Creating effective and credible government has become a big issue in the last 25 years. Our perspective is that of management theory and practice, rather than political science or organization theory. In investigating public governance and management we have paid closest attention to the role of strategic management in building effectiveness and credibility. This no doubt reflects the emergence and spread of new ideas and new thinking on public governance. We think that these new ideas, which now abound not only in the academic literature but also in the pronouncements and work of international bodies, need more empirical investigation. This sets the book on a path of moving beyond the legacy of approaches dominated by concepts of bureaucracy and of government leaders and officials operating mainly through the law. That legacy is now being confronted by ideas focusing on understanding how to develop the strategic functions of public governance and how government can interact with civil society to facilitate action on societal challenges and problems.
In the last 25 or more years, and even now, the top challenges and problems facing public governance have been often perceived in international bodies to be ones of economic development. Despite increasing global attention to sustainability and social wellbeing, the last decade seems to have meant that governments, and government leaders, continue to prioritize economic governance as an area for modernization and reform. This has also been true in the case of Europe. But we have set out in this book to take a wider view of the benefits of public governance based on strategic management capabilities.
1 The Need for a Strategic State
There has been much writing on the purpose of government (e.g., to supply the public with protection and security; to expand opportunity and prosperity; to foster human happiness; to encourage human goodness and virtuous living; etc.). There has also been much writing, for hundreds of years, on constitutions (and on their varieties, advantages and defects), on ruling, on the rule of law, on the nature of democracy and the extent of its realization in practice, and so on (Aristotle 1981; Machiavelli 1961). Since the 1980s a new issue has risen in importance in the eyes of public policy makersâthis is the use of strategic management in government.
Initially many academics wrote about management in government within a framework known as New Public Management, which was undoubtedly their reaction to the many government efficiency initiatives and attempts to trim back the size of the public sector. Some of these academics looked at the application of management to government sceptically and critically, identifying this as caused by âmanagerialismâ, by which was meant that there was a widespread conviction that management makes government better, with this being essentially a belief rather than a proven fact (Pollitt
1993). Of course, we could also see the rise of management in governments in the 1980s as a resuscitation of the much older idea of a âmanagerial revolutionâ as promoted by James Burnham in a book first published in 1942 (see Burnham
1962), in which he argued that managers, rather than politicians or capitalists, would come to rule society. He wrote about what he claimed was already happening, a transition from a capitalist to a managerialist society. Not only would managers become a ruling class, but also sovereignty would shift from parliaments to administrative bureaus dominated by managers (Burnham
1962, p. 74):
âThe managers will exercise their control over the instruments of production ⊠The stateâthat is, the institutions that comprise the stateâwill ⊠be the âpropertyâ of the managers. And that will be quite enough to place them in the position of ruling class.â
We can compare this thesis of a managerial state of the future with the analysis of German sociologist Max Weber, who saw officials in bureaucracies as having powerful roles because of their expert knowledge. Weber characterized politicians, even elected politicians, as in a weak position because they could not match the expertise of the bureaucratic officialsâbut it is important to remember that he also diagnosed the existence of a tension between bureaucracy and democracy (Weber 1948). If this tension exists we cannot safely make an assumption that either the politicians are in charge or the bureaucrats are in charge of society.
The public policy interest in management in government has outlasted the âefficiency phaseâ of the 1980s. The interest has continued into a period in which a search for government effectiveness is a major concern. An intense interest in better management within government is now linked to a desire for more strategic governments capable of better public governance because they possess necessary strategic capabilities (OECD 2013). Such governments are strategic states that are more effective in the face of the challenges of an evolving global context (PUMA 1996).
One way of framing the development of the strategic state is to see it as a cross-fertilization of the laissez-faire practices of the liberal state and the centralized state planning of communist societies. As is well known, the neo-liberalism of the 1980s (e.g., as proselytized in the United Kingdom and in the United States) prescribed a minimal role for the state in economic matters and the creation and maintenance of âfree marketsâ that operated with little state interference. In contrast, the theory of centralized economic planning was sometimes taken to mean the planning and coordination of all (or nearly all) economic activity in a society.
1.1 A Synthesis of Two Doctrines
The strategic state might be seen as a synthesis of these two opposed doctrines of the state. An early attempt to conceptualize it occurred in the mid-1970s (Budd 1978, pp. 152â153). Strategic planning, it was thought, when used by government, could be selective and interactive. If governments were being selective it meant that they were not trying to plan everythingâthey were focusing. If governments made use of social interaction to find solutions it was considered that this was better than simply relying on âreasonâ. So, this type of strategic planningâselective and interactiveâwas neither a centralized Soviet style nor was it a technocratic form of strategic planning in which politicians and experts planned on behalf of society. We infer that governments using strategic planning should engage with civil society in the process of strategic planning. This was, moreover, a strategic planning based on recognition of the limits of governmentâs ability to exercise control (Budd 1978, p. 153)âhence strategic planning was about ânegotiating with the environment rather than seeking to control it.â This idea of a type of governmental strategic planning based on selectivity and interaction was compatible with the World Bankâs ideas for effective government that were articulated some 20 years later (World Bank 1997).
The World Bank (
1997, pp. 1, 25) endorsed a new activist model of government, one in which the state interacted with wider society and business and was selective and focused in its actions, and which appeared to be very different from the laissez-faire model favoured by country leaders on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1980s:
âThe message of experience since then [50 years ago] is rather different: that the state is central to economic and social development, not as a direct provider of growth but as a partner, catalyst, and facilitator. [âŠ] the lesson of a half centuryâs thinking and rethinking of the stateâs role in development is more nuanced. State-dominated development has failed, but so will stateless development. Development without an effective state is impossible.â
The East Asia experience may have been a particularly telling one for the World Bank: it seemed to have taught the World Bank that an active government policy could promote markets. East Asia experience had also shown the World Bank the merits of partnership, demonstrating that âgovernment and the private sector can cooperate to achieve rapid growth and shared developmentâ (World Bank 1997, p. 46).
While the World Bank argued that effective states varied according to their stage of development, it proposed a strategy for making a state effective. There were two priority areas for this strategy: first, matching the governmentâs role to its capability and, second, reinvigorating public institutions. Interestingly the first of these meant not only that government should be strategic in deciding what to do (selectivity) but also, as stated in the report, strategic in deciding how it was to be done. So, we might speculate that government needed to undertake strategic analysis to decide what was to be done and how it was to be done. The second priority areaâreinvigorating public institutionsâmeant several different things. Firstly, it meant government countering arbitrary and corrupt action. Secondly, it meant increasing efficiency by introducing more competition. Thirdly, it meant improving pay and incentives for those working in the state institutions. Fourthly, it meant making the state more responsive to the needs of the people, and making it get closer to the people through broader participation and decentralization (interaction). It should be noted that these points about government being more responsive to the needs of the public and decentralization could be seen as support for more engagement to back up a representative system of democracy (see Fig.
1.1).
Versions of this new thinking could be found in individual countries. For example, in the UK, an attempt was made to move beyond traditional policy-making by developing strategic policy-making. National leaders were concerned that policy-making was not sufficiently long-term, not sufficiently well delivered, and was beset by problems of poor coordination and poor integration due to departmentalism (âsilosâ). Also in the UK, government talked about the state becoming enabling. The Prime Ministerâs Strategy Unit in 2007 made the following statement as part of a major governmental policy review (PMSU
2007, p. 4):
âThis Policy Review introduces the idea of the strategic and enabling state as a response to the continuing evolution of global and domestic trends. It seeks to avoid the pitfalls of the big or small state argument and reinvent effective state power for the current age.â
A variant of the new thinking was embedded in the OECDâs public governance reviews of individual countries and it was the kernel of the OECDâs public championing of improving public governance by making changes to realise the concept of a strategic state (OECD 2013). The OECD at around this time consistently pressed the case for the development and use of strategic capabilities by government.
The new thinking was also seen as applicable to public governance for the global community of nations. In 2015 the nations of the planet confirmed their commitment to a long-term vision of a better world, which was operationalized by a set of long-term goalsâthe 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. This was an expression of intelligent government of the planet. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the goals as a transformative vision for a better world.
1.2 The Institution of a Strategic State Means Moving Away from the Traditional Bureaucratic State
For at least a hundred years people have written about public administration using concepts of bureaucracy and the rule of law. The practices they refer to are even older. For example, in the Chinese state of Qin, more than 2000 years ago, there was a famous public administrator, Shang Yang, who reformed the system of public governance. He created a centralized bureaucracy, appointed administrators to administrative districts, and brought in a harsh but consistently applied system of law. The administrators were state appointed and trained to administer districts and collect taxes. At the time, this was a radically new model of public governance in China, quite different from systems based on rule by nobles.
Another historical example, taken from Spain, can be used to show how legal institutions to regulate behaviour have been at the core of public governance. More than a thousand years ago Aboul-Abbas El Hakkam ruled as the Caliph of most of Spain. According to history, we are told that he âapplied himself wholly to promoting the happiness of his subjects,â to enforcing the laws, and âgave audience to his subjectsâ once a week to hear their complaints and dispense justice (Florian 1840). The Caliph appointed governors to cities and provinces, who were in charge of the military and the administration of the pol...
