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Bureaucratic Politics (bureaucratic + politics)
Selected AbstractsAnatomy of Failure: Bush's Decision-Making Process and the Iraq WarFOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 3 2009David Mitchell The Bush administration's decision-making process leading to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 has been singled out for its many shortcomings: failure of intelligence; lack of debate concerning options; an insufficient invading force; and poor postwar planning. Contrary to the administration's claim that no one foresaw the difficulties of waging a war in Iraq, many concerns about the challenges the United States would face were raised inside and outside of government. Yet, none of this information had a significant effect on the decision-making process. This paper develops a decision-making model that integrates elements from the individual to the organizational level and explains how important information was marginalized, leading to a poor policy outcome. The model illustrates how the combined effects of the president's formal management style, anticipatory compliance on the part of key players, bureaucratic politics, and the intervening variable of the 9/11 terrorist attacks contributed to a defective decision-making process. [source] Banishing Bureaucracy or Hatching a Hybrid?GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2000The CanadianFood Inspection Agency, the Politics of Reinventing Government The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is a means to overcoming long-standing bureaucratic politics while attaining some major policy ends.Contrary to some of the new public management bravado of transforming the public sector, the CFIA is not a bureaucratic revolution in reshaping the Canadian State. Changes in scientific staffing, funding, and inspection have been more incremental than fundamental. Moreover, the CFIA is something less than the special and separate operating agency models discussed in the alternative service delivery literature in terms of autonomy and market orientation, but something more autonomous and entrepreneurial than traditional government departments. These organizational and managerial reforms are modest extensions providing a means for achieving economies and enhanced effectiveness in carrying out the mandate of safety, consumer protection, and market access for Canadian food, animal, plant, and forestry products. [source] Productivist Welfare Capitalism: Social Policy in East AsiaPOLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2000Ian Holliday The article engages with the literature on the ,East Asian welfare model' by using Esping-Andersen's ,worlds of welfare capitalism' approach to analyze social policy in the region. It describes the main features of a productivist world of welfare capitalism that stands alongside Esping-Andersen's conservative, liberal and social democratic worlds. It then shows that Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan are all part of this world, though they divide into sub-groups within it. To account for productivist welfare capitalism in East Asia, the article focuses particularly on bureaucratic politics at the unit level, and on a range of key shaping factors at the system level. It closes by considering the implications of East Asian experience for comparative social policy analysis. [source] An Evaluation Crucible: Evaluating Policy Advice in Australian Central AgenciesAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2000Michael Di Francesco Policy advice is a core function of government that until quite recently remained outside the formal processes of performance evaluation. Evaluation, by its very nature, is designed to question both the effectiveness and relevance of government activities; applying it to policy advice opens up a traditionally confidential and politically sensitive arena. This paper reports on an evaluation experiment in Australian government , policy management reviews (PMRs) , that sought to evaluate the quality of central agency policy advice. It traces the development of the PMR model around interdepartmental committee processes, the bureaucratic politics that diluted the focus on policy outcomes, and examines how central agencies steered evaluation away from questions of public accountability towards arrangements for achieving more effective control of the processes underpinning production of advice. By targeting the process rather than outcomes of policy advising, PMRs sought unsuccessfully to adhere to the divide between management and policy and, in doing so, marked out the limits to performance evaluation. [source] | ||||||||||