Structure or agency? Discourse or meta-narrative? Explaining the emergence of the financial management initiative (original) (raw)
Explaining dynamics without change: a critical subsector approach to financial policy making
This article uses a case study of financial sector policy making in East Asia in the post 2000 period to examine and help to resolve questions surrounding the origins of the phenomenon of ‘dynamics without change’ in public policy making; that is, the appearance of policy activity and alteration without affecting the overall nature and orientation of policy outputs or outcomes. This is a phenomenon which has challenged existing notions of policy dynamics which associate enhanced policy activity with fundamental changes in outputs and outcomes and is an issue which has concerned policy studies since Robert Alford’s seminal study of British health policy dynamics first noted the phenomenon in the mid-1970s. The article develops and extends the ideas put forward by Rayner et al. (2001, Privileging the sub-sector: critical sub-sectors and sectoral relationships in forest policy-making, Forest Policy and Economics, 2 (3–4), 319–332) that ‘critical subsectors’ or subsets of actors within a subsystem which control whether or not fundamental change occurs. Evidence from recent developments in the Asian financial sector is put forward supporting the argument that the uneven structuration and non-reciprocal nature of the relationships existing between components of a policy subsystem explain that policy’s propensity for change and stability. The discussion moves the general analysis of policy change, policy subsystems and their role in policy change forward from the existing orthodoxy of ‘dynamics with change’ and provides the foundation for a new research programme analysing intra-sectoral policy dynamics in an empirically robust manner.
Book - Chapter Ten Reconsidering policy our agenda revisted
Reconsidering Policy: Complexity, Governance and the State, Policy Press , 2020
Analysis of public policy is a daunting task. The esteemed Canadian writer Richard Simeon acknowledged this some decades ago when he rejected the emphasis on narrow analytical policy skills (Simeon, 1976), and instead called for a broad analytic approach that is ‘holistic and contextually situated’ (Skogstad and White, 2017 p 666). However over the last forty years, policy approaches have fractured and scattered rather than become holistic and integrated, with theorists attempting to make sense of this variety by identifying strands or families of theory, or proposing models for, or thematic approaches to, theoretical synthesis (Ayres and Marsh, 2013). Some are driven into narrow areas of specialisation where they build sub-fields that, in our view, lose efficacy and relevance for complex problem solving insofar as they neglect broader political and systemic contexts. However, not all policy analysis is concerned to assist with problem solving and improved policy, as we are in this book, nor concerned with our focus on the governance of wicked problems, crisis responses, and the building of more resilient, effective policy contexts.
Modernisation by Consensus: the Impact of the Policy Process on British Economic Policy 1945-64
Policy, 2001
In October 1999 Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave the Mais lecture at the City University. He took as his theme 'The conditions for full employment' and used the famous 1944 White Paper on Employment Policy as his starting point (http//www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/press/1999/p168\_99.html). From this he proceeded to give a potted history of the development of economic policy in Britain and to highlight the reasons why postwar governments, both Labour and Conservative, had failed to maintain full employment and growth. Central to his analysis was the need, recognised in the White Paper, for the achievement of four conditions, stability, employability, productivity and responsibility, if employment policy was to be successful. Postwar governments had failed to achieve this necessary combination of requirements, whereas, with typical politician's optimism, the current Labour government had put in place a framework of policies which would correct these previous failings (Eccleshall 2000, pp.157-8).
Modernising the Policy Process
Policy Studies, 2006
In an increasingly complex world of interrelated problems many governments have tried to modernise their institutional structures and the ways in which they go about making policy. In the UK and elsewhere this has been most apparent in the growing emphasis given to evidence-based policy making in contrast to faith-based approaches and the conviction politics of earlier periods. Much of the debate about the impact and indeed value of this apparently new approach has focussed on the supply side of the equation: on the utilisation of research evidence and how researchers might make their work more relevant and useful to policy makers. Less attention has been paid in these debates to the different ways in which the nature of policy and policy making is conceptualised and how this might affect the relationship between research and policy. This article takes forward this debate by critically reviewing the theorisation of the policy/ research relationship under three different conceptions of policy making: the stages model, the advocacy coalition framework and the argumentative turn. It considers the future of policy research via two questions: who should carry out policy research in which settings; and what skills do they need to do so more effectively?
The expenditure and taxation policies that governments produce have implications for a big variety of actors, ranging from pensioners and schoolteachers to big businesses and international financial markets. Due to the different nature of the different addressees, the expectations about what governments should do vary a great deal. These expectations may be as different as being about the levels of democratic participation within the decision-making process, to being about the problem-solving capacity of the final policies. Logically, these different expectations are generally hardly compatible, and governing parties have the difficult task of reconciling them. As political scientists, we are intrigued by how parties manage to do so. In this paper I introduce how the study of justification arguments is a helpful tool in this regard. In particular, I show how the justifications contained in the presentation of the yearly budgets allow us to understand how governments wish to profile themselves in front of an audience ranging not only from party-supporters to government opposition, but also from local constituencies to supranational institutions. The theoretical lens through which I analyse these justifications comes from the literature on political parties, according to which partygovernment is supposed to find a balance between its electoral commitments and its institutional responsibilities. The paper relies on the empirical evidence coming from over-time comparisons I have done for Labour governments in Britain, France and the Netherlands. On the basis of this empirical work, I illustrate how a comparative content analysis of justification arguments helps to find patterns in the changing relationships between governments, parliaments and voters.