Public Policy and Administration

vLex
Publisher:
Sage Publications, Inc.
Publication date:
2021-09-06
ISBN:
0952-0767

Issue Number

Latest documents

  • Crisis decision-making inside the core executive: Rationality, bureaucratic politics, standard procedures and the COVID-19 lockdown

    The article explains how the unprecedented pandemic management decision to lock down the country came about, using the case of Norway and drawing on unique interview material from political and administrative executives. Urgency and precaution were the government’s primary considerations in March 2020, with proportionality and due process only peripheral decision premises. Voices of moderation were drowned out at critical moments to pave the way for a lockdown. Moreover, Norway’s lockdown decision lacked distinct and official agency, with none of the key actors able to say precisely when, where and by whom this decision of unprecedented size and scope had been taken. An interpretation using Graham Allison’s analytical models shows that the rational policy model most accurately captures the case. The suggested implication is that when senior political executives take active control of an ultra-high-stakes process, decisions are unlikely to be the product of political resultants or organisational output.

  • Municipal performance management during the covid pandemic

    The COVID-19 pandemic brought a major shift in governmental operations, including decision-making processes. In the midst of an unprecedented crisis, public managers had to make rapid decisions within an uncertain landscape and ambiguous timeline. This exploratory study aims to understand how the pandemic impacted public managers’ behavior as they attempted to better cope with the crisis. In particular, we focus on the impact of the pandemic on performance management practices in municipal governments, examining a range of components, including data analysis and use. Our cross-sectional analysis of 103 line managers from North Carolina municipal departments finds that local government managers increased their use of performance management practices during the pandemic compared to the previous (non-pandemic) year. The increased use was amplified when existing performance information practices were established before the pandemic. These exploratory findings contribute to a better understanding of the role of performance information in decision-making during a crisis and to performance management scholarship more broadly.

  • ‘This is just a little flu’: analysing medical populist discourses on the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil

    This paper explores the concept of medical populism to examine how Brazil has responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. Recognising the centrality of discourses in framing health policy, we employ Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to identify and analyse (1) what were the main discursive frames that characterised medical populism in Brazil’s Covid-19 crisis? and (2) how were these frames constructed, legitimated and reproduced in discursive meanings, structures and schemes of argumentation? Our study is an effort to inform the literature about medical populism and, more broadly, public health policymaking, administration and governance of health crises. Specifically, we seek to uncover the underlying discursive features of medical populism and expose how they frame public health policy. Our case study shows ample evidence that the main discursive frames underpinning medical populism during the Covid-19 crisis in Brazil reflected the most widely agreed attributes of populism as a strategic political discourse, notably an antagonistic depiction of the health problem, overpoliticisation and moral interpretation of political actors. However, our findings challenge some theoretical assumptions of extant conceptualisations of medical populism, thus providing greater insights into the concept of medical populism by demonstrating how this type of political discourse may incorporate different discursive meanings, structures and schemes of argumentation into its populist repertoire. This can help us anticipate patterns of action and narratives for preparing responses to future public health emergencies in an era of increasing post-truth politics, as populist discourses seem likely to influence public policy and governance for some time.

  • Stakeholder involvement as a form of accountability? Perspectives on the accountability function of stakeholder bodies in Dutch public agencies

    This article analyses how managers and officials within public agencies perceive the accountability function of stakeholder bodies. Many agencies have established formal accountability relationships with societal stakeholders by introducing stakeholder bodies, such as client councils and user panels. The academic literature has however debated whether and how stakeholder bodies can reflect a full accountability mechanism. Based on original qualitative interviews with 25 representatives from nine Dutch agencies, this study distinguishes five different perspectives that agency managers and officials have about the accountability function of stakeholder bodies: a control perspective, an institutional perspective, a managerial perspective, learning perspective, and a reputational perspective. Agency managers or officials do not often describe stakeholder bodies as a form of accountability, but their experiences and perceptions include elements of accountability. Rather than strengthening control and scrutiny, stakeholder bodies are perceived as an accountability mechanism that relates to a mixture of agency demands and motives.

  • The visualization of public information: Describing the use of narrative infographics by U.S. municipal governments

    Narrative infographics present information in a visual, easy-to-understand format and are organized such that the information conveys a story. Public administrators are increasingly using narrative infographics to disseminate information, yet research has yet to investigate exactly how this technological form of storytelling is being used. To fill this gap, we use narrative theory to guide our exploration to uncover how U.S. municipal governments are using narrative infographics. We analyzed 322 infographics using visual content analysis, coding each infographic by government function, policy area, usability factor, and narrative elements. Our research shows that narrative infographics are widely used at the municipal level, most notably for informing the public about various issues but more specifically for communicating information about planning, evaluation and risk. Public health and safety were most frequently addressed by municipal government infographics. Furthermore, we discuss implications of this research for public affairs research, education and practice.

  • Coercive and mimetic isomorphic mechanisms for service provision: The creation of nonprofit organizations in Mexico before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

    Nonprofit organizations represent diverse efforts of collective action and service provision, and have for some time been collaborators to public governance systems in developed and developing economies. In this article, we contribute to the limited empirical and analytical study in the field of public policy and administration about the operational environments that enable or constrain nonprofits in the provision of public goods and services. The operational environment for organized civil society, namely for nonprofits, includes the combination of their regulatory, political, and funding contexts. By analyzing the purposes of 296 new nonprofits registered between 2016 to 2020 in Mexico, the empirical context of our inquiry, we find that as resources have declined, new nonprofits adopt isomorphic mechanisms by resembling their purposes to the services the government intends to support. Nonprofits have also responded to the pandemic by focusing more than before on areas related to health, social assistance, and funeral services. The study contributes to bigger questions about the relationships between and balance across the responsibilities of governments and nonprofits, including during the COVID pandemic, and to the understanding of nonprofits as service providers in public governance.

  • Why are organisational professionals expanding in the Swedish public sector? The role of accountability

    Recent research shows that new types of high-skilled administrators, what we in this article label organisational professionals, have amplified their presence in public sector organisations in relation to other types of public sector employees. Our purpose is to analyse how organisational accountability can be seen as a driver behind the expansion of organisational professionals. Intensified political and administrative pressures seem to be driving this process, but there also seems to be internal turfs in which the different parts of the government administration seek to hold each other accountable, a process possibly amplified by professionalising ambitions of the organisational professionals. The article concludes that the bureaucratising effect of accountability demands ought to be highlighted more in critical research of accountability. The study is based on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with public sector professionals in Sweden from different policy sectors and government levels.

  • Exploring the influence of Islamic governance and religious regimes on sustainability and resilience planning: A study of public administration in Muslim-majority countries

    This research delves into the relatively uncharted territory of Islamic governance and its impact on strategic sustainability and climate resilience planning in Muslim-majority countries. It scrutinizes the role of religious regimes in public administration and policy-making within these nations. The study employs a case study methodology, focusing on 11 strategically chosen countries within the Islamic world, and evaluates their respective climate resilience and sustainable development objectives. Forty-five reports, plans, and government documents from 2017 to 2023 are analyzed using a two-cycle coding process facilitated by software. The paper makes three significant contributions. Firstly, it addresses the academic call for understanding the positive governance of sustainable development and resilience planning in Muslim-majority countries, specifically focusing on the role of religious regimes. Secondly, it reframes the general understanding of governance in public administration related to resilience planning in Islamic countries. Lastly, it offers an understanding of religious regimes to analyze climate resilience planning. The analysis reveals several thematic categories, each representing a different resilience and sustainability planning governance aspect. The study’s results suggest that nations with the most effective plans tend to have robust economies, comprehensive educational institutions, pluralistic societies, inclusive governments, and liberal religious regimes, all of which positively influence sustainable development and climate resilience planning.

  • Religion and representative bureaucracy: Does religion guide administrative discretion?

    In this paper we seek to understand how religion influences discretion in a developing fragile society: Palestine. Drawing on a recent review of the religion and public administration literature and the theory of representative bureaucracy, we ask: Does active representation on behalf of a religious identity exist? And if so, what does it look like? We explore four different possible manifestations, including none at all. In other words, this is a study of how religiosity influences civil servant behaviour in instances of discretion. Using original small-n in-person survey data, we find active representation by a majority of mid-level civil servants on behalf of a religious identity; we find evidence of religious service being underpinned by public service motivation and by pro-social motivation. Others are guided by traditional Weberian bureaucratic values while others are guided by what they perceive to be the religious foundation of the bureaucracy.

  • Religion, spirituality, faith and public administration: A literature review and outlook

    This article originates from the consideration that religion, spirituality and faith affect public administration, its configuration and its workings. Religion, spirituality, and faith are important explanatory factors and part of explanatory frameworks for several fields of inquiry in the field of public administration. Specifically, no literature review has been conducted so far about what has been written on the relationship between religion, spirituality and faith, and public administration. This study aims to fill this gap through a literature review of scholarly publications between 1960-2020. On this basis, the article identifies themes of research at the micro-, meso- and macro-level (that is, the level of individuals/people, organizations, and administrative systems respectively) about the manifold relations between religion and public administration.

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