Too many accounts of policy reforms in developing countries discount the role of bureaucrats and experts as agents of policy innovation, Ricardo Gutiérrez argues in the current issue of Governance (23.1). His study of water management reform in three Brazilian states suggests that experts can play the critical role. In these states, reform was not primarily the result of crisis, party or civil society pressure, or intervention by international organizations. Instead, experts drove change. Experts “do politics,” Gutiérrez argues, “when they use expertise as a political resource and broker political, bureaucratic, and social relationships to get their proposals approved and implemented.” Read more: When Experts Do Politics: Introducing Water Policy Reform in Brazil.
How experts “do politics” to achieve policy change
Published February 4, 2010 Current issue Leave a CommentTags: Brazil, expertise, policy change, water management
How universal healthcare fades away
Published January 26, 2010 Current issue , Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: Canada, healthcare, retrenchment, welfare states
In the current issue of Governance, 23.1, Vandna Bhatia of Carleton University uses Canada as a case study to illustrate the subtle ways in which policymakers in welfare states have undermined health programs. The conventional view that healthcare is protected from retrenchment is misguided, Bhatia says. Discourse has subtly shifted away from the proposition that healthcare is a societal obligation, while governments have relied on “policy drift” — the failure to update programs to meet new needs — to limit their liabilities. The cumulative effect, says Bhatia, is a gradual adjustment of the public to “new realities.” Read more: Social Rights, Civil Rights, and Health Reform in Canada. Free download until January 31.
Fiscal retrenchment in Italy: The collision of imperatives in budget reform
Published January 22, 2010 Current issue Leave a CommentTags: budget reform, fiscal policy, fiscal stress, Italy
Italy was under intense pressure to consolidate its budget in the early 1990s, as it reeled from a currency crisis and struggled to meet requirements for joining the Eurozone. Francesco Stolfi examines how budget institutions were reformed as part of the consolidation effort. A combination of structural and ideological factors shaped the reform, Stolfi says, yielding a budget process that strengthened Treasury power while preserving significant discretion for managers in budget implementation. Stolfi says that his study addresses “the profound epistemological divide” between structuralist and interpretative approaches to the study of policy change. Read the article for free: Testing Structuralist and Interpretative Explanations of Policy Change: The Case of Italy’s Budget Reform.
An apology: The Editors apologize for an error in describing Dr. Stolfi’s institutional affiliation on the first page of this article. Dr. Stolfi now teaches at the University of Exeter.
Governance book reviews: public participation, international political economy, and more
Published January 15, 2010 Current issue , book reviews Leave a CommentTags: book reviews
David Rosenbloom says that Leonardo Avritzer’s book Participatory Institutions in Democratic Brazil “significantly advances conceptualization and theorizing with respect to participatory democratic institutions,” while Angela Wigger says that a new volume edited by Mark Blyth provides “an erudite and elegantly written” overview of international political economy. Also reviewed in the current issue: Rosemary O’Leary and Lisa Blomgren Bingham on collaborative public management; Stephen Haggard and Robert Kaufman on the political economy of welfare in the developing world; Rachel Epstein on liberalization in Eastern Europe; and Steven Cohen and William Eimicke on contract management. Read all of the reviews for free in January.
Andrews: “Good government” means different things in different countries
Published January 12, 2010 Current issue Leave a CommentTags: financial management, governance, indicators, World Governance Indicators
In the new issue of Governance (23.1, January 2010) Professor Matt Andrews of Harvard Kennedy School criticizes the “one-best-way model of effective government” that is built into benchmarking projects such as the World Bank’s World Governance Indicators. Examining public financial management structures in thirty-eight nations, Andrews finds substantial variation in practice among countries that are held up as models of effectiveness. “Good public financial management means different things in different countries,” Andrews says. “The good governance version of good or effective government is a hollow one.” Download Andrews’ article, “Good Government Means Different Things in Different Countries” for free.
New book honors SOG Secretary-Treasurer Per Laegreid
Published January 10, 2010 New books by SOG members Leave a Comment
A new book, Change and Continuity in Public Sector Organizations (Fagborkforlaget, 2009), has been published to honor Per Lægreid, SOG’s Secretary-Treasurer. The edited volume includes contributions from Geert Bouckaert, Tom Christensen, Morten Egeberg, Anne Lise Fimreite, Robert Gregory, John Halligan, Bengt Jacobsson, Werner Jann, James G. March, Johan P. Olsen, Ove K. Pedersen and Per Selle. The editors are Paul G. Roness and Harald Sætren of the University of Bergen.
SOG is the Structure and Organization of Government Group of the International Political Science Association, which sponsors Governance. Learn how to join SOG. SOG members receive a subscription to the print version of Governance. New members in the month of January 2010 will receive a complementary copy of Paul Starr’s book Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism.
New book from SOG member: Continuity and change in public policy and management
Published January 8, 2010 New books by SOG members Leave a Comment
SOG member Christopher Pollitt of the Public Management Institute at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven is co-author, with Geert Bouckaert, of a new book from Edward Elgar Press: Continuity and Change in Public Policy and Management. The book provides a long-term view of policy developments in major public services in England and Belgium over the last half-century. John Halligan says that the book contains “a pioneering and profound analysis that few current books in public policy and management can equal.” Download the flyer.
SOG is the Structure and Organization of Government Group of the International Political Science Association, which sponsors Governance. Learn how to join SOG. SOG members receive a subscription to the print version of Governance. New subscribers in the month of January 2010 will receive a complementary copy of Paul Starr’s book Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism.
New book by SOG member: public management reform in Southern Europe
Published January 7, 2010 New books by SOG members Leave a Comment
SOG member Edoardo Ongaro of Bocconi University and the SDA Bocconi School of Management is author of a new book from Edward Elgar Press: Public Management Reform and Modernization: Trajectories of Administrative Change in Italy, France, Greece, Portugal and Spain. Guy Peters calls it “a major contribution to understanding the political and administrative systems of Southern Europe . . . [and] an excellent example of comparative analysis in general.”
SOG is the Structure and Organization of Government Group of the International Political Science Association, which sponsors Governance. Learn how to join SOG. SOG members receive a subscription to the print version of Governance. New subscribers in the month of January 2010 will receive a complementary copy of Paul Starr’s book Freedom’s Power: The True Force of Liberalism.
New book by SOG members on reform in Asia-Pacific
Published December 29, 2009 New books by SOG members Leave a Comment
Governance book review editor Clay Wescott and SOG member Bidhya Bowornwathana are co-editors, with L.R. Jones, of a new book from Emerald Books: The Many Faces of Public Management Reform in the Asia-Pacific Region. The collection of essays examines three categories of reforms within Asian public sectors: corruption and anti-corruption initiatives, public financial management reforms, and public management reforms within an emphasis on performance and results.
SOG is the Structure and Organization of Government Group of the International Political Science Association, which sponsors Governance. Learn how to join SOG. SOG members receive a subscription to the print version of Governance.
Governance: New year, new design, new commentary on e-governance
Published January 1, 2010 Current issue , commentary Leave a CommentTags: commentary, democracy, e-governance, information technology, Paul Starr
The new design includes a new feature at the start of each issue: a short commentary by a leading scholar or policymaker on a critical question of governance. The first commentary is by Paul Starr, Stuart Professor of Communications and Public Affairs at Princeton University.
“The fundamental problems of democracy are not susceptible to technological solutions,” says Starr. In the current environment, “it will be a struggle just to maintain some of the minimal conditions of political accountability that democracy requires.” Download Professor Starr’s commentary, “The Liberal State in a Digital World,” for free.