I’ve
been reflecting a lot this year on my working experience of organizational
change (both managing and advising state bodies) - now equally divided between the UK (the first 25 years) and central
Europe and central Asia (the last 25 years).
I do so in a coat of many colours – scholar, community activist,
politician, consultant, straddler of various worlds (not least academic
disciplines), writer and….blogger.Conscious that there are very few who have this experience of straddling so many worlds, I thought it would be useful to try to produce some pointers for the general public, using a series of questions which occur to interested citizens about public services
I
have always been a fan of tables, axes and matrices – by which I mean the
reduction of ideas and text to the simple format of a 2x2 or 6x3 (or whatever)
table. It forces you to whittle text down to the bare essentials. Perhaps
that’s why I love these Central Asian and Russian miniatures so much
So I have developed 16 questions and have compressed my answers into such a
table with just 2 columns for responses – “how each question has been
dealt with in the literature” and “where the clearest answers can be found”. Of
course, the literature is predominantly anglo-saxon – although the experience
covered is global.
This
proved to be an extraordinarily useful discipline – leading to quite a bit of
adjustment to the original questions. It’s a long table – so I’ll make a start
with the first five questions
-
How does each particular public service (eg
health, education) work?
- What can realistically be said about the
interests which find expression in “the state”?
-
How satisfied are citizens with the outcomes of state activities?
-
Why is the state such a contested idea?
-
Where can we find out about the efficiency and effectiveness of public
services?
Basic Question
|
How extensively has it been
explored
|
Some Good answers
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1. How
does each particular public service (eg
health, education) work?
How
does it define and deal with challenges?
|
Each
country has its own legal and cultural history which affects the shape and
funding of services. Globalisation and Europeanisation have posed state
bodies with profound challenges since the 1980s – with functions transferring
from state to private and third sector sectors (and, in some cases, back
again) and an increasing emphasis on mixed provision and “partnerships”
Thousands
of books give analytical treatment of each of our public services – some with
a focus on policy, some on management.
Measurement and comparison of performance – at both national and international level - have become dominant themes Less emphasis since 2010 on Capacity building and strategic thinking – seen as luxuries for services under severe pressure because of cuts and austerity… |
Public and Social
Services in Europe ed Wollman, Kopric and Marcou (2016)
The New Public Governance – emerging
perspectives on the theory and practice of public governance; ed
Stephen Osborne (2010)
What are Public Services
Good At?; Demmke (2008)
Parliaments and Think
Tanks
occasionally report on strategic work
|
2.
What can realistically be said about the interests
which find expression in “the state”?
|
The
1970s and 80s saw an active debate in political science and sociology about
the nature of The State (national and local) – and the public, professional,
political, commercial and other interests one could find represented there.
As
the state has “hollowed out” in the past 30 years – with privatisation and
“contracting out” - political scientists became more interested in
identifying the narratives which justified the remaining structures (see 8
and 9 below).
It has been left to journalists such as Jones and Monbiot to look at the issue of interests – particularly commercial and ideational – of the new constellation of the state. |
The State of Power 2016
(TNI)
The Establishment – and
how they get away with it; Owen Jones (2014)
Democracy Incorporated –
managed democracy and the spectre of inverted totalitarianism; Sheldon Wolin (2008)
|
3. How
satisfied are citizens with
the outcomes of state activities?
|
Despite
the constant political and media attacks on public services, the general
level of satisfaction of the British public remains high – particularly for
local institutions
|
Opinion
polls – Gallup, European Union
|
4.
Why is the state such a contested
idea?
|
In
the 1970s a new school of thinking called “public choice theory” developed a
very strong critique not so much of the public sector but of the motives of
those who managed it. The argument was not a pragmatic one about performance
– but rather that politicians and bureaucrats had private interests which they always put
ahead of any notion of public interest; and that private sector provision
(through competition) would therefore always be superior to that of public
provision.
Although
it was initially treated with derision, it was the basic logic behind
Margaret Thatcher’s push for privatisation which became global after the fall
of the Berlin Wall
|
Reinventing Government (by Osborne
and Ted Graeber) popularised the new approach in 1992
|
5. Where
can we find reliable analyses of
the efficiency and effectiveness of public services?
|
In the
UK a powerful National Audit Office (with more than 600 staff) investigate
Departments of State (inc Hospitals). It is overseen by Parliament’s most
powerful Select Committee - the Public Accounts Select
Committee. For
25 years local authority budgets in England and Wales were overseen by an Audit Commission which
was, very curiously, abolished
Attack
on public spending “waste” has long been a favourite subject for the media –
with quite a few books devoted to the subject.
|
Global
league tables for health and education sectors
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