursue interlocal service arrangements. These competing theories are tested on 134 large municipalities, using survey data from the city managers of these jurisdictions, coupled with interlocal revenue and expenditure data for these cities. Results yield greater support for the first theory. However, progressive ambition possesses complex consequences for interlocal service delivery choices. Jurisdictions managed by city managers with career‐enhancement ambitions are more likely to sell services to other local governments. Yet, they are significantly less inclined to buy services from other jurisdictions, thereby underscoring entrepreneurship in shaping managers’ professional trajectories.     

The American State and Social Engineering: Policy Instruments in Affirmative Action

The American state is conventionally depicted as inactive and organizationally weak compared with the state in comparable industrial democracies, and it is sometimes depicted as weak compared with the private sector’s capacities to effect change. This interpretation stems from applying an inappropriate Weberian model of stateness. This article examines the way in which measures to implement affirmative have been employed through the policy instruments of quotas to reengineer the divisions between key groups in American society. Placed in historical context, affirmative action illustrates a powerful activism associated with the American state conceived as an institution engaged in setting and monitoring national standards.     

Civil Society Intervention in the War-Torn Gulu District in Northern Uganda: Policy Implications for Social Service Delivery

Civil society in the African Gulu district of Uganda operates in an area of acute humanitarian crisis. The fragile nature of the environment due to prolonged civil war has rendered ineffective the implementation of public policies that should enable the population access to services. Thus, civil society intervention in this area is on urgent requirement as government and market have failed to deliver services to the people. The Gulu case is representative of other developing countries undergoing similar conflicts. Development partners need to recognize the role of civil society and advocate policies that enhance their effective participation in the development process. In order to more effectively tackle global development challenges, and in this era of globalization, this article argues that serious discussions should be held by all development partners to form a global governance system led by civil society organizations.     

Collective Action,Civil Society,and Public Policy in Turkey

Abstract

Understanding policy change mechanisms has been a key question for scholars of public policy and collective action. However, policy scholarship mostly ignores civil society-based explanations of policy processes. In order to address this gap, this study combines the Advocacy Coalition Framework with networked collective action perspectives and analyzes a successful case of mobilization of women’s rights organizations in Turkey to reverse a bill on child marriage. Study findings suggest that advocacy coalitions are not static entities. When different issues in a policy subsystem are invoked, the structure of inter-coalition networks can change substantially and these variations in inter-coalition interactions may have consequences for influencing policy change. Moreover, this paper argues that extensive street protests and online campaigns by civil society organizations have the capacity to boost the bargaining power of minority coalitions, especially in contexts that lack multiple formal venues for making policy claims.     

Moving Toward Mixed Service Delivery: The Growth in Schools Run by Non-Governmental Providers in Ten Cities

ABSTRACT

The delivery of public services by a mix of government and non-governmental organizations can offer many public policy benefits. When direct governmental provision has predominated, however, achieving these benefits requires building the supply of non-governmental service providers, which requires understanding how to improve their availability and quality. Integrating the literature on contracting and mixed delivery, this article specifies three categories of supply-building tactics: creating markets, buying smart, and managing markets. We then report on 10 cities that have nurtured the supply of schools run by non-governmental organizations. We find that cities’ supply-building efforts fall along a continuum from passive to active, and they employ some types of tactics (creating markets, buying smart) more than others (managing markets). Differential changes in market share across the cities we studied suggest a relationship between supply-building activities and movement from exclusive governmental provision toward the mixed delivery of schools. These findings suggest hypotheses for future research on governmental efforts to build the supply and capabilities of non-governmental service providers in order to pursue mixed service delivery.     

Reforming Service Delivery in China: The Emergence of a Social Innovation Model

In this paper, I find that the political economy of public goods provision by the local government in Shanghai influenced the decision to transition from the existing public service delivery model based on residency, to a social innovation model where the government contracts with non-profits and private firms to provide services at lower costs and experiment with different levels of provision (购买服务). Contracting also forms a bridge between old governance models and new ones, which potentially allow for a process of administrative modernization without social instability. Contracting for public-goods provision is increasing in prevalence not only in Shanghai but also in many other provinces, and is professionalizing participating organizations and providing public goods to vulnerable populations. While this practice is not yet increasing non-profit participation in the policy process, the creation of access channels that are currently operating solely in one direction may at some future date allow groups to participate in relevant policy areas. Contracting public goods might have the potential of significant effects beyond the term of the contract by increasing pluralism in local public policy and generating more demand for transparency and accountability of government services. As such, this is an interesting bellwether for future political change in China.     

Slackers and Zealots: Civil Service, Policy Discretion, and Bureaucratic Expertise

We investigate how aspects of "civil service" systems of personnel management interact with bureaucratic discretion to create expert bureaucracies populated by policy-motivated agents. We construct a dynamic model in which bureaucrats may invest in (relationship-specific) policy expertise and may or may not be interested in policy choices per se. The legislature makes sequentially rational grants of discretion, which serve as incentives for expertise investment and continued service only for policy-motivated bureaucrats. Bureaucratic policy preferences and the legislature's agency problem vis-à-vis bureaucracies develop endogenously in the model. Bureaucratic expertise can be supported in equilibrium only at a cost of its politicization; "neutral competence" is inconsistent with strategic incentives of bureaucrats. We identify several conditions that support the development of an expert bureaucracy in equilibrium, including security of job tenure and control over policy issues for policy-motivated bureaucrats.     

Coproduction and Equity in Public Service Delivery

Public managers and researchers devote much attention to the benefits of coproduction, or the mixing of the productive efforts of public employees and citizens in public service design and delivery. One concern, however, is the distributional consequences of coproduction. This article proposes that disadvantaged citizens may be constrained by a lack of knowledge or other resources necessary to contribute to and benefit from the coproduction process. From this assumption, the authors develop the theoretical argument that if coproduction programs were designed to lift constraints on disadvantaged citizens, they might increase both efficiency and equity. This claim is tested using a field experiment on educational services. A coproduction program providing immigrant parents with knowledge and materials useful to their children's early educational development had a substantial positive impact on the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children, thereby diminishing inequity. Economically, the program was more efficient than later compensation of low‐performing children.     

Electronic Service Delivery: Achieving Accuracy and Consistency in Complex Transactions

This article discusses the use of rule-base technology in the administration of legislation. It first looks at determinative processes, the management of assessments of entitlement and obligations that form much of the operational work for many government agencies. It examines existing problems that agencies experience when attempting to secure accurate and consistent primary decision-making when administering complex legislation. It also examines the way in which traditional techniques for administering legislation constrain the service delivery methods open to an agency. It suggests that rule-base systems are a peculiarly appropriate technology for improving these determinative processes. It then argues that the use of rule-base systems offers two main benefits to agencies. They can improve the quality of primary decision-making and they can provide a means for dramatically widening the range of service delivery options open to an agency. Finally, the article argues that, until agencies have applications that are capable of automating complex transactions, such as the determination of entitlements, they will not be able to achieve large-scale benefits from electronic service delivery.