How Networks Explain Unintended Policy Implementation Outcomes: The Case of UK Rail Privatization

How a government secures the implementation of its policies is one of the most interesting processes in public administration. The tendency of scholars is to ignore implementation and how it impacts on the form of policy, something which invariably changes once resources have been allocated to implementing agencies and the policy detail is addressed. Traditional 'top-down' (Pressman and Wildavsky 1984, Mazmanian and Sabatier 1981) and 'bottom-up' (Elmore 1979, Hjern and Porter 1981, Hull and Hjern 1983) analytical frameworks give only a partial explanation of outcomes. In making the case for a netwrok approach, a typology of implementation networks is presented. The utility of this typology is evaluated in the context of one of the most complex privatization programmes attempted by any government: the privatization of British Rail (BR) between 1992 and 1997. In the case of the sale of one BR subsidiary train operating company, ScotRail, a variety of agencies with competing interests and acting in a politically-charged climate exchanged essential resources to deliver the policy, though not without generating unintended outcomes in the form of significant change to the policy and the agencies charged with implementing it.     

UNEQUAL PARTNERS: THE IMPLEMENTATION OF EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES POLICIES IN WESTERN EUROPE

As a general principle, equality of opportunity attracts considerable support. However, such agreement does not extend to definitions of equal opportunity policies or to the need and manner for their implementation. These policies have a variety of both ideological and historical aspects, and patterns of implementation are politically and culturally conditioned. To highlight different approaches to equal opportunity implementation, three countries are compared: France, the United Kingdom and Sweden. Indices of progress for women are presented and performances assessed, as are the instruments and mechanisms of implementation preferred under different regimes. In addition, the influence and actions of the European Community (EC) are considered. Three distinct but not mutually exclusive models of implementation are observed, each with particular benefits and drawbacks. Sweden emerges with the most sustained and effective public policy on equal opportunities, France demonstrates the value of a Ministry of Women, while the potential inherent in Britain's Equal Opportunities Commission and local authority endeavour is thwarted by a lack of political will at central government level.     

The policy adoption-implementation spiral

The “Policy Adoption-Implementation Spiral” is an exploration of the policy-making process that begins at the national level and proceeds through the labyrinth of administrative interpretations, court decisions, and judicial decrees before it is finally implemented at the state level. This analysis is based on the premise that policy adoption and policy implementation are not two separate steps in the policy-making process. The adoption/implementation process may be more clearly thought of as a continually narrowing spiral with each inward band of the spiral representing a further specification, refine- ment, clarification, or interpretation of a piece of public policy.

Equal Employment Opportunity policy is the content area used in this analysis. A case study is used which follows EEO policy from the National level down to its implementation in the area of employment opportunities for state jobs in the State of Alabama.     

Europeanization, Whitehall Culture and the Treasury as Institutional Veto Player: A Constructivist Approach to Economic and Monetary Union

This article examines Europeanization in Whitehall, using EMU as a case study. It argues that how the EMU policy community has developed within Whitehall, and its outcomes, cannot be captured using a narrow, rationalist game-theoretic frame-work. Although strategic behaviour is important, as Dyson and Featherstone (1999) argue, the primary question is how Whitehall players have defined British interests, formed a collective identity and given a specific meaning to the EMU game. The article applies a cultural approach to Whitehall, focusing on the macro structures of belief within which EMU policy is made.     

Distributed Public Governance in Britain

The structure of the British state is growing increasingly complex. This trend raises a number of questions that focus on the forces stimulating this complexity and its implications both for society-state relationships and the design and implementation of public policy. This article focuses on one specific element or strand of these debates: the growth in the number and role of quasi-autonomous public bodies within Britain. It seeks to analyse and reflect upon the distinctive approach taken by the Labour government, since winning office in May 1997, in relation to the sphere of 'distributed public governance' in Britain. Moreover, the article seeks to locate this analysis within broader debates surrounding the future of the British state and the Labour government's approach to statecraft through a thematic framework based around: growth, co-ordination, accountability, depoliticization and power. The central argument of this article is that the Labour government has increased considerably the sphere of distributed public governance in Britain. This process has been largely devoid of an underpinning rationale and this may have significant implications for successful policy delivery, the public's trust in government and the future trajectory of the British state.     

THE DEVELOPMENT OF EU EQUALITY POLICIES: BUREAUCRATIC EXPANSION ON BEHALF OF WOMEN?

This article critically evaluates the impact of European Community equal opportunities policies on behalf of women. It is argued that the European Commission, supported by the European Parliament, women's organizations and European Court rulings, has consciously sought to extend the scope of Community legislation and policies in this sector. The article highlights the various strategies used by the Commission in pursuit of this objective, including the cultivation by the Commission of a number of policy networks which are actively involved in the formulation and monitoring of EU equal opportunities policies. A central theme of the article is the growing opposition to further EC legislation in this sector among employers and some national governments. In this situation, the Commission has been forced to adopt alternative 'soft’policy instruments.     

HOW POLICY NETWORKS CAN DAMAGE DEMOCRATIC HEALTH: A CASE STUDY IN THE GOVERNMENT OF GOVERNANCE

This article examines a detailed case study of implementation networks in England using the example of the relocation of the Norfolk and Norwich hospital, which became a flagship PFI project for the Labour government after 1997. The case study illustrates the workings of the new order of multi‐layered governance with both local and national networks from different policy areas interacting. However, it also sheds light on the governance debate and illustrates how in the world of new public management, powerful actors, or policy entrepreneurs, with their own agenda, still have the facility, by exercising power and authority, to shape and determine the policy outputs through implementation networks. It is argued that, whereas policy networks are normally portrayed as enriching and promoting pluralist democratic processes, implementation networks in multi‐layered government can also undermine democratic accountability. Four aspects here are pertinent: (1) the degree of central government power; (2) local elite domination; (3) the fragmentation of responsibility; and (4) the dynamics of decision making which facilitates the work of policy entrepreneurs. All these factors illustrate the importance of ‘the government of governance’ in the British state.     

EVALUATING THE BREADTH OF POLICY ENGAGEMENT BY ORGANIZED INTERESTS

This article probes the variation in the breadth of policy engagement among organized interests. The literature, heavily shaped by large‐n US studies of Washington and its lobbying system, suggests many reasons for organized interests to focus policy engagement relatively narrowly. This claim of policy specialization has been long repeated in the British public policy literature. The aim of this article is to empirically test the extent to which expectations of narrowed engagement hold in a UK context. This article uses a new Scottish dataset that tracks actual engagement by any organized interest on executive policy consultations over a 25‐year period. It tracks over 90,000 ‘mobilization events' by over 18,000 organizations in 1,690 distinct consultation issues across the entire Scottish policy system. In analysing these data, we concern ourselves with establishing: (1) the extent of generalized engagement; (2) the type of organized interests that are more or less general in their engagement; and (3) the extent to which a specialized style of policy engagement is on the increase over time. In the process, we develop measures that are appropriate for assessing breadth of engagement using issue‐based policy data.     

POLICY-MAKING WITH A DIFFERENCE? THE TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION INITIATIVE

In this study we focus on the emergence of the technical and vocational education initiative. The formulation of the policy is found to differ from that of the conventional British policy style, in that it was announced without prior consultation with the education policy community. Further, overall responsibility for the initiative lies outside the traditional sphere of education — with the Manpower Services Commission. However, in the subsequent processing and implementation stages of the initiative, the established educational interests (local and national) are seen to move from the auditorium back to centre stage. The reasons for the original departure from the conventional policy style, those for the return to normality, and some implications, are examined.     

CHARACTERIZING NEW LABOUR: THE CASE OF THE CHILD TRUST FUND

The UK Child Trust Fund (CTF), which came into effect in January 2005, appears to be an exemplary instance of ‘asset‐based welfare’, of the redistribution of wealth rather than simply income. However, this article shows that over the course of its development, and in its final implementation, CTF policy became ever more focused on generating a ‘savings culture’ and enhancing financial literacy. In explaining this outcome, it is argued that it may be characteristic of New Labour for which, it is further argued, welfare policy should seek to push individual aspirations and outlooks in certain directions. The article takes an interpretive approach to the study of policy and politics, arguing that we should look carefully at the processes of argument and selection by which ‘objects’ of policy are specified. This can help us characterize the approach of varying administrations, their ‘governmentality’.     

Reforming family policy in the Baltic States: The views of the elites

The aim of this paper is to explore the various views of the social policy elites in the Baltic States concerning family policy and, in particular, family benefits as one of the possible explanations for the observed policy differences. This study is based on semi-structured expert interviews from the three Baltic countries conducted in 2002. The qualitative analyses indicate that the Baltic States differ significantly with regard to the reasons behind their family policies. Lithuanian decision-makers seek to reduce poverty among families with children and enhance parents' responsibility for bringing up their children. Latvian policy-makers act so as to increase the birth rate and create equal opportunities for children from all families. Policies that seek to create equal opportunities for all children and the desire to enhance gender equality was more visible in the case of Estonia in comparison with the other two countries. This study thus indicate how intimately the attitudes of top-level bureaucrats, policy-makers and researchers shape social policy.     

The Governance Narrative: Key Findings and Lessons from the Erc's Whitehall Programme

This article provides a personal interpretation of the key findings of the Economic and Social Research Council's Whitehall Programme. I tell the distinctive story of 'governance'— of fragmentation, networks, unintended consequences and diplomacy — challenging the dominant, managerial account of change in British govern-ment since 1979. I present a view of the world in which networks rival markets and bureaucracy as ways of allocating resources and co-ordinating policy and its implementation.     

Searching for “the usual suspects”: The role of discretion and target group constructions in the frontline of policy implementation

This study investigates the implementation of preventive policy targeting children. Based on longitudinal survey data we analyze how frontline workers assign meaning to core concepts of the policy and categorize the children and in this light how their exercise of discretion affects policy implementation. Many studies problematize the effects of limiting the discretion in the frontline. We identify a case where the policy is highly ambiguous, the definitions of target groups, core concepts, or central goals are vague, and the general steering of the frontline is not characterized by a lack of discretion but a lack of organizational boundaries to shape the discretion. This expands not only the policymaking role of the frontline but also becomes a barrier to developing a stronger preventive effort. The findings give nuanced insight into how organizational boundaries affect the discretion and target group construction in the frontline during frontline implementation of welfare policies.     

Competitive industrial policy and macro performance: Has South Korea outperformed Taiwan?

Taiwan adopted a competitive industrial policy before South Korea but pursued it more cautiously. According to orthodox theory, Taiwan's less interventionist policy should have increased its initial per capita income lead over South Korea. In fact, the income gap narrowed, and income distribution improved relatively in South Korea, casting doubt on the orthodox criticism of South Korean industrial policy. But some qualification of the South Korean success is in order. The South Korean gains were achieved at the cost of greater consumption fore gone and greater concentration of economic power than in the case of Taiwan. Moreover, the crucial post‐1985 Taiwanese economic slow down was partly due to economic maturation as well as to tardy financial reform and to the opportunities created by the Chinese diaspora for Taiwanese firms to invest abroad.     

The bank of italy in the european system of central banks

This article illustrates the legislative and organizational changes affecting the Bank of Italy as a consequence of its participation in the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). The Bank of Italy, while losing its independence in setting national monetary policy, will take part on an equal footing with the other member central banks in setting the single monetary policy for the Union through the participation of its Governor in the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB). The implementation of the single monetary policy and the management of both the exchange rate regime and the official reserves will be decentralized.     

The Enemy Within: Intragovernmental Politics and Organizational Failure in Greek Privatization

Mainstream approaches explain privatization policy failure by taking account of the surrounding sociopolitical and economic context. This article examines the unsuccessful Greek privatization over the first half of the 1990s by following an alternative approach. It looks at the obstacles originating from intragovernmental politics and the state organizational structures and resources. Contrary to what the British or French experience would suggest, the adoption of a statist, impositional policy-making strategy in the Greek case failed to achieve policy effectiveness. Indeed, it probably ended up accelerating policy failure. The employment of statism as a policy-making strategy was undermined by the structural weaknesses of the state.     

Transferring emotional capital as coerced discretion: Street‐level bureaucrats reconciling structural deficiencies

The discretion of street‐level bureaucrats (SLBs) plays a key role in policy implementation. This study offers a new perspective on the meaning of discretion under social policy reforms, which created new structural deficiencies in the work of SLBs and have raised expectations of policy implementation without offering sufficient policy responses. Under such conditions, the discretion of SLBs should be understood as coerced, more so than as a positive element of freedom and choice. As such, SLBs are forced to employ informal practices and provide alternative resources for their clients. Findings indicate a transference of emotional resources from SLBs to clients, aimed at achieving policy outcomes of economically independent citizens, paradoxically accompanied by an awareness of powerful barriers to such conversion. The study contributes both to the understanding of discretion in policy implementation, in the context of an expanding public service gap, and to theories of emotion manifestation in public administration.     

A Model of Learned Implementation

The majority of the literature concerning the implementation of public policy assumes that public managers can carry out new policy initiatives regardless of the behavioural, cognitive or technical demands that the introduction of such policies may make upon them. There has been a tendency to assume that managers actually have the detailed technical knowledge by which to enact such new policies. The paper proposes that in effect, public managers have to learn a range of often new and detailed techniques in order to implement what are often ambiguous policy directives. Drawing on data gathered from the introduction of capital investment appraisal in the British National Health Service, a model of Learned Implementation is presented that describes one way in which public managers can learn to enact new policy initiatives. Using a mix of six organizational processes and variables, the model demonstrates how learning occurs and is used to solve the problems that are inherent in the introduction of new policy initiatives. The model further describes how the managers routinize these solutions into job tasks and procedures and hence a policy initiative is operationalized. The paper concludes with a discussion about the difficulties of predicting the operational consequences of new policy initiatives and raises questions about knowledge, ability and capability in the implementation of public policy.     

BRITISH GOVERNANCE IN TRANSITION: A CASE STUDY OF THE NORTHERN IRELAND CIVIL SERVICE

ABSTRACT

In comparisons of the internal governmental arrangements within states, the United Kingdom (UK) is ordinarily categorised as a unitary state conforming to the ‘Westminster model’. However, this article contends that the changing nature of British governance over the last two decades means that the UK is better viewed as a ‘union state’ that conforms more readily to a ‘differentiated polity model’. Nowhere is the reality of differentiation more clearly exemplif ied than in respect of the British civil service. To illustrate the extent of differentiation, the article presents a case study of the characteristics and trends in the civil service of Northern Ireland for, while the politics of the Province have received great attention, its system of public administr ation has been chronically under-reported. The article considers the changing structures, policy process and impact of public management reforms as well as the restoration of devolved government. Finally, it summarises how the evidence from Northern Ireland informs theoretical understanding as well as its implications for the rest of the UK and beyond.     

Ideas, bargaining and flexible policy communities: policy change and the case of the Oxford Transport Strategy

Critiques of policy networks have highlighted particularly the inability of concepts such as policy communities to explain policy change. The established construction of policy community places it chiefly as a metaphor for a relatively stable network within the policy process, which emphasizes the resource dependencies between key stakeholders. Typically, a process of bargaining brings about accommodation and a state of negotiated order.
However, a key problem arises in explaining major policy change where an established policy community persists. One solution here is to appreciate that, over time, dominant ideas and associated policy meanings may shift appreciably within an otherwise durable policy community. Thus, even a seemingly insulated policy community, under certain conditions, may not be immune to idea mutation and new policy meanings. Given the central importance of policy communities, these shifts may induce significant policy change.
A case study of this type is provided by the Oxford Transport Strategy (OTS), where a dual process of change took place. On one level of analysis, a challenge to the policy community produced a typical bargaining strategy, with an emphasis on negotiated order. On another level of analysis, however, the terms of the policy debate shifted markedly, and produced a new meaning for the key concept of integrated transport within the policy community. In turn, this process induced significant policy change. The article concludes that, ironically, the survival of a policy community depends on its ability to re-create itself by visualizing a new future.