Fall 2003

The papers in the symposium were commissioned and edited by Tony Bovaird (Bristol Business School) and Elke Loffler (Governance International, UK). The impetus for preparing the symposium was the recognition of a mismatch between recent public governance reforms, particularly in OECD countries, and the available performance measurement tools and models. While many public sector reforms, in particular at local levels, go beyond the improvement of service delivery, conventional performance measurement approaches still focus almost exclusively on ‘value for money’ or service quality. It is argued that such measures capture only one part of the current public sector modernization agenda in OECD countries.

Given the difficulties experienced in recent decades in measuring service quality and organizational excellence, many researchers think that any attempt to ‘measure’ the quality of public governance is bound to fail. Certainly there is currently no ‘scientifically-sound’ model to assess the quality of public governance. However, as interest in ‘good governance’ spreads, it is inevitable that attempts are made to explore how to operationalize it and to test whether it can be empirically demonstrated. As the papers gathered for this symposium show, there are now many interesting initiatives to assess specific aspects of public governance. They occur in many different contexts, spanning international, national, local and neighbourhood levels, and have been undertaken by many different types of organization for a wide variety of reasons.

Bovaird and Loffler recognize that it is still too early to judge whether the new interest in governance indicators will really bring about an improved understanding of whether governance is improving – and even earlier to judge whether evaluating the quality of public governance makes an important contribution to actually improving public governance. They argue also that the discussion about the quality of public governance should not remain an insider debate for the enjoyment of ‘the usual suspects’ reading academic journals but should attract participation from a wider audience. Two of the symposium papers suggest ways in which the approaches used and the results gathered are shared more widely has been the case up to now in the arcane and closed world of public service performance measurement. Bovaird and Loffler hope that the symposium will stimulate researchers and practitioners among IRAS readership to rise to this daunting challenge.

The first of the three articles, written by the editors, provides an overview on the evaluation of the quality of public governance. It charts the move in the public sector during the 1990s from concern largely with excellence in service delivery to a concern for good governance. It examines what we mean by governance and good governance and the dimensions of ‘good public governance’. It demonstrates that there is now widespread interest in measuring not only the quality of services but also improvements in quality of life and improvements in governance processes. It discusses how measures of good governance are being used in different contexts around the world. Finally it considers how the measurement of good governance can be encouraged, e.g. through awards, inspections, setting funding conditions and empowering stakeholders to demand evidence.

In the second paper, Geert Bouckaert and Steven Van de Walle note that until recently, public administration mainly used so-called ‘hard indicators’, such as resources and outputs, to monitor performance. Increased attention to accountability and issues around impacts and outcomes have stimulated the introduction of ‘soft’ indicators - e.g. citizen and user satisfaction targets. Moreover, there is increased demand for information on performance in relation to ‘governance’ as a whole, including ‘quality of life’ indicators. Politicians, journalists and citizens increasingly express their worries about a decreasing level of trust in government and the detrimental effects this has on government and on the cohesion of society – they appear to assume that more trust and more satisfaction equal better governance. It is assumed also that increasing the quality of governance will thus lead to citizens who are more satisfied and more trusting. This article shows that current attempts to measure trust and satisfaction in government are misleading if they claim to be measuring good governance. First, satisfaction is difficult to measure, and very service-specific. Secondly, trust in government is easier to measure but its linkages with good governance are far from clear.

The third paper, by Steve Knack, Mark Kugler and Nick Manning, summarizes progress made in a DfID-funded World Bank initiative to test and develop policy-relevant, politically acceptable, quantitative indicators of governance. There are two major principles involved in the process of generating indicators that are useful for practical reforms. Political acceptability is key in developing neutral quantitative benchmarks of good governance that can be embraced by reformers. Measures should also be institutionally specific so that reformers know which institutions to reform and how to do so. This paper explores some of the most promising second generation indicators of good governance and elaborates on how they are being used in World Bank operations.

Additional Papers

In addition to the symposium on “Evaluating the Quality of Governance,” this issue of the Review contains three articles on other issues.

In the first of these papers, Nada K. Kakabadse and Andrew Kakabadse examine how a collaborative inquiry (CI) intervention has been used effectively to enhance change within central government organizations. The article focuses on a CI initiative to assist public servants to promote meaningfully the United Kingdom’s Modernizing Government agenda. The paper illustrates how harnessing diverse opinions through mutual inquiry can be a more fruitful form of pursuing change than the top-down rational approach or the more confrontational rhetorical models of debate. The authors conclude that the collaborative qualities of participation and democratic dialogue are especially pertinent to individual and organizational development as emphasis is placed on the contextual relevance of experiential knowledge, group and community development and the need to involve all participants in the task of defining the aims of change and creating meaningful futures.

Tom Christensen and Per Laegreid discuss complex interaction and influence among political and administrative leaders, with particular reference to Norway. The authors describe the influence of Norwegian executive political and administrative leaders on salient policy issues, based on a structural, a cultural-institutional and an exposure perspective. The data are drawn from a broad survey of elites, focusing on undersecretaries of state, secretary generals and director generals in the ministries. The analysis reveals that political and administrative leaders are regarded as the most influential actors on salient policy issues. They are engaged in extensive and intensive inter- and intra-organizational contact networks. Their influence varies according to political-administrative contact patterns, internal administrative structure and external media exposure.

In the final article in this issue of the Review, Gambhir Bhatta re-examines the notion of organizational capability. Bhatta notes that an organization does not work in a vacuum and that its external environment plays a key role in shaping the manner in which it works. Since the environment tends to be complex and turbulent, the introduction of uncertainty and risks in the analysis makes the notion of organizational capability murkier. This paper argues that one way of dealing with this constraint is to look at capability as being derived from its sequential relationship with results and strategy – which gives governments a more holistic picture. The paper also argues that by preparing organizational statements of intent (SOIs), public organizations are better able to understand their environments and to convey purposeful action to Parliament.

Upcoming Debates

The major theme to be examined in the next edition of this web page is “Toward Quality Governance for Sustainable Growth and Development.” The papers in this symposium, together with other papers, will be briefly summarized on this web page and published in full in the International Review of Administrative Sciences. Information on the Review is available at http://www.iiasiisa.be/iias/airisa/airisa.htm).