The GOVERNANCE blog

Current theories about the relationship between public agencies and interest groups are deficient in two ways, Caelesta Braun of the University of Antwerp argues in the current issue of Governance. They neglect the variation in incentives that agencies face to engage with interest groups, as well as the groups’ own incentives to engage with agencies.  Braun uses survey data from British and Dutch bureaucrats and interest group leaders to test a more complex theory of agency-group interaction.  This new approach, says Braun, offers “a fruitful way forward” in explaining policymakers’ responsiveness to interest groups.  Read the article.

The 2009 Nobel Prize awarded to Elinor Ostrom brought new attention to the concept of polycentric governance, first envisaged by Michael Polanyi sixty years earlier.  In the current issue of Governance, Paul D. Aligica and Vlad Tarko of George Mason University argue that the project of defining the concept of polycentricity is not yet completed.  The authors explain the three basic features of polycentricity and outline a framework that shows how the concept can be used more broadly.  Read the article.

In an influential 1990 Governance article, Peter Aucoin argued that New Public Management wrestled with a tension between empowering public servants and tightening political control over them.  In the current issue of Governance, Aucoin argues that in many cases the drive for political control has won out, producing what he calls the New Political Governance (NPG).  NPG has four features: the harnessing of administration to a “continuous campaign” for reelection; the rise of political staff as a “third force” in governance; the politicization of senior administrative appointments; and an expectation of public service loyalty to the government of the day.   Open access to the article.

Peter Aucoin passed away in July 2011.  This article was in the final stages of review at Governance at the time.  The editors are pleased to publish it in recognition of Professor Aucoin’s service to the journal and the field of public administration.

The current issue also includes two comments on Aucoin’s article.  Jonathan Boston of Victoria University of Wellington asks how many of the elements of NPG are really new.  And J.R. Nethercote of Australian Catholic University acknowledges the pressure of accelerated news cycles and continuous campaigns, but suggests that Westminster systems do correct themselves after excesses of politicization.  Read the commentaries.

In a research note in the current issue of Governance, Rick Stapenhurst and Riccardo Pelizzo of the World Bank Institute examine a success story in “constitutional engineering”: the establishment of effective legislative oversight mechanisms within Ghana’s parliament.  Improved legislative oversight, they argue, has enhanced the reputation of parliament.  Low levels of partisanship and a general demand for good governance have helped to make the reforms work.  Read the research note.

In the current issue of Governance (25.2, April 2012), four distinguished Belgian academics discuss what happened when the country’s parties spent almost six hundred days after the June 2010 elections negotiating over a new government.  “Surprisingly,” , say Carl Devos of Ghent University and and Dave Sinardet of the Free University of Brussels”life without a government has been pretty normal.”  They explain why in their commentary (open access).   Meanwhile Geert Bouckaert and Marleen Brans of the University of Leuven argue that the crisis was actually a period “when two types of transitional governments operated together: a caretaker one, which was disappearing, and a ‘constituent’ one, which was emerging.”  Open access to their commentary.

In the current issue of Governance, Ariel Ahram of the University of Oklahoma reviews Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt by Lisa Blaydes.  “It is difficult to pick up a book about Mubarak’s Egypt without wondering if history has surpassed it,” Ahram says.  “That is not the case with this book. . . . Overall it makes a number of valuable contributions.”  Open access to the review.

And Amita Singh of Jawaharlal Nehru University reviews two books: The Black Box of Governmental Learning by Raul Blindenbacher and Bidjan Nashat and Restoring Values: Keys to Integrity, Ethical Behaviour and Good Governance, edited by E. Sreedharan and Bharat Wakhlu.  The first provides an important message about the importance of investment in learning tools for administrators, Singh says, while the second provides insight into India’s “crumbling body politic.”  Open access to the review.

In psychiatry, a double bind is a dilemma that produces acute distress.  In the current issue of Governance, John Zysman and Dan Breznitz argue that this is the situation of policymakers following the financial crisis: “They are called on at once to make the markets work more effectively, to unleash creative capitalism, and also to protect society against the consequences and disruptions of the market.”  In the aftermath of the crisis, politics will become more volatile as policymakers seek new ways of managing this predicament.  Open access to the article.  Photo: John Zysman at Governance roundtable on financial crisis.

In the current issue of Governance, Matt Andrews of Harvard Kennedy School considers how the financial crisis will shape the trajectory of public sector reform in developing countries.  Before the crisis, many developing countries emulated reforms of richer states.  But this pattern may likely be shaken by the crisis, Andrews suggests.  The legitimacy of developed country policies is questioned, while new players such as China offer alternative models.  Endogenous factors within developing countries will play a larger role in determining reform paths.  Open access to the article.  Photo: Matt Andrews at a Governance roundtable on the financial crisis, with Geoffrey Tootell, senior vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Before the financial crisis, write Julie Froud, Adriana Nilsson, Michael Moran and Karel Williams, the governing agenda was shaped by “reassuring liturgies” about the defeat of inflationary pressures and the benefits of financial innovation.  But the crisis itself has led to a period of intensified conflict in which rival interests offer “competing stories” about the nature of the crisis and appropriate responses.  “So long as no story wins out,” the authors argue, “group identity, institutional affiliation, and crude calculations of interest become more important.”  Post-crisis politics, they argue, “is ‘turf wars’ writ large.”  Open access to the article:  Stories and Interests in Finance: Agendas of Governance Before and After the Financial Crisis.

Sir John Gieve speaks at Governance roundtable on financial crisis

In the current issue of Governance, John Gieve (formerly of the Bank of England) and Colin Provost (University College London) explain how a flawed intellectual model discouraged coordination by monetary and regulatory authorities that might have prevented the financial crisis.  “This common intellectual framework helps to explain why similar mistakes were made in countries with very different institutional arrangements,” Gieve and Provost argue.  Future reforms will put more emphasis on coordination between central banks and regulators, as well as checks against “policy groupthink.”  Open access to the article: Ideas and Coordination in Policymaking.