Politics, Administration, and Markets

Abstract

Politics can be viewed as the search for consensus on underlying values to foster a sense of community. This search challenges contemporary political and administrative leadership because the policy process increasingly involves interactions among amorphous and unstable issue-oriented coalitions rather than a smaller number of actors with more stable and predictable roles. Within this volatile political climate, increased emphasis on market-based values and privatization as one manifestation of the new public management (NPM) has complicated expectations of accountability for public managers beyond the relationships represented by traditional notions of politics and administration. This article discusses politics, administration and markets as separate ways of thinking-as decision-making perspectives-that produce a variety of expectations of accountability, often at odds. It presents a case study involving contracting out of foster care services in Kansas to illustrate these competing perspectives, and examines how market-based challenges to traditional political and administrative perspectives complicate expectations of accountability. The result is a situation where the challenge of accommodating three crosscutting expectations of accountability (derived from the three competing perspectives of politics, administration and markets) makes the already-complex job of public management even more difficult.

Accountability in Public Policy Partnerships

“…The task of providing welfare services at the ground level was delegated either to government agencies enjoying broad discretion or to private providers, relying on performance-based contracts. Klingner et al (2002) scrutinise a similar case of outsourcing in the context of the Kansas foster care reform. For a more detailed discussion of outsourcing and what it entails for federal and local governments see, for example, O'Looney (1998).…”

The Accountability of Voluntary Organisations: Implications for Government Funders

“…For Hill and Lynne (2003) this means that they have few incentives to be fully accountable to one agency as funding can be gained from others. They can 'cream', that is, provide services to the clients with the easiest problems to address, and pass over difficult -and costly -clients (Behn and Kant, 1999;Klingner et al, 2001). Indeed, few incentives are said to exist for the staff of voluntary organisations to actually achieve the public purpose underlying any contract (Behn and Kant, 1999).…”

“…This is particularly so in the area of social services. Many government agencies have had difficulty developing acceptable and realistic outcome measures and benchmarks for evaluating contractor performance (Klijn and Teisman, 2000;Klingner et al, 2001;van Slyke, 2002).…”

“…Indeed, contracting makes it difficult for the public to attribute accountability for inadequate performance and seek satisfaction (Klingner et al, 2001;van Slyke and Roch, 2004).…”

“…Due to difficulties developing acceptable non-financial measures, government contracting regimes focus on outputs and finances, or hard accountability (Klijn and Teisman, 2000;Klingner et al, 2001;van Slyke, 2002). Given that much funding of the voluntary sector comes via government and contracting with government has been subject to relatively extensive research (Gronbjerg, 1993;Kramer, 1994;Nowland-Foreman, 1997;Campbell, 2002), hard accountability relationships are more visible than soft ones.…”