Oliver James

The Limitations of ‘Policy Transfer’ and ‘Lesson Drawing’ for Public Policy Research

The concepts of ‘lesson drawing’ and ‘policy transfer’ have become increasingly influential ways of understanding public policy, especially in the UK. However, the main proponents of the concepts, Rose for ‘lesson drawing’ and Dolowitz and Marsh for ‘policy transfer’, have difficulty in providing convincing answers to three questions that are important for them and those engaged in similar studies. First, can they be defined as distinctive forms of policy-making separate from other, more conventional, forms? ‘Lesson drawing’ is very similar to conventional accounts of ‘rational’ policy-making and ‘policy transfer’ is very difficult to define distinctly from many other forms of policy-making. Second, why does ‘lesson drawing’ and ‘policy transfer’ occur rather than some other form of policy-making? The proponents of ‘policy transfer’ put a set of diverse and conflicting theories under a common framework, obscuring differences between them. Third, what are the effects of ‘lesson drawing’ and ‘policy transfer’ on policy-making and how do they compare to other processes? Whilst the effect of more ‘lesson drawing’ seems to be more ‘rational’ policy-making, the effect of ‘policy transfer’ on policy ‘success’ and ‘failure’ is less clear. Dolowitz and Marsh redescribe aspects of ‘failure’ as different forms of ‘transfer’ rather than giving independent reasons for outcomes based on features of transfer processes. Overall, particularly in the case of ‘policy transfer’, researchers may be better off selecting from a range of alternative approaches than limiting themselves to these conceptual frameworks.

Controlling Modern Government

Controlling Modern Government explores the long-term development of controls over government across five major state traditions in developed democracies – US, Japan, variants of continental-European models, a Scandinavian case and variants of the Westminster model.

Regulation Inside Government: Public Interest Justifications and Regulatory Failures

Regulation is normally thought of as government regulation of the private sector, particularly business. However, there is a developing literature on regulation inside government, exploring the ways in which government regulates itself through a range of bodies which set standards for public sector organizations, monitor them and seek to bring about compliance with those standards. Reading across economic theories of business regulation to regulation inside government, this article suggests that the current wave of reform inside the UK public sector implicitly reflects a public interest view of regulation. However, the analogous public interest justification for the regulation of business has been heavily criticized and regulatory failures have been suggested including regulation in the interest of regulated bodies, regulation in the interest of regulators and the high costs of operating regulatory systems.

Democracy and Government Performance: Holding Incumbents Accountable in English Local Governments

The link between government performance and support for incumbents is a key mechanism of accountable government. We model the vote share of incumbent administrations in local government as proportional and nonproportional responses to public service performance. We evaluate the models using a panel data set covering performance and elections from 2001 to 2007 in English local governments where an incumbent party or coalition was up for reelection. We control for the previous vote, whether the incumbent administration is of the national governing party, and local economic conditions. We find evidence for a nonproportional, performance threshold hypothesis, which implies that voters’ behavior is affected by clear gradations of performance. Only the difference between low performance and at least mediocre performance matters. There is no reward for high performance. Instead our findings suggest negativity bias in the relationship between performance and electoral support for incumbents.

Business Models and the Transfer of Businesslike CentralGovernment Agencies

At the same time as many researchers in public administration are suggesting the emergence of similar New Public Management (NPM) forms in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, a substantial number of those working in comparative political economy are rediscovering differences between countries. This paper explores a key component of NPM—business-like central government agencies—in four countries: the UK, the U.S., Germany, and Japan. So far, the private sector side of the NPM story has largely been neglected. However, the business-like agency model as developed in the UK was influenced by the Anglo-American system of corporate governance. In comparative political economy, the Anglo-American system is seen as different from that in Germany or Japan. These differences are important for understanding transfer through emulation of the UK agency model by policy-makers in other countries. An apparent inconsistency may be developing, with governments using an NPM form based on an AngloAmerican model of business that is far from universal in business itself. In recent years, public administration has been dominated by debates about the “New Public Management” (NPM) (Hood 1991, 1994), “managerialism” (Pollitt 1993), “market-based administration” (Lan and Rosenbloom), “the hollowing out of the state” (Rhodes 1994; Saward) and “reinventing government” (Osborne and Gaebler). The particular features of these forms differ. However, taking the NPM definition as a starting point, they include: using contractors to deliver services rather than providing them directly; breaking up activities into corporate units with freedom to manage and targets for performance; creating incentives for good performance, including performance pay; and turning civil servants into managerial executives. NPM methods differ radically from traditional means of organizing the public sector. The intellectual origin of these ideas is mixed, but it is heavily influenced by ways of organizing private sector business (Hood 1994, 133–134; Pollitt 1993). The dominant view among researchers in public administration is that governments in many OECD countries have adopted NPM forms (Dunleavy; Minogue; Savoie; Zifcak). The surveys collated by OECD’s PUMA public sector group strengthen this impression of vigorous adoption (for example, see OECD 1995, 1998).

Principal-Agent Modelling and Learning The European Commission, Experts and Agricultural Hormone Growth Promoters

Principal-agent modelling has become a very influential way of thinking about bureaucratic politics in a wide range of settings. Simple agency models have recently been extended and bureaucratic relationships placed in their wider temporal and socio-political contexts. By developing a conceptualization of principal-agent learning this article offers a nuanced account of the extent to which principals can learn to develop institutions that enhance their political control of bureaucratic agents and predispose those agents toward the principals preferences, limiting adverse selection and moral hazard problems. The revised model is applied to the context of the European Commissions selection and management of scientific committees in the case of agricultural hormone growth promoters. The findings not only confirm the usefulness of more dynamic accounts of principal-agent relationships that eschew ahistoricism and acontextualism, they also suggest that extended principal-agent models should include constraints on learning by principals. In this case the principals learning was reactive — relying heavily upon external actors and venues to do their thinking for them.

Incredibly Good Performance An Experimental Study of Source and Level Effects on the Credibility of Government

Initiatives to boost public trust of government often rely on better reporting of the efforts and accomplishments of government agencies. But if citizens disbelieve the performance reports of agencies, especially information about good performance, then these initiatives may be do little to enhance trust. We ask the following questions: Do citizens find performance information from government agencies to be credible, or do they trust more in independent sources? Do they believe some agencies more than others? And does credibility of the agency itself as a source depend on the level of performance that is being reported? To address these questions, we designed an experiment to test the credibility of a customer satisfaction index for two U.S. federal agencies, with random allocation of the specific agency (one politically less attractive, the other more so), the source of the index (the federal agency itself or an independent rating firm), as well as the level of performance reported in the index. Results from an online sample of nearly 600 U.S. adults show that credibility is lower for the politically less attractive agency and that citizens are especially doubtful about good performance reported by the government agency itself (as opposed to the independent rating firm). These results suggest that independent sources can boost credibility when reporting good news about government performance.

The Politics of Agency Death: Ministers and the Survival of Government Agencies in a Parliamentary System

This article extends the theory of government agency survival from separation of powers to parliamentary government systems. It evaluates expectations of increased risk to agencies following transitions in government, prime minister or departmental minister, and from incongruence between the originally establishing and currently overseeing political executive. Using survival models for UK executive agencies between 1989 and 2012, the study finds that politics trumps performance. Ministers seek to make their mark by terminating agencies created by previous ministers, which is reinforced by high media attention to the agency. Performance against agency targets is not associated with higher termination risk, and replacement agencies do not perform any better than those that were terminated. Financial autonomy provides some protection for agencies that are less dependent on budgetary appropriations.

The New Public Management ‘Revolution’ in Political Control of the Public Sector: Promises and Outcomes in Three European Prison Systems

The ‘new public management’ (NPM) promised a revolution in the way executive politicians control public services. This article looks at the effects of NPM forns on political control, especially ‘arms-length’ executive agencies, contracting with private firms and performance measurement in the prisons domain. These reforms promised politicians strategic control and disengagement from day to day issues, and a harnessing of competitive forces to break up traditional, unresponsive, public sector monopoly provision. We compare three jurisdictions that are conventionally seen as having embraced NPM to differing degrees: England & Wales (a relatively high NPM reformer where a package of measures was introduced), the Netherlands (an intermediate case) and Germany (where much variety is evident within an, overall, relatively low NPM reformer). The ‘promises’ of NPM control were in many aspects not fulfilled and the prison systems that made less use of such structures did not seem obviously to have suffered as a result. Indeed, some of the consequences, especially the detachment of executive politicians from day to day management, may have weakened the legitimacy of control systems, potentially making executive politicians’ task even more difficult.

Evaluating Executive Agencies in UK Government

Evaluating executive agencies is important even though most government and academic interest is currently focused on ‘modernising government’, ‘e-government’, ‘joined-up’ government and ‘partnership’ working. Firstly, executive agencies are a significant part of the structure of UK central government. In 2000 about 60 per cent of civil servants worked in 126 agencies with about 75 per cent of civil servants working either in agencies or bodies working on agency lines. But there has been very little assessment of whether agencies have been a success. Instead, attention has moved on to the next reform. Secondly, the current ‘joined-up’ government agenda, in part, rests on a view of the merits and shortcomings of agencies. The evidence base for this view requires strengthening. These issues are particularly salient because the Cabinet Office has belatedly instigated an agency policy review and several countries have embarked on reforms seeking to emulate the UK agency initiative. This paper evaluates executive agencies through a general survey of their performance and a case study of the largest agency, the Benefits Agency. The case study enables the effects of agency structures on performance to be assessed. The research draws on existing studies and new research, identifying gaps in evidence and the need for further research which could be incorporated in the Cabinet Office agency policy review.