Valuing Public Participation in Policy Making

Books reviewed:
Richard Stuart Olson, Robert A. Olson, and Vincent T. Gawronski, Some Buildings Just Can't Dance: Politics, Life Safety, and Disaster
Louise K. Comfort, Shared Risk: Complex Systems in Seismic Response
Gregory E. McAvoy, Controlling Technocracy: Citizen Rationality and the NIMBY Syndrome     

Measuring the Financial Position of Municipalities: Numbers Do Not Speak for Themselves

There are several challenges facing someone who wants to know if a city's revenue structure is fair and reasonable. There are few generally accepted standards to use as benchmarks of financial condition, and there is no generally accepted methodology to assess relative financial position. This article reviews literature on financial position and condition, and then develops a methodological approach that creates a cohort of similar cities for benchmarking financial position, and then forming a basis for assessing financial condition. Based on a study of the financial position of a medium-sized city, the article offers lessons for practitioners and scholars.     

Civic Engagement and Public Policy Making in America

Larry N. Gerston, Public Policymaking in a Democratic Society: A Guide to Civic Engagement
Thomas A. Birkland, An Introduction to the Policy Process: Theories, Concepts, and Models of Public Policy Making
Mark E. Rushefsky, Public Policy in the United States: At the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century     

对公共政策制定的政治哲学思考

公共政策制定是社会政治生活中公共决策系统的经常性活动。在现代社会,由于公共政策的巨大作用和影响,公共政策制定问题引起了广泛的关注。从政治哲学的角度审视,以公意为价值取向、以政治权力为基本依托,以政治秩序为最终归宿,才能建立起人民期待的合理、公正、有效的公共政策,从而进一步推进决策的科学化、民主化。     

Havel versus Klaus: Public Policy Making in the Czech Republic

In Central and Eastern Europe, we can observe and analyze an ongoing social experiment euphemized as the process of the transformation of totalitarian countries with centrally planned economies into democratic countries with market economies. This article offers an analysis of what has been happening in the Czech Republic in this regard. Attention is given to the impact of political philosophies (those represented by names of Václav Havel and Václav Klaus) upon legal and institutional changes. Key terms for better understanding of these processes are the free market, civil society, civic sector, and participation of citizens in public affairs. Channels, developmental threats, and opportunities for public policy formation and implementation are studied as well.     

Public Managers as the Missing Variable in Policy Studies: An Empirical Investigation Using Canadian Data

The article draws on survey data from a 2007–09 study of Canadian policy analysts to assess several propositions concerning the role of public managers in policy‐making. It is argued that little is known and much taken for granted concerning the role public managers play in policy making. The discussion begins with a conceptual discussion of the nature of policy advice systems in modern governments and situates public managers among the range of actors who affect different stages of policy making activity. Propositions derived from this conceptual discussion are then subject to empirical analysis using a large‐n 2007–09 Canadian federal, provincial, and territorial dataset.     

浅谈公共政策制定中的公民参与

公民参与是公共政策制定过程中不可或缺的重要环节,是确保社会价值公平分配的重要途径。目前,我国公民参与公共政策的程度还比较低,一些问题还比较突出。本文通过对公共政策制定中公民参与的发展与现状的分析和研究,在此基础上找出了公共政策制定中的公民参与存在的问题,并为之完善提出积极地建议。     

Improvisation in Public Administration and Policy Making in Israel

Although improvisation stands outside of conventional models for rational policy making and Weberian administration, it is nonetheless prevalent in public life. This article argues that improvisation is both a natural consequence of bounded rationality as well as a product of cultural and personal predilections and environmental circumstances. Drawing on a number of instances of improvisation in public administration and policy making in Israel, it attempts to shed light on its uses, motives, and implications, as well as on the issues involved in considering its utility.     

公共政策的合法性:基于制定程序的视角

公共政策的制定程序为政策主体设置了决策步骤与职业规范,为政策实体提供了技术支撑与制度保障。立足合法性的基本含义,程序的合法性首先体现为程序之于实体合法性的基础与保障功能。其次,合法性赋予公众价值主体与评判主体的地位,要求政策程序遵循科学性、民主性的价值标准,以实现公众的权利诉求。再次,政策的技术与制度程序在各自层面遵循科学性、民主性的标准,也对程序乃至实体的合法性产生积极影响。     

Public Service Motivation Research: Lessons for Practice

Public service motivation research has proliferated in parallel with concerns about how to improve the performance of public service personnel. However, scholarship does not always inform management and leadership. This article purposefully reviews public service motivation research since 2008 to determine the extent to which researchers have identified lessons for practice. The results of the investigation support several lessons—among them using public service motivation as a selection tool, facilitating public service motivation through cooperation in the workplace, conveying the significance of the job, and building leadership based on public service values. These results are important because they offer evidence that the field is coalescing around tactics that managers and leaders can use to address enduring concerns about employee motivation in the public sector. They also prompt us to articulate ideas that can guide a tighter integration of research and practice moving forward.     

Policy Target Populations and Public Participation in Agency Decision Making

Why are some government agencies more open to public input than others? Although many agree about the normative desirability of involving citizens in administrative decision making, there is significant variation across agencies in the extent of public participation. This article investigates the conditions under which public managers solicit greater public participation. We argue that, in addition to normative rationales, participation also serves instrumental considerations related to agency constituency. We draw on a rich body of literature examining participation in the policy process to develop empirically testable hypotheses about the patterns of participation in the administrative decision making of public agencies. Using data on the approaches to gathering citizen input in the budget process at four state departments—environmental protection, transportation, child protective services, and corrections—we find that the characteristics of target populations (namely, their political power and social construction) are strong predictors of an agency's openness to the public.     

反事实分析与公共政策制定——以“自行车难题”为例

本文尝试将反事实分析法引入公共政策制定,用于预先评估某项公共政策可能引发的预期效果和非意愿后果。选取城市治理中的"自行车难题"为案例,探讨反事实分析法在公共政策制定过程中的适用范围、应用方法和分析过程。现有研究认为,惩罚成本过低是导致"自行车难题"的主因,因而提高惩罚的治理政策就能解决"自行车难题"。本文采用犯罪经济学的分析框架,通过反事实分析,系统地考察惩罚严厉的治理政策的社会效果,得出与之相反的结论:惩罚严厉的治理政策仅考虑了单一的盗窃成本与收益,但实际上犯罪者的行为选择受各种社会条件制约,严厉的惩罚政策不但不能解决治理问题,并有可能导致社会治安恶化的非意愿后果。单一政策目标和复杂社会系统之间的矛盾是中国公共治理中广泛存在的问题,而在政策制定中引入反事实分析则是避免这一困境的有效途径。     

Using Data to Manage for Performance at Public Universities

As performance‐oriented reforms have become more commonplace in recent years, questions about the factors that drive organizational adoption and use of performance systems for internal management are of central importance. This article uses data taken from a survey of presidents at public universities to advance our understanding about the use of data and performance management strategies within public organizations. The central research question is, why do public administrators choose to employ performance management strategies? In addition, the author also explores variation in the extent to which public universities use performance management strategies for three tasks that are central to public management: (1) strategic planning, (2) evaluating employees, and (3) interacting with external stakeholders. Findings indicate that public universities often use performance data to help manage, but many of the causal factors that lead to data use vary across management functions.     

Open Data for Science,Policy, and the Public Good

Supporters of open data believe that free and complete access to research data is beneficial for science, public policy, and society. In environmental science and policy, open data systems can enable relevant research and inform evidence‐based governmental decisions. This article examines the unlikely case of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research's transition toward an open data model. Considering Brazil's young democracy, incipient practice of government transparency and accountability, and lacking a tradition of science‐policy dialogue, this case is a striking example of how open data can support public debate by making information about forest cover widely available. The case shows the benefits and challenges of developing such open data systems, and highlights the various forms of accessibility involved in making data available to the public.     

Policy Diffusion: Seven Lessons for Scholars and Practitioners

The scholarship on policy diffusion in political science and public administration is extensive. This article provides an introduction to that literature for scholars, students, and practitioners. It offers seven lessons derived from that literature, built from numerous empirical studies and applied to contemporary policy debates. Based on these seven lessons, the authors offer guidance to policy makers and present opportunities for future research to students and scholars of policy diffusion.     

Inside Collaborative Networks: Ten Lessons for Public Managers

This paper offers practical insights for public managers as they work within interorganizational networks. It is based on the author's empirical study of 14 networks involving federal, state, and local government managers working with nongovernmental organizations. The findings suggest that networks are hardly crowding out the role of public agencies; though they are limited in their decision scope, they can add collaborative public value when approaching nettlesome policy and program problems.     

Big Data and U.S. Public Policy

This paper examines the growing recognition of the phenomenon called “Big Data” and the policy implications it poses. It is argued that a core policy issue is personal and organizational privacy. At the same time there is a belief that analysis of “Big Data” offers potentially to provide public sector policy makers with extensive new information that would inform policy at unprecedentedly detailed levels. Despite this potential to improve the policy‐making process data often contain individual identifiable information that would negatively impact American core values such as privacy. This makes the use of these data almost impossible. The paper recognizes that there may be a way to strip individual data from Big Data sets thereby making their analysis more policy useful. This approach is not at this time technically feasible but research is ongoing.     

Getting People to Behave: Research Lessons for Policy Makers

Many government policies attempt to change the behavior of individuals and businesses. This article argues that policy makers and administrators should (1) think comprehensively about the barriers that may keep target populations from complying with government policies, (2) match policy instruments to the most important barriers that inhibit compliance, and (3) take into account heterogeneity within the target population. Relatively nonintrusive strategies such as social marketing, providing resources to targets to help them comply, and manipulating options and defaults (choice architecture) are politically attractive but unlikely to secure compliance when incentives for noncompliance are high. Based on the three basic principles outlined in the article, the author recommends strategies to increase compliance, including the use of leverage points and secondary targets, adjusting for unanticipated behavioral responses, and employing long‐term, multiphase strategic management of behavior change initiatives.