Bureaucratic Decision Research Articles

Why and How Does Participatory Governance Affect Policy Outcomes? Theory and Evidence from the Electric Sector

Abstract In many policy arenas, decision makers have supplemented or even replaced traditional forms of bureaucratic decision making with more participatory approaches to governance. While theory suggests that participatory governance can have an instrumental effect on policy outcomes, there have been few efforts to systematically test these theories across multiple jurisdictions. This study asks whether and how participatory governance in electric sector regulation affects utilities’ energy savings. Using a mixed-methods research design, this study develops hypotheses drawn from participatory governance theory, analyzes regulatory documents to operationalize a set of participatory governance variables, and uses a multilevel fixed effects model to test whether these participatory governance variables have an effect on electricity consumption by customers of 250 utilities across 42 states between 2000 and 2015. Model results show that deliberation among stakeholders has a significant decrease in electricity use by consumers, but that this effect must be realized over time as stakeholders gain experience with the deliberative process. To explore why deliberation produces this effect, the study presents qualitative evidence from Connecticut and Maryland, two states that have used participatory governance to regulate utilities’ energy efficiency plans. Results suggest that information exchange among participants has a direct effect on utilities’ energy efficiency plans. Participatory governance also contributes to a network of engaged stakeholders who can help hold utilities accountable for achieving their savings goals.

Policy articulation and paradigm transformation: the bureaucratic origin of China’s industrial policy

Existing studies of state-led industrial development argue that state autonomy is essential for formulating consistent and coherent industrial policies. This article shows that autonomous bureaucracy, while useful for fending off the politics of interest groups, is not free of politics in itself. Using Chinese industrial policy-making as a strategic case study, this article uncovers the competitive dimension of bureaucratic decision-making and the extent to which it serves as a driving force for industrial policy paradigm change in China. Equipped with a theory of policy articulation, this article details the strategies used by multiple superagencies and groups of career bureaucrats to vie for industrial policy authority within the Chinese state. In sum, this article seeks to expose the role of intrabureaucracy competition in mediating international political economic environment and national policy outcomes. Looking forward, this article proposes that the renewed focus on industrial policy by many national governments compels an analytical re-engagement with the role of large bureaucracies in economic decision-making and the kind of organizational and cognitive frameworks by which bureaucrats mobilize to chart our industrial landscapes.

Statisticians as Back-office Policy-makers: Counting Asylum-Seekers and Refugees in Europe

Street-level bureaucracy literature ascertains that policies get made not only in the offices of legislatures or politicians but through the discretion bureaucrats employ in their day-to-day interactions with citizens in government agencies. The discretion bureaucrats use to grant access to public benefits or impose sanctions adds up to what the public ultimately experience as the government and its policies. This perspective, however, overlooks policy-making that gets done in the back offices of government, where there might not be direct interaction with citizens. Furthermore, it treats discretion as inherently anthropogenic and ignores that it is exercised in relation to sociotechnical arrangements of which bureaucrats are a part. In this paper, based on extensive ethnography at national statistical institutes and international statistical meetings across Europe, I make two arguments. The first is that, statisticians emerge as back-office policy-makers as they are compelled to take multiple methodological decisions when operationalizing abstract statistical guidelines and definitions, thus effectively making rather than merely implementing policies. This is the “discretion” they employ, even when they may not interact with citizens. The second argument is that the exercise of discretion is sociotechnical, that is, it happens in relation to the constraints and affordances of technologies and the decisions of other bureaucrats in their institutions and others.

Interest Groups on the Inside: The Governance of Public Pension Funds

New scholarship in American politics argues that interest groups should be brought back to the center of the field. We attempt to further that agenda by exploring an aspect of group influence that has been little studied: the role interest groups play on the inside of government as official participants in bureaucratic decision-making. The challenges for research are formidable, but a fuller understanding of group influence in American politics requires that they be taken on. Here we carry out an exploratory analysis that focuses on the bureaucratic boards that govern public pensions. These are governance structures of enormous financial consequence for state governments, public workers, and taxpayers. They also make decisions that are quantitative (and comparable) in nature, and they usually grant official policymaking authority to a key interest group: public employees and their unions. Our analysis suggests that these “interest groups on the inside” do have influence—in ways that weaken effective government. Going forward, scholars should devote greater attention to how insider roles vary across agencies and groups, how groups exercise influence in these ways, how different governance structures shape their policy effects, and what it all means for our understanding of interest groups in American politics.

Muddling-Through and Deep Learning for Managing Large-Scale Uncertain Risks

AbstractManaging large-scale, geographically distributed, and long-term risks arising from diverse underlying causes – ranging from poverty to underinvestment in protecting against natural hazards or failures of sociotechnical, economic, and financial systems – poses formidable challenges for any theory of effective social decision-making. Participants may have different and rapidly evolving local information and goals, perceive different opportunities and urgencies for actions, and be differently aware of how their actions affect each other through side effects and externalities. Six decades ago, political economist Charles Lindblom viewed “rational-comprehensive decision-making” as utterly impracticable for such realistically complex situations. Instead, he advocated incremental learning and improvement, or “muddling through,” as both a positive and a normative theory of bureaucratic decision-making when costs and benefits are highly uncertain. But sparse, delayed, uncertain, and incomplete feedback undermines the effectiveness of collective learning while muddling through, even if all participant incentives are aligned; it is no panacea. We consider how recent insights from machine learning – especially, deep multiagent reinforcement learning – formalize aspects of muddling through and suggest principles for improving human organizational decision-making. Deep learning principles adapted for human use can not only help participants in different levels of government or control hierarchies manage some large-scale distributed risks, but also show how rational-comprehensive decision analysis and incremental learning and improvement can be reconciled and synthesized.

Infrastructural Development and Vulnerabilities: A Sociological Study of Two Selected Flyovers in Dhaka City, Bangladesh

Does infrastructural development cause underdevelopment of the third world peripheral states like Bangladesh? Can flyover project overcome traffic congestion? Does it create vulnerabilities for the common people? This paper is an attempt to answer all the above questions. Depending on the qualitative research design, this study was conducted on the two selected flyover projects in Dhaka, Bangladesh named Mayor Hanif Flyover and Khilgaon Flyover. Theoretical arguments of development and underdevelopment on modernization and dependency school were incorporated for critically examining this research. Hence, the researcher followed conflict approaches given by Dahrendorf (1959), later used Coser (1956) and Guangshe Jia, et al.’s (2011) arguments to understand how mega projects like flyover operate through different channels in third world countries. The study then reveals that although these mega projects benefited communication system, it literally failed to fulfill public core demands and interests by making people marginalized and vulnerable. Besides, this study explored that mega projects like flyover are an outcome of bureaucratic decision in which social and environmental impact assessment was ignored.

GENDER STRENGTHENING IN BUREAUCRATIC DECISION MAKING CITY OF GORONTALO

ABSTRACT The long-term objective of this research is the birth of a process of describing women's involvement in the bureaucratic decision-making process, and the model of gender strengthening in bureaucratic decision-making in Gorontalo City. The research method used is qualitative research with data collection techniques through: interviews, documentation, and FGD. Then the collected data will be analyzed by triangulation data. The results show that: first, so far the existence of women in the Gorontalo City government in the bureaucratic decision-making process is still less than optimal, although the potential quantity of women is 3,023 (66.97%) compared to 1,491 men (33.03%). The progress of the role of women in the bureaucratic leadership only 6 people occupied the heads of regional apparatus organizations and 24 others were men. This symptom certainly has an impact on demands. women must play their role in realizing democracy that is not gender biased as well as proof of the maturity of a nation. Keuda, the Gender Strengthening Model in the decision making of the bureaucracy in Gorontalo City is the zero-sum and positive-sum models.

Legislators as Lobbyists

Public policy is produced by elected and unelected officials and through the interactions of branches of government. We consider how such interactions affect policy implementation and representation. We argue that legislators try to influence bureaucratic decisions through direct communication with federal agencies, and that such contact is effective and has consequences for policy outcomes. We provide empirical evidence of this argument using original data about direct communication between members of Congress and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) along with decisions made by the DOL regarding trade and redistributive policies. We find that direct contacts influence DOL decisions, and the agency is more likely to reverse previous decisions when requested to do so by legislators. Our results challenge key assumptions and findings in the previous literature and have important implications for interbranch relations and informal means of control over the implementation of national policy.

"We make a direct impact on people's lives": Youth empowerment in the context of a youth-led participatory budgeting project.

Participatory budgeting [PB] is a democratic process whereby community members determine how to spend governmental funds. Youth-led PB is relatively new, occurring in select U.S. cities. During youth-led PB, youth collect ideas, develop proposals, and advertise community improvement projects for which they, citywide, cast deciding votes. The study examined opportunities for the empowerment youth at each stage of a youth-led PB project. Data collection included individual interviews with 31 youths and adult stakeholders, 3 focus groups with youths, and 7 observations of meetings. The data were analyzed using consensual qualitative research methods. Findings align well with the psychological empowerment literature and demonstrate several opportunities for empowerment throughout the PB project, including feeling in charge of the process, understanding and allocating resources, and influencing positive community change. Findings also demonstrate potential barriers to empowerment, including understanding bureaucratic decision making, and influencing policy. PB is relevant to furthering our understanding of the empowerment of youth. The youths who participated in the present study expressed feelings of competence, purpose, and an ability to use the skills learned to engage fellow youths in the PB process. Additional empirical research is needed to examine the dimensions of empowerment at each stage of the PB process.

Identifying disrespect and abuse in organisational culture: a study of two hospitals in Mumbai, India

This paper draws on findings from a qualitative study of two government hospitals in Mumbai, India, which aimed to provide a better understanding of the institutional drivers of disrespect and abuse (D&A) in childbirth. The paper describes the structural context, in which government hospital providers can exercise considerable power over patients, yet may be themselves vulnerable to violence and external influence. Decisions that affect care are made by a bureaucracy, which does not perceive problems with the same intensity as providers who are directly attending to patients. Within this context, while contrasting organisational cultures had evolved at the two hospitals, both were characterised by social/professional inequality and hierarchical functioning, and marginalising women. This context generates invisible pressures on subordinate staff, and creates interpersonal conflicts and ambiguity in the division of roles and responsibilities that manifest in individual actions of D&A. Services are organised around the internal logic of the institution, rather than being centred on women. This results in conditions that violate women's privacy, and disregards their choice and consent. The structural environment of resource constraints, poor management and bureaucratic decision-making leads to precarious situations, endangering women’s safety. With the institution's functioning based on hierarchies and authority, rather than adherence to universal standards or established protocols, irrational, harmful practices endorsed by senior staff are institutionalised and reproduced. A deeper focus on organisational culture, embedded in the discourse of D&A, would help to evolve effective strategies to address D&A as systemic problems.

Getting to grips with the public trust doctrine in biodiversity conservation: A brief overview

The explicit incorporation of the public trust doctrine into South Africa’s Bill of Rights in SouthAfrica’s Constitution, and its subsequent codification into the country’s environmentalbiodiversity, protected area, water, minerals and heritage legislation, occurred to a large extentwithout applause or fanfare. It is apparent that in the 20-odd years since the adoption of SouthAfrica’s Constitution, the existence and importance of the public trust doctrine within theacademic and legal fraternities, bureaucratic decision-making and the courts have largely beenoverlooked. This observation evokes curiosity about the history and evolution of the doctrineand its meaning and relevance in, at least, the conservation of biodiversity in a South Africancontext. It is concluded that the nature of the application of the public trust doctrine in SouthAfrica remains an enigma, and the development and refinement of this jurisprudence arerequired. The variable and, in places, conflicting wording of the trust-related provisions in anumber of South Africa’s environmental statutes suggests that the doctrine and hence thenature of its application was not fully understood by the drafters of the statutes or by thelegislature adopting those statutes into law. The public trust doctrine in South Africanenvironmental law lies beyond the country’s Constitution, and appears to have multiplebloodlines, which dispels the notion that South Africa hermetically imported the concept froma single source. The interpretation and hence the nature of the application of the doctrine inSouth Africa is likely to be influenced by the country’s heritage and hence is likely to varybetween the disciplines that constitute South Africa’s environmental law.

Think tanks in politically embedded knowledge regimes: does the “revolving door” matter in China?

This article conceptualizes a “politically embedded knowledge regime” in which political power is deeply embedded in administrative and personal networks between bureaucratic decision-makers and their professional consultants. To demonstrate the features of the politically embedded knowledge regime, I evaluate the effects of the revolving door on Chinese think tanks. I empirically find that the revolving door has a negligible contribution to the influence and revenue of think tanks in China. Moreover, the revolving door has significantly negatively effects on the personal social network building of think-tankers. Heterogeneous analysis and propensity score matching are conducted to present the robustness of regression results.Points for practitionersThe “revolving door” has always been regarded as an essential factor for the prosperity of American think tanks. It has now become the prevailing recruitment strategy for global think tanks. In particular, the Chinese government and academia are embracing the revolving door mechanism for the development of Chinese think tanks. Nevertheless, no systematic empirical research has been conducted to evaluate the exact effects of the revolving door on Chinese think tanks. My empirical findings reveal that the developmental experiences of American think tanks may not be as effective when applied to other countries with different knowledge regimes.

When do we care about political neutrality? The hypocritical nature of reaction to political bias.

Claims and accusations of political bias are common in many countries. The essence of such claims is a denunciation of alleged violations of political neutrality in the context of media coverage, legal and bureaucratic decisions, academic teaching etc. Yet the acts and messages that give rise to such claims are also embedded within a context of intergroup competition. Thus, in evaluating the seriousness of, and the need for taking a corrective action in reaction to a purported politically biased act people may consider both the alleged normative violation and the political implications of the act/message for the evaluator’s ingroup. The question thus arises whether partisans react similarly to ingroup-aiding and ingroup-harming actions or messages which they perceive as politically biased. In three separate studies, conducted in two countries, we show that political considerations strongly affect partisans’ reactions to actions and messages that they perceive as politically biased. Namely, ingroup-harming biased messages/acts are considered more serious and are more likely to warrant corrective action in comparison to ingroup-aiding biased messages/acts. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the implementations of measures intended for correcting and preventing biases, and for the nature of conflict and competition between rival political groups.

Penguatan Gender dalam Pengambilan Keputusan Birokrasi di Kabupaten Bone Bolango

The long-term goal of this research is the birth of the process of drawing women's involvement in the bureaucratic decision-making process, and the gender reinforcement model in bureaucratic decision making in Bone Bolango District. The target of the research will be done by stages: 1) identify the problem of constraints faced; and 2) to formulate a model of gender reinforcement in bureaucratic decision making. The research method used is qualitative research with data collection techniques through: interview, documentation, and FGD. Further data collected will be analyzed data triangulation. The result of the research is the birth of a model of gender reinforcement in decision making bureaucracy. The impact of the study will provide answers on women's partisifasi in decision making. During this time the existence of women is very much ruled out. The presence of female figures in the public dimension brings new trends in the context of government. Women want to be treated proportionally. This tendency has implications for the inclusion of women to compete with men to become leaders.

Israel’s citizenship policy since the 1990s—new challenges, (mostly) old solutions

Israel’s highly restrictive citizenship policy constitutes the clearest indicator of its dominant ethnic model of citizenship. However, this policy has faced new challenges since the early 1990s, following the mass migration of non-Jewish immigrants. This paper examines and characterizes changes in immigrants’ entitlement to Israeli citizenship since the 1990s. It indicates that while Israel’s traditional citizenship policy has not undergone any significant change, two trends are evident: a much more restrictive policy towards Arab immigrants; and a somewhat more inclusive policy concerning other immigrants. To explain how these conflicting trends have coexisted, this study identifies three major characteristics of the Israeli policy: widespread use of the ‘divide and rule’ technique; managing policy through bureaucratic decisions; and the growing assimilation of liberal and republican principles into Israel’s citizenship policy, although without undermining—on the contrary, even reinforcing—the dominant ethnic model of citizenship. These findings indicate that although the dominant ethnic citizenship model in Israel remains stable, and can successfully tackle significant obstacles, limited opportunities exist for greater inclusion of specific non-Jewish populations within the Israeli polity.

Managing Street-Level Arbitrariness: The Evidence Base for Public Sector Quality Improvement

Decentralized decisions among government officials can cause dramatic inconsistencies in bureaucratic decision making. This article provides a synthetic review of the evidence base for improving the quality of bureaucratic decisions and reducing such street-level arbitrariness. First, we offer a typology to unify quality assurance management techniques often treated in distinct scholarly literatures. This synthesis reveals common challenges but also points to novel hybrid solutions that borrow across management techniques. Second, although empirical evidence is limited, our review suggests that ongoing management techniques, such as monitoring, peer review, and pay-for-performance, are more successful than ex post techniques, such as audits and appeals. Third, performance measurement and pay exacerbate the quantity–quality trade-off long opined about in public administration. We offer suggestions for future directions—most importantly, the vital role of academic-agency research collaborations in crafting quality improvement efforts—to address this endemic challenge to bureaucracy and rule of law.

Are polish theatres autonomous? Artistic institutions in a bureaucratic system of culture funding

ABSTRACTThe culture funding systems based on the arm's length mechanism are generally believed to secure more autonomy of artistic institutions than ‘bureaucratic’ systems which directly involve politicians or public servants in the allocation of public funds. There is a wide range of academic literature that defend this approach. The aim of this paper is to readdress this view and show that it stems from typology-based preconceptions rather than real-life policy-making. To this end, the article analyses relations between public theatres and local funding bodies in Poland, where culture funding system is characterised by a bureaucratic decision-making. Mixed methods were applied using questionnaires and focus groups with public servants and theatre directors. The paper suggests that, although Polish local governments play a dominant role in the arts funding, their intervention in the area of culture has merely administrative nature and, in general, does not entail interference in the artistic activity.

Coping with Compassion: Role Transformation Amongst Oregon Food Pantry Directors

In stark contrast to the robust social safety nets found in many developed nations around the world, the modern American welfare state is increasingly operated by a variety of non-governmental actors and voluntary organizations. The operation of this welfare regime depends on the discretionary decisions of street-level bureaucrats. As street-level bureaucrats confront new circumstances, their discretionary decisions change. Normative institutionalism and the concept of bricolage are used to explore how discretionary decisions change within an organizational role in the context of a voluntary organization. Understanding this process of bricolage sheds light on the decision-making processes of street-level bureaucrats, explains how behavior in an organizational role shifts over time, and points to the dynamic nature of institutions. We present an in-depth qualitative study of the emergency food network in Oregon as a critical case to illustrate this argument.

Slow-Rolling, Fast-Tracking, and the Pace of Bureaucratic Decisions in Rulemaking

The slow pace of administrative action is arguably a defining characteristic of modern bureaucracy. The reasons proffered for delay are numerous, often centering on procedural hurdles or bureaucrats’ ineptitude. I offer a different perspective on delay in one important bureaucratic venue: the federal rulemaking process. I argue that agencies can speed up (fast-track) or slow down (slow-roll) the rulemaking process in order to undermine political oversight by Congress, the president, and the courts. That is, when the political climate is favorable, agencies rush to lock in a rule, but when it is less favorable, they wait on the chance that it will improve. I find empirical support for this proposition using an event history analysis of more than 11,000 agency rules from 150 bureaus. The results support the interpretation that agencies strategically delay, and that delay is not simply evidence of increased bureaucratic effort.

Unequal resilience: The duration of electricity outages

The resilience of social, biophysical, and technological systems is of increasing scholarly and practical import. Guided by scholarship on disaster resilience, environmental inequality, and urban service inequality, we advance the study of “unequal resilience” in a critical infrastructure – the electric grid. We analyze inequality in electricity outage duration at the census block group level using data from the U.S. Census, the U.S. Geological Survey, and a U.S. electrical utility's database of power outages from 2002 to 2004. Our intersectional approach identifies a factor variable of American Indian disadvantage as a correlate of average outage duration – suggesting possible support for an institutional bias hypothesis. However, spatial error regression models demonstrate that unequal resilience within our study area is most consistently explained by proximity to priority assets (i.e., hospitals), average downstream customers affected by outages, and environmental conditions (i.e., the seasonality of outages). These results are consistent with existing research on utilities' response to power outages, and more broadly with the bureaucratic decision rules perspective on service inequalities. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research and energy policy.