IPMN Newsletter 2005
Number 1
PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM
The Newsletter of the International Public Management Network
IPMN NEWSLETTER No. 1 2005
In this Issue:
· Steven Kelman at Harvard University is the new editor of IPMJ
· Outstanding New IPMJ Board Members
· How to subscribe to the International Public Management Journal
· Report on the IPMN 2004 Brazil Conference by L. R. Jones
· Report on the IPMN 2004 Brazil Conference by Eugenio Caperchione
· Report on the IPMN 2004 Brazil Conference by Turo Virtanen
NEW EDITOR FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
IPMJ has a new editor, Dr. Steven Kelman, Professor in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (steve_kelman@harvard.edu). Please submit manuscripts for review for IPMJ to Professor Kelman. IPMN owes much thanks to outgoing founding IPMJ editor Professor Fred Thompson, Atkinson Graduate School of Management, Willamette University. Professor Thompson established IPMJ as the premier journal in the world in the area of international public management reform and change. We know Professor Kelman will carry on the tradition of scholarly excellence established by Professor Thompson and his editorial team.
NEW MEMBERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL EDITORIAL BOARD
As a result of the efforts of new IPMJ Editor Steven Kelman we are pleased
to welcome some highly distinguished new members to the editorial board
of the journal. This list of new board members includes the following:
John Brehm, University of Chicago
Michel Crozier, France
Armando Cunha, Brazilian School of Business
Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University
Henrich Greve, Norwegian School of Management
Roderick Kramer, Stanford University
James March, Stanford University
Johan Olsen, University of Oslo
Karl Weick, University of Michigan
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REPORT ON THE IPMN 2004 BRAZIL RESEARCH CONFERENCE
IPMN held its biennial research conference on November 17-19 in Rio de
Janeiro hosted by he Brazilian School of Business and Getulio Vargas Foundation
(FGV/EBAPE). IPMN is grateful for the wonderful reception and management
of the conference by the staff and faculty of EBAPE, particularly our
colleagues Eduardo Marques.and Professor Armando Cunha. The
conference theme was, "Third Generation Reform in Brazil and Other
Nations: Achieving Governmental, Social and Economic Realignment."
Third generation reform was defined by Professor Larry Jones in his plenary
address reproduced below. Following this text are two reports on the conference
written by rapporteurs Dr. Eugenio Caperchione, Professor, Bocconi School
of Management and Professor/Vice Director, Department of Economics Studies,
University of Modena and Reggio, Italy and Dr. Turo Virtanen, Professor
and Department Head, Department of Political Science, University of Helsinki,
Finland.
Third Generation Reform in Brazil and Other Nations: Achieving Governmental, Social and Economic Realignment, L. R Jones
How is reform to be implemented once a mature stage of change is reached?
This issue is important for all nations and particularly Brazil and Latin
American nations. How is policy continuity best achieved once political
parties
sponsoring change leave office? What are the sources available to fund
continued
implementation of reforms? How do local and state governments continue
to
implement reform after national government support changes or fades? What
criteria
should be applied to determine which reforms should be continued and which
should be terminated? How are a variety of economic and social changes
instituted
under a succession of reforms to be coordinated and aligned to achieve
a
common purpose, e.g., economic development, environmental protection,
social
equity? What is the role of international lenders and other international
institutions in this process? Papers addressing these and related issues
are welcomed
for review for presentation at the IPMN 2004 international research conference.
To expand on the definition of third generation reform, in the first
phase of
comprehensive reform comes the articulation of a new policy and management
direction (public management policy making in Michael Barzelay's framework;
see
International Public Management Journal 6/3 2003: 251-281), typically
but not
always issued by a newly elected government. Passage/enactment of policy
and
budgets followed articulation and dialogue. Then, new policies and management
approaches were implemented. This is only the start of the implementation
process but the end of the first generation of reform. The second generation
consists of following through -- steering of continued implementation
by the government that articulated and sponsored the reforms.
The third generation begins when the original sponsors leave office,
often but not always at the point of transition to another government.
At this point it is up to a new government (of
the same political party or party coalition as the original policy reform
sponsors or a different party) to decide, enact and then begin to implement
modifications to the original reforms. Here is where continuity and other
problems
arise, where tough choices are necessary on policy priorities, spending,
enforcement, responsibility sharing, etc. When national governments change,
critical
questions must be addressed, e.g., which policies should continue, which
should be modified and how, which should be terminated? Answers to these
questions
lead to another set of issues, e.g., what were the net benefits of the
previous regime of reform and how were they distributed? Who paid and
who benefited?
What are the likely effects if the new regime articulates a fairly radical
departure from the reforms of the previous government? How do state and
local
governments that have enlisted and been paid to participate in the first
and
second generations of reform deal with such change? (One answer is state
and
local governments continue to endorse programs that fit with their policy
priorities and that continue to be funded by the national government,
but drop
everything else.) Where changes in national-local government relationships
occur
accompanied by other changes (e.g., policy/program termination), who loses
benefits? What level of government or what other entity takes up the slack
if
programs/services are discontinued? In this conception of the phases of
public sector
and government reform, the toughest problems are those faced by a number
of
stakeholders in the third generation of change.
Many places in the world are now at the point of third generation reform and, consequently, must face sets of questions that go far beyond the debate over whether NPM persists, whether it constituted a paradigm shift and other issues often raised in public management reform dialogue. (L. R. Jones, 2004).
REPORT ON THE IPMN 2004 BRAZIL RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Eugenio Caperchione, Bocconi School of Management and Modena and Reggio Emilia University, Italy.
IMPN members met at mid-November 2004 in Rio de Janeiro for two and a half days to discuss "Third Generation Reform in Brazil and Other Nations: Achieving Governmental, Social and Economic Realignment" During the conference 10 papers were presented. Because many of them will be submitted to IPMJ or other journals, interested people need only to wait a while before reading the final drafts incorporating suggestions received by authors at the conference. Nevertheless, papers are not the only relevant and enriching aspect of a scientific meeting, at least when participating people like to debate openly about the various issues raised by the different authors. This is indeed the case with IPMN events. Thus it is worthwhile to sketch some of the main elements of the conference dialogue. Inevitably, what follows is a personal choice about what is significant as distilled from a lot of information, biased by the rapporteur's personal interests.
Most of the conference papers dealt with reform generation and implementation
in Brasil and Latin America; a few of them on the other hand, offered
a view on different European and Asian countries. Presenters, discussants
and scholars in the audience concentrated on some key issues:
· The reform generation process;
· The role of politicians and élites in a reform guidance;
· The external or environmental conditions necessary to start and
implement reform;
· The choice between central control and local administration autonomy,
and its impact on reform success;
· The behavior of incoming governments towards initiated reform
processes, and their political need to formulate a new reform agenda.
A number of examples were provided, which clarified that every time a
new government comes into office, a high risk exists of interrupting ongoing
reforms.
IPMN members discussed deeply, so as to identify strategies, actions or
techniques attempting to make reform programs less dependent on the political
support and less vulnerable to the changes of administration. Linked to
this, a significant part of the discussion concerned the possible differentiation
of reforms on the base of their generation, so that 1st, 2nd and 3rd (or
even n-) generation reforms might be identified and differentiated.
Following this logic, first generation reforms would consist of an effort
to translate in documents and plans a reform strategy. Sometimes the reform
stops here, especially if managers lack the necessary skills and competence.
We may then see a second generation of reform once a reform is implemented:
agreements are made, new services are delivered, (new) people are (better)
served, privatization or other managerial innovations occur.
Finally, third generation reforms may be represented where a new government
puts new or revised policies and programs in place, choosing a balance
between the continuity of previously articulated (1st generation) and
implemented (2nd generation) reforms and the need to build and communicate
its own reform agenda (L. R. Jones, 2004). This is clearly a new field
for research, since up to now academics have directed much of their energies
towards research on first and to some extent second generation reforms,
giving less attention to the third.
Some other critical questions were debated. A first we investigated the
nature of our research object: what is a "reform" itself? Shall
we consider a change in the law as a reform, or is this only a pre-condition,
sometimes rather irrelevant?
The role of managers in conceiving, implementing and finalizing reforms
also was analyzed. Is managerial capability the central resource for a
reform's success, or do political commitment and support play a more significant
role?
These were some of the questions about which the audience debated, and
a number of possible answers emerged at the end of a highly heuristic
discussion.
It is useful to list some of the suggestions that were (more or less)
agreed on about how to ensure a higher success of reform (of whatever
generation):
a) A first need is the for commitment of high-level politicians, a visible
and convinced support of key people in a government - sometimes even the
president and his staff. This appears to be much more necessary in those
countries with younger or less stable democracies and a less skilled bureaucracy.
In these cases, only the perception that "the president himself"
is fighting for a reform may convey enough energy to effectively support
reform;
b) Nothing good can be done unless a great investment is made in human
capital. The characteristics of public management are such that it requires
both skilled and educated people inside and outside public administration
borders to press for reform. Consequently, a plan of long run investments
is needed. Quite evidently public managers are in need of continuous education,
since the phrase "Let the managers manage" should more correctly
be stated as "Let skilled managers manage." In the view of J.
P. Silveira, the former Secretary for Planning and Strategic Investments
for the federal government of Brasil, managerial capability is a dramatic
aspect in many countries; the inadequacy of managers, he said, explains
some major reform failures;
c) In some situations, a careful selection of projects can be the way
to implement a program of presidential priority projects. This was for
instance the case of "Brasil in Action" (Brazil em Ação),
a program of 42 priorities started in 1996 by the F.H. Cardoso government.
These projects eased the communication with citizens and other stakeholders,
made it clear that the president himself was highly engaged, while concentrating
the limited energies of the best-skilled managers. Once they were actually
implemented and positive results were achieved, they served as a platform
for further reform steps. Nevertheless, presidential priorities are only
a start, since they do not cover the whole of an administration;
d) Priorities can be set following two alternative paths (E. Bardach).
On one hand, from a technical point of view reformers should look for
correct sequences of interventions, so as to build platforms. The existence
of property rights or a shared view and a general consent on the rule
of law can, for example, provide a platform upon which to base democratic
elections, privatization or freedom of press. On the other hand, politicians
want to build momentum, so they tend to anticipate easy tasks or popular
and widely supported reforms, while postponing themselves against problems
that might magnify errors. They can also profit from modularization, trying
to split a reform into independent actions, as well as from isomorphizing.
Clearly, the ideal managerial sequence does not necessarily fit with the
ideal political sequence: trade-offs and risks have then to be identified
and discussed;
e) A deep knowledge of other countries' reform history is a relevant asset
for everybody in the field: most of the mistakes have already been made,
most of the obstacles have become apparent, some of the possible solutions
have been discussed or even tried. This is especially relevant for those
willing to promote and implement reforms having a high possibility to
survive government change. The existence of transition mechanisms, and
particularly any joint vision between outgoing and incoming ministers,
can contribute very much to the survival of some pieces of reform (Silveira);
f) As for any other program, the greater the detail in defining some intermediate
expected results, the higher the possibility to timely identify deviations
or inconsistencies and to introduce corrections or amendments;
g) Time is a crucial variable to manage, as many papers emphasized. Speed
is relevant but it cannot become a value per se; only rarely can difficult
reforms be realized very quickly. So, time should not be wasted, and a
cautious government should start with its reform agenda on the first day
of its mandate. On the other hand, the shortage of time can lead, or at
least can contribute, to a reform failure (García);
h) Financial issues and policies also are very critical. L. Jones argued
that reformer's budgets clarify the relevance that a Government or a Parliament
actually assigns to specific reforms. Ad hoc "ring-fencing"
mechanisms can prevent undesired use of resources (Barzelay-Shvets). In
this regard, during the debate it was noted that most politicians tend
to pay little attention to this aspect, and that external communication
only occasionally reports on expected or actual costs. This may be due
to a fear of the possible criticism of the population, once this information
goes public (R. Laughlin).
In addition to these points, some suggestions about research emerged
for our network dialogue as a scientific community.
The first one is methodological, and concerns comparisons. K. Lüder
pointed out the need to collect a very large information set on a single
country before comparing it to other countries. Comparisons, he explained,
are a very difficult and time-spending piece of work, and they should
not be limited in scope, investigating only a phenomenon's surface. On
the same point, D. Klingner noted that, "You have to study a language
if you want to study a country." A country's language explains its
culture, its habits, its ways of thinking, so researchers have to live
in that country, and they had better speak its language to understand
it. I would add that comparisons require the direct analysis of original
documents and materials, since every translation, notwithstanding its
quality, risks offering a simplified and inappropriate picture.
A second methodological remark concerned our labeling of phenomena. Because
we deal with public management, we must never forget to stick to these
two words. R. Mussari invited IPMNers to go back to the emphasis on the
word "public" in public management, i.e., to re-concentrate
on the tasks of delivering services to the public -- the key stakeholders
in government -- and on the specific aspects of public administration/management
that differentiates it from other institutions and sectors.
A third recommendation to scholars regards the way in which we communicate. As K. Schedler noted, the results of our studies are sometimes misinterpreted by politicians and managers. This can in some cases be intentional; nevertheless, we are all tasked to refine our communication about policies and instruments if we intend to make a significant contribution to public management reform.
A last suggestion (at least in this brief personal selection) refers to human capital and its role in public sector innovations. If we consider on one hand the tremendous relevance of education in enhancing a country's opportunities, and we think about the difficulty of financing comprehensive educational programs, we should resolve to pay more attention to this problem. Regional development banks, L. Jones noted, often look for a return on their investments, and tend to finance self-repaying infra-structural projects. They might be more willing to support major educational projects if scholars could make clearer how to measure the long-term return on human capital investments.
REPORT ON THE IPMN 2004 BRAZIL RESEARCH CONFERENCE
Turo Virtanen, University of Helsinki
'The Same X Fits All?' - Dialogue on generations of public management reform
Third Generation Reform in Brazil and Other Nations: Achieving Governmental, Social and Economic Realignment - Rio de Janeiro, November 17-19, 2004
Public management can be understood both as a field of research and one of the key activities of all public organizations. The former perspective sees public management as a multidisciplinary scholarly work largely protected the autonomy of scientific community, while the latter sets public management open to policy making with varying intensity. Depending on the priorities of different targets within the political agenda, public management policy may constitute a crucial part of the Government's policy making and be clearly outlined in official policy papers - or be nearly non-existent in terms of political publicity and agenda setting. Whether public management is politically interesting or not, depends on its effects on political mobilization. This is partly determined by how urgent and severe the problems of public management (e.g., corruption) are considered among the actors of political power. Public managers and other administrators as well as the researchers of public management have a natural interest in questions of public management. In many cases, their political power is not sufficient for the political mobilization (and should it ever be?). In this sense, public management policy making is only partly in the control of the professional community of public management.
The macro-political environment has many effects on how we understand the generations of public management reform, the central topic of the Rio conference of the International Public Management Network. The theme, introduced by Prof. Michael Barzelay and Prof. Larry Jones in Rio, is exceptionally interesting, because it reveals how the role of public management may be seen in wider society. It is true that the traditional rhetoric of goal-setting for administrative modernization (the first generation) has been followed, in many countries, by instrumentalization and actual implementation of those reforms or part of them. New situations have emerged, however, when new governments have taken over and the continuity of reform policies has become obscure. The Rio discussions did not neglect these important questions. For example, the stronger role of political science in post-NPM research was seen as an implication of the political change in the context of public management.
Political developments in Brazil constitute an excellent environment for discussion about generations of public management reform. Brazil in Action, a policy program for reforming public management in 1996-98 under the presidency of F.H. Cardoso, was followed by "public management as a non-policy field in Lula's administration" (as Dr. Regina Silvia Pacheco put it). This may not be a surprise if public management is understood as part of a more comprehensive political program. As the discussions in Rio showed, the goal of macroeconomic stability emphasized by Cardoso's administration assumed new structures, processes and leadership capacity within public administration. It is not obvious that every government should have the same policies or priorities in a set of different policy domains, of which public management is only one. This is also related to the leadership and organization of reform design and implementation. High priority is often understood to entail a strong role of the head of the Government. However, if there is a policy change, too centralized an organization may cause overload in the decision-making required by the implementation of the new priorities. Implementers are not always trusted.
The academics and practitioners of public management tend to assume - or hope - that there is continuity in public management policy making, since the goal-achievement is hard work and requires often more than a few cycles of elections. Continuity assumes learning, both individually and organizationally, and even inter-organizationally within the set of organizations of the whole public sector. However, in developing criteria for evaluation of good public management transformation through a change of government, this task must address that the practice of public management reform appears to be more like waves of relatively independent successes and failures rather than a well-structured cycle of generations of learning. Even though the criteria may prove to be the same, their ranking and operationalization as well as the set of actors may change in part relative to the extent that accumulation of information turns out to be difficult or nearly impossible. Politicians may make mistakes - mistakes defined by the goals that they actually would like to accomplish - in not prioritizing public management higher or in supporting specific goals and instrumentalization. In this case, it is the obligation of professionals of public management to try to revise the agenda and policies. But it may turn out that politician choice is rational and transparent enough - they just do not value the development of public administration in the same way as professionals do under the particular reform circumstances (there may be more important goals). This is the hard case, but if there is anything left of democratic decision-making, this choice is to be respected. This aspect, often forgotten, was pointed out in Rio discussions.
The design of public management policies assumes theoretical aspects that are often hidden and taken-for-granted. For example, assumptions of public choice theories are often behind policies emphasizing privatization, contracting-out, performance management, service to the customer etc., and many reform programs remind one of another. Even if few scholars and other observers think that 'one size fits all' in reform, in practice the commodification of public management and consultancy often proves something else. It is easier to sell one product and stretch it over variety of forms than to tailor to individual solutions. The necessary homogeneity of a set of governmental organizations may strengthen this approach in one state. The control of governmental policies and budget assumes similarity or at least isomorphic solutions. But political systems and cultures of countries may have profound differences to which one should pay attention. One of the most passionate discussions in Rio was fueled from a disagreement on the issue of whether 'one size fits all' is a valid observation. Perception and opinion on this issue is inexhaustible for every thoughtful mind. Somehow it seems that the lessons of contingency theory, a mainstream approach in organization studies in the 1970s, have been forgotten.
In the last session, Larry Jones presented a hypothesis: one cannot find
mature third generation reforms anywhere. In a way, this claim conveys
the important message that public management reforms have to adapt to
political conditions. If the professionals of public management do not
foresee the ruptures of forthcoming public management policy making and
blur the gaps with legitimate institutional narratives, there may be a
'war between generations." It may be that the continuity of reform
processes presupposes argumentative structures where 'the same X fits
all' whatever the X may be. Free advice: in order to cover it all, try
XXXL.
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Last Modified: January 14, 2005