1 On the basis of the evidence in this case study, was the West Midlands Police force being strategic when it introduced restorative justice?
2 What were the key choices made by West Midlands Police when designing the policy of restorative justice and implementing it? Were the right options chosen?
3 With respect to restorative justice, what were the chief constraints on deci-sion-making and action for the West Midlands Police?
4 What were the key lessons from this case study about how to be strategic in policy-making?
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Discussions of reforming the UK civil service and attempts at developing and reforming it have been occurring for more than a decade. Policy-making, seen as the function of the senior civil service, has been evaluated and weaknesses in it identified.
It is important to place these concerns about policy-making by civil ser-vants in the context of the long-standing analysis of the civil service as having a bureaucratic culture. The propositions of Max Weber about the consequences of the development of a bureaucratic officialdom in the administration of the state alongside mass democracy continue to find resonance today. He diagnosed an asymmetry of knowledge in the relationship between politician and bureaucrat that gave the expert and trained bureaucrat de facto power despite the nominal higher authority of the politician. One effect of this, in everyday parlance, is that elected politicians are placed in the position of rubber-stamping decisions actually made by bureaucrats.
The 1999 Modernising Government White Paper in the UK identified a num-ber of desirable changes to policy-making. It suggested that policies should be strategic, outcome-focused, joined up, inclusive, flexible, innovative and robust.
Civil service capabilities for being more long-term in policy-making, more forward-thinking and more outcome-focused were developed, first in the centre of government, and later within government departments with the formation of departmental strategy units.
Despite efforts to reform policy-making and develop civil servants some com-mentators claimed that there were little signs of change occurring or that despite some progress there remained weaknesses in policy-making. A recent study reported policy-making weaknesses in relation to: evaluation, review and learning; joined-up policy-making; and being innovative, flexible and creative. Of course, these were serious weaknesses from the point of view of modernizing policy-making.
This chapter has pointed to the importance of considering the power base for changing policy-making to make it more strategic and more modern generally.
This power base has to be assessed in relation to the vested interests in existing policy-making practices and departmental boundaries. One consequence of this insight is to appreciate that with ebbs and flows in power, progress in developing strategic policy-making may at times be halted and even reversed. It was argued that one aspect of analysing the power base is taking account of the difference that results from the appointment of powerful ministers who derive their power in part from the ability to get policies agreed in cabinet or supported by the Prime Minister. If they have power in the government, and in the political party they belong to, this gives them power in their own ministry or department.
The power of senior civil servants may arise in part from their ‘editing’ when carrying out policy analysis: they set the parameters of the discussion of policy with ministers by writing policy drafts in which they have decided how many options to include, what options to include, what evidence to include and so on. Ministers may be aware of this and describe what they get as ‘pre-cooked’, and this implies that the political decision is a rubber-stamp process. Resistance may also take the form of keeping a minister overloaded through a mountain of paperwork. The minister is kept busy just keeping up with the volume and detail of information being supplied by civil servants. They have no time to get a ‘grip’
of the policy agenda in their own ministry.
The chapter speculated that resistance to change had been most determined and most successful where the change of system seemed most threatening to the current interests of civil servants. More joined-up policy-making might in due course lead to mergers and restructuring. Evaluation, review and learning may have been an area of weakness that persisted. To evaluate and review a policy is also to evaluate and review the policy-makers and those who deliver the policy.
So, it is not just a neutral process of learning lessons for the future.
Whatever other weaknesses persisted, a decade after the White Paper, civil ser-vice policy-making was seen to have strength in terms of being forward-looking and inclusive (taking account of all interests). There was less basis in reality for the charge that policy-making was short-term and reactive.
FURTHER READING
Hallsworth, M., Parker, S. and Rutter, J. 2011. Policy Making in the Real World:
Evidence and Analysis. London: Institute for Government.
This report provides a thoughtful and evidence-based discussion of the realities of making and puts it within a framework of concern to see policy-making improve. It has additional value by relating its fi ndings to the agenda for reforming policy-making which was set in the 1999 White Paper, Modernizing Government.
REFERENCE LIST
Ansoff, I. and McDonnell, E. 1990. Implanting Strategic Management. London:
Prentice Hall.
Hallsworth, M., Parker, S. and Rutter, J. 2011. Policy Making in the Real World:
Evidence and Analysis. London: Institute for Government.
House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee. 2007a. Governing the Future. Second Report of Session 2006–07. Volume II. London: Stationery Offi ce.
House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee. 2007b. Skills for Gov-ernment. Ninth Report of Session 2006–07. Volume II. London: Stationery Offi ce.
Milner, E. and Joyce, P. 2005. Lessons in Leadership: Meeting the Challenges of Public Services Management. London: Routledge.
Nutt, P.C. and Backoff, R.W. 1992. Strategic Management of Public and Third Sec-tor Organizations: A Handbook for Leaders. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
OECD. 2007. The Role of Ministries in the Policy System: Policy Development, Monitoring and Evaluation. Sigma Paper No. 39. Paris: OECD.
Osborne, D. and Gaebler, T. 1992. Reinventing government: how the entrepreneur-ial spirit is transforming the public sector. Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley.
Strategic Policy-Making Team, Cabinet Offi ce. 1999. Professional policy-making for the 21st-century. London: Cabinet Offi ce.
Weber, M. 1948. Bureaucracy. In: Gerth, H.H. and Wright Mills, C. (eds). From Max Weber. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp.196–264.
West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner. 2014. Police and Crime Plan 2013.
[online]. [30 June 2014]. Available from: http://www.westmidlands-pcc.gov.uk/
media/211943/police_and_crime_plan_2013.pdf
The objectives of this chapter are:
1 to examine the practical guidance that practitioners provide for strategic planning in public sector organizations;
2 to underline aspects of that guidance for later consideration in relation to academic theory and research; and
3 to suggest some of the implicit theories contained in practical guidance.
INTRODUCTION
The raw material for this chapter is based on three documents of practical guidance issued to help civil servants and public managers carry out strategic planning. It might be expected that they will contain some ideas drawn from academic theory and research. However, in addition, it will be interesting to see what ideas are given prominence or special attention, which may in turn reveal some of the cultural background to strategic planning in the public sector and may reflect requirements placed upon them from above.
The first piece of guidance was issued to public sector organizations in Turkey following legally based reforms of public management that came into force in 2005. A key audience for this guidance were the civil servants working in the ministries of central government. But it was also written for public administration officials at subnational levels of government. The guidance was presented as a gen-eral framework and practitioners were expected to comply with the main princi-ples and the general structure offered, but they were also expected to modify it to suit their own organization. This guidance is considered in detail in this chapter.
The second piece of guidance comprised checklists for departmental strategic planning and was designed by the Transparency and Accountability Office in the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. The source document was revised in 2005.
The third piece of guidance, which was developed in Australia, was prepared for use in strategic planning focused on land use and transport. This type of strategic planning, which has been an important part of government planning, tends to get overlooked or neglected by academic work focused on corporate management.