GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS: EFFECTS. CHANGES AND NORMATIVE FOUNDATIONS

Transcription

1 GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS: EFFECTS. CHANGES AND NORMATIVE FOUNDATIONS

2 Library of Public Policy and Public Administration Volume 5 General Editor: DICK W.P. RUITER Faculty of Public Administration and Public Policy, University oftwente, Enschede, The Netherlands The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.

3 GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS: EFFECTS, CHANGES AND NORMATIVE FOUNDATIONS Edited by Hendrik Wagenaar Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration, Leiden University, The Netherlands SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

4 A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Printed on acid-free paper AII Rights Reserved 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2000 Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 2000 No part ofthe material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.

5 CONTENTS Preface Hendrik Wagenaar, Editor References 1 7 Part I Institutional Change Institutional crises and reforms in policy sectors 9 Arjen Boin and Paul 't Hart 1. Introduction 9 2. Identifying institutional crises The development of institutional crises From crises to reforms? Conclusions References 29 Institutional change of welfare states Empirical reality, theoretical obstacles 33 Romke van der Veen, Willem Trommel and Bert de Vroom 1. Introduction The character of welfare state change: retrenchment versus restructuring The reform of the Dutch social security system Institutional change of the Dutch welfare state Conclusion References 52 The interplay of institutional sectors Negotiating policy change in the Dutch welfare state 55 Anton Hemerijck 1. A Dutch miracle? Negotiated change in a 'tightly coupled' welfare state The Dutch disease The resurgence of organized wage moderation The crisis of inactivity From fighting unemployment to increasing participation Lessons from the Dutch experience References 73

6 VI Part II Testing Institutional Theory Dedicated followers of fashion Program emulation at Dutch universities Jeroen Huisman 1. Introduction 2. Previous findings 3. Research question 4. Institutional theory 5. Isomorphic processes in higher education 6. Research strategy 7. Explaining the growth: differences between leader and followers 8. Curricular change in theology programs 9. Explaining the program growth: some considerations 10. Late adopters are worse off in terms of enrolments 11. Late adopters are (relatively) of poor quality 12. Late adopters are more often confronted with profound changes 13. Conclusions 14. References Constitutional change in the European Union Parliament's impact on the reform of the codecision procedure Bernard Steunenberg 1. Introduction 2. Reforming the codecision procedure 3. Analyzing the choice between different procedures 4. Different game forms for codecision 5. Comparative constitutional analysis 6. Parliament's practice on codecision 7. Conclusions 8. References 9. Appendix: Solutions to the different games Part III Normative Foundations of Government Institutions Legitimate governance within the state Barbel Dorbeck-Jung and Huib de Jong 1. Introduction 2. Pragmatism 3. Governance in the state 4. Legitimacy 5. Summary and conclusion 6. References

7 CONTENTS vii The Procrustean Bed Of The Rational Organization The works of Taylor, Weber and Fayol revisited 129 Petra Schreurs 1. Introduction Rationality and Efficiency Taylor, Weber and Fayol Frederick Taylor Max Weber Henri Fayol The rational model of organization: Procrustes at work? References 143 Oedipus in the Welfare Office Practice, discourse and identity in public administration 147 Hendrik Wagenaar and Rogier Hartendorp 1. Introduction: the problem of narrati ve knowing The Problem of Narrative Analysis 1: the nature of narrative meaning The Problem of narrative analysis 2: the indexicality of everyday human discourse Discourse Analysis The Narrative Construction of Meaning in Public Administration: the Case of Jack Conclusion: Practice, Discourse and Identity References 176 Part IV Institutional Design Cultural bias and framing wicked problems A comparative analysis of structuring the car mobility problem by three institutes for parliamentarian technology assessment 179 John Grin and Robert Hoppe 1. Introduction Research design and theoretical framework Car mobility problems go through the ta-machine: so many institutes, so many ta's Cultural bias in ta-reports: towards an explanation Conclusions References 198 Institutional change and implementation A dynamic implementation-study of the Dutch General Administrative Law Act 201 Gerrit Dijkstra and Frans Jorna 1. Introduction The Awb Administrative agencies 204

8 Vlll 4. The dynamics of implementation: implementation-styles Faltering implementation: the Housing Grants Agency Conclusion References 214 Organizing Accountability: From Best Practices to Dilemmas in Design 217 Mark van Twist 1. Introduction Accountability between paper and practice What are the dilemmas in design of the accountability process? Dealing with Dilemmas in Organizing Accountability: Arrangements Conclusion: from best practices to dilemmas in design References 232 Design in Context: Applying Institutional Analysis to Social Designing 235 Arco Timmermans 1. Introduction Perspectives on institutions and designing The case of telecommunications policy redesign Viability, design principles, and change potential The viability of telecommunications policy redesign Institutional analysis, design, and normative implications Acknowledgements References 248 Biography 251 Index 255

9 HENDRIK WAGENAAR, EDITOR PREFACE In the last decade we have witnessed a profound transformation of the institutional landscape in which governments operate. Under the influence of a series of diverse and wide-ranging developments, such as the internationalization of capital markets, increasing interconnectedness as a result of rapidly developing computer and transportation technology, the creation of a common currency in Europe, and the increasing autonomy of citizens, national governments have seen both their position and functions eroded. The changes in the place and functioning of national governments can be summarized as a twofold loosening of traditional institutional boundaries: I) those between levels of government, and 2) those between traditional government actors. For example, it is quite common now that national policy (such as for example the policy toward pig farming in the Netherlands) is strongly influenced by European guidelines (in this case on nitrate-levels in the soil). Even local governments in the Netherlands have to reckon with European guidelines, such as for example fair competition guidelines in the awarding of building contracts. With regard to actors, national governments now share the stage with a range of policy actors such as special interest groups, professional organizations, employers organizations, unions, businesses, and a range of so called middle-range organizations that are part of what is known as civic society. This loosening of boundaries and interpenetration of spheres of influence has resulted in large changes in the way the work of government is done. Policy making now takes place in complex networks, in intensive interaction with a range of actors and levels of government. Government has gradually turned into governance. All these changes have led to a reconsideration of a number of cherished truths and certainties in the realm of government. For example, if governing no longer is the exclusive domain of the state, what then is the relation of the state towards society? And, by extension, what is the role and importance of the institutions of civic society? If the national government is no longer the central actor, how are issues of legitimacy dealt with? Who, in other words, is a legitimate actor in the large networks. Or, in a more practical vein, if many actors are involved in a policy sector, who gets blamed when a policy fails? Or, more fundamentally, how do we recognize that a policy fails, and who is to be held accountable? On a more disciplinary level: how do we distinguish real from superficial change in the bewildering array of changes around us? How do we get a methodological handle on some of the more immaterial issues in this changing institutional landscape, such as the changing identities and meaning structures in different policy domains? How do we define cherished administrative ideals such as rationality or efficiency in the changed landscape of governance? And, how do administrators deal with their daily work in H. Wagenaar (ed.). Government Institutions: Effects. Changes and Normative Foundations Kluwer Academic Publishers.

10 2 HENDRIK WAGENAAR an institutional environment that not only redefines their traditional role, but provides them with more discretion than ever? The papers in this book all in one way or another wrestle with these questions. The papers in this book are the result of research that has been done under the auspices of the Netherlands Institute of Government. A brief word of explanation is in order. The Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG), founded in 1995, is a consortium of Departments of Public Administration and Departments of Political Science in the Netherlands. The NIG is one of a number of so called "research schools". These are the result of a national policy in Holland to arrive at greater yield and efficiency in university research by requiring departments to cooperate with other departments in their respective disciplines. "Research schools" are founded with the dual purpose of providing a teaching curriculum for Ph.D. students and for stimulating research in the various disciplines. For the latter purpose the NIG provides research grants, finances conferences and symposia, and subsidizes visiting appointments of foreign scholars on Dutch universities. The NIG has a research program which focuses on government institutions, in particular the foundation of institutions, institutional change, and normative foundations of institutions. I In the Fall of 1998, the NIG held a conference in which members of the research school presented their work. This book contains a selection of the papers that were presented there. Getting included in an edited volume is always the result of deliberate planning and happenstance. Although the book is representative of the breadth and variety of institutional research in public administration in the Netherlands, for various reasons, it cannot be said to be exhaustive. For example, excellent work on policy networks, interactive policy making, and the effect of information and communication technology on governance, while part of the research program of the NIG, is not represented in this book. The first three chapter in this book deal with the issue of institutional change. By its very nature, change is a notoriously difficult subject for institutional theorists (Peters 1999) Boin and 't Hart for example take institutional crises as their entrance into understanding institutional change. After identifying a series of high profile crises in different policy sectors (agriculture, higher education, social security, criminal investigation), they ask themselves two main questions: 1) how and why do certain sectors slide into crises, and 2) what happens after a crisis has become manifest? Crises are often seen as a stimuli for fundamental change, but Boin and 't Hart argue that this doesn't always happen, and that a broader analytical framework for understanding institutional crisis management is required. Their arguments are provocative, in that they give empirical and analytical content to the age-old This statement describes the situation of the period At its foundation the NIG was a consortium of public administration departments only. At the beginning of 1999 it was joined by a number of political science departments. At the 1998 conference political science research in the NIG was not yet represented. Currently, the NIG research program is being reformulated on the basis of the experiences of the past five years to better reflect the contribution of political science scholars in the School.

11 PREFACE 3 cnticlsm of the incrementalist approach to policy making that sometimes an incremental change is just not enough. Van der Veen, Trommel and De Vroom deal with the question of institutional change. They take on a well known argument in the institutional literature on the welfare state, that retrenchment is doomed to fail because of resistance and drag by the organizations and interests involved. The latter are believed to form a powerful coalition that will undo whatever cutbacks have been implemented. Van der Veen et. al argue that this argument, in which welfare states retrenchment is discussed in terms of more or less, is too general. They identify different dimensions of change, and distinguish fundamental from superficial change. In the Dutch case, important changes occurred in the distribution of responsibility for the administration, implementation, and governance of the welfare state. Fundamental change they define as a change in the institutional logic. In the case of the Dutch welfare state, they see a change from a social rights paradigm to an incentive paradigm. Hemerijck also has the Dutch welfare state as his subject. He focuses on the mechanics of institutional change; the process whereby the Dutch welfare state was transformed from the 'sick man of Europe" in the early 1980s to the famous "poldermodel" of the late 1990s. His argument takes a governance approach in that he describes the change as the result of interlocking policy changes in three tightly coupled institutional areas: macro-economic policy and wage setting, social security policy, and labor market policy. His chapter is a sophisticated analysis of the complexities of governance in the real world. He shows how understanding the interplay of institutional sectors is a requirement for understanding institutional change. The next section consists of two papers that formulate and test explicit hypotheses about institutional theory. Huisman's chapter is a study of an organizational field: higher education in the Netherlands. His question concerns the issue of program emulation among university departments. Neo-institutional theory predicts that homogeneity of organizations in an organizational field is a matter of course through processes of isomorphism. That is, through coercive, normative and mimetic forces, late entrants in the field are more or less forced to mimic early and successful innovators (DiMaggio and Powell 1983). However, late followers are prone to experience structural inconsistencies in their organization; conflicts between technical demands for efficiency and the largely ceremonial rules of production. Taking program development in theology departments as his case, Huisman formulates three hypotheses to test the above mentioned theories. After a careful analysis of the data, he finds little evidence of program emulation. Most of the isomorphism hypotheses were falsified. Steunenberg's paper is a study in game theory. His subject is the so called so-called codecision procedure, the most important legislative procedure in the European Union. In the Treaty of Amsterdam it was decided that the Council may no longer re-propose its initial proposal after attempts to seek a compromises with the

12 4 HENDRIK WAGENAAR European Parliament on a particular issue have failed. This amendment to the codecision procedure repairs a structural imbalance between the two co-legislators in Europe, and by increasing Parliament's impact on the contents of legislative policies, effectively puts them on more or less equal footing. Steunenberg discusses several game theoretic approaches to explain this outcome and finds most of them wanting. He then proposes a sequential, noncooperative game to account for the different institutional features of the codecision procedure and its alternatives in the negotiations. In this way, he suggests, the analysis, compared to other gametheoretic approaches, allows for the introduction of a richer set of contextual institutional features. Using the sequential, noncooperative game model he proceeds to analyze the different effects of the amended procedure with regard to the possibilities of gridlock, departures from a common position, and the flexibility of decision making. The next section contains papers that deal with normative aspects of government institutions. Dorbeck-Jung and De Jong address the question what the effects of the fragmentation of state power and the dispersion of decision making over large networks of social actors have for traditional theories of the state. In particular they ask themselves how the changing relation between civil society and the state affects conceptualizations of legitimacy. If the power to govern is in actual practice no longer the exclusive domain of the state, how can the outcomes of collective action be legitimized? In a fascinating analysis of the question, the authors employ pragmatist theory to address the legitimacy question because, as they state, pragmatism is essentially empirical yet recognizes the importance of relevant values. Moreover pragmatism frames collective decision making as a set of practices, rather than a set of norms or behaviors. They conclude that the moral justification of collective action is not based on eternal, universal normative principles of good government, but on specific context-dependent, principles and standards, that provide the possibility of a critical and substantive assessment of governance. Following Selznick, they approach the application of these standards in actual situations of collective action as a form of practical wisdom, or the making of appropriate moral judgments in concrete situations (Selznick 1992: 60). This 'cultural' perspective on legitimacy suggests that standards of good governance are both provisional and evolving. Schreurs' contribution is an exegesis of one of the most central and powerful norms of institutional rationality. In her paper she takes on the rational model of organization. Despite more than fifty years of sustained criticism of the rational organization model, she argues that for most authors and practitioners it still functions as the ideal or normative standard of good organizing. Central in the concept of organizational rationality is the notion of efficiency as a supposedly neutral criterion of good organizing. Efficiency, both in its economic and organizational meaning, is of course one of the central concepts in the currently popular rational choice approaches to institutional theory. Schreurs then turns to the founding fathers of the notion of efficiency: Taylor, Weber, and Fayo!. She shows that over and over again these three authors are summoned up by contemporary

13 PREFACE 5 prophets of rational choice and rational organization theory to support the central value of efficiency. Through a careful reading of the original, untranslated, texts however, she demonstrates that all three authors are victims of misreading or mistranslation. In all three cases the term efficiency had either a much wider meaning (as with Taylor), or was the result of outright mistranslation (as with Weber and Fayol). She concludes that the three founding fathers of organizational theory have been appropriated in a kind of Whig history of organizational theory with its emphasis on efficiency, and that a careful reading of their original works shows that they were concerned with a much wider spectrum of organizational and social values. The subject of Wagenaar and Hartendorp's contribution is administrative practice. Their aim is twofold: to demonstrate empirically how stories help administrators deal with practical, everyday problems, and to demonstrate the possibilities of a method of discourse analysis that focuses on the prosodic aspects of (oral) discourse. The central concept in their paper is situatedness. They describe situatedness as a theoretical perspective that delineates how people interact with the world in everyday situations. The concept points towards the specific, concrete, actiondriven, personal nature of this interaction. Summarized in wider theoretical terms: the concept of situatedness challenges the theoretical boundaries between structure and action, cognition and appreciation, institutional context and individual activity. In their analysis of the story of a welfare administrator working with the homeless, the authors demonstrate how through the use of various contextualization cues, the administrator draws upon the setting of his work to make it specific to the situation at hand, thereby creating a particular perspective on the case. They also show how the administrator constructs an identity in the course of his narrative. Identity is not seen as an attribute of the individual, but as the product of the administrator's membership in a professional community. Thus, the concept of identity forms a nexus between the individual at work and the world in which he works. Grin and Hoppe apply cultural theory to technology assessment. Their choice of subject is provocative because by their very nature institutions of technology assessment purport to be neutral arbiters who provide unimpaired, objective, scientific information on controversial policy subjects. Their international comparative analysis of three T A projects dealing with traffic congestion demonstrates, however, that cultural bias is manifest in all phases of technology assessment: from problem definition to conclusions and policy recommendations. Although all T A studies showed elements of an hierarchical bias, the authors also show strong differences that can only be explained by the institutional and cultural context of the TA. For example, the Dutch case shows a careful balance between a participatory and hierarchical cultural bias, which they explain from he long tradition of pillarization, elite consultation and interest articulation which is characteristic of Dutch political culture. The final section contains three papers that deal with institutional design. Dijkstra and lorna have done an evaluation study of the General Administrative Law Act

14 6 HENDRIK WAGENAAR (Awb) in the Netherlands. The Awb is a deliberate effort by the Dutch government to restructure the relation between administration and citizen. The A wb seeks to improve the citizen's protection against the government. In this sense the Awb is meta-law, in that it issues guidelines and rules for the adequate implementation of other laws and programs. In their analysis of the implementation of the A wb they show that the nature of the administrative agency is decisive for the success of the implementation. High volume "decision-factories" were faced with insurmountable difficulties in adapting routine procedures to the subtle and stringent legal standards of the A wb. Their detailed analysis of the Housing Grant Agency showed not only that standard handling of applications didn't change much, but also that the introduction of the A wb resulted in a massive increase in the number of appeals by citizens. In fact, the agency seemed to count on the citizen to redress possible breaches of administrative procedure by the agency. Low-volume "decisionworkshops" however were stimulated by the new law to further refine and strengthen procedures that were already dependent on the skills and discretion of experienced administrators. Implementation of the A wb, the authors conclude, should be seen in terms of a fit between two institutional spheres that do not necessarily match: that of the legislator and that of the agency. Van Twist deals with the issue of how to organize accountability in administrative agencies. He shows that while everyone agrees that accountability is important and necessary, in actual practice the design of accountability procedures runs into some serious risks such as 'overdoing it', 'reinforcement of bureaucratic procedure', 'ritualization', 'tunnel vision', 'suffocation of autonomy', and the 'emergence of mistrust'. The design of accountability procedures is subject, according to the author, to a number of dilemmas such as those between a fixed or a flexible format, or the use of public versus private procedures. Taking these design dilemmas as his starting point, the author then proceeds to sketch a number of 'arrangements' for organizing accountability procedures in government agencies. Timmermans' paper finally discusses institutional design. The thrust of his argument is that institutions are not just objects but also contexts of design. With this assumption he moves away from simple-minded rational-instrumental approaches to institutional design. By understanding institutions not merely as instrumental, but also moral, context, as Timmermans argues, moves to the foreground. Such an approach directs attention to the institutional properties of the context, such as beliefs, norms, rules and conventions, in which designs are formulated and implemented. The paper applies this approach to the case of telecommunication policies in the Netherlands in the 1990s. Originally, the institutional context acted as a drag on the legally required liberalization of the telecommunication market. The liberalization that was entailed in the Telecommunications Act of 1989 was barely viable in the context of the regulated economy of the Netherlands. Only when the institutional context widened, with the mounting pressure from EU competition and antitrust regulation, was it possible to implement the liberalization of the Dutch telecommunications market. The author concludes that in the actual practice of

15 PREFACE 7 institutional design, context is relevant, but that the drawing of boundaries between object and context is no easy matter. Finally, I am indebted to a number of persons who made the publication of this book possible. First, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their searching and constructive commentaries on earlier versions of these papers. Second, I want to thank Marcia Clifford and Connie Hoekstra for their untiring professional efforts to transform this book from a rather chaotic series of papers to a camera-ready manuscript. REFERENCES Dimaggio, J. and W.W. Powell (1983) The iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review 48: Peters, B.G. (1999) institutional Theory in Political Science. The 'New institutionalism '. London: Pinter Selznick, Ph. (1992) The Moral Commonwealth. Social Theory and the Promise of Community. Berkeley: University of California Press.