Modernist and postmodernist metaphors of the policy process: Control and stability vs. chaos and reflexive understanding

The complexity of the policy process is such that analysts often resort to metaphorical representations of its most salient aspects. Sometimes these metaphors are used deliberately but, in most cases, they are implicitly built into their theoretical frameworks. This article argues that commonly used metaphors based on the paradigmatic notion of ‘control’ have ceased to be relevant to the analysis of contemporary policy dilemmas. Two new conceptions of the policy process have emerged from the new sciences of complexity. Both chaos theory and models based on the concept of ‘organizational closure’ clearly reveal the self-organizing logic inherent in the problems confronting managers and policy-makers today. The main focus here is on examining the rationales for, and the potentials of, metaphors derived from these paradigmatic innovations - innovations which can be situated within an emerging postmodern culture insofar as they emphasize indeterminacy and the role played by social actors in constructing the social situations in which they find themselves. It is also argued, however, that within very specific contexts the notion of control may still be valid. The author wishes to thank Michael Howlett for his helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

Social Value and the Management of Community Infrastructure*

The management of community infrastructure by local governments has emerged as a significant policy issue in Australia as evidence mounts of a funding shortfall to maintain ageing physical assets. In 2003 the Victorian government introduced a new infrastructure management policy to focus local government decision‐making on service potential and financial sustainability rather than political interests or community preference. However, the policy relies on a model of local government as a service provider that is inattentive to new interests in community building and governance and takes limited account of the wider social value of community facilities. This article backgrounds debates over infrastructure, particularly at local level, and critically analyses the new policy direction set by the Victorian government.     

民营经济发展过程中的公共政策创新——温州地方政府政策的演变与分析

地方政府作为正式制度供给的主体之一,在民营经济发展过程中起着特殊而又重要的作用。以温州民营经济发展为背景,实证描述和分析了地方政府政策在突破旧制度约束过程中所呈现出的显著跃迁性的特征。温州地方政府适时的政策创新,促使民营企业的非正式制度创新逐步转变为正式制度安排,为民营企业从非法走向合法奠定了坚实的基础。温州地方政府在公共政策设计过程中,既符合了温州民营企业的利益和制度知识,又符合了政策者的既得利益和意识目标,政策供给兼备了社会可行性和组织可行性,从而使得政策效能得到了充分的发挥。     

Politics of private regulation: ISEAL and the shaping of transnational sustainability governance

Scholars describe the proliferation of sustainability standards by multi‐stakeholder initiatives as part of an organizational field for sustainability. The aim of this article is to gain a better understanding of the institutionalization process of this global organizational field by focusing on the case of the ISEAL Alliance (the global association for sustainability standards). We show how ISEAL puts specific strategies into place to both reinforce and expand the role and influence of sustainability standards. This institutional entrepreneurship consists primarily of two dimensions: institutionalizing macro‐standards based on a market‐driven and procedural vision of sustainability; and simultaneously legitimating both the tools and ISEAL through internal and external enrolments and entanglements. The characterization of ISEAL's activities in this way brings politics back into the analysis of sustainability standard‐related technical debates and extends our understanding of how the micro‐dynamics within organizational fields are interdependent upon macro‐dynamics outside organizational fields.     

SOCIAL PROGRAM INNOVATION AND DISSEMINATION: A STUDY OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE PROCESSES

The dissemination of social program innovations that have been demonstrated to be effective through rigorous evaluation is an important issue. The classical dissemination framework emphasizes the position that programs implemented with fidelity to the original model are most likely to produce the positive outcomes demonstrated in the model's evaluation phase. However, critics suggest that local programs that are extensively modified are more likely to meet local goals and, therefore, are more likely to be sustained within the organization. The present research examined the implementation, effectiveness, and routinization of seven innovations replicated in a nationwide sample of organizations. The innovations were diverse in both content and implementing context and were located in a variety of sites, including schools, courts, prisons, police departments, and social service agencies. The results suggest that the innovations were replicated with acceptable levels of fidelity to the disseminated program models, and that higher-fidelity implementations tended to be more effective than those implemented with lower fidelity. The implications of the findings for social program dissemination policy are discussed and the authors propose an expansion of Berman's contingency model of innovation dissemination.     

Development and planning of sustainable airports

Air transport is considered an important part of the transportation infrastructure and it has a great impact on urbanisation as well as long‐term economic growth. Airports significantly add to local economy and facilitate a country's integration into the global economy and also provide social benefits to the society. However, together with the socioeconomic benefits, airports adversely affect to the surrounding environments, ecology and society. Some of the main concern, that is, emission from aircraft, noise while take‐off and landing of aircraft, land use, waste disposal and energy consumption, are raised with respect to airport's functioning which requires the attention of the regulatory authorities. The authorities to find the balance approach for the development of airports and to minimise the unfavourable consequences. Therefore, the efforts to be made to develop the “sustainable airports”. “Sustainable development” practises in the airports, improves the social, financial and operational benefits of the airport and also lessen the negative impacts on the environment. After understanding the concept of “Sustainability”, next challenge is to make airport sustainable. The main objective of the article is to find, how to make airport sustainable, when it is called that the airport is a “sustainable airport”. After reviewing the relevant literatures, it may be concluded that “sustainable airports” can be developed by incorporating the sustainability concept in to the airport planning and then taking care of the airport sustainability issues and barriers and airport sustainability components, that is, policy making, commerce, social responsibility, environmental and service quality.     

Developing Management Practices to Support Joined‐Up Governance

Various forms of ‘boundary‐crossing’ practices continue to proliferate in public management and public service provision (i.e. activities that require engagement and collaboration across sectors, institutions, and organisations). Yet the dynamic nature of this type of joined‐up working is proving to be a major management challenge. In this paper, we bring a number of concepts to bear on the management of joined‐up and cross‐boundary working in public management of complex social issues. Firstly, we present the concept of ‘adaptive management’, which we draw from field of environmental policy and planning (and human ecology). Secondly, we introduce a rethinking of the role of ‘policy targets’ using a complexity lens. These concepts are integrated into a practice heuristic (or framework) designed to assist cross‐boundary policy implementation in real‐world settings. We argue that adaptive management approaches may have significant utility for ensuring effective governance in uncertain environments.     

Rapid knowledge: ‘Bridging research and policy’ at the Overseas Development Institute

Numerous organizations advocate the need to ‘bridge research and policy’. Philanthropic foundations, national social science funding regimes and international organizations have sought to improve knowledge utilization. Similarly, research consumers such as NGOs and government departments complain of research irrelevance for policy purposes. The concern of this article is with ‘evidence informed policy’ within the field of international development in which the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a London‐based think tank, forms the case study. Most think tanks are driven by the need to influence immediate political agendas but ODI has also developed organizational strategies of policy entrepreneurship that extend to longer term influence through creating human capital, building networks and engaging policy communities. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Letter from the Editor

ABSTRACT

Organizational theory and research suggests that organizational performance may be affected by environmental circumstances. However, the available evidence on this important issue for public organizations relies primarily on “objective” archival measures of the environment drawn from secondary data sources. Perceptual measures gauging managerial “subjective” views on the nature of the task environment are also likely to be important determinants of organizational outcomes. In this paper, a comprehensive model of the impact of “objective” and “subjective” task environments on the performance of local government service departments is formalized and tested. The results suggest that both objective and subjective environmental munificence are positively related to performance, and that objective and subjective environmental dynamism are negatively related to service achievements. In addition, objective task complexity is negatively related to performance. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Local Government Restructuring: Privatization and Its Alternatives

Local government restructuring should no longer be viewed as a simple dichotomy between private and public provision. A 1997 survey of chief elected township and county officials in New York shows that local governments use both private and public sector mechanisms to structure the market, create competition, and attain economies of scale. In addition to privatization and inter‐municipal cooperation, two alternative forms of service delivery not previously researched—reverse privatization and governmental entrepreneurship—are analyzed here. Logistic regression on the 201 responding governments differentiates the decision to restructure from the level and complexity of restructuring. Results confirm that local governments are guided primarily by pragmatic concerns with information, monitoring, and service quality. Political factors are not significant in the restructuring process and unionization is only significant in cases of simple restructuring (privatization or cooperation used alone). Fiscal stress is not a primary motivator, but debt limits are associated with more complex forms of restructuring. Restructuring service delivery requires capacity to take risks and is more common among experienced local officials in larger, higher‐income communities. Restructuring should be viewed as a complex, pragmatic process where governments combine public and private provision with an active role as service provider and market player. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Introduction to Jesse Burkhead Symposium

Government budgeting is one of the major processes by which the use of public resources is planned and controlled. To the extent that this is done well, governmental programs are brought increasingly to the service of its citizens, enhancing their material and cultural status.
The study of government budgeting is a study in applied economics—in the allocation of scarce resources. This study must look at operations and begin with organization and procedure, the routines which have been established for decision–making in government. It should extend to an examination of the influences, governmental and nongovernmental, that come to bear on the decision-making process.
Ours is both an organized society and a society of organizations. The significance of organization is nowhere more evident than in the public sector. Here organizational arrangements bring together the learning of all social scientists. The patterns for decision-making do not provide separate compartments for economic knowledge, for political knowledge, for social knowledge. These are merged in the organizational arrangements which have been established for the conduct of governmental affairs.1     

Public Service Motivation,Organizational Social Capital,and Knowledge Sharing in the Korean Public Sector

This article investigates whether public service motivation (PSM) and organizational social capital predict knowledge sharing in the public sector. The hypothesized relationships in the proposed model are verified with the online survey data of 506 public employees in Korea. The test results show that the two dimensions of PSM (attraction to public service and commitment to public values) and the trust component of organizational social capital are both positively related to knowledge sharing in the Korean public sector, and that the associability component of organizational social capital is indirectly associated with knowledge sharing through its influence on PSM. The article discusses the ways that PSM and organizational social capital may contribute to overcome the social dilemma of knowledge sharing in public organizations. It also suggests that there is need for further research on the individual dimensions of the PSM construct.     

Critiquing Food Security Inter‐governmental Partnership Approaches in Victoria,Australia

Food security is an issue, not only in developing countries but also in developed economies such as Australia where people from vulnerable groups cannot access affordable and appropriate food on a daily basis. Agencies emphasise the need for collaborative approaches to such complex, multi‐sectoral challenges. This article analyses two inter‐governmental partnership approaches facilitating local government's response to food insecurity in 12 municipalities within the state of Victoria. We focus on the partnership approaches to collaboration, processes and structures, and collective outcomes. The comparative data analysis from in‐depth interviews and document analysis of project‐associated materials and municipal policies provides insight into the different partnership approaches. Results suggest that while strategically designed and focused inter‐governmental partnerships can build local government capacity to respond to food security, there are systemic, regulatory, and resource barriers in play. In conclusion, the implications of these findings for future inter‐governmental approaches to address complex challenges are considered.     

Revitalize the Public Service,Revitalize the Middle Class

The reinventing government movement of the 1990s reshaped the public sector in significant ways. Creating a government that worked better and cost less was accomplished through streamlined federal middle management ranks and privatized service delivery, which contributed to the emergence of a “hollow state.” Workforce reductions that addressed short‐term economic realities effectively threatened the long‐term sustainability of governmental organizations and the communities they serve. A variety of forces are now ushering in a new era of hollow government, including a changing context for public work, shifting bureaucratic expectations, and reduced capacity for workforce management. The public sector and its employees represent an important contributor to the vitality of our economy and communities. Revitalizing the public sector workforce is critical for revitalizing the middle class, and both represent urgent policy priorities.     

When top‐down meets bottom‐up: Local adoption of social policy reform in China

Authoritarian local leaders face two driving forces in social policymaking: top‐down pressure from the regime and bottom‐up motivations derived from local conditions. Existing studies recognize the importance of both forces, but remain unclear as to how they interact and which of them is more influential in driving local policy adoption. Focusing on two health insurance integration policies in China, we find that when the policy entails substantial class or distributive conflicts and bureaucratic friction, top‐down pressure for compliance is a dominant driver for local policy adoption; when the policy does not entail such conflicts or bureaucratic infighting, bottom‐up motivations based on local economic geography together with top‐down pressure drive local adoption. We find support for this argument from an analysis of an original city‐level data set in China from 2004 to 2016. This study has implications for social policy reform, decentralization, and government responsiveness in authoritarian countries with multilevel governance.     

New Governance,Green Planning and Sustainability: Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together1

Bridgman and Davis (2000:91) have argued that ‘ideally government will have a well developed and widely distributed policy framework, setting out economic, social and environmental objectives’. This article compares and evaluates two such frameworks or plans, Tasmania Together and Growing Victoria Together, in terms of their potential to promote sustainability. It argues that they are very different exercises in new governance, aimed at reconnecting with community priorities and at redirecting macro‐policy setting away from a preoccupation with economic priorities, respectively. Nevertheless, both plans have the capacity to ‘green’ state planning, in Tasmania in terms of more purposeful benchmarks, and in Victoria in terms of enhanced sustainability emphasis in the macro‐policy setting. The article encounters tensions in its review of the plans between deliberation and planning, policy empowerment and policy progress, and policy institutionalisation and politicisation as means of achieving policy change. It finds that whilst Tasmania and Victoria are re‐engaged states that are reinventing state policy, as yet they are failing to meet the governance challenges of sustainability.     

公共政策创新的因素分析——以《上海市政府信息公开规定》为例

随着施政的生态环境加速变迁,政府必须以创新公共政策的方式予以应对。但政府创新公共政策的内在因素是什么呢?已有的文献不仅局限于美国的政策生态,而且以计量方式考察经济、政治和社会因素,忽视了其中大量难以计量以及需要整合考察的因素。在一个融合条件(资源和要素、政治架构、现有制度和政策及社会文化)和机制(学习机制、决策机制、执行机制、激励机制和评价机制)的综合模型指导下,以分析性叙事的方法,具体考察上海市创新政府信息公开制度的内在因素。分析案例表明,尽管上海在条件和机制上都非常充分的情况下,也还必须融合各种条件和机制才能解释创新的出现及其有效运行。     

地方政府创新与政府体制改革

文章分析了地方政府创新的客观空间和动力,探讨了它在坚持与推广方面存在的问题、原因及对策,论述了地方政府创新与政府体制改革之间的关系。     

演化范式下中国地方政府创新可持续性研究

地方政府创新不仅是世界范围内政治经济发展的一种普遍现象和趋势,也是推动我国政治-行政改革的主要手段。本文在梳理地方政府创新相关文献、分析中国地方政府创新案例的基础上,基于演化范式对中国地方政府创新可持续性进行了理论探讨。首先,本文重新界定了地方政府创新可持续性的内涵;其次,研究了其演化路径与内容,指出了地方政府创新可持续性的四条演化路径和三个方面的内容;然后,分析了其内外部决定因素,总结出地方政府的适应性学习、"政治企业家"精神、知识累积、创新的路径依赖、多样性选择主体的内生需求、知识外溢与竞合、创新嵌套的行政文化和技术创新等八个决定因素;最后,构建了地方政府创新可持续性的分析模型。     

Transforming Scotland's Public-sector Housing through Community Ownership: The Reterritorialisation of Housing Governance?

In recent decades, UK public-sector housing has increasingly been problematised, with government solutions focusing on modernising the sector by transferring ownership of the housing from the public to the voluntary sector through stock transfer. This promises to transform the organisation of social housing by devolving control from local government to housing organisations located within, and governed by, the communities in which they are based. The Scottish Executive's national housing policy of community ownership is the epitome of this governmental rationale par excellence. Drawing upon empirical research on the 2003 Glasgow housing stock transfer, this paper argues that, whilst community ownership is underpinned by governmental rationales that seek to establish community as the new territory of social housing governance, the realisation of these political ambitions has been marred by emergent central–local conflict. Paradoxically, the fragmentation of social housing through the break-up of municipal provision, co-exists with continued political centralisation within the state apparatus.