LIST OF WORKSHOPS

The proposed workshop evolves from the interest to continue the discussion started at the IPPA 2017 Singapore International Seminar by our paper State management issues in Latin America. Assessing “patterns of mismanagement” in the Argentine national state (2007-2015).

In that paper, we proposed to adapt existing public policy analysis strategies to detect state management issues during the “management-intense” phases of public policy design and implementation. We did this with an observation guide, derived from Elmore’s “historical mapping” (Elmore, 1979 and 1983) and contemporary developments of the stages approach to public policy (DeLeon, 2007, Knoepfel et al, 2006). With the help of this observation guide, we scoured information in a number of recent relevant public policy processes in Argentina, isolating a few recurrent and path-dependency generating problems that we proposed to call patterns of mismanagement. Although more substantive research is necessary to ascribe causes and consequences to such patterns, we put forward some educated conjectures about their genesis and inertial effects. Even if inextricably tied to politics and political regimes, these patterns showed an interesting “life of their own” that, we insisted, deserves better -if possible, comparative- understanding. We suggested that such new knowledge could provide keys to design better responses to public policy problems in the developing world, as well as to understand why and how classical capacity building strategies repeatedly seem to fail.

We tried to show that, in most Latin American countries, the performances of state agencies in all sectors and levels of government are very frequently found to produce low, insufficient or unstable impacts, relative to public and expert expectations, as well as legally and/or ethically objectionable ways and procedures. Among most political scientists in our countries, these governance problems have been straightforwardly attributed to politics, as if the public policy process was a mechanical outcome of political arrangements and decisions. Political regimes, governments and governing coalitions, or even specific figureheads, are deemed either incapable to adequately plan the right strategies necessary to solve development management issues, or too capable to model the public policy processes according to their interests and will. Yet, relatively little interest is placed on what actually happens between political arrangements, decisions and outcomes. Probably because of the obvious methodological and political difficulties facing substantial research in the field, a surprisingly low number of studies actually dig relevant evidence about what goes on in the corridors and offices of public agencies, among decision makers, cadres and clerical workers.

Classical policy analysis defined “good” governance as timely and cost-efficient solutions to problems (Lasswell, 1951; Lindblom, 1959), although it was soon acknowledged that the very nature of problems -let alone the solutions- vary according to interests and cognitive maps (Wildavsky, 1979). Within the political regimes where policy sciences developed -democracies, or more precisely, “polyarchies” (Dahl, 1971)- a considerable variety of interests and cognitive maps are tolerated, as long as basic sets of rules are respected, essentially: the rights to do politics, to maintain free flows of information, and to avoid excessive concentration of political power. In such regimes, “good” needs to carry an acceptable degree of “common”.

Other public policy students directed their attention to “governance” and “state capacity”, as (more or less related) ideas capable of providing frameworks to answer questions about state performances and public policy results. At least since the provoking works of Michael Mann (1997, 1998, 2012 and 2013) comparative studies aimed at resuming Max Weber’s reasoning on states (1977), looking for keys to understand their success and failure as political organizations producing material and symbolic forms of power. If in Mann, infrastructural power is the effective combination of key sources of social power through political means (1997 and 2012), the question is how to get this combination, particularly when it does not seem to come out of contingency.

Some of these studies worked on the classical idea of “good government” (Rosanvallon, 2015) or “governance” (Mayntz), in at least two senses: the ways in which policies are conducted in arenas or political regimes where power is not concentrated (Bovens, t'Hart & Peters, 2001; Benz & Papadopoulos, 2006; Peters & Pierre, 2006; all drawing on numerous previous authors); or the ways in which problems affect state performance (Tobelem, 1992; Evans, 1995; Grindle, 1996; ibidem). Most studies in this direction tended to look, at the same time, at institutional and operational, political and administrative dimensions of public policy, and invited to look into (though not necessarily did) the actual implementation processes (Saetren, 2005). On this issue of “public management”, within a relatively abundant literature (see Lynn, 2005 y 2006; and Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2004 y 2009; for general approaches), key debates tended to identify the specificity of public management, and its changes through time (Hood, 1991; Frederickson, 1996); the problems of bureaucratic organizations that are, at the same time, subjects, stake-holders and objects of public policies (Moe, 1989; Olsen, 2005 and 2008); the issue of human resources, public service and civil service (Ingraham, 2005; Derlien & Peters, 2008); or the problem of inadequacy and obsolescence of public policy tools facing rapidly changing public problems (Dror, 2001).

Closer to our interests, Bovens, t'Hart y Peters (2001) searched for patterns of success and failure, for selected European countries, in what they labelled governance capacities. Isolating relevant public policy fields where national and European Union collided, they traced the way in which national state agencies intervened. Interestingly, they identified significant asymmetries in the assessment of “success” and “failure” to programmatic achievements (relative to the actual problems policies supposedly attacked) and to political achievements (relative to the perceptions the public had on such “attacks”). “Success” was to be used only if the asymmetry between these two assessments was low enough. None of the factors underlying success and failure found in all areas and countries, though, were common enough to establish patterns capable of explanations in terms of causes and effects. But the very finding of factors stake-holders linked to success was, in itself, a worthy result. The factor found ranged from institutional “embeddedness” or propension to negotiation and agreement between different sectors and levels of government (as in Evans, 2005); to favourable contingency, as in “solutions finding problems” (Cohen, March & Olsen, 1989) or “windows of opportunity (Kingdon, 2010); including individual capacities in civil servants (Cohen, 1993), particularly in “political entrepreneurs” (as in Mintron & Norman, 2009); and the diffusion of ideas in Zeitgeiste (“spirits of the epoch”) through  “advocacy coalitions” (Sabatier, 1998).

In the same direction, Martin Painter and Jon Pierre (2015) suggested to speak of policy capacity as the ability to adequately combine classical elements of state capacity, political and administrative, achieving governing capacities. While policy capacities depend on stocks of resources moving in essentially contingent ways, governing capacities generate and accumulate adequate quantities and qualities of resources, controlling flows and pointing them toward desired directions, thus producing the expected outputs and outcomes (Painter & Pierre, 2015: 3-4). The effectiveness of these governing capacities can be measured through performance indicators and normative criteria, and in so doing, research can point to instruments and tools that recurrently (although not systemtically or mechanically) orient flows in successful ways, and can become key support systems for governments. Key support systems of these kind are merit-oriented civil services, decentralization, careful mastering of public finances, auditing and control techniques (all administrative capacities); collective decision schemes, planning and evaluation and coordination (all policy capacities); and consensus-oriented élites; political brokerage and consultation, homogeneous coercive forces, and performance-oriented bureaucracies (all state capacities).

The problem of governance and state capacities is relevant for any state, but it has become paramount for those perceived as less performant. In Latin America, studies related to the role of management processes, in public policy performance, concentrated around a handful of perspectives, namely the attribution of state weaknesses and failures to the capture of civil servants and bureaucracies by interest groups or global center-periphery power networks, deriving in their lack of autonomy (Bresser-Pereira, 1977; Oszlak y O'Donnell, 1981; Medellín Torres, 1997 and 2004); the relationships between low performances with non-democratic rule (O'Donnell, 1993); the significant lack of quality management capacities among political parties and their decision-makers (Aguilar Villanueva, 1995; Lora, 2007); or the ways “bad politics” reflect in policy design and management (Scartascini, Spiller, Stein & Tommasi, 2011).

From Colombia, Medellín Torres (1997 and 2004) suggested to pay attention to the perverse combination of high instability (states’ institutional and territorial fragmentation) and low autonomy (state agencies subordinated to intense and unsolved tensions and conflicts). Governance techniques and tactics lack information and fall prey to short term political needs. Overpoliticized by the clashes for the control of the state, policies lack the linear link between problem, design, implementation and effects, and institutions cannot achieve a minimum neutrality compatible with notions of common good. Other national studies compiled by Scartascini, Spiller, Stein and Tommasi (2011) agree. According to them, the institutional ways of Latin American “political game” (non-cooperative stake-holders and how they interact in political arenas) leave very limited space for transactions capable of brokering long term agreements, which puts important obstacles in the way policies can attack structural economic and social problems. Political regimes and the institutional fragility of laws and checks-balances schemes make this game even more complicated, producing perverse incentives and behaviours. Policies tend to present frequent patterns of instability, inflexibility, incoherence and discoordination, as well as high vulnerability to capture or co-optation from private or party interests. Argentine researchers tended to find similar problems, in terms of state regulation capacity (Oszlak and Felder, 2000), state/institutional capacity (Oszlak and Orellana, 2001; Alonso, 2007; Bertranou, 2015), “intra-bureaucratic” dynamics (Oszlak, 1999 and 2003); political regime dynamics (Oszlak, 2011); policy coherence (Martínez Nogueira, 2002 and 2010); or power relations (Acuña, 2013; 2014a and 2014b).

Throughout the discussion that followed, colleagues from different countries underlined the interest for a wider call on researchers dealing with the subject. The workshop proposes to receive papers willing to share new light and/or to discuss existing research on the following main axes (among other related questions): On what conceptual/normative basis do we speak of good and bad governance in the developing world? What analytical strategies should be used to detect state capacity deficits and/or public policy management issues in organizations usually prone to lower reliance on protocols? Is it possible to isolate recurrent or path-dependent management problems independent of specific policy sectors, governments and/or countries of the developing world? Are there patterns of mismanagement or bad governance that can be traced to specific regions and/or political regimes? Should the result meet our expectations, we commit to organize the logistics and potential support for a collective book on the matter.

References

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Aguilar Villanueva, Luis (1993): “Estudio introductorio”; in Aguilar Villanueva, Luis (editor): Problemas públicos y agenda de gobierno; Porrúa, México.

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Benz, Arthur & Papadopoulos, Yannis (2006): "Governance and Democracy: Concepts and Key Issues"; in Benz & Papadopoulos (op. cit.).

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The workshop welcomes papers on the following areas of study, also admitting other subjects reasonably related to them:

Conceptual constructions and discussions on good (bad) governance, state (in)capacity, public (mis)management in developing countries, including comparative studies crossing sectors, levels and regions.

Analytical and research strategies capable of detecting state capacity deficits and/or public policy management issues in developing countries, including comparative studies crossing sectors, levels and regions.

Studies aiming to isolate specific recurrent or path-dependent management issues and/or problems, whether independent or not of specific policy sectors, governments and/or countries.

Studies aiming to trace the relationship between specific recurrent or path-dependent management issues and/or problems to regions and/or political regimes.

Governance, in many developing countries, is often presented as problematic, if not outright ‘bad’: an issue-scarred process, reflecting opaque polities, state capacity deficits, and public management problems, all of them related to insufficient and/or arguable development outcomes. Yet, most of the times, evidence and cause-effect links are incomplete or unsystematic, as well as presented against imprecise and/or non-explicit idea of ‘good’ governance. Because of the sheer amount of information involved, the natural diversity of state agencies and levels of government, as well as the very important obstacles derived from the way actual government works, research is usually limited to case-studies or government assessment. The workshop proposes to receive papers dealing with these issues, in the aim of bringing together strategies and results, to better grasp the conceptual and methodological challenge public policy research in developing countries entail. We hope to offer a place to discuss, among other related questions: On what conceptual/normative basis do we speak of good and bad governance in the developing world? What analytical strategies should be used to detect state capacity deficits and/or public policy management issues in organizations usually prone to lower reliance on protocols? Is it possible to isolate recurrent or path-dependent management problems independent of specific policy sectors, governments and/or countries of the developing world? Are there patterns of mismanagement or bad governance that can be traced to specific regions and/or political regimes?

Luciano Andrenacci (Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Buenos Aires & FLACSO Argentina: lucianoandrenacci@gmail.com). Luciano Andrenacci (Bahía Blanca, Argentina, 1966) is an academic and a practitioner in the fields of public management, citizenship and social policy. He has a degree in Political Science at Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina; and a PhD in Latin American Studies at the Université Paris III (Sorbonne-Nouvelle), France. Since 2009 he is an Associate Professor at the Escuela de Política de Gobierno, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Buenos Aires; and he coordinates the Human Development Program at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), site Argentina. He has worked as teacher/researcher for many universities in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and the USA; as well as an official and/or consultant for the Interamerican Development Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the governments of Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Peru. After a career in the study and the implementation of social and citizenship public policies, he has recently reoriented his research interests toward public policy management problems in Latin America.

Julián Bertranou (Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Buenos Aires & Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza: jbertranou@hotmail.com). Julián Bertranou (Mendoza, Argentina, 1963) is an academic and a practitioner in the fields of public policy and public management. He has a degree in Public Administration and Political Science at Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Argentina; and a PhD in Social Science at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is a Professor at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM) and at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, both in Argentina. He is Director of the Master’s Program on Planning and Evaluation of Public Policies at UNSAM. He has worked as teacher/researcher for many universities in Argentina; as well as Governance Coordinator in UNDP-Argentina and Director of Social Programs in the Province of Mendoza.