REFORMING PUBLIC SERVICES AFTER THE CRASH: THE ROLES OF FRAMING AND HOPING
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12016 |
| Date | 01 March 2013 |
| Published date | 01 March 2013 |
| Author | LEO MCCANN |
doi: 10.1111/padm.12016
REFORMING PUBLIC SERVICES AFTER THE CRASH:
THE ROLES OF FRAMING AND HOPING
LEO MCCANN
This symposium of Public Administration explores the impact of the ‘Great Financial Crisis’ (GFC) on
public services provision and delivery. This introductory article discusses the political and media
‘framing’ and ‘counter-framing’ of what the GFC means for reforming public service bargains. The
dominant frame is that service reform and cutbacks to provision are inevitable and unavoidable.
This is contrasted with the counter-frame that the GFC is being used as ‘cover’ for ‘ideologically
driven’ reforms that policymakers would have wanted to introduce even if the crash had not
occurred. Reform processes, however, are highly context-specific and frames and counter-frames
are rhetorical and subjective. They emanate from deep-seated yet fragile assumptions about
the economic, social, and moral capacities of markets and governments, and are therefore best
understood as ‘mechanisms of hope’ rather than distinct and rational policy prescriptions.
INTRODUCTION
Without hope, reforms lose their meaning. (Brunsson 2009, p. 140)
The need to develop convincing and effective policy responses to the ‘Great Financial
Crisis’ or ‘GFC’ (Foster and Magdoff 2009) has come to dominate political discourse in
the OECD countries and beyond. How do governments, policymakers, civil servants,
media, and members of the public come to understand and take stock of the crisis and
its implications? The very acts of understanding, formulating, and publicizing responses
entails re-examining and repackaging core beliefs about ‘what works’, especially as
regards the relative merits of markets versus governments. Since the 1980s, it appeared as
if markets were in the ascendancy (Steger and Roy 2010), as market-driven reforms swept
through public administration and regulation was curtailed. But the scale and nature of
the GFC has thrown such convictions into uncertainty and confusion (Engelen et al. 2011).
Accounts of the crash itself are now numerous and diverse (Shiller 2008; Foster and
Magdoff 2009; Weitzner and Daroch 2009; Davies 2010) and this article will not provide
another overview. Instead it explores two very broad interpretations of the impact of
the GFC on public services and related frames of policy response (pro-austerity and
anti-austerity). It considers the assumptions that lie beneath both of these broad positions,
suggesting that the ‘pro-austerity’ frame and the anti-austerity ‘counter-frame’ are both
highly rhetorical and often mask complex and contradictory positions. This discussion
provides the background for the more detailed examples of post-crash reform discussed in
the symposium articles. This introductory article draws on insights from the burgeoning
literature on executive politics (Lodge and Wegrich 2012), especially as regards issues
of political ‘framing’ by which political actors attempt to set the agenda, react to crises,
apportion blame, and overall lay the ground for proposing and justifying change measures.
To propose reform, moreover, is to invest hope that improvements are possible, that
policy measures will work, and that recession turns into recovery. The article therefore
Leo McCann, The Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK.
Public Administration Vol. 91, No. 1, 2013 (5–16)
©2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148, USA.
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