Defining the policy-making function in government: An organizational and management approach

Applying what is in effect a roles and missions approach to the management of the office of the chief planner in large scale public operations is at variance with modern public administration theories. However, a definitional approach is advanced here as a needed step in organizing and managing the policy-making process, which in most agencies is in constant flux. Five key functions are defined: Planning, Analysis, Research, Demonstration and Evaluation. A simplified scenario is used to show how these functions and their management interact over several years of policy-making. Activities identified with each function are spaced chronologically and are shown to be mutually reinforcing. The scenario also makes extensive use of the initial earmarking of portions of the Research and Evaluation budgets for coordinated use in response to requirements growing out of the overall policy determination process.     

Power,agency and structure: An examination of Steven Lukes

The dynamic between violence and politics in the American South during the Civil Rights Movement is analyzed, focusing on the relationship between racist terror and the state. The study explores how blacks in the rural South tried to defend themselves before civil rights, when white supremacists dominated local government and federal authorities ignored lynch murders. The article traces the development of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s nonviolent resistance strategy, and the long struggle to force the state to combat racist violence, one of the Civil Rights Movement's most significant achievements.     

Regulation is evil: An application of narrative policy analysis to regulatory debate in New Zealand

Using findings from research on the implementation of telephone number portability in New Zealand, we demonstrate how narrative analysis can account for how particular influence stories, or policy narratives, come to dominate the policy process. In this paper, we extend the concept of metanarrative, which to date has been interpreted as a story that policy makers use to recast policy problems. Policy metanarratives are shown to have strong pre-figurative effects and to be more pervasive than previously recognised.     

Reflections on Leadership: An Interview with Sean O'Keefe

This interview with Sean O'Keefe by PAR Associate Editor W. Henry Lambright is a departure from traditional Administrative Profiles. It represents an opportunity to elicit from a man who has held executive positions in government, industry, and the university lessons he has learned about leadership from those experiences. It is his perspective, in his own words, about a host of questions of interest to scholars and practitioners of public administration. These include commonalities and differences in leading organizations in various sectors. O'Keefe discusses how executives can deal with people and get the most from them, how executives use administrative power in achieving organizational goals, and why executives sometimes make the wrong calls in key decisions. He comments on what he learned about leadership from mentors during his formative years. He explains the limits he faced in making controversial decisions, such as his termination of a Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission.     

Mixed feedback dynamics and the USA renewable fuel standard: the roles of policy design and administrative agency

Policy Sciences - Using the case of the USA Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), this paper contributes to theorizing regarding the factors that affect feedback dynamics of a disruptive technology....     

浅谈跨文化的商务谈判应对策略

根据当前跨文化的商务谈判中存在的问题,在新时期跨文化的商务谈判中应懂得世界不同国家的文化差异、谈判习惯、风俗习惯、各国商人的谈判风格,这对提高跨文化商务谈判有一定的帮助.     

构建和谐社会领导方式的转变 --论人本领导

构建和谐社会,是一项系统工程,需要我们的领导方式发生转型,向以人为本转变。人本思想古已有之,但那时却更多地烙上了工具性标记。以人为本作为人本思想的本质,是人的目的与手段的统一。从“政本”(或“邦本”)到“人本”的转变,是统治演化为领导的根本标志。人本领导在其价值观、权力观与服务观的假设上,与传统领导理论有根本性区别。人本领导是领导理论创新、积累并推动和谐社会实践变革的结果。     

Risk assessment in the policy-making process: environmental health and safety protection

This article examines the extent to which differences exist in the relative degree of discretion permitted by the statutory mandates under which health risk assessments are conducted as a basis for regulatory action. Attention is focused on the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, because they are the lead federal regulatory agencies on most environmental health matters. The statutes are found to define risk, consider effects, identify target populations, and use benefit-cost analysis in a flexible way. But the burden of proof of risk typically is assigned in a more direct and stringent fashion. Overall, however, agencies are found to have substantial discretion in the manner in which risk assessments are incorporated into the policy process. A number of examples of efforts to reduce this flexibility are outlined and their implications for the future of the analysis of risks are delineated.     

Government’s credible commitment in economic policy-making: Evidence from Singapore

Policy Sciences - Studies of participatory policy-making show citizens’ participation in policy-making yield better solutions and more successful policy performance. But studies of the Asian...     

Leadership and the public sector: an internationally comparative benchmarking analysis

In this article the concept of leadership is explored. Particular attention is given to examining the dynamics of individual and team leadership, as it is postulated that the impact of top people and top teams is crucial to the running of today's organizations. The results of an extensive survey conducted across the departments of the Civil Service of a European country government will be presented. These results will be benchmarked against the results of a worldwide survey of business leaders, spanning 12 countries and the responses of top managers in National Health Service (HNS) Trusts, UK. Emphasis will be given to the necessity of conducting effective team leadership through high quality dialogue and through cabinet responsibility in order to successfully lead and maintain the organization on its agreed path. Finally, approaches to the development of leadership for those already in top positions and for those entering into such challenging positions, will be discussed.     

Neglected challenges to evidence-based policy-making: the problem of policy accumulation

Claims for evidence-based policy-making are motivated by the assumption that if practitioners and scholars want to learn about effective policy design, they also can. This paper argues that this is becoming more and more challenging with the conventional approaches due to the accumulation of national policy portfolios, characterized by (a) a growing number of different policy targets and instruments, that (b) are often interdependent and (c) reformed in an uncontrolled way. These factors undermine our ability to accurately relate outcome changes to individual components within the respective policy mix. Therefore, policy accumulation becomes an additional source of the well-known ‘attribution problem’ in evaluation research. We argue that policy accumulation poses fundamental challenges to existing approaches of evidence-based policy-making. Moreover, these challenges are very likely to create a trade-off between the need for increasing methodological sophistication on one side, and the decreasing political impact of more fine-grained and conditional findings of evaluation results on the other.     

Policy roles: an analysis of policy formulators and policy implementors

This paper presents an empirical analysis of individuals in policy formulating and policy implementing roles. Data for the comparison are from interviews with a random sample of 119 New Zealand middle-level public administrators from 27 government departments.The individuals in the policy formulating roles were slightly younger; however, those in the formulating and implementing roles varied little from each other in terms of social background, educational attainment and career patterns. Few differences were evident in regard to job satisfaction, decisional authority, and hierarchical relations. Significant differences between policy formulators and policy implementors were discovered in terms of work load, career aspirations, and awareness of political influences in governmental policymaking.From the evidence of this study, the New Zealand administrative system does not allocate policy formulating roles to individuals different from those who implement policies. Differences between formulators and implementors in the New Zealand system appear to stem from the nature of the work of the two policy roles.     

Causes, forms, and consequences of sectoral policy-making: some Danish evidence

Abstract. The article reviews policy-making patterns with respect to the importance and limits of sectorization and adds new analyses of the involvement of interest groups and bureaucrats in the legislative process. The pattern of sectoral policy-making appears to vary according to types of actors involved, stages of the process, party in government, and policy area in question. Basically however, it is a process of affected interests in action. While the findings fit well with some democratic principles they also give reason for some concern.     

Analysis on the major obstacles of public participation in public policy-making

Participation in public policy-making is one of the important approaches for citizens to affect public policy, and also the guarantee of the scientific and democratic paths of the public policy. To enhance the cognitive level and ability of the citizen who participate in public policy-making, ensure the institutionalization and procedures of the public policy-making, make the information about the public policy-making open and transparent, this paper points out the main obstacles of citizens＇ participation in public policy-making mostly at present and enhance the quality of public policy.     

Policy analysts' roles and value orientations: An empirical investigation using Q methodology

Several scholars have suggested that policy analysts and policy researchers can be classified as falling into one of a small number of ideal types. These ideal-type models are based largely on analysts' views of their roles in an organization and their value orientations, including their relationships with clients, their perceptions of their responsibility to the public, and their acceptance of professional norms. To determine to what extent practicing policy analysts and researchers resemble the ideal types, we administered Q-sorts to 38 analysts and researchers in three states. In our analysis of the Q-sorts, we identified five types. Also, we found that the analysts and researchers hold in common many views of analytic roles and values.     

In Capable Hands: An Experimental Study of the Effects of Competence and Consistency on Leadership Approval

Current research demonstrates that instances where leaders’ promises and actions are inconsistent leads to lower public approval and support. While there are exceptions to this trend there is no cohesive framework to address this issue. We introduce a conceptualization where public reactions to a leader’s inconsistency is placed in a broader context of public perception of the leader’s overall competency. We claim the public evaluation of the leader is dependent on her competency. And while inconsistency of a particular act can negatively affect public evaluations of the leader, the extent of that effect is conditioned by leaders’ competency. To test this perspective we experimentally manipulate both the competency of the leader as well as her consistency in following up on her promises. Furthermore, we expand the context of inconsistency to include both international and domestic domains. We find both leaders’ competency and inconsistency matter in public approval. Our findings hold across policy domains and levels of issue salience.     

The role of agency in cleavage formation

Abstract.  Through the analysis of Hungarian politics, this article demonstrates how parties become embedded in the social, cognitive and emotive structures of societies. The role of agency in cleavage formation is addressed, with a special emphasis on the mechanism through which political parties structure their environments. Next to the popularization of conflict perceptions and the consolidation of camp identities, the development of a more elaborate and segmented organizational structure is identified as an integral part of the process of cleavage formation. Such a structure enables parties to forge coalitions among previously separate social groupings and combine group interests into packages large enough to overcome institutional thresholds of power. The findings indicate that parties are potentially able to cross cleavage lines, re-structure relations within the party system and create new associations between party preferences, socio-structural categories and attitudes. Furthermore, parties seem to be able to alter the relationships between psychologically rooted attitudes and social categories. The study also shows, however, that deep-seated socio-cultural divides limit the power of agency even in new democracies.