Eugene Bardach

Policy termination as a political process

The problem of how to terminate ineffective or outdated public policies, programs, or organizations is increasingly important. This paper argues that it is helpful to conceive of termination as a special case of the policy adoption process: there is a struggle to adopt a policy A, the substance of which is to eliminate or curtail policy B. The main distinguishing feature of this class of policy contests is the activity of “vested interests” who are able to advance a peculiarly powerful moral claim concerning the “inequity” or “unfairness” of change.

The Dissemination of Policy Research to Policymakers

Suppose that, despite certain appearances, significant policy research results did in fact reach most of those practitioners who could and would make use of them, and in a relatively timely way. What processes might produce this result? Some conjectures are offered, along with certain political and policy implications.

From practitioner wisdom to scholarly knowledge and back again

The relationship between scholarly knowledge in public management and the conventional wisdom of capable practitioners needs to be clarified. If we accept that improving practical wisdom is the ultimate objective of scholarly studies in public management, practitioner experience can usefully serve as the starting point of such studies as well. This article uses the maxims about coping with “overhead agencies” supplied by one respected practitioner, Gordon Chase, as a source of ideas concerning the direction of scholarly work. It also conceptualizes three types of practitioner wisdom-rules, principles, and checklists-and advises academic researchers to concentrate on clarifying the conceptualization of the principles and checklists and empirically refining the rules. A focus on those rules that protect the practitioner against large downside risks is especially important.

How do They Stack Up? The 9/11 Commission Report and the Management Literature

The editor asked contributors to this symposium to make connections between ‘‘organization theory’’ and the assembly of facts, interpretations, and recommendations that is The 9=11 Commission Report. The connections could run from the report to the theory—any theories supported or undermined here?—or from theory, and the empirical literature, to the solution of organizational problems identified in the report. The potential analytic domain is therefore vast. To narrow it, I identify three significant problems, more or less as they are conceived by the commission: insufficient salience, within the pre-9=11 Intelligence Community (IC), of the terrorism problem; inadequate pooling and analysis of intelligence data (failure to ‘‘connect the dots’’); and general failures of collaboration—inadequate horizontal and also vertical integration—within the IC. I then consider the report’s prescriptions for dealing with these problems in the future and ask whether they are compatible with the cumulative knowledge of the relevant academic literature (such as it may be, and such as I know of it). I conclude by asking whether the academic literature might suggest prescriptions that the commission had not thought of and what the report might imply for the public management research agenda.

Networks, Hierarchies, and Hybrids

ABSTRACT Clusters of organizations making at least modest efforts to collaborate on implementing joint solutions to public sector problems are often called “networks.” By directing attention away from the hierarchical aspects of these clusters, and towards the voluntaristic and egalitarian aspects, this nomenclature can undermine and distort our understanding of the phenomenon. Such organizational clusters can be more fruitfully thought of as “implementation hybrids,” a type of collective production arrangement that has its own distinctive strengths and weaknesses, which this article delineates.

The buyback strategy: An alternative to container deposit legislation

Abstract This paper describes and defends a programmatic alternative to legislation that mandates the imposition of deposits on beer and soft drink beverage containers. We call this alternative a “buyback” program. It is essentially a consumer-financed and privately-administered recycling system that uses government as a financial intermediary. Like a deposit system, it can achieve any desired level of container recovery and reuse. In contrast to the deposit system, however, it can be phased in gradually; it can minimize the economic cost of the “backhaul” industry (e.g., collection, storage, transportation); and it can alter the long-run mix of container materials in accordance with economic common sense. If we as a society decide to undertake to recover for reuse almost all of our beverage containers, the buyback method is superior to the deposit method from nearly every point of view.

Subformal warning systems in the species Homo politicus

A political activist needs to pick up early warning signals that “something is happening” which might require his attention. The “something” could be an emergent danger or opportunity. An ideal-typical warning system is postulated to account for what is believed to be the extraordinary infrequency of activists being caught off guard under most “routine” conditions. Such a system would ideally meet four criteria: rapidity, comprehensiveness, validity, and selectivity. The postulated system rests on what Anthony Downs has called “subformal” communications channels among individuals and groups interrelated by principles of specialization and the division of labor.

The wall socket theory of learning

Teachers of policy analysis lack a theory of how students actually learn. Applying “lessons” of general validity to specific circumstances is the essential skill to be mastered. It may be taught by emphasizing lessons of universal rather than conditional relevance, “coding” them so as to improve their memorability, and adjusting the codes to match the environmental cues that students are likely to encounter on the job. Because wall sockets are everywhere in the policy analysts environment, they symbolize the ubiquitous cue that can help the analyst draw on the coded lessons.

Disappointing Outcomes: Can Implementation Modeling Help?

This paper addresses questions about modeling the implementation requirements of a public policy proposal. Can modeling provide advance warning of problematic implementation requirements inherent in the design of a policy idea? Going further, can it suggest feasible redesign options to improve the chances for desired outcomes? Our methodology, system dynamics, is more than just a simulation tool; it also a method of scientific inquiry that fosters operational thinking about how to improve the functioning of complex social systems. Our model is motivated by a case often cited as the seminal work in the implementation literature: Pressman and Wildavsky’s narrative of problems that undercut a US policy to combat persistent unemployment among minorities in Oakland, California in the late 1960s.

Adding Value to Policy Analysis and Advice

to the cognitive skills of their children. One mechanism is that undocumented parents, afraid of deportation in pursuit of remaining anonymous or under the radar, do not enroll their kids in federally subsidized programs such as day care. All of these programs ask for proof of identification and employment, which the undocumented immigrants are reluctant to provide to protect their identity, residential information, and their employers. Furthermore, many of the immigrants are uninformed and, worse, misinformed about these programs. Many Mexican parents in Yoshikawa’s sample raised concerns about these programs as they think taking money from the federal state for their children when they are infants will disqualify them from getting student loans for college in the future. Also due to both their legal status and dead-end jobs with no mobility and autonomy, these parents are under higher stress and vulnerable to depression, which may further lower the quality of their interaction with their children and teaching abilities. The author finds limited support for this argument in that all parents seem to be very involved in their children’s development, regardless of their work conditions or documentation status. While this is an interesting finding, it could also be a result of the Hawthorne effect which would suggest that being selected for this study, parents in the sample may put additional effort into parenting. While slightly problematic for this particular causal path, this effect does not threaten the overall validity of the study in that, without this effect, one would find even larger differences across these two immigrant groups. By testing these results against alternative explanations, the author also illustrates that it is not the ethnic differences in raising children which lead to differences in early cognitive development. In fact, it is parents’ sparse social networks, lower quality jobs which pay less, in most cases, than minimum wage, and provide less autonomy on the job.These economic conditions lead to higher stress, less access to stimulating child care, and fewer financial resources to invest in children. While this analysis fully confirms the author’s expectations, the lack of tables of related statistical analysis at least in an appendix leaves the reader unconvinced on this particular issue. This book also does a nice job of providing specific policy remedies to the findings, which are summarized in the final chapter titled ‘‘Providing access to the American dream’’. Part of these remedies relate to providing a legal and trustable framework to these parents so that they can take advantage of the programs available for their children, such as giving them a path to citizenship and creating additional and reliable access points to social and economic advancement. Others are harder to achieve and run the challenge of collective action such as labor law enforcement and unionization to improve immigrants’ working conditions. Finally, another possible avenue for improvement is strengthening the community based support systems that can be funded at the state and even community level. In terms of its theoretical implications, this book should shift a paradigm inmanyAmericans’minds – seeing illegal immigrants as exploiters of welfare programs. As the literature in political science illustrated years ago, this is not the case for African Americans, contrary to many who believe so. The author illustrates that due to their lack of information and fear of deportation, many illegal immigrants underuse these welfare programs, so much that it creates problems for the cognitive development of their US citizen children. This book also employs an elaborate and impressive methodology, making it inspiring for most scholars of social scientific inquiry, regardless of their area of specialization. More importantly, in terms of the findings and their vast policy implications on immigration, this book should be read by policy makers dealing with legal, educational, sociological, psychological, andmedical aspects of immigration and immigrants, as well as academics with related research interests.