Dr Madeleine Pill is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield, UK. Madeleine’s research takes a critical, comparative approach to the theory and practice of governance and public policy at the urban/local and neighbourhood scales, explored in Governing Cities: Politics and Policy (Palgrave, 2021). She conducted the Baltimore, U.S. research as part of the international Collaborative Governance Under Austerity study funded by the British Economic and Social Research Council. Recent articles in Local Government Studies, Policy Studies and Urban Studies consider the implications for local government of national government ‘dealmaking’ in Australia; the co-production of neighbourhood services in Wales; and informality in local governance.
Policy capacity at the local level: theory and practice
The local (‘urban’ or municipal) level is often lauded as an effective scale for intervention and space for action in tackling public policy challenges. In this lecture, we will examine local policy capacity via a range of critical perspectives informed by broader debates regarding local autonomy and collaborative forms of local governance. Drawing from a variety of empirical studies, we will consider ways in which the local ‘everyday’ state (comprising state and non-state actors) can create and is constrained in formulating and implementing localist policies.
Mike Howlett(Simon Fraser University)
Mike Howlett
Simon Fraser University
Michael Howlett, FRSC (Professor) BSocSci.(Hon)(Ott), MA(Br Col), Ph.D. (Queen's) is Burnaby Mountain Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University. Professor Howlett taught at Queen's University (1986-1988) and the University of Victoria (1988-1989) before coming to SFU. He was Visiting Professor (2009-2010) and Yong Pung How Chair Professor (2013-2017) at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, Visiting Research Fellow at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2018) and Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Advanced Studies of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen (2020). He is the author of Canadian Public Policy (2013); Designing Public Policies (2011 and 2019), The Policy Design Primer (2019) and co-author of Procurement and Politics; (2023), Dictionary of Public Policy; (2022), Policy Consultancy in Comparative Perspective; (2020), Designing for Policy Effectiveness: Defining and Understanding a Concept; (2018). He is the founder and past Chair (2010-2018) and current Secretary of Research Committee 30 (Comparative Public Policy) of the International Political Science Association and sits on the Executive Committee of the International Public Policy Association.
Policy Capacity: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Policy Competences and Capabilities
Although policy capacity is among the most fundamental concepts in public policy, few systematic efforts try to operationalize and measure it. This talk presents a conceptual framework for analysing and measuring policy capacity by examining the competencies and capabilities important to policy-making and how they come together to define 'capacity'. Competences are categorized into three general types of skills essential for policy success—analytical, operational and political—while policy capabilities are assessed at the individual, organizational and system resource levels. The literature and sources of each combination of competences and capabilities are set out along with a discussion of the problems that can result from imbalanced attention to these nine different components of policy capacity. Discussion of the strategies able to overcome any gaps in professional behaviour, organizational and managerial activities, and the policy systems involved in policymaking are also outlined.
Carsten Daugbjerg (Copenhagen University)
Carsten Daugbjerg
Copenhagen University
Carsten Daugbjerg is a political scientist and Professor at the University of Copenhagen. He was a Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University (ANU) from 2013 to 2018 and is now an Honorary Professor at this institution. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Co-editor of the Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning. His research area is comparative public policy with a particular interest in policy network and governance theories, policy capacity, historical institutionalism (in particular feedback and sequencing), ideational and policy paradigm theory, and policy instrument and design theory.
Generating policy capacity through collaboration with interest groups: advantages and pitfalls
While the policy capacity literature acknowledges that collaboration with interest groups can contribute to generate policy capacity, its focus has tended to be state-centric. Earlier literature on corporatism and policy networks put emphasis on the resources that interest groups could bring into the policy design and implementation process to generate policy capacity. This session will consider the role of interest groups in the generation of policy capacity by drawing on the earlier literature as well as work on collaborative governance. In such an endeavour, it is important also to pay attention to the pitfalls in government relations with interest groups as these in some circumstances can undermine policy capacity.
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