The State 's Capacity Of Policy Making And Governance

AIPA 2: UNDERSTANDING ACTORS, INTERESTS & POWER Institutions  Basic level – states exist to provide (1) defence and (2) social order  this requires the presence of a functioning economy.  State not only produces, consumes and redistributes; it’s also the main source and enforcer of “rules of games”.  “Rules of games” are institutions  institutional quality is related to economic performance.  Evidence: No country has gotten rich with bad institutions. Politics  Politics is the process of creating new institutions. Existing institutions create a constraint on this process.  Political processes can be analysed in terms of Actors involved in the processes, their interests and their relative power (AIP).  Actors: Political,

The top-down approach is a definite system of control and command by the authoritative person of the government to the project, which concerns the people (Political pipeline, 2013). The state superintendent, Tom Torlakson will carry out the policy decision. The strength of the top-down approach is: (a) it has clear and consistent goals being articulated by the top authority and (b) it has strong rules that are aligned with the policy since it is established on the top. The autocratic leadership in the top-down approach is beneficial to the organization with knowledgeable and talented leaders.

141). He also draws on Foucault’s idea of governmentality, which considers governance over a group by the state, to describe how grants are structured such that the NGOs are often shaped by governmental donors. However, considering the necessity of and input provided by these agents, including major corporations, institutions, and state or governmental bodies, they are not given enough attention in the text. Considering Weber’s hierarchy of bureaucratic authority, neoliberal ideologies themselves permeate through societies from the top-down. In his theory, Weber denotes that “the power position of a fully developed bureaucracy is always overtowering,” (1946, p. 232) and that often, the intentions of those highest in power are obscured in order to maintain their superiority; effectively, the trajectories of NGOs are often determined by their principal donors. In addition, both within organizations and among their sponsors, rationalization and technologization, meant to increase efficiency, can produce detrimental effects due to a large separation between the source of money and the patients, creating rigidity, bureaucratic indifference, and a dehumanized “iron cage”

These features of having third parties providing services and the government cutting out responsibilities, but maintaining inherently governmental functions have altered from the traditional conception of government administration. These differences include the government maintaining inherent, core functions. Today, the core functions are debated and have not been explicitly stated or maintained. Furthermore, traditional government administration contracting was based on a good ol’ boys’ system – who you know, more than professional and well-developed pre-soliciting and soliciting stages. However, the traditional administration when dealing with

By arguing who the actor is to be responsible to fit into the position of social laws, public policy expresses itself in term of “public offices within government, and by extension the citizens they represent, choose to do or not to do about public problems” (Kraft & Furlong, 2013, pg. 3) in which public policy is the regulation people are following other than laws and regulations. Due to its complexity, policy cycle has been generated as the end-producer of this policy institutionalism. Implicitly, a number of fundamental elements are to be notified as the most significant factors to focus on how well-designed the policy cycle is by regarding to the aspects policy cycle concentrate on. While we pay attention on analyzing the

Although policy making is very much a domestic concern involving national governments and their citizens, the international organizations (known as network actors) also are increasingly vital in shaping domestic or national policy choices and policy developments. Network actors help build norms by bringing new ideas/opinions and issues in the policy debates and serving as sources of information and testimony. They help build up issues, set agendas and provide information to create awareness of a problem. This is often done in such a way that it becomes more salient by underlining specific values, facts, and other socioeconomic considerations and how audience members interpret a particular situation.

The role of authority can be explained through a hierachical structure, in which the higher your position, the level of authority directly increases. Henri Fayol has completed extensive research with regards to management within

Colebatch (2009, p. 47) defined policy as “The exercise of authority to achieve collective purposes. Policy is the pursuit of goals. The assumption is that policy is a purposive course of action”. Therefore, policy is processes acquired and followed by organisations to prevent and resolve contemporary difficulties. Public policy is policy for a public area or shared intent. It is when an organisation owns the policy (Baker, 2015).

Although policy making is very much a domestic concern involving national governments and their citizens, the international organizations (known as network actors) also are increasingly vital in shaping domestic or national policy choices and policy developments. Network actors help build norms by bringing new ideas/opinions and issues in the policy debates and serving as sources of information and testimony. They help build up issues, set agendas and provide information to create awareness of a problem (Yvonne). This is often done in such a way that it becomes more salient by stressing specific values, facts, and other

Over the past 40 years, through internal reforms and external changes, many liberal democratic states are seen as losing their autonomy over their very own borders. Therefore, many assert that the states are in the retreat, however in this essay, it will argue that the states are in fact in the state of revival because of New public management and Europeanization. This essay will first explain what internal reforms are and how they revive the power of the state. It will then move on to explain what the external changes are and how they also revive the power of the state. Lastly, the conclusion will consolidate all the arguments to support why the state is in the revival.

Government programs, even when designed to be carried out in a direct and simple way, eventually come to involve a large number of governmental and nongovernmental organizations and people (Starling, 2001, p. 383). Every one of the people and groups involved has their own perspective, priorities, urgency levels, opinions, demands, and regulations. Any of them might cause friction and conflict when administering public policy.

Althaus, Bridgman and Davis have developed a public policy cycle, which entails a structure of steps aimed to ‘help make sense of policy processes for the puzzled (Bridgman and Davis, 2003)’. The cycle is formulated to guide public servants towards identifying and covering most bases before creating a policy, designed to achieve a required action. This model has been under both significant scrutiny, as well as endorsement. Consequently, the following essay investigates to what extent the public policy cycle mentioned above, reflects the reality of how public policy is made in Australia.

The liberal democratic state has been in retreat due to its fragmentation and diminished accountability caused by the internal reform: new public management (NPM). NPM is an attempt to reform the public sector through the application of management techniques used in the private sector. In reality, NPM is a loose concept, consisting of different economic reforms. (Osborne 2009) While the adoption of NPM has had many advantages, there have been substantial unintended consequences from this implementation. This internal reform has resulted in a fragmentation of the state that has led to blurred and diminished accountability. Rhodes explains that within the UK civil service “the role of officials is increasingly constrained by new management systems and political controls. The obvious outcomes of these changes are fragmentation and diminished accountability.” (1994: 151) This

Legislative tasks are not easily formed. Within our government there are three branches. The executive branch is the branch that oversees healthcare matters with the president as the “CEO”. The other two branches, legislative and judicial, serve their own purpose each separate from the other two. Each branch contributes its own unique processes in establishing social policy.

This essay will argue how a certain state handles challenges to state capacity. State capacity is the ability of a state to implement decisions and whether it has the resources, organization and leadership to implement its decesions.1 This essay will describe the challenges Belgium had the last decade and will argue how this affected the state capacity. Belgium is a constitutional monarchy and a member of the Europian Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN). These institutions have influence on the state capacity of Belgium as the state is obliged to follow certain guidelines of these institutions. However, I won 't discuss the influence of the United Nations and European Union, because these influences are relatively small in the discussed issues. In this essay it will be argued how the economic crisis and the problems with forming of government challenged the state capacity of Belgium.