Public Management and Administration: a Need for Evolution

Recently, British public management has relied too much on private sector approaches suited to market‐facing situations, to the detriment of systems based on a realistic estimate of the special nature of public business, and its needs for economy and co‐ordination. Accountability processes have suffered from over‐simplification (targetry) and from a gross multiplication of mechanisms focusing on individual error, as opposed to ensuring intelligent assessment of business results. There has been an over‐emphasis on management of inputs and outputs, as opposed to systems gearing the result‐producing mechanisms to means for policy formation and co‐ordination of effort. We need now to re‐think and define properly the systems whereby ministers are advised, account is rendered, resources are allocated and effort is co‐ordinated—and the qualifications of the relevant actors. Suggestions are made to these ends.     

有效政府:当代行政改革的价值取向

当代行政改革的价值目标是建立一个有效政府,而有效政府除了具备行政效率外,还应具备行政效能及行政行为的有效性.有效政府是有限政府、法治政府、民主政府、服务型政府和学习型政府等多重特性的统一.实现这一目标,必须不断完善民主监督机制和全面推进依法行政,有效促进新的行政文化的建构和公共管理方式的创新.     

Why a nudge is not enough: A social identity critique of governance by stealth

Policy makers can use four different modes of governance: ‘hierarchy’, ‘markets’, ‘networks’ and ‘persuasion’. In this article, it is argued that ‘nudging’ represents a distinct (fifth) mode of governance. The effectiveness of nudging as a means of bringing about lasting behaviour change is questioned and it is argued that evidence for its success ignores the facts that many successful nudges are not in fact nudges; that there are instances when nudges backfire; and that there may be ethical concerns associated with nudges. Instead, and in contrast to nudging, behaviour change is more likely to be enduring where it involves social identity change and norm internalisation. The article concludes by urging public policy scholars to engage with the social identity literature on ‘social influence’, and the idea that those promoting lasting behaviour change need to engage with people not as individual cognitive misers, but as members of groups whose norms they internalise and enact.     

城乡结合部管理体制改革:思路与政策建议--公共物品提供的主体、责任与机制

随着中国城市化进程的发展,城乡结合部的公共管理问题成为理论界和政府关注的一个焦点问题.本文在分析城乡结合部特征及其发展阶段的基础上,阐述了不同时期和阶段城乡结合部公共物品提供的主体、责任与机制问题.     

Max Weber in the tropics: How global climate politics facilitates the bureaucratization of forestry in Indonesia

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is one of the most advanced global climate governance arrangements and we show that it contributes to the buildup of autonomous capacities and reliable procedures in areas of rather limited statehood. These partially unintended effects can be conceptualized as an increasing rational–legal bureaucratization, which has been initiated through both external and domestic actors as we illuminate in the case of Indonesia's forestry sector in the period from 2007 until 2017. Our finding is that a bureaucratization of a new kind is increasingly strengthened in Indonesia's forest despite enduring patterns of neopatrimonialism, emerging signs of new public management approaches, and the strengthening of functional equivalents such as community-based forest management. We thus claim that Max Weber's perspective on the prospects and problems of rational–legal bureaucratization is still valuable, even when travelling to the tropics.