If Max Weber and Woodrow Wilson were to suddenly appear on the
landscape of modern public administration, normative theories in hand,
it is likely they would be unable to recognize the field. The
comprehensive, functionally uniform, hierarchical organizations governed
by strong leaders who are democratically responsible and staffed by
neutrally competent civil servants who deliver services to citizens
(Ostrom, 1973) – to the extent they ever existed – are long gone. They
have been replaced by an ‘organizational society’ in which many
important services are provided through multi-organizational programs.
These programs are essentially “interconnected clusters of firms,
governments, and associations which come together within the framework
of these programs” (Hjern and Porter, 1981, pp. 212-213).
These implementation structures operate within a notion of governance about which a surprising level of consensus has been reached. There is a pervasive, shared, global perception of governance as a topic far broader than ‘government’; the governance approach is seen as a “new process of governing, or a changed condition of ordered rule; or the new method by which society is governed” (Stoker, 1998, p. 17). Similarly, in the scholarship that has followed the ‘Reinventing Government’ themes of public effectiveness, much has been written of New Public Management practices by which governance theory is put into action (Mathiasen, 1996; Lynn, 1996, 1998; Terry, 1998; Kelly, 1998; Peters and Pierre, 1998).
In this complex, devolved mode of service delivery, the unit of analysis for some students of policy implementation is the network of non-profit organizations, private firms and governments. As Milward and Provan note, in policy arenas such as health, mental health, and welfare, "...joint production and having several degrees of separation between the source and the user of government funds...combine to ensure that hierarchies and markets will not work and that networks are the only alternative for collective action" (2000, p. 243). The purpose here is to attempt to set forth a theoretical framework for the study of welfare policy implementation by synthesizing the related and theoretically consistent concepts of governance, New Public Management, and networks. I then discuss how this framework can be applied to welfare policy implementation. I follow the lead of scholars who have attempted to offer coherence and synthesis to a research field that historically has been dominated by top-down and bottom-up perspectives.
The need to inform implementation scholarship is great. As O’Toole concludes in his review of the literature on multi-organization policy implementation, the field is complex, without much cumulation or convergence. Few well-developed recommendations have been put forward by researchers, and a number of proposals are contradictory…two reasons for the lack of development are analyzed: normative disagreements and the state of the field’s empirical theory. Yet there remain numerous possibilities for increasing the quality of the latter. Efforts in this direction are a necessary condition of further practical advance. (1986, p. 181).
Click here for the paper or https://www.academia.edu/2115083/Theories_of_Governance_and_New_Public_Management
These implementation structures operate within a notion of governance about which a surprising level of consensus has been reached. There is a pervasive, shared, global perception of governance as a topic far broader than ‘government’; the governance approach is seen as a “new process of governing, or a changed condition of ordered rule; or the new method by which society is governed” (Stoker, 1998, p. 17). Similarly, in the scholarship that has followed the ‘Reinventing Government’ themes of public effectiveness, much has been written of New Public Management practices by which governance theory is put into action (Mathiasen, 1996; Lynn, 1996, 1998; Terry, 1998; Kelly, 1998; Peters and Pierre, 1998).
In this complex, devolved mode of service delivery, the unit of analysis for some students of policy implementation is the network of non-profit organizations, private firms and governments. As Milward and Provan note, in policy arenas such as health, mental health, and welfare, "...joint production and having several degrees of separation between the source and the user of government funds...combine to ensure that hierarchies and markets will not work and that networks are the only alternative for collective action" (2000, p. 243). The purpose here is to attempt to set forth a theoretical framework for the study of welfare policy implementation by synthesizing the related and theoretically consistent concepts of governance, New Public Management, and networks. I then discuss how this framework can be applied to welfare policy implementation. I follow the lead of scholars who have attempted to offer coherence and synthesis to a research field that historically has been dominated by top-down and bottom-up perspectives.
The need to inform implementation scholarship is great. As O’Toole concludes in his review of the literature on multi-organization policy implementation, the field is complex, without much cumulation or convergence. Few well-developed recommendations have been put forward by researchers, and a number of proposals are contradictory…two reasons for the lack of development are analyzed: normative disagreements and the state of the field’s empirical theory. Yet there remain numerous possibilities for increasing the quality of the latter. Efforts in this direction are a necessary condition of further practical advance. (1986, p. 181).
Click here for the paper or https://www.academia.edu/2115083/Theories_of_Governance_and_New_Public_Management
No comments:
Post a Comment