Abstract: Funding information Ella ja Georg Ehrnroothin Säätiö; Koneen Säätiö In the past few decades, many sector-specific case studies have been conducted on the use of consultants in the public sector. However, the overall picture of the qualitative changes facilitated by consultants remains fragmented, and a comprehensive framework on how “consultocracy” affects governance is lacking. This article shows how the increased use of consultants has impacted the operational logics of public administration and governance at large. Drawing from a large multisectoral case study from Finland as well as existing studies, a fourfold typology of how consultocracy shapes public administration is introduced. We argue that increased reliance on consultants contributes to the monopolization and privatization of public knowledge and ensuing dependencies, erosion of tacit knowledge, weakening of accountability, and strengthening of instrumental rationality. This research emphasizes the importance of understanding the links between these developments and the need to implement a comprehensive research agenda on consultocracy.

Abstract: Under what conditions will implementing bureaucrats act as policy entrepreneurs seeking to change policy? What strategies do these entrepreneurs adopt to increase their influence on policy design? While previous studies argue that street-level bureaucrats can become policy entrepreneurs, the basic assumption is that they will do so through the implementation of policy. Using the case of social workers working with disadvantaged populations in the context of urban renewal in Israel, we developed a theoretical model based on in-depth interviews, focus groups and textual source analysis. The model demonstrates that the combination of three factors leads social workers to adopt innovative strategies aimed at influencing the design of policy on the individual level, through a process of street-level bureaucrats’ policy entrepreneurship. We also draw conclusions about the possibility of applying the theoretical model to other types of street-level bureaucrats operating in other policy domains.

Abstract: id53001188 Clarke, A., & Craft, J. (2017). The vestiges and vanguards of policy design in a digital context. Canadian Public Administration, 60(4), 476–497. Craft, J., & Halligan, J. (2017). Assessing 30 years of Westminster policy advisory system experience. Policy Sciences, 50(1), 47–62. 14 | CLARKE AND CRAFT 18 CLARKE AND CRAFT

Abstract: In recent years, public consultation has become a standard feature of policymaking in authoritarian regimes. Despite increasing attention to this institutional innovation, we know little about whether autocrats are responsive to consultative input. To answer this question, this paper presents the first systematic analysis of Chinese central government policy responsiveness to online consultative input, focusing on a major recent policy reform. In 2008, the Chinese government unveiled a blueprint for healthcare reform, inviting the public to post their opinions online. Having collected 27,899 online comments, the government subsequently published a revised draft. This paper analyzes a random sample of 2% of this corpus of comments, assessing the effect of comments on revisions while controlling for both media content and bureaucratic preferences. The findings demonstrate that public comments have an impact upon policy revisions and suggest that the Chinese government is more responsive to street-level implementers than to other social groups.

Abstract: © 2018 The Authors. Governance Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This article explores the issue of the major reform of the child welfare sector that has been carried out in Russia in recent years. Focusing on deinstitutionalization and a child's right to a family, this reform moves Russia in the direction of international trends in this area and represents a break with previous state- and institution-dominated approach to “problem families.” The article explores how and why this process has come about in a traditionally top-down hybrid regime and applies the Multiple Streams Framework first developed by Kingdon to argue that Russian child welfare nongovernmental organizations have acted in concert with government officials to act as policy entrepreneurs in framing the policy problem and presenting solutions to it in a way that has influenced national priorities in this area. At the same time, the article acknowledges that major challenges remain in terms of implementing the reform at the regional level of government in Russia.

Abstract: Prior research shows that the effect of partisanship on social expenditure declined over time in OECD countries. In this article, the author argues that the 2007/08 recession resulted in the re-emergence of partisan policy making in social spending. This was a result of mainstream parties needing to respond to the growing challenge from non-mainstream parties as well as demonstrating that they responded to the economic crisis by offering different policy solutions. Using a panel of 23 OECD countries, the author shows that since the Great Recession, partisan effects on social spending are once again significant. These effects are more likely to be observed where the salience of the Left-Right dimension is higher. In accordance with classic theories of economic policy making, left-wing governments are more likely to increase social spending when unemployment is higher and right-wing governments restrain social expenditure when the budget deficit is greater. ∗This is the pre-print version of the article published in Governance

Abstract: Rutgers University-Newark Despite growing interest in bureaucratic reputation as a theoretical construct, the field lacks a standardized measure that can be used in surveys to capture individual-level variation in the reputation judgments of citizens and other audiences. The aim of this article, therefore, is to develop a standardized, individual-level measure of bureaucratic reputation based on the conceptual definition provided by Carpenter (2010). Employing feedback from experts and data from a survey of over 300 U.S. citizens, this article develops and tests a unidimensional scale of bureaucratic reputation, representing the content domains of performance, morality, procedural fairness, technical competence, and general reputation. Results suggest that our proposed bureaucratic reputation scale (BRS) has good internal reliability and that it is positively associated with support for autonomy, budget, and power, which provides evidence of criterion validity. Potential uses of the scale to study bureaucratic reputation are discussed.

Abstract: Olson's logic of collective action predicts that business interest associations face fewer collective action problems than citizen action groups. This article challenges this assumption by arguing that forming an organization comes with different collective action problems than voicing a joint policy position. This leads us to examine an important paradox: Citizen groups face challenges in establishing themselves as organizations but find it relatively easy to position themselves on policy issues, whereas the reverse is true for business associations. We study this paradox empirically based on interviews with spokespersons of interest organizations active in the European Union and find support for our hypotheses. Our findings demonstrate that citizen groups position themselves on policy issues more easily than business interests and that this competitive advantage is amplified when policy issues attract the attention of the media.

Abstract: Funding information Australian Research Council, Grant/Award Number: (DP140104097) This article explores the role of variations in organizational form in explaining levels of group access. Specifically, we test whether group forms incorporating more extensive engagement with members receive policy advantages. We develop and test a account of beneficial inefficiencies. Our account reasons that the costs of inefficient intraorganizational processes and practices associated with enhanced engagement with members are beneficial as they generate crucial “access goods”—specifically encompassing positions—that in turn receive enhanced policy benefits. The costs of intraorganizational practices allowing members to engage more thoroughly in decision making are thus beneficial inefficiencies. We test this proposition using data on the Australian interest group system. Using the tools of cluster analysis, we identify three forms, each varying in respect of the inefficiencies they embody. Our multivariate analysis finds strong support for the account of beneficial inefficiencies: groups with the most inefficient organizational model receiving the greatest policy access.

Abstract: In the last decade, reforms in the public sector have been implemented at an ever‐increasing pace. Hereby, organizations are repetitively subject to mergers, splits, absorptions, or secessions of units; the adoption of new tasks; changes in legal status; and other structural reforms. Although evidence is largely missing in the literature, there is a growing belief that such intense reform sequences may be damaging to organizations. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature by empirically examining the existence of such repetitive change injury for public organizations. To do so, we employ organizational absenteeism rates as an indicator for repetitive change injury and link this to the reform sequences an organization experienced. Results indicate that intense reform sequences disproportionally increase organizational absenteeism rates, supporting the existence of repetitive change injury and suggesting that reforms remain rooted in organizational memories for a longer time than is often assumed.

Abstract: Governments in many industrializing democracies face difficult policy trade-offs. Liberalization and informality have placed electoral pressure on them to expand noncontributory social spending. However, governments in developing democracies face constraints when attempting to finance this expansion. In some countries, the informal labor market is very large, thereby undermining the revenue that can be collected through income tax. We argue that this has given rise to a paradoxical situation. Left governments in developing democracies with large informal labor markets have a strong electoral incentive to expand welfares regimes to previously excluded outsiders but to fiscally underwrite this expansion, they have increasingly been forced to fund their redistributive strategies via a regressive policy instrument, indirect consumption taxation. We examine this argument for a sample of 17 Latin American countries between the years 1990 to 2016. Our results suggests that labor informality forces left governments to turn to indirect taxation.

Abstract: We analyze locational policy coordination in the metropolitan regions of secondary capital cities. Secondary capital cities - defined as capitals that are not the primary economic city of their nation states - serve as the political center of their nation states; however, they must simultaneously explore new ways to develop their own regional economies. Locational policies, and their regional coordination, aim to strengthen the economic competitiveness of metropolitan regions. Our comparison of the metropolitan regions of Bern, Ottawa–Gatineau, The Hague, and Washington, D.C., reveals that vertical institutional fragmentation, together with high local tax autonomy, create an unlevel playing field, which prompts jurisdictions to behave fiercely in regional tax competition. These findings are troubling for secondary capital cities given their propensity to be located in fragmented metropolitan regions and the capital city‐specific local tax autonomy constraints imposed on them.

Abstract: Many domains of transnational policy are now governed through dynamic, multilevel governance processes, encompassing transnational, national, and subnational scales. In such settings, both membership of policy communities and distributions of authority within them become more fluid and openly contested—increasing the importance of the politics of legitimation as a basis for distributing influence over policy processes and outcomes. Drawing on insights from theories of organizational and institutional legitimation, this article theorizes three distinctive strategies of policy influence exercised by transnational actors in multilevel governance settings, through which strategic efforts to legitimize transnational actors and forums are deployed as means of transnational policy influence. The three strategies involve: transnational field building, localized network building, and role adaptation. The effects of these influencing strategies on policy processes and outcomes are illustrated with reference to the case of Indonesian land governance, in which highly dynamic, contested, and multiscalar governance processes lend our theorized strategies particular salience.

Abstract: 2M Research University of Utah Whether public services are better delivered through centralized or decentralized administrative systems is one of the most enduring debates in public administration. This article contributes to the debate with a study of program outcome achievement in U.S. child welfare services. We examine whether centralized state-administered or decentralized county-administered systems are more successful at realizing desired outcomes, which exhibit greater performance equity, and which are more successful at securing program outcomes in rural settings. Using a coarsened exact matching approach to quasi-experimental research, we find that centralized child welfare systems exhibit greater success at achieving desired outcomes—in both rural contexts and overall. No discernible difference is found in centralized and decentralized systems’ performance equity; outcome disparities exist under both structures. The study thus lends credence to centralization arguments, but at the same time cautions that centralized administration is not a structural panacea.