In the current issue of Governance (23.2, April 2010), Arjan Schakel of the University of Edinburgh uses a new dataset to answer an old question: when is governmental policy provision likely to be decentralized? Schackel’s study of forty European countries demonstrates that decentralization is heavily determined by two functional characteristics of policies — the availability of economies of scale, and the presence of significant externalities from provision — and by the degree of variation in policy preferences among localities. Other factors — such as the extent of democratization, national wealth, and degree of integration into the European Union — play a less significant role. Read more: Explaining Regional and Local Government: An Empirical Test of the Decentralization Theorem.
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When is policy provision likely to be decentralized?
Published June 7, 2010 Current issue ClosedTags: decentralization, European Union
In the current issue of Governance (23.2), Alison Post reviews The Political Economy of Water and Sanitation by Matthias Krause. Post says that the Krause’s book “provides a helpful reminder that the effects of privatization and other types of reforms in infrastructure sector will vary greatly depending upon both the broader institutional and political environment and sector-specific institutions and policies.” Read the review.
And Eric Heinze of the University of Oklahoma reviews two books that examine changing ideas about state sovereignty. The State of Sovereignty: Territories, Laws Populations, edited by Douglas Howland and Luise White, demonstrates how “the notion of sovereignty changes over time,” while Humanitarian Intervention: Confronting the Contradictions, edited by Michael Newman, illustrates “how international human rights and humanitarian principles are affecting traditional conceptions of state sovereignty.” Read the review.
Governance roundtable held in London
Published May 30, 2010 Uncategorized ClosedTags: conference, financial crisis, governance
Governance co-sponsored a roundtable on “public governance after the financial crisis” at University College London’s School of Public Policy on May 28. Academics and policymakers from over twenty institutions participated in the day-long discussion, which was a follow-on to a similar session held at Suffolk University Law School in Boston last November. Papers prepared for the roundtable are being compiled for a forthcoming special issue of Governance. Photo below: Paul Posner of George Mason University discusses the capacity of democratic systems to deal with fiscal crises.
Developing better models to understand management reform in Spain
Published May 25, 2010 Current issue ClosedTags: public management reform, Spain
In Public Management Policymaking in Spain: The Politics of Legislative Reform of Administrative Structures, 1991-1997, Raquel Gallego and Michael Barzelay examine the tumultuous process that led to the adoption of two important laws on administration by the Spanish government in 1997. The article also illustrates a more rigorous way of mapping how policies about public management evolve. Gallego and Barzelay conclude that key ministers often made decisions that reflected lessons they had drawn from the experience of their predecessors, and well as their relationships with regional political elites. In early phases of reform, the evolution of policy was often affected strongly by the conduct of top officials; but at later stages, events were heavily shaped by the “flow conditions of politics.”
The number of libraries providing access to Governance in print or electronic form increased by fifteen percent between 2008 and 2009, according to statistics released this week. Governance is now available in three thousand libraries around the world. As the following chart shows, the journal’s readership was broadly distributed around the world in 2009.
Questioning assumptions about Italy’s governmental traditions
Published May 14, 2010 Current issue ClosedTags: innovation, Italy, public management reform
In the current issue of Governance (23.2), Valentina Mele of Bocconi University challenges the widely held view that Italy’s legalistic administrative tradition suppresses reform. The reality, she says, is more complicated. Mele tracks a prolonged effort to promote government innovation that actually succeeded in “normalizing” novel management policies and practices. Policy entrepreneurs created space for reform by first ensuring that older traditions “were actively discredited.” Mele says the case study illustrates why there is a need for closer attention to the social mechanisms that guide change even in politically unstable contexts. Read more: Innovation Policy in Italy (1993-2002): Understanding the Invention and Persistence of a Public Management Reform.
Explaining a watershed moment in French public management reform
Published May 7, 2010 Current issue ClosedTags: France, policy entrepreneurship, public management reform
A watershed in public management reform in France was crossed in 2001 with the adoption of new legislation for the planning and control of public expenditure. In the current issue of Governance (23.2), Anne Corbett provides an original account of the process that led to adoption of the Organic Law on Laws of Finance, or LOLF — an outcome that many of the players involved considered “miraculous.” Corbett says that the case study reinforces the view that “political leadership and policy entrepreneurship are important characteristics” of key episodes in reform. Read more: Public Management Policymaking in France: Legislating the Organic Law on Laws of Finance (LOLF), 1998-2001.
SOG member Raj Chari has a new book, co-authored with Gary Murphy and John Hogan, published by Manchester University Press: Regulating Lobbying: A Global Comparison. Frank Baumgartner calls it “the single best resource for anyone interested in the topic of the regulation of lobbying or political transparency.” Learn more about the book, and read the first chapter, at regulatelobbying.com. Chari is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Trinity College Dublin.
What happens after major policy changes are enacted?
Published April 20, 2010 book reviews ClosedTags: development, implementation, sustainable development, World Bank
“It is no small thing to win the adoption of general-interest reforms in the United States,” says Erik Patashnik in his new book, Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted?, “But what is required to initiate policy reform should not be confused with what is required to sustain it” Patashnik’s book is reviewed by Michael Moran of the University of Manchester in the new issue of Governance. Moran says the book is “an example of American political science at its best . . . fine scholarship indeed.”
Also reviewed in the new issue: Sustainable Development for Public Administration, by Denise Zeynep Leuenberger and John Bartle. Fred Thompson of Willamette University says that this “very good book . . . introduces public administrators to the basics of sustainable development and to the design and implementation of public policies . . . which are systemically sustainable, intertemporally and distributionally equitable, and economically efficient.”
And Arthur Goldsmith of the University of Massachusetts Boston reviews Governance and the Depoliticisation of Development, edited by Wil Hout and Richard Robison. Hout and Robison “challenge the new orthodoxy about governance,” Goldsmith says. The book’s theme is that “the governance approach to global development represents less improvement than advertised over the market fundamentalism it superseded.”
How do independent regulators actually use scientific knowledge?
Published April 12, 2010 Current issue ClosedTags: regulation, independent regulatory agencies, decisionmaking, scientific knowledge
A major argument for delegating power to independent regulatory agencies is that they will make decisions based on scientific knowledge rather than political considerations. But what do we know about how independent regulators actually use scientific knowledge? Not enough, says Lorna Schrefler of the University of Exeter, in the new issue of Governance (23.2, April 2010). Regulators might not rely on scientific knowledge at all; or they might use it to buff their legitimacy rather than solve regulatory problems. Schrefler develops a framework to explain when and how scientific knowledge is likely to be used, and uses decisions from the US EPA and NHTSA to illustrate her approach. When political conflict over an issue is intense, and a regulatory problem is relatively intractable, the odds increase that scientific knowledge will be neglected or used for symbolic purposes alone. Read more: The Usage of Scientific Knowledge by Independent Regulatory Agencies.
