Innovation Policy in Italy (1993–2002): Understanding the Invention and Persistence of a Public Management Reform

The literature on the politics of public management reform in Italy broadly contends that the country's legalistic administrative tradition suppresses reform. This article questions and qualifies this line of argument on the basis of a newly reported case of public management reform that endured for more than 10 years. The study tracks and explains the emergence of the policy issue of “government innovation” and its persistence on the specialized policy agenda of the Ministry for Public Administration. The initial emergence of the government innovation policy in Italy and its directional stability is explained by applying event‐centric approaches to historical analysis, together with the institutional concept of policy subsystems. The article shows the need for modifying central arguments—both substantive and theoretical—about the politics of public management reform in Italy.     

The Rise and Fall of Radical Civil Service Reform in the U.S. States

Initiated by a 1996 Georgia statute, “radical” civil service reform quickly swept the United States. This article explains the wax and eventual wane of state efforts to increase the number of at‐will employees at the expense of the population of fully protected merit system employees. Using an event history approach to explain this policy diffusion with state‐level variables, the author shows that electoral competition and gubernatorial powers are the most significant determinants of this kind of policy diffusion. Whereas previous literature concluded that these reforms ceased spreading because the new programs were failing to create the promised governmental efficiency, this article argues that the institutional conditions for these human resource management policies have been less propitious in recent years. The article signifies an important contribution in that it brings civil service reform back into the scope of policy diffusion literature and identifies political insights into a perpetually important question.     

Ministerial Advisers and the Politics of Policy‐Making: Bureaucratic Permanence and Popular Control

The advent of ministerial advisers of the partisan variety – a third element interposing itself into Westminster's bilateral monopoly – has been acknowledged as a significant development in a number of jurisdictions. While there are commonalities across contexts, the New Zealand experience provides an opportunity to explore the extent to which the advent of ministerial advisers is consistent with rational choice accounts of relations between political and administrative actors in executive government. Public administration reform in New Zealand since the mid 1980s – and in particular machinery of government design – was quite explicitly informed by rational choice accounts, and normative Public Choice in particular. This article reflects on the role of ministerial advisers in the policy‐making process and, on the basis of assessments by a variety of political and policy actors, examines the extent to which the institutional and relational aspects of executive government are indeed consistent with rational choice accounts of the ‘politics of policy‐making’. The reader is offered a new perspective through which to view the advent, and the contribution of ministerial advisers to policy‐making in executive government.     

Policy networks,politics and decentralisation policies in Ghana

Policy‐making is a political process involving a network of actors with varied interests. This article uses policy network as an analytical framework to understand the politics of decentralisation policy‐making in Ghana from the perspective of interactions among interest groups. The article is based on a research study, which utilised semi‐structured interviews and documentary sources in its data collection. It argues that the lack of progress in decentralisation in Ghana can be explained by the politics surrounding government–interest group relations. The article also provides evidence to indicate how varied interests represented within the decentralisation policy networks affected politics and in turn influenced decentralisation policy‐making and outcomes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Governments and unpopular social policy reform: Biting the bullet or steering clear?

Abstract. Under which conditions and to what extent do governments pursue unpopular social policy reforms for which they might be punished in the next election? This article shows that there exists substantial cross‐cabinet variation in the degree to which governments take unpopular measures and argues that current studies cannot adequately explain this variation. Using insights from prospect theory, a psychological theory of choice under risk, this study hypothesises that governments only engage in unpopular reform if they face a deteriorating socio‐economic situation, a falling political position, or both. If not, they shy away from the risk of reform. A fuzzy‐set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA) of the social policy reform activities pursued by German, Dutch, Danish and British cabinets between 1979 and 2005 identifies a deteriorating socio‐economic situation as necessary for unpopular reform. It is only sufficient for triggering reform, however, if the political position is also deteriorating and/or the cabinet is of rightist composition. This study's findings further the scholarly debate on the politics of welfare state reform by offering a micro‐foundation that helps one to understand what induces political actors aspiring to be re‐elected to engage in electorally risky unpopular reform.     

Understanding Shared Roles in Policy and Administration: An Empirical Study of Council‐Manager Relations

Recent literature in public administration emphasizes enhanced collaboration between elected and administrative officials. The complementarity view is presented as an alternative to the traditional politics–administration dichotomy. At the center of this new perspective lies the concept of shared roles between elected officials and public administrators with respect to policy making and administration. This article expands the emerging literature on role sharing by proposing and testing new variables to understand what enhances the policy‐making role of city managers and the administrative role of elected officials. Employing data collected from a nationwide survey of city managers and utilizing structural equation modeling methodology, this research finds that the council’s expectations and the city manager’s role conception significantly influence the city manager’s involvement in policy making, while the context of policy making, the city manager’s support, and the council’s access to resources affect elected officials’ involvement in administration. This article aims to make a cumulative contribution to the literature on role sharing.     

When Experts Do Politics: Introducing Water Policy Reform in Brazil

This article brings to the fore the role of experts as policy agents by analyzing the water management reform in three Brazilian states. Seeking to contribute to the recent ideational turn in political science, it contends that in studying the emergence and implementation of new policy ideas, more attention must be paid to the role of experts as policy innovators and to the interplay between experts' knowledge brokerage and the influence of party politics. To examine the interaction between knowledge brokerage and party politics, comparative case studies were conducted to trace back throughout their different phases the reform processes of the Brazilian states of Ceará, Paraná, and Rio Grande do Sul. The purpose of this research design is to test the argument that experts are major reform agents and that what experts can effectively achieve depends on both the reform phase and the political context they find themselves in.     

Public sector reform in Sub‐Saharan Africa: what can be learnt from the civil service performance improvement programme in Ghana?

This paper focuses on public sector management reform ‘best‐practice’ case experience from Sub‐Sahara African (SSA). Given that ‘best‐practice’ is a relative concept and often debatable, the paper uses the Ghana Civil Service Performance Improvement Programme (GCSPIP) experience as rather a ‘good‐practice’ case with the view to sharing the outcome and lessons to encourage collaborative‐learning. It seeks to share the outcome and lessons learnt by the Ghana civil service reform with future public service reformers and to contribute to the literature. The paper concludes with an adaptable three‐dimensional framework. The framework argues that successful future public service reform (PSR) should consider three broad issues: first, are the ‘critical success factors’, including wholehearted political leadership commitment; wholehearted bureaucratic leadership commitment; thoughtful synergistic planning/preparation; patience for implementation and evaluation; capacity to convince; neutralise and accommodate reform‐phobias and critics; sustainable financial and technical resource availability and conscious nurturing of general public support. Second, is the need for reformers to appreciate the concerns of the public and the civil society scepticism of public ‘institutions’ and its ‘operatives’ and finally placing any reform programme in a country‐specific context, including understanding its history, culture, politics, economy, sociology, ideology and values. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Politicians,Media Moguls and PayTV: Pay‐TV Policy‐making in Australia 1977‐1995

This article explores the major influences on pay‐TV policy‐making in Australia from the late 1970s, when the issue was first discussed in the context of proposals to establish a domestic communications satellite, up until the introduction of pay‐TV in Australia in 1995, thereby placing current developments in the pay‐TV industry in context. The article argues that among larger broadcasting and telecommunications issues, pay‐TV has never been ‘the main game’. For both Coalition and Labor governments, the expansion of existing free‐to‐air television services in regional Australia and the introduction of competition in telecommunications have been much more important policy priorities than the introduction of pay‐TV. Furthermore, because pay‐TV policy‐making largely took place in this wider policy context, the structure of the broadcasting and telecommunications industries also shaped pay‐TV policy outcomes.     

Public Management Policymaking in France: Legislating the Organic Law on Laws of Finance (LOLF), 1998–2001

A watershed in the politics of public management in France was crossed in 2001, when the French president and prime minister signed off a law initiated by the French Parliament to reform the planning and control of public expenditure. This legislation, the Organic Law on Laws of Finance of August 1, 2001 (generally known as the LOLF), requires public authorities to adopt performance‐oriented ideas and public management approaches, and seeks to rebalance executive and parliamentary powers over the public purse. This article uses the LOLF as a case study to gain insight into the politics of public management policymaking in France as developed in recent decades. The article starts with an original historiographic account of the policymaking around the law, follows with a research argument explaining the policy choice, and concludes with some field‐level research questions on the politics of public management reform in France.     

Legitimacy and context: implications for public sector reform in developing countries

This article examines the interplay between legitimacy and context as key determinants of public sector reform outcomes. Despite the importance of variables such as legitimacy of public institutions, levels of civic morality and socio‐economic realities, reform strategies often fail to take such contextual factors into account. The article examines, first, relevant literature – both conceptual and empirical, including data from the World Values Survey project. It is argued that developing countries have distinctive characteristics which require particular reform strategies. The data analysed shows that in Latin American countries, there is no clear correlation between confidence in public institutions and civic morality. Other empirical studies show that unemployment has a negative impact on the level of civic morality, while inequality engenders corruption. This suggests that poorer and socio‐economically stratified countries face greater reform challenges owing to the lack of legitimacy of public institutions. The article concludes that reforms should focus on areas of governance that impact on poverty. This will in turn help produce more stable outcomes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Limits to Evidence‐Based Policy: Evidence,Emotion and Criminal Justice1

While ‘evidence‐based’ or ‘rationalist’ approaches to criminal policy may appeal to technocrats, bureaucrats and a number of academics, they often fail to compete successfully with the affective approaches to law and order policies which resonate with the public and which appear to meet deep‐seated psychological needs. They also often fail to recognise that ‘policy’ and ‘politics’ are related concepts and that debates about criminal justice are played out in broader arenas than the academy, the bureau or the agency. To be successful, penal reform must take account of the emotions people feel in the face of wrongdoing. Further, successful reform must take into account changes in public ‘mood’ or emotions over time and be sensitive to different political and social cultures. This article argues that criminal justice policies are more likely to be adopted if, in addition to the gathering and presentation of evidence, they recognise and deal with the roles of emotions, symbols, faith, belief and religion in the criminal justice system. It also recognises that evidence alone is unlikely to be the major determinant of policy outcomes and that the creation and successful implementation of policy also requires extensive engagement and evidence‐based dialogue with interested and affected parties. This necessitates a different kind of modelling for evidence‐based policy processes.     

Scotland's Future Political System

Debates on Scottish constitutional reform go hand in hand with discussions of political reform. Its reformers use the image of ‘old Westminster’ to describe ‘control freakery’ within government and an adversarial political system. Many thought that the Scottish political system could diverge from the UK, to strengthen the parliamentary system, introduce consensus politics and further Scotland's alleged social and democratic tradition. Yet the experience of devolution suggests that Holyrood and Westminster politics share key features. Both systems are driven by government, making policy in ‘communities’ involving interest groups and governing bodies, with parliaments performing a limited role and public participation limited largely to elections. The Scottish government's style of policy‐making is distinctive, but new reforms are in their infancy and their effects have not been examined in depth. In this context, the article identifies Scotland's ability to make and implement policy in a new way, based on its current trajectory rather than the hopes of reformers.     

The Obama Administration's Challenges after the “War on Science”: Reforming Staffing Practices and Protecting Scientific Integrity in the Executive Branch

In this article, we examine the difficult leadership position President Barack Obama inherited as he took office with respect to science and technology policy making and implementation, particularly following the Bush administration and years of the so‐called “war on science.” We contend that the Obama administration's challenge is not only to take substantive policy action, but also to reform certain administrative practices, particularly in light of the previous administration's practice of the politics of strategic vacancies, a managerial technique that rearranges an agency's ideological inclinations not through the usual forms of active politicization (i.e., by filling the appointee ranks with like‐minded ideologues) but instead by “starving” the agency of staff and co‐opting its agenda that way.     

Comparing blunders in government

Much attention has been paid to government ‘blunders’ and ‘policy disasters’. National political and administrative systems have been frequently blamed for being disproportionately prone to generating mishaps. However, little systematic evidence exists on the record of failures of policies and major public projects in other political systems. Based on a comparative perspective on blunders in government, this article suggests that constitutional features do not play a prominent role. In order to establish this finding, this article (a) develops theory‐driven expectations as to the factors that are said to encourage blunders, (b) devises a systematic framework for the assessment of policy processes and outcomes, and (c) uses fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis to identify sets of causal conditions associated with particular outcomes (i.e., blunders). The article applies this novel approach to a set of particular policy domains, finding that constitutional features are not a contributory factor to blunders in contrast to instrument choice, administrative capacity and hyper‐excited politics.     

An Analysis of the Joint Board or County Model as the Structural Basis for Effective Australian Local Governance

Australian policy‐makers continue to rely on municipal amalgamation as the main engine of structural reform in local government, despite strong evidence that it diminishes participation and representation without improving service efficiency. Several promising, but neglected alternative models of structural reform have been developed, including ad hoc resource sharing models, Regional Organisations of Councils, virtual local government, and agency models. In an encouraging response to the recent policy of enforced council amalgamations in NSW, the Shires Association of NSW (2004) has recently proposed a ‘Joint Board model’ of local governance and invited comment on this model. This article takes up this challenge and seeks to place the Joint Board model in conceptual context and evaluate its characteristics and simulated cost savings.     

Defending the organisation,not the members: Unions and the reform of job security legislation in Western Europe

European labour markets are often described as rigid with comparatively high levels of job protection that do not allow for the flexible adjustment of employment to economic fluctuations. This interpretation overlooks important sources of flexibility, however. Research has shown that recent labour market policy reforms have allowed for the creation of two‐tier labour markets consisting of insiders in standard employment relationships and outsiders in non‐standard employment. This outcome has typically been explained by pointing to the representational interests of unions or social‐democratic parties. It has been argued that rather than protecting all labour market participants, unions and social‐democratic parties focus on the interests of their members and their core constituency, respectively, most of whom are in standard employment relationships. In contrast, it is argued here that unions' institutional power resources are the crucial variable explaining this outcome. In difficult economic times, when unions are asked to make concessions, they will assent to labour market reforms, but only to those that do not fundamentally threaten to undermine their organisational interests. In the context of job security legislation, this means that unions defend the protection of permanent contracts while they compromise on the regulation of temporary employment. This ‘second best solution’ allows them to protect their organisational interests, both by retaining their institutional role in the administration of dismissals and by living up to their institutional role as one of the organisations responsible for the direction of labour market policy reform. Using fsQCA this article shows that unions' institutional power resources are more apt to explain the observed two‐tier reform pattern than the unions' or the social‐democratic parties' representational interests.     

'The Possible as the Art of Politics': Understanding Consensus Politics

Drawing on the Kuhnian model of scientific paradigms, this article suggests consensus politics should be conceptualised not as an agreement or a settlement but as a political framework that derives from an ideationally informed policy paradigm. Such a consensus constrains the auto-nomy of governing elites, encouraging them to conform to an established policy agenda that defines the 'mainstream' wherein 'the possible is the art of politics'. In Britain, as demonstrated by the replacement of a post-war social democratic paradigm by a contemporary neo-liberal successor, periods of policy continuity and incremental reform have been matched by occasions of dramatic political change. Any appreciation of consensus politics has therefore to explain change as well as account for stability, something considerably under emphasised in the existing literature. Consensus politics are therefore best defined as a constrained space within which politics is conducted and political actors differ, a paradigmatic framework from which political outcomes emerge, and never as an agreement freely entered into. Looking at consensus politics beyond the much commented upon post-war example, this article uses British politics since 1945 as an exemplar of consensus politics and an illustration of how a consensus can be forged, how it can endure and how it may change.     

Regulatory Agencies—The Challenges of Balancing Agency Autonomy and Political Control

In this article we focus on the dynamic interplay between increase in autonomy of regulatory agencies and political control of those agencies. The general research issues are the weak empirical foundations of regulatory reforms, the complex trade‐off between political control and agency autonomy, the dual process of deregulation and reregulation, the problems of role‐specialization and coordination, and the questions of “smart practice” in regulatory policy and practice. The theoretical basis is agency theories and a broad institutional approach that blend national political strategies, historical‐cultural context, and external pressures to understand regulatory agencies and regulatory reform. This approach is contrasted with a practitioner model of agencies. Empirically the article is based on regulatory reform in Norway, giving a brief introduction to the reform and agency context followed by an analysis of the radical regulatory reform policy introduced recently by the current Norwegian government. We illustrate how regulatory reforms and agencies work in practice by focusing on two specific cases on homeland security and telecommunications.     

Evidence‐Based Policy‐Making: The Elusive Search for Rational Public Administration

Evidence‐based policy making has been criticised as a revival of the ‘rationality project’ in which democratic politics is regarded as rent‐seeking and a deadweight loss to society. In response, the evidence‐based policy movement has failed to articulate a defence in which the rationality animating the policy process is situational and contextual rather than unique and authoritative. This article traces the movement's motto –‘what works?’– to the American pragmatist movement, whose influence on Harold Lasswell and New Labour in the UK was substantial. This article argues that the ambition for evidence‐based policy‐making should be seen in terms of the transition from a single, unique and universal rationality toward multiple rationalities that vary according to different policy making contexts. Interpreted in such terms, evidence‐based policy making can avoid several of the main criticisms, and offer strong potential to contribute to solving policy problems.