Understanding Governance

This book examines why many ambitious public management policies do not materialize. Comprehensive reforms do not generate relevant and lasting changes. Yet some evolutions may occur that actually improve the efficiency level inside public administrations. The book identifies how and why such processes may occur. It explores an innovative approach to the way reform policies inside the public sector are assessed. 

The opening chapters examine the contributions of different disciplines to the study of change in the public sector, before proposing a framework to better understand management developments. The book then reviews eight crosscutting central government programmes successively launched since the late 1960s, examines how these programmes were designed and constructed, and analyses the ways in which three toolkits are appropriated: dashboards and indicators, cost-benefit analysis, and ex post evaluation. The final chapters examine the links between the development of agencification and the way in which central government proceeds to implement it, and demonstrate why and how the structure of human resources is crucial for initiating change processes. Together, the book proposes lessons for public practitioners as well as for academic purposes.

This book examines the contemporary relevance of the concept of the core executive across a range of constitutional contexts, covering examples from Westminster system, continental Europe, and Scandinavia. Much study of core executives focuses exclusively on the Westminster system, but this book expands that scope to take into account nations where coalition government has been the norm for decades. Focusing on the interaction between the political and administrative executives, the book addresses tensions between the two that have become increasingly apparent in an age of populism and mediatisation.

This book compares network governance practices and public service delivery in England and China. Adopting a political ethnographic approach, it assesses whether networked forms of governance are used in provision of care for the elderly and those with learning disabilities in the two countries. It also examines several concepts from network governance theory - including interdependence and resource exchange, trust and reciprocity, and diplomatic skills - in the context of English and Chinese local state engagement with NGOs providing and managing care. Perhaps surprisingly, the book argues that there are more similarities than differences in network governance practices in England and China. It will appeal to all those interested in network governance theory, public administration and comparative politics.