The Succession of Policy Termination

Published date01 March 1993
Date01 March 1993
DOI10.1177/014473949301300102
AuthorJustin Greenwood
Teaching Public
Administration:
Spring 1993 voJ.XIll no.1
pp.3-9
The Succession
of
Policy
Termination
JUSTIN GREENWOOD
School
of
Public
Administration
and Law,
Robert
Gordon University,
Aberdeen
THE
LOST
TRIBE OF
THE
TERMINATION
SCHOLARS
One
of
the
most
promising
process
issues in
the
Public
Administration
literature
to
emerge
in
the
1970's -
that
of
Termination,
or
the
occurrence
of
an ending
-has all
but
disappeared
from
the
pages
of
public policy journals and
texts.
The
subject
remains
largely
where
it
was
last
left
by
de
Leon, in a
path-
breaking
article
of
1978.
Apart
from an
article
by Hogwood and
Peters
(1982),
and a book by
Kaufman
(1985) which argued
that
termination
was largely a
matter
of
chance,
the
few
contributions
to
the
subject
made
since
1978
have
either
marginally
refined
or
adopted
the
legacy
left
by
de
Leon.
In
the
UK,
the
subject
has
been
left
to
the
efforts
of
no
more
than
a handful
of
authors
(Hogwood and Gunn, 1984; Hogwood and
Peters,
1985; Hogwood, 1992).
There
remain
only a
very
few
case
studies
of
termination,
and
our
understanding
of
the
conditions
under
which
termination
occurs
remains
at
best
hazy.
The
promise
of
the
termination
literature
appeared
considerable
from
the
rash
of
first
publications in
the
1970's. If
termination
could
be
effected
to,
for
example,
an
organization
or
programme
which had outlived
its
usefulness
then
the
opportunity
cost
savings
appeared
considerable.
Scarce
public funds could
be
diverted
elsewhere
to
areas
of
greater
need; tasks could be fulfilled in a
much
shorter
time
span through
the
imposition
of
clearly
understood deadlines,
and
citizens
would
benefit
much sooner
than they
otherwise
would have done.
These
were
themes
which would, in hindsight,
take
on an increasing
saliency
as
the
decades
of
the
1980's and 1990's unfolded,
with
their
emphasis upon
cost
consciousness and
citizen/customer
service.
Indeed,
the
new approaches
to
public
sector
management,
with emphasis upon
procedures
such as
performance
measurement,
have
themselves
provided considerable
opportunity
to
increase
the
rate
of
termination
of
programmes
and organizations known
to
be
unsuccessful.
The
lack
of
progress and
apparent
interest
with
the
dynamics
of
the
subject
matter
to
date
is
therefore
curious. The 1980's and 1990's have
been
replete
with
examples
of
attempted
termination
in
the
public
sector,
whether
of
organizations,
policies
or
programmes,
arising from
the
restructuring
of
the
public domain.
For
example,
the
1980
Pliatzky
report
alone
listed
30
executive
agencies,
211
advisory bodies and a
variety
of
judicial
tribunals
to
be
abolished
as
part
of
the
attempt
to
withdraw from 'big
government'
(Chapman, 1991).
Local
authorities
have
been
abolished,
Development
Corporations
have
come
to
the
end
of
their
planned lives,
established
public
corporations
have
transformed,
planning
establishments
have
withered
-all, seemingly,
unnoticed
by public
administrators
apparently
reluctant
to
use
the
termination
literature.
Governments,
it
would
seem,
have
been
anxious
to
achieve
hard
results
without
taking
the
trouble
to
find
out
the
conditions under which
termination
might
best
be
achieved.
At
the
other
end of
the
scale,
organizations
threatened
with
termination
have
not
sought
information
about
the
strategies
which
might
be
3

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