Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

More documents

Recommendations

Info

unfairly treated are entitled to have recourse to other avenues of appeal (Nagel, 1990, p. 429). If implemented these would go some distance towards countering the criticisms of those who argue that policy analysis, even the whole public policy school, has no interest in the political consequences of its analyses or the fact that there are people involved in their abstract decision-making. In Nagel’s response the more mechanistic aspects have been modified, and more traditional public administration virtues like participation are superimposed. But the attempt to do this seems forced and unconvincing. The strength of the policy analysis approach is in its treatment of numbers and its rational approach, even given their limitations. To include all those other features would take away its power by making it all things to all people. The latter, in actuality, seems to be the aim. Nagel says (1990, p. 459) of the field in which he was a pioneer: The field of policy studies scores well on a lot of dimensions. It has a long-term philosophical foundation, originality, a theoretical side, a practical side, an important political science that involves all fields of political science, a multidisciplinary component that involves all fields of knowledge, especially the social sciences, a qualitative value-oriented side, a quantitative, reasonably objective way of dealing with analytic problems, an ability to get utilised when deserved in the light of democratic processes, non-utilisation when deserved in the light of those same democratic processes, value to conservative policy makers, and value to liberal policy makers. Too much is being claimed for the field in which Nagel has probably been the largest contributor. Certainly, the empirical work is useful; certainly it may be more useful than what existed before. But a problem with empirical work in the public sector develops when it goes further than an information role. If data, no matter how gathered, can be presented to policy-makers, this must be useful in improving the quality of decisions made. But if data or methods are considered to be able to make decisions by themselves, this approach will inevitably fail. The public sector is about politics, and political decisions are, and should be, made for all kinds of reasons of varying kinds of rationality. Policy analysis of the formal kind can provide good information in some circumstances, but that is all. Often the information will be irrelevant, often it will have to confront conflicting information from other sources and often it will be rejected. If policy analysts could accept a role in which they may provide useful information for policy-makers, that role could be valuable; the trouble is, they tend to claim a far grander role. Political public policy Public Policy and Policy Analysis 127 A far less rigid approach to looking at policy is put forward by other writers, such as Lynn (1987) and deLeon (1997). Policy-making is viewed in this approach as a political process rather than a narrowly technical one. As noted earlier, Lynn sees public policy as the output of individuals in organizations.
128 Public Management and Administration These people operate under a variety of influences and ‘to understand policymaking it is necessary to understand the behaviour of and interactions among these structures: individuals holding particular positions, groups, organizations, the political system, and the wider society of which they are all a part’ (1987, p. 17). Therefore, instead of involving particular methodologies, policymaking is a matter of adapting to and learning to influence political and organizational environments. The focus is understanding how particular policies were formed, developed and work in practice; these are concerns broader than a focus on decision-making or mathematical models. Lynn argues that policy-making ‘encompasses not only goal setting, decision making, and formulation of political strategies, but also supervision of policy planning, resource allocation, operations management, programme evaluation, and efforts at communication, argument, and persuasion’ (1987, p. 45). Public policy in this perspective is a process, but one which is a political one above all other considerations; one in which those Lynn calls ‘managers of public policy’ – an interesting amalgam of terms – use any means to achieve their goals. Instead of being a formal process, they are strictly limited, as ‘public executives pursue their goals within three kinds of limits: those imposed by their external political environments; those imposed by their organizations; and those imposed by their own personalities and cognitive styles’ (p. 42). Rather than being technical experts, effective managers of public policy (Lynn, 1987, p. 271): ● establish understandable premisses for their organization’s activities; ● attain an intellectual grasp of strategically important issues; identify and focus attention on those activities that give meaning to the organization’s employees; ● remain alert to and exploit all opportunities, whether deliberately created or fortuitous, to further their purposes; ● consciously employ the strong features of their personalities as instruments of leadership and influence; ● manage within the framework of an economy of personal resources to govern how much they attempt to accomplish and how they go about it. Managers work in this way because their own positions are on the line; they must achieve results or they will be in trouble, so any means of doing so must be considered. Public policy-making viewed from this perspective becomes much more a political process. Hogwood and Gunn, who cross the two public policy perspectives, argue that analysis is seen as ‘supplementing the more overtly political aspects of the policy process rather than replacing them’ and ‘to treat politics as a residual is to doom analysis, not politics, to irrelevance’ (1984, p. 267). They put forward a nine-step approach to the policy process, which
Page 1 and 2:
Public Management and Administratio
Page 3 and 4:
Also by Owen E. Hughes AUSTRALIAN P
Page 5 and 6:
© Owen E. Hughes 1994, 1998, 2003
Page 7 and 8:
Preface Over the past 20 years the
Page 9 and 10:
viii Preface the Colorado link such
Page 11 and 12:
2 Public Management and Administrat
Page 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
10 Public Management and Administra
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31 and 32:
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48:
Page 49 and 50:
Page 51 and 52:
Page 53 and 54:
3 Public Management Introduction Th
Page 55 and 56:
Page 57 and 58:
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68:
Page 69 and 70:
Page 71 and 72:
Page 73 and 74:
Page 75 and 76:
Page 77 and 78:
Page 79 and 80:
Page 81 and 82:
Page 83 and 84:
Page 85 and 86: 76 Public Management and Administra
Page 103 and 104: 5 Public Enterprise Introduction Pu
Page 109 and 110: 100 Public Management and Administr
Page 135: 126 Public Management and Administr
Page 141 and 142: 7 Strategic Management Introduction
Page 187 and 188:
178 Public Management and Administr
Page 189 and 190:
Page 191 and 192:
10 E-government Introduction In the
Page 193 and 194:
Page 195 and 196:
Page 197 and 198:
Page 199 and 200:
Page 201 and 202:
Page 203 and 204:
Page 205 and 206:
Page 207 and 208:
Page 209 and 210:
Page 211 and 212:
11 Managing External Constituencies
Page 213 and 214:
Page 215 and 216:
Page 217 and 218:
Page 219 and 220:
Page 221 and 222:
Page 223 and 224:
Page 225 and 226:
Page 227 and 228:
12 Public Management in Developing
Page 229 and 230:
Page 231 and 232:
Page 233 and 234:
Page 235 and 236:
Page 237 and 238:
Page 239 and 240:
Page 241 and 242:
Page 243 and 244:
Page 245 and 246:
13 Accountability Introduction The
Page 247 and 248:
Page 249 and 250:
Page 251 and 252:
Page 253 and 254:
Page 255 and 256:
Page 257 and 258:
Page 259 and 260:
Page 261 and 262:
Page 263 and 264:
Page 265 and 266:
14 Conclusion: A New Paradigm for P
Page 267 and 268:
Page 269 and 270:
Page 271 and 272:
Page 273 and 274:
Page 275 and 276:
Page 277 and 278:
Page 279 and 280:
Page 281 and 282:
Page 283 and 284:
Page 285 and 286:
Page 287 and 288:
Page 289 and 290:
Page 291 and 292:
Page 293 and 294:
284 References Borins, Sandford (19
Page 295 and 296:
286 References Glor, Eleanor D. (20
Page 297 and 298:
288 References Jordan, Grant (1997)
Page 299 and 300:
290 References Monroe, Kristen Renw
Page 301 and 302:
292 References Putt, Allen C. and S
Page 303 and 304:
294 References Wilson, Graham K. (1
Page 305 and 306:
296 Index bureaucracy 1-5, 9, 15-43
Page 307 and 308:
298 Index information and communica
Page 309 and 310:
300 Index ‘one best way’ thinki
Page 311 and 312:
302 Index Ritter, G. 85, 86 role of
show all

Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?