INTERGOVERNMENTAL IMPLEMENTATION OF BUILDING CODES WITH LATERAL FORCE PROVISIONS

Building-code revisions and land-use planning are recognized as potential solutions to the threat posed by hazardous structures in seismically active regions. Their implementation, however, is problematic and several Impediments to action on building codes are analyzed. The authors recommend a system of incentives to overcome these barriers including federally subsidized insurance, low interest loans, and joint state-local policy ventures with technical assistance provided by federal agencies.     

SITE CONTROL OF HAZARDOUS WASTE FACILITIES

Although it controls disposal of hazardous wastes, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 leaves the details of site selection and control to the states.
Twelve states have passed site selection laws, but their implementation shows that there are problems still to be worked out. Georgia's law, which goes beyond those of many other states by providing for eminent domain, still has not fully resolved difficulties of state-local relations, liability, and representation of the public.     

INTERGOVERNMENTAL ROLES IN LOCAL ENERGY CONSERVATION: A RESEARCH FRONTIER

This article examines a frontier research area: local energy conservation and intergovernmental relations. The vast potential for financial and energy savings by local governments through energy conservation is contrasted to a significant lack of meaningful programs by reviewing current local programs through examination of research efforts, intergovernmental trends in assistance and the legal foundation for local energy roles. Several items for the energy conservation research agenda are offered, especially a call for more research on the relationship between rising energy prices and development of energy programs. Other research foci are the impacts of intergovernmental technical assistance, organizational structures for incorporating energy conservation concerns into local government, state-local program coordination, citizen demand for conservation programs and the information dissemination networks in energy policy.     

Comparing Implementation Processes in Sweden and the United States

This article attempts a systematic comparison of how policy is implemented in Sweden and the United States. We suggest that differences might be explained by examining policymaking processes, policy content, and governmental structure. The comparison reveals differences in 'incentive structure'. Both Sweden and the U.S. have responded to the complexity and uncertainty that accompanies increased demands on central government by adopting 'softer' mechanisms for implementation. The effect of these shifts in both systems is to devolve important decisions to lower levels of government. In Sweden, this devolution is still accompanied by strong incentives for national policymakers to undertake implementation, although the incentives may not be as strong as they were in the past. In the U.S., it is accompanied by a radical weakening of incentives to carry out implementation and increasing instability in policy content and relations among key actors.     

The State-Local Nexus in Policy Innovation Diffusion: The Case of School Choice

Our knowledge of how policy innovations diffuse in federal systemscould be enhanced by paying greater attention to the behaviorof policy entrepreneurs. This study shows how policy entrepreneurshelped stimulate the diffusion of state school-choice plansby collecting and generating evidence of workability of thisinnovation. Importantly, these policy entrepreneurs have oftenused evidence from local experiments to promote state policychange. Thus, a state-local nexus exists in the diffusion schoolchoice. This analysis suggests that there is value in conceptualizingpolicy innovation diffusion a federal system as both a horizontal(that is, state to state) and a vertical (that is, state andlocal) phenomenon.     

Mandates and Management Challenges in the Trenches: An Intergovernmental Perspective on Homeland Security

Scholars and practitioners agree that homeland security policy implementation is contingent on a strong system of intergovernmental relations. The responsibilities associated with the homeland security mission, often mandated, cut across federal, state, and local boundaries. Local-level stakeholders are especially important players in the implementation process. This article presents a local perspective on the way intergovernmental relations have changed—and the reasons for those changes—since 9/11. Results of a survey of county and city officials in Florida provide evidence that intergovernmental cooperation has improved as a result of federal and state mandates. These results are refined by an analysis of the effects of specific local characteristics and the quality and quantity of vertical and horizontal networks on intergovernmental cooperation and local preparedness. Homeland security appears to be a policy area in which mandated cooperation and coordination—in a time and place of urgency—have actually strengthened the intergovernmental system.     

Corporatism, Administrative Regimes and the Mis-management of Public Funds

Danish democracy has strong corporatist characteristics. The implication is that interest organizations are integrated in both policy-making and policy implementation. This article deals with policy implementation. A distinction between different administrative regimes is developed. The proposition advanced here is that variations with respect to the involvement of interest organizations in administrative execution of public policy have consequences for administrative behavior. A number of scandals revealed during recent years concerning the management of public funds provide the basis of the empirical analysis. The conclusion is that with increased involvement of interest organizations in the administrative implementation of policy, legal norms are superseded by political norms, while the traditional institutions of administrative accountability are weakened.     

Decoupling practical and legal compliance: Analysis of member states’ implementation of EU policy

Despite the vast literature on policy implementation, systematic cross‐national research focusing on implementers’ performance regarding different policy issues is still in its infancy. The European Union policies are conducive to examining this relationship in a comparative setting, as the EU member states need to implement various EU directives both legally and in practice. In this study, a first attempt is made to analyse the relationship between legal conformity and practical implementation and the conditions for practical deviations in 27 member states across issues from four policy areas (Internal Market, Environment, Justice and Home Affairs and Social Policy). In line with existing approaches to EU compliance, it is expected that the policy preferences of domestic political elites (‘enforcement’) affect their incentives to ‘decouple’ practical from legal compliance. Instead, administrative and institutional capacities (‘management’) and societal constraints (‘legitimacy’) are likely to limit the ability of policy makers to exert control over the implementation process. The findings suggest that practical deviations arise from policy makers’ inability to steer the implementation process, regardless of their predispositions towards internationally agreed policies. The results have strong implications for the effective application of international rules in domestic settings, as they illustrate that political support for the implementation of ‘external’ policy does not ensure effective implementation in practice.     

The Changing Property Tax and State-Local Relations

The substantial transfer of fiscal power to state government,undermining local government autonomy, characterizes the courseof state-local relations in the last quarter of the twentiethcentury in the United States. Central to this shift is diminishedlocal control of the property tax, a result of the tax limitationsadopted in most states since the 1970s. This article arguesthat control of the property tax is critical to the workingsof local representative democracy, affecting both the discretionof elected officials and participation of citizens. It presentsboth quantitative and qualitative evidence of the centralizationtrend, including changes in property-tax flows and state financesaffecting local governments, an analysis of the comparativeseverity of property-tax limitations, changes in K-12 educationfinancing, and local consequences of the tax limitations.     

Rule growth and government effectiveness: why it takes the capacity to learn and coordinate to constrain rule growth

This paper asks whether strong bureaucracies can effectively constrain the continuously growing stock of rules in modern democracies through organizational coordination and learning. To answer this question, the paper analyzes the growth of rule stocks in the areas of environmental policy and social policy in 23 OECD countries over the period between 1976 and 2005. To do so, it develops a new measure of rule growth based on the content of laws and regulations rather than their length. The analysis highlights that effective bureaucracies are indeed better able to contain rule growth in these areas than weak bureaucracies. Since rules have to be implemented, countries suffering from bureaucratic capacity and quality constraints thus appear to be stuck in an implementation deficit trap. Appropriate implementation is not only inherently more challenging for countries with weak public administrations, but the body of rules to be implemented also tends to grow quicker in these countries.     

FEDERAL POLICY IN LOCAL CONTEXT: The Influence of Local State-Societal Relations on Endangered Species Act Implementation

Current debates regarding the degree to which centralization or decentralization of environmental bureaucracies promotes more effective management of natural resources suggest the need for employing new methodologies to empirical analysis, in a variety of political and ecological settings. In this paper, recent state synergy scholarship is adopted to an analysis of the impact of state‐societal relations on the implementation of the U.S. Endangered Species Act in the coastal redwoods region of California. This study suggests that certain state‐societal relations at the peripheries of bureaucratic state systems pose potential sources of both state autonomy and capacity. Effective utilization of such sources may be hampered, however, by policy actions that reflect national‐level political pressure, leading to management decisions that are not necessarily designed to improve either the ecological or social welfare of the region. In conclusion, the author argues that decentralization may be beneficial to bureaucratic effectiveness, however such efforts will be contingent on the ability of states to develop dense connecting networks with social actors that can contribute to policy goals.     

Health systems decentralization and human resources management in low and middle income countries

The aim of this article is to explore the experiences of human resources management in the context of health sector decentralization. The initial review of health sector decentralization covers issues relating to the context, content, formulation/implementation and impact of decentralization. The review of the literature on human resources management (HRM) and decentralization has identified a number of key points that are organized around the following HRM functions: HR planning/ staff supply, personnel administration and employee relations, and performance management. The importance of the management of change is also highlighted. The article concludes by emphasizing the need to include human resources as a key issue in health systems change and emphasizes the areas of policy dialogue and research. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ideas, Interests, and Institutions: Challenging the Property Rights Paradigm in Botswana

Recent work in international studies and comparative politics scrutinizes the relative importance of ideas, interests, and institutions as sources of policy change. A growing body of scholarship identifies ideas as the main causal factors, influencing perceived interests as well as perceived policy options. Others contend that policies can best be understood as products of institutions. Neither explanation can account for both policy choice by politicians and the implementation strategies of administrators. In Botswana, the use of professional criteria for hiring and advancement encourages adherence to international professional norms within the bureaucracy, but electoral competition gives politicians more reason to be attentive to local political concerns. The institutions that define relations of authority among actors with different motivations shape the outcomes of policy choice and implementation. Institutions influence the attentiveness of policy-makers to ideas when making decisions, the degree of attention particular policy-makers give to ideas from particular sources, and the degree of acceptance that ideas must achieve to affect policy. Better evaluations of political development can be achieved through attentiveness to the mix of actors involved in policy decisions, the diversity of institutions and ideas that affect their policy preferences, and the relations of authority that shape their relative influence over policy choice and implementation.     

Closing institutions in New York State: implementation and management lessons.

This article examines the lessons learned about implementation and management from the closing of six large institutions for people with mental retardation in New York State. Unanticipated problems occurred, despite special attention to implementation issues in policy design and demonstrated management capacity in similar circumstances. A study of the closure experience showed that subtle but important changes in policy as well as changes in the context of implementation confounded the reasonable expectations of success that policymakers, managers, and analysts would normally have under these circumstances. A closer look, however, suggests that this experience should not be surprising. A more appropriate understanding of the role of policy, policymakers, and managers in implementation suggests that the burden falls heavily on middle managers, and that policy management capacity and an intergovernmental management perspective are crucial to implementation success. Moreover, this experience suggests that a broader definition of success that encompasses this normal turbulence of implementation provides a better appreciation of the requirements of implementation.     

Local government reform in Jamaica and Trinidad: a policy dilemma

Issues of local governance have dominated Caribbean policy agenda for the past two decades, prompting considerable thought and action on local government reform by scholars, local government practitioners and policy makers, alike. No reforms have been as ubiquitous as those of local government. Permitted by an international reformist agenda, local government reform policy is linked positively to efforts to redress incapacities of public management and administration. This article examines conceptual and empirical issues relating to implementation of local government reform in two Caribbean countries, Jamaica and Trinidad. It analyses how the vision for local governance is articulated through specific reform taxonomies and argues that, although local government reform is normatively a policy aimed at fundamental changes in intergovernmental relations, in Jamaica and Trinidad reform has led merely to adjustments in the internal administration of local government. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond Kyoto: Climate Change Policy in Multilevel Governance Systems

Climate change policy has commonly been framed as a matter of international governance for which global policy strategies can be readily employed. The decade of experience following the 1997 signing of the Kyoto Protocol suggests a far more complex process involving a wide range of policy options and varied engagement by multiple levels of governance systems. The respective experiences of the United States and Canada suggest that formal engagement in the international realm of policy is not a good indicator of domestic policy development or emissions reductions. The different contexts of intergovernmental relations, varied resources available to subnational governments for policy development and implementation, and role of subnational leaders in policy formation have emerged as important factors in explaining national differences between these North American neighbors. Consequently, climate change increasingly presents itself as a challenge not only of international relations but also of multilevel governance, thereby creating considerable opportunity to learn from domestic policy experimentation.     

Of ‘Misguided Notions’ and Misguiding Nations: The Growth Report,Poverty and Climate Change

The Growth Report neither addresses the issue of growth and poverty, nor considers the implications of binding constraints on global carbon emissions, which invalidate the argument for global growth as a positive‐sum game. The polarisation of the debate on growth and poverty reflects different perspectives and priorities between economists, environmentalists and development professionals, and the absence of constructive dialogue between them. “Growth or no growth?” is the wrong question. Reconciling poverty eradication and tackling climate change requires us rather to ask what our ultimate objectives are, and how economic policy can best achieve them.     

Implementation of Aged Care Policy in the Australian Federal System

In 1983–84 the Commonwealth and state governments trialled the introduction of the geriatric assessment team (GAT) program. Twenty years of Australian Health Ministers' Conference (AHMC)¹ minutes and records (1969–88), files within the Queensland and Commonwealth health departments (1983–88) and interviews with major stakeholders revealed that implementation can extend over many years and can require a confluence of factors for a policy idea to come to fruition. This article examines the dynamics involved in the implementation of the GAT policy and reveals that expert advisers played a central role in policy innovation and implementation and that the federal system could both obstruct and facilitate policy implementation. While there was evidence of delay and conflict, the Australian states through their expert advisers were significant contributors to the development and implementation of aged care policies. Many of the intergovernmental relations were often characterised by a high degree of cooperation at least at the officer to officer level. The 'coercive' nature of the federal system may need to be revisited.     

How the Clinton Administration Can Make Foreign Aid Work

The changes taking place in the world today are exposing the inadequacies of the U.S. foreign assistance program. Beyond external changes such as the fall of communism, internal changes have occurred in the policy decisions and purposes governing the program, management and operations of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), level of public attention on scandal, and aggressiveness of congressional oversight. After describing the purposes of the foreign assistance program, this article assesses the evolving role of the agencies involved in foreign assistance planning, budgeting and implementation processes; the processes themselves; the changes affecting the program; and the decision-making structure. Three reforms are needed to make the U.S. foreign aid program more responsive to U.S. foreign policy interests and more effective in accomplishing its development mandate. First, a strong policy focus is needed to direct the program toward realistic objectives and the best mechanisms for achieving those objectives. Second, the foreign aid program must move away from implementing projects with limited objectives and toward programs that promote broad-based economic growth, pluralism and democracy. Finally, AID should be merged into the State Department, and its field structure reorganized and reduced to better integrate development and foreign policy considerations.