Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

210 Public Management and Administration
policy style as the balancing of group pressures. It may once have been legitimate to see
the role of groups as simply articulating demands to be ‘processed’ in the legislative/
governmental machine. Now the groups are intimately involved in decision and implementation
processes. A symbiotic relationship has developed.
Richardson and Jordan argue that the bureaucracy could itself be seen as an
interest group in that official organizations and agencies behave ‘in almost
exactly the same way as more conventional external pressure groups’ (1979,
p. 25). Groups can be allies of departments, and while there may be conflict
between ministers and groups over details of policy, they generally ‘share a
commitment to greater resources for that policy area’ (1979, p. 29). This means
that politicians do not necessarily make policy, nor is it made by politicians
together with the bureaucracy, but by the interaction of the bureaucratic part of
government and the relevant groups. As they argue (1979, pp. 73–4):
In describing the tendency for boundaries between government and groups to become
less distinct through a whole range of pragmatic developments, we see policies being
made and administered between a myriad of interconnecting, interpenetrating organizations.
It is the relationships involved in committees, the policy community of departments
and groups, the practices of co-option and the consensual style that perhaps better
account for policy outcomes than do examinations of party stances, of manifestoes or of
parliamentary influence.
This theory seems a far more realistic account of what actually happens in government.
It also fits the change from a bureaucratic focus to one in which internal
politics is recognized. Particular parts of the bureaucracy develop their own
interest groups to assist them in the real political battle, that is, the struggle for
resources with other parts of the bureaucracy.
Further, Pross (1986) argued, in Canada, real competition in the political
arena was that of policy communities. The policy community was defined as
‘that part of a political system that by virtue of its functional responsibilities,
its vested interests, and its specialized knowledge – acquires a dominant voice
in determining government decisions in a specific field of public activity, and
is generally permitted by society at large and the public authorities in particular
to determine public policy in that field’ (1986, p. 98). A policy community
is populated by government agencies, pressure groups, media people, and individuals,
including academics, who have an interest in a particular policy field
(1986, p. 98).
The development of the policy community has implications for the operation
of the bureaucracy and derives, according to Pross, from the decline in the
influence of the bureaucracy. Public officials now have to generate support in
the policy community, ‘winning the approval of the other government agencies,
the pressure groups, corporations, institutions, and individuals with a vested
interest or an explicit concern in the policy field’ (Pross, 1986, p. 132).
Departments and agencies need their clients and need them to be organized into
groups. If relevant interest groups do not exist, departments are quite likely to