Public Management Models Paper 4

Razvan Manta Alexandra-Oana Burlan

Governance

The concept of governance be it private or public, has been defined by Michalski, Miller and Stevens as the general exercise of authority, by authority meaning a system of accountability and control. Williamson further describes governance as including global and local arrangements, formal structures and informal norms and practices, and spontaneous and intentional systems of control. Particularly, corporate (private) governance has been defined as the design of institutions that induce or force management to internalize the welfare of stakeholders (Tirole, 2001). Similarly, public governance can be described as institutions to induce public managers to internalize stakeholder interests, but this concept is broader than its counterpart: according to Frederickson, it encompasses public administration, stakeholder pluralism, management within networks and legitimacy; Lynn, Heinrich and Hill have described it as a regime of laws, rules, judicial decisions, and administrative practices that constrain, prescribe and enable the provision of publicly supported goods and services through associations with agents in the public and private sectors. The most important problems that managers (governance practitioners) face can be synthesized in the following questions: is my policy successful? Is my organization effective? Does my program work?. Resolving these problems is equivalent to finding unambiguous and positive answers to the previous questions. In order to help practitioners, the policy research community seeks to answer such questions in specific policy or program contexts, using a variety of methods, including randomized experiments, quasi-experiments and cost-effectiveness analyses. Though theoretically important, less political interest is given to problems which concern governance and managements contributions to governmental outcomes. Again, these problems can be synthesized in the following questions: do the designs of policies and programs affect their performance? Does management matter and, if so, how? Are particular organizational structures better than others for accomplishing certain goals and, if so, for whom, when and where?. The successful answering of these questions can allow practitioners to find ways to replicate success or avoid failure that occurred under different circumstances, or how to improve the functioning of different programs or agencies. The democratic principle of rule-of-law (including all its dimensions: lawmaking, adjudication and institutional expression) is a starting point for analyzing governance. State institutions, as empowered by constitution, are linked to policymaking and public management.

Public Management Models Paper 4

Razvan Manta Alexandra-Oana Burlan

This can be translated to the fact that governance involves means for achieving direction, control and coordination of individuals or organizational units on behalf of their common interests. As such, a governance regime is the outcome of a dynamic process, characterized by an intrinsic logic, which involves certain aspects of collective action. Interpreting collective actions through the core logic of governance, we obtain the following set of hierarchical interactions: between (a) citizen preferences and interests expressed politically and (b) public choice expressed in enacted legislation or executive policies; between (b) public choice and (c) formal structures and processes of public agencies; between (c) the structures of formal authority and (d) discretionary organization, management, and administration; between (d) discretionary organization, management, and administration and (e) core technologies, primary work, and service transactions overseen by public agencies; between (e) primary work and (f) consequences, outcomes, outputs, or results; between (f) consequences, outcomes, outputs, or results and (g) stakeholder assessments of agency or program performance; between (g) stakeholder assessments and (a) public interests and preferences.

Considering this hierarchy, the functioning of governance can be influenced by variables found on all levels, and furthermore by the conjoint results of variables tampering with each other. As such, the most important factors are: Structural factors (such as legislated policy design elements, organizational hierarchies, and administrative procedures) provide significant explanations for the values of a broad range of dependent variables; Public management (including factors such as administrative arrangements, use of managerial tools, and management values or strategies) has demonstrable effects on subordinate levels of public administration and on governmental performance. Managerial values and strategies themselves appear to be shaped by the institutional environment, but specific managerial practices tend to be influenced by proximate resource and organizational constraints. Governance at the treatment level (including factors such as program design features, worker discretionary activity, worker beliefs and values, and administrative processes established in the field) also have significant effects on governmental performance.

Relative to governance, a subsequent are of interest and research is the management of networks in the public sector. Public policy usually develops in complex networks of public, quasi-public and private organizations. Being disposed as a network of networks system,

Public Management Models Paper 4

Razvan Manta Alexandra-Oana Burlan

instead of a highly centralized system, public administration is constrained in its governance capabilities. Building on the theoretical concepts of 'networks' and 'games', two forms of network management are identified: game management and network structuring. Four key aspects can be identified for both of these management forms: actors and their relations, resources, rules and perceptions. It is more and more accepted that public policy is a result of an interaction process between numerous actors, of which only a few are government bodies. These interactions constitute a number of networks, all linked together, within which policies develop and are implemented. Though networks are defined in various ways, one major element sticks out everywhere: long-term relation patterns between dependent actors within which interactions take place. The policy network is the more or less stable context within which separate games about policy decisions take place. Moving on to the concept of game, we can define it as a continuing, consecutive series of actions between different actors, conducted according to and guided by formal and informal rules, and which arises around issues or decisions in which actors have an interest. Policies lead and shape the outcomes of said games, like a frame and a referee at the same time. The cumulative effect from all the separate games leads to the development of specific patterns. In this way, policy networks arise around policy issues. Then in its turn the network forms the more permanent framework for subsequent games. It becomes evident how closely linked networks and games are. We will further elaborate on this problem, using Gidders structuration theory. The network forms the context within which games develop. It provides the resources and rules which are used by the actors in the games. The network is the game-keeper and the game-world, so to speak, but it does not determine its outcome. The outcome and/or the policy are after all dependent on the strategies of the players. In their turn, the outcomes of games can, in the long term, change the characteristics of the network. Actors can, for example, influence the rule structure of the network by interpreting the rules in a particular way. The network is not only changed by conscious efforts on the part of actors. Unintended effects of behavior on the part of actors may also result in' changes at network level. The network is reproduced and changed in games. Thus, the observation that networks are of a stable nature means, in fact, that the actors repeatedly confirm the distribution of the resources, the prevailing rules and the existing perceptions in actual games. Total stability is, theoretically speaking, highly unlikely. Rules, for example, are mostly ambiguous. They require an interpretation from actors in actual games and this contributes to the change in their content.