400 heads are better than one: Tales from a public management conference

29/05/201528/05/2015 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Sue Olney

With more conferences and events happening each year, deciding on where to share your practice and research findings and where to seek professional development is challenging. It can help to know more about key conferences and how they may inform your work or be a vehicle to share your insights. In this post, Sue Olney (@olney_sue) gives us an overview of the International Research Society of Public Management Conference hosted by INLOGOV, and provides some highlights as well as links to interesting sessions.

The annual conference of the International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM) attracts delegates from around the world interested in new developments in public management and the implementation of public policy. The theme of the 19^th annual conference, held at the University of Birmingham from 30 March 2015 to 1 April 2015, was hosted by INLOGOV and titled Shaping the Future – Reinvention or Revolution? In a packed program around four hundred academics, new researchers and policy practitioners shared their insights and research into the potential for public organisations and their partners in delivering public services to respond, reflect, reinvent, and revolutionise in the face of fiscal, political, environmental and cultural upheaval. Australia was well represented by policy luminaries including Gemma Carey, Helen Dickinson and Helen Sullivan, Jenny Lewis and Damon Alexander,Siobhan O’Sullivan, Brian Head, John Alford, Jo Barraket, John Halligan,Owen Hughes, Warren Staples, Deborah Blackman and Janine O’Flynn.

As a first-time attendee moving from implementing social policy into research I was encouraged by the strong links between scholarship and practice evident at the conference. The opening plenary, involving ex MP, ex civil servant and international policy activist Clare Short, community activist Jess Steele, Councillor and Birmingham City Council Cabinet Member for Children and Family Services Brigid Jones and Local Government Ombudsman Jane Martin and chaired by the University of Birmingham’s Chris Skelcher, promised a ‘citizen’s-eye view of public services’ and unflinchingly explored the challenges of developing and implementing policy in the context of competing priorities, diverse and sometimes incompatible demands, scarce resources, outsourced and fragmented government services and shrinking government bureaucracy. The panellists argued that citizens should be encouraged and empowered to play a greater role in identifying and addressing local issues but acknowledged that public sector reform over the last two decades – marketisation, outsourcing, commissioning, internal cost-cutting and the individualisation of social services – has muddied the waters for collective action. They also argued that these changes have sapped the bureaucracy’s ‘motivation to serve’ and called on governments to find new ways of working with citizens to ensure innovation is not stifled by accountability in tough economic times. The plenary segued into fifty three panel sessions over three days tackling complex questions about the role of government, public value, austerity, inequality and the relationship between evidence and policy, under themes ranging from what citizens and governments expect of public servants; local governance; democracy, third sector and citizen engagement; sectoral challenges in public management; research and knowledge utilisation in public management; resources, accountability and technology; public-private partnerships; public management in developing and transitional states; and networks, complexity and innovation.

The conference closed with the University of Melbourne’s Helen Dickinson, the CEO of Skillshare International Cliff Allum and experienced health and social care executive Cynthia Bowerreimagining the 21^st century public servant as a commissioner, storyteller, resource weaver, system architect, networker, municipal entrepreneur and broker, in a hopeful and thought-provoking plenary chaired by the University of Birmingham’s Deborah Youdell. In between, we attended a civic reception with the Mayor at Birmingham’s Council House and a gala dinner at the International Convention Centre next to the spectacular Birmingham library.

I gravitated toward sessions about the third sector and spent the conference torn between keen interest in the research into policy struggles on this front and despair at the pervasiveness of market approaches to delivering public services. There were numerous examples of policy development affecting the most vulnerable members of society running counter to evidence, with governments appearing to favour short term fiscal and political gains over long term social change. Two very different papers likely to interest readers of this blog are Exploring the public-third sector boundary – designing and managing a dynamic partnership for innovative services with young people , which found that while the third sector is an important player in the coproduction of services for hard-to-reach young people its diversity produces mixed results – a challenge for governments wanting to replicate programs – and The New Intersections of Philanthropy, the Third Sector and Public Policy: Revealed, Reinvented, Revolutionised?, which explores the changing nature of philanthropy where ‘giving’ is being replaced by ‘social investment’.

All the conference papers are available online here and there is unfiltered commentary on the conference as it rolled out on Twitter under #IRSPM2015. The real value of gatherings like these is the opportunity for researchers to test their ideas, to defend or strengthen their theories in response to expert feedback or what they learn from listening to other people, and to forge international alliances to build new knowledge. If two heads are better than one, a conference-load is bound to be pushing research into public management in the right direction.

Sue Olney has worked in the public sector, the private sector and the not for profit sector and participated in numerous cross-government and cross-sector initiatives to promote access and equity in education, training and employment in Australia. She is doing a PhD at the University of Melbourne on employment services for the long term unemployed and recently presented some of her findings at the IRSPM conference in Birmingham.

This blog post was also posted here on the 8th May, 2015

A new typology of local government systems

22/05/201522/05/2015 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Pawel Swianiewicz Typologies of the European systems of local government are important and frequent point of reference for many scholars. But the trouble for scholars from my part of Europe is that the most popular classifications concentrate on Western part of the continent, totally disregarding the post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. After 25 years from the political turn-over and from the fall of the Berlin Wall, the numerous attempts to include the whole of Europe usually end up with putting the whole of Eastern Europe into one basket of democratizing and decentralizing societies. Such an approach could be justified in the 1990s, i.e. in the early stages of political and economic transformation, when the new local government systems were in flux, and it was difficult to find any stable patterns. But after more than 20 years, and after over decade since a group of those countries have joined the European Union, such an approach seems to be much anachronistic. Nevertheless, even relatively recent works on Heinelt and Hlepas (2006) or Loughlin et al. (2010) sustain the scheme of treating the whole group of East European countries as one, a relatively homogeneous cluster, which is considered separate from the rest of European local governments. They argue that “they are considered as a distinct group because of their historical background and in particular recent radical decentralization in these countries” (Heinelt and Hlepas) or that the group “Shares a common experience of communist dictatorship… they also share a common experience of the transition to democracy and preparation for, and accession into, the European Union [their analysis ignored countries of Eastern Europe other than those who became new member states of the EU in the 2004-2007 period – P.S.] … The legacy of that period was political systems marked by high levels of centralization and uniformity” (Loughlin et. al. 2010). My recent article “Empirical Typologies of Local Government Systems in Eastern Europe” demonstrates the weaknesses of such approach. It shows the diversified universe of the eastern part of the continent in regards to their territorial arrangements and decentralization strategies. The variation is probably not smaller than among West European countries, covered by classic typologies of Page and Goldsmith (1987) or Hesse and Sharpe (1991). The article develops a new typology of local government systems in Eastern Europe. Obviously, it is just a first step towards the integration of our knowledge on local governments across the whole Europe. The next step would be to bridge a gap between typologies covering both parts of continent, and to paint a single, coherent landscape of decentralized Europe. One may expect that this next step will be made relatively soon, and the article is one such contribution efforts of re-unification of academic research on local government studies across the whole of Europe. Pawel Swianiewicz is a professor of economics at University of Warsaw, Head of the Department of Local Development and Policy at the Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies. His research and teaching concentrates on local government finance, local politics as well as territorial and decentralization reforms in Central and Eastern Europe. Adviser on local government issues to the President of Poland since 2010. Between 2005 and 2010 – President of the European Urban Research Association.

Professor Swianiewicz’s prize winning article related to this post is published in Local Government Studies

A day for devolution

14/05/201514/05/2015 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Daniel Goodwin

Thursday 14^th May 2015 might not see celebrations in 800 years’ time in quite the same way as Monday 15^th June 1215, which saw the sealing of Magna Carta. However it did see two events which are quietly momentous in local government terms. In the morning the Core Cities launched their Devolution Declaration in London, setting out five actions that they sought from government. And in the afternoon, in Manchester, George Osborne appeared to meet the first of these by announcing that the Queen’s Speech would include a Cities Devolution Bill, granting powers over housing, transport, planning and policing.

The Core Cities were caught by surprise and, whilst apparently delighted, had to make hasty arrangements to be present at the announcement. It remains to be seen whether the other actions set out in their package of measures will be implemented quite as speedily, time will tell. However they include a devolution commission, a place-based Comprehensive Spending Review, much broader fiscal retention and devolution and a Constitutional Convention to address UK-wide issues.

There has already been much comment in the local government press and on social media about the two events, so I will not try to summarise them here. However I am struck not only by the pace of change, but also the tenor of the debate. I have compared these with the points made by INLOGOV in its response to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee’s work on codifying the UK constitution.

We considered that any form of devolution will need to be addressed in the round. It should not just bolt on new service or tax based powers. Our response considered that there needs simultaneously to be a review of the responsibilities of individuals, communities, cities, regions and countries within the UK. In doing so it should also consider the questions of the extent of devolution of local government within all four countries and not just restrict itself to England. We considered that there should be some key guarantees on local determination, perhaps in line with the European Charter for Local Self Government, to which the UK is a signatory.

The 2015 General Election has left the UK with a highly diverse political picture in the four nations and at the more local level within them. The Government’s challenge is to find strengths in that diversity and prevent it turning into division. The key question is whether the changes will provide sufficient means of self-determination and self-government and embed these effectively in the as yet unwritten constitution. This will depend on the extent to which they are founded on community leadership and capability rather simply expediency in facing service cuts. Will the discussion be one about the principles of power sharing rather than long-winded discussions about structure? Can we have a debate on the future of the UK as a modern nation rather than one focused on service structures in England?

The Core Cities are to be commended for setting out their Declaration. It is an ambitious document which sees the challenge as ‘working together nationally and locally in a different way [to] transform the lives of millions and ensure our country can compete in an increasingly globalised and complex world’. The Cities Devolution Bill, with careful attention to principle as well as expediency and in the context of wider constitutional renewal, could just be the way to start to make that happen and help to address the wider devolution challenges which the UK faces following the General Election.

Daniel Goodwin’s career has mainly been in local government, starting in libraries and cultural services and progressing through policy and corporate services. He is particularly interested in policy into practice issues, the links between strategy and finance, local leadership and the politics of communities and place. He is a regular contributor to journals, conferences and seminars.

The forgotten local elections – Conservatives defied predictions here too

11/05/201511/05/2015 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Chris Game

You’d not have known it from the national media, either before Election Day or since, but the 650 parliamentary contests weren’t the only ones taking place in the UK last Thursday. It was the year in local government’s four-year election cycle that almost all English district and unitary councils – 279 of 293 – had elections, and there were votes too for six mayors, for many parish and town councils, plus the odd local referendum.

There were no council elections in London, Scotland or Wales, but English voters – many doubtless to their surprise – were confronted by up to five ballot papers. Those in Bedford, for example, had votes for an MP, a mayor, two borough councillors, up to 11 parish councillors, and a referendum on their Police and Crime Commissioner’s proposal to increase Council Tax – the first ever of its kind. The proposal – specifically for a 15.8% increase in the Police and Crime Commissioner’s portion of council tax – was rejected by nearly 70% to 30%: Yes 91,086; No 207,551.

These multiple ballots offered electors the obvious opportunity for split-voting: one for their MP or national government, and another more personal, local or protest vote. Minor parties and independents in the council elections could be expected to be chief beneficiaries, but, as shown in the nearly complete results table, that was another ‘expert’ prediction largely confounded.

9,500 local elections are even trickier to predict than 650 parliamentary ones, and few are daft or brave enough to try. Those who do will start from the baseline of four years ago – 2011 here – when these actual seats were last fought, compare that year’s results with current national opinion polls, and hope.

2011 was surprisingly good for the Conservatives, a year into their far from popular Coalition with the Liberal Democrats. They gained votes from disaffected Lib Dems, and the coinciding electoral reform referendum galvanised their own supporters. This time, though, the national election effect was expected to boost the turnout of Labour and Lib Dem voters.

The poll standings of both main parties had dropped significantly since 2011. But, with the Conservatives the more damaged by UKIP’s dramatic rise, and defending twice as many seats as Labour, the latter was predicted to make most net gains, with the Lib Dems not suffering “too badly” in losing perhaps “around 50 seats”.

If these predictions echoed those for the General Election, then so did the outcome. The Conservatives were unambiguous winners of these local elections, Labour not just net, but absolute, losers, and the Lib Dems suffered as painfully as they did nationally. UKIP made progress, but less than it hoped, and the Greens flatlined.

For the Conservatives, their more than 30 gains – mostly, it should be noted, councils previously under arithmetically No Overall Control – will take the local headlines. Two particularly satisfying results, though, will be the retained control in their only two metropolitan boroughs – Solihull and Trafford – both with additional seats. Solihull Greens lost a seat, but, with the Lib Dems losing two, they are still the official opposition.

Conservative unitary council gains include Basingstoke & Deane, Poole, and Bath & North East Somerset, where there are now two Greens, but 14 fewer Lib Dems and a first-time Conservative majority. Districts won include traditionally Independent Babergh, Suffolk, also for the first time in its 41-year history; Amber Valley, Gravesham and North Warwickshire straight from Labour; Hinckley & Bosworth from the Lib Dems; Gloucester, St Albans, Scarborough, Winchester, and Worcester.

Further Labour losses to No Overall Control included Walsall metropolitan borough and the unitaries, Plymouth and Stoke-on-Trent. There was a little compensation perhaps in hanging on to a knife-edge majority in Bradford, thanks to Independents, UKIP and Respect all losing seats, and gaining majorities in unitary Stockton-on-Tees, and, after a suspended recount and overnight rest, Cheshire West & Chester.

Labour is also now largest party on Brighton & Hove council, since 2011 the UK’s first to be run by the Greens. As in the General Election, the Greens’ recent membership surge didn’t really translate into hard results, though they will be encouraged by seven gains in Labour-dominated Bristol, bringing them within touching distance of official opposition.

This time UKIP was the history maker. UKIP leader Nigel Farage had failed to become Thanet South’s MP, but his party reduced Thanet district’s Labour councillors from 24 to 4 and, with 33 of its own, won overall control of its first principal council.

Good Lib Dem news was at a premium all weekend, but enough of Bedford’s conscientious voters gave their mayoral ballot paper X to Lib Dem Dave Hodgson to re-elect him comfortably for a third term as the borough’s mayor.

In other mayoral votes, Peter Soulsby was re-elected for Labour in Leicester, Gordon Oliver for the Conservatives in Torbay, and Mansfield’s three-term Independent Tony Egginton was succeeded by his Mansfield Independent Forum colleague, Kate Allsop.

Another Independent, Mike Starkie, was elected as the first mayor of Copeland in Cumbria, while in Middlesbrough three-term Independent Ray Mallon has retired and is replaced by Labour’s Dave Budd – though only after a second preference count and the rejection of large numbers of spoilt ballots, presumably from the many Labour members who, despite the result, want the mayoral system abolished.

In these mayoral elections at least, then, there’s something for almost everyone: Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, and Independent.

Chris Game is a Visiting Lecturer at INLOGOV interested in the politics of local government; local elections, electoral reform and other electoral behaviour; party politics; political leadership and management; member-officer relations; central-local relations; use of consumer and opinion research in local government; the modernisation agenda and the implementation of executive local government.

The other 1215 Charter: 800 years of elected mayors

06/05/201506/05/2015 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Chris Game

The LGA’s Magna Carta web pages have recently featured a delightful homophone – sounds the same as another word, but different spelling and meaning. Among this summer’s many MC commemorative events will reportedly be “a programme of inciteful lectures and talks” (my emphasis).

Excellent, I thought. Insight’s for wimps. Rousing incitement is what’s needed if, like the LGA, we’re to model today’s struggle for devolution on that of the 13^th Century rebel barons with their tyrannical but cash-strapped King, and what better rouser than the Association’s aptly named Chair, David Sparks.

Given the countless products already being promoted by June’s 800^th anniversary – from Jay Z’s free-to-smartphone album, Magna Carta Holy Grail, to the British Library’s ginger fudge – cynics might accuse the LGA of bandwagon jumping. But they’d be unfair.

There is much more local government stuff in Magna Carta than I for one first appreciated. I knew the main local government clause (13), about the City of London and “all other cities, boroughs, vills [towns] and ports” being assured all their “ancient liberties and free customs, by both land and water”. But I’d no clear idea what the liberties and customs were, and also assumed that was about all there was.

In fact, most of clauses 23 to 31, ostensibly about such things as county farms and commandeering of timber, actually referred to malpractices of the King’s local agents – sheriffs, bailiffs, and so on – with clause 25, perhaps most relevantly to modern-day concerns, limiting the financial burdens placed by the King on the counties.

Then there’s clause 48, empowering 12 knights elected in each county to investigate and abolish those malpractices, which can be seen as part of a wider local self-government campaign around the turn of the 13^th Century.

Even so, there’s a still better instance of early local self-government in a contemporaneous charter which, though less known, was important in itself and also played a key part in shaping the Runnymede agenda: the King’s Charter for London of May 9^th 1215.

The London here, of course, is the famous Square Mile – today’s City of London Corporation – some of whose ‘ancient liberties’ predated the Norman Conquest. From 1067, in exchange for London’s supporting the King with cash or troops, these liberties were extended in successive royal charters, and included exemptions from certain taxes and tolls, right of trial by the City’s own courts, and the right to appoint civic officials.

Richard I (1189-99) was particularly indebted to Londoners, as funders of his crusades overseas and defenders against his baronial opponents at home, and it earned them in the early years of his reign both a recognized body of self-government, in the form of a Norman-style ‘commune’ – precursor of the City Corporation – and their own mayor, in place of the King’s Portreeve or sheriff.

Historians dispute precise dates, but the City claims 1189 as the year Henry Fitz-Ailwin de Londonestone was appointed its first Mayor – the addition of ‘Lord’ took another 200 years – and proceeded to serve a never remotely repeated 24 terms.

This circumstantial evidence alone suggests Fitzy was not only entirely acceptable to the King, but probably a financial backer and appointed by him. And explicit reinforcement comes in the May 2015 Charter, King John’s last desperate (and unsuccessful) attempt to detach London from the baronial insurgency that would culminate in the following month’s Magna Carta.

In a key concession and, it seems, the first documented reference in this country to a popularly elected mayor, the Charter grants “to our barons of the City of London, that they may choose to themselves every year a mayor …”.

The full translation, from the second line of the illustrated extract, runs:

“Know ye that we have granted … to our barons of our city of London, that they may choose to themselves every year a mayor, who to us may be faithful, discreet and fit for government of the city, so as, when he shall be chosen, to be presented unto us, or our Justice if we shall not be present… and he shall swear to be faithful to us; and that it shall be lawful to them, to amove him and substitute another, if they will, or the same to retain …”

The King’s climb down could not be clearer. The tables are turned: You now choose your own Mayor, and I get to approve his faithfulness, rather than the reverse. It wasn’t his biggest surrender of that 1215 summer, but it was significant then and, whatever you happen to think of even the idea of directly elected mayors, it obviously still has its relevance today.

The story, and this blog, could obviously end here, but that would have involved omitting quite an interesting postscript, which links these events directly to the one Lord Mayor of London that even most non-Londoners can name: Richard Whittington.

We need to set aside much of the pantomime tale: the Gloucestershire lad, Dick, and his fictional cat who, returning home up Highgate Hill after failing to find his fortune in London, heard the distant Bow Bells preternaturally telling him to fulfil his destiny and “Turn again, Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London”.

Never mind what he was doing returning to Gloucestershire via Highgate Hill, or whether he could conceivably have heard the Bow Bells chiming five miles away. The interesting bit is the ‘thrice’ – because, by the time this bit of nonsense was written, centuries later, Whittington had in fact served four mayoral terms: 1397-98, 1406 and 1419. So why the confusion?

No Lord Mayor since Whittington has served as many terms, so there can be no doubting his renown and popularity during his own lifetime. His money helped. A successful import-export merchant, he’d have easily made the Sunday Times Rich List, and he spread it around judiciously. Plenty was ‘borrowed’ by the King of the day, but plenty also went to good causes and public works – including an unmarried mothers’ ward at St Thomas’ Hospital, rebuilding the Guildhall, and a 128-seat public toilet.

The one big irony in all this is that the early public affection for Whittington’s mayoralty owed much to his initially NOT having been popularly elected – despite it having become the established practice by then for London citizens ‘at large’ to choose their mayor, with the King formally ratifying their choice.

However, when the incumbent mayor died in June 1397, Richard II, in one of his absolutist moods, decided he’d do the electing and simply imposed Whittington, one of his long-term creditors, on the City. The new mayor responded by negotiating a costly but popular deal, buying back for London its own usurped privileges for £10,000 (around £6 million today), and in October was triumphantly elected by a grateful citizenry – the two separate assumptions of office in the same year apparently accounting for the doggerel-writer’s ‘thrice’, unless of course it was the difficulty of scanning ‘quadruple’.

A marriage made in heaven?

05/05/201505/05/2015 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Catherine Staite, Director of INLOGOV

The ESRC, LGA and SOLACE have created a new role – that of Research Facilitator for local government – with the aim of supporting strong and productive relationships between researchers, policy makers and practitioners. I’m very pleased to take on that role, with the active support of the INLOGOV team of academics and expert practitioners. Over the next year we’ll be establishing a dating agency for those seeking partners to answer some essential questions and running a series of events to support creative and sustainable relationships. A GSOH will be essential.

Public services need researchers. That is because evidence is the lifeblood of efficacy. When money is so tight, the last thing we should be wasting it on is the wrong service, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. Policy decisions and service design need timely and accessible evidence and there’s plenty out there. So why aren’t researchers, policy makers, commissioners and providers using the available evidence to do better with less? Why aren’t we getting it together?

We work in very different spatial and temporal environments (note the unnecessary use of obscure language) which means that opportunities to meet suitable partners are limited and academic time-scales militate against speedy responses. Academic language is often impenetrable: designed to impress other academics rather than to inform those who can actually use the evidence on offer. Contestation is a vital element of academic discourse. That means – academics also like to argue among themselves and even with themselves. After a few pages of ‘on the one hand this and on the other hand that’ … policy makers and practitioners can be forgiven for giving up and going off to make it up.

However, the fault is not all on one side. Too often research is commissioned, not to gather objective evidence or stimulate creative thinking but to justify an existing policy or priority. The findings of research can be a major challenge to political ideologies. Those who are seeking to bolster their prejudice with an academic fig leaf are doomed to disappointment. If you ask for independent research – that’s just what you’ll get. Don’t ask if you don’t want to know the real answers. It will lead only to mutual disappointment.

So how can we make this relationship work? Let’s spend more quality time together, getting to know each other and exploring our shared passions. Let’s make each other some promises. If we promise not to argue about how many angels can dance on the point of a pin, would you promise not give us six weeks to enumerate and classify the angels and calculate the likely savings from combining seraphim and cherubim? Agreed? Great – now let’s do some good work together.

Catherine Staite is the Director of INLOGOV. She provides consultancy and facilitation to local authorities and their partners, on a wide range of issues including on improving outcomes, efficiency, partnership working, strategic planning and organisational development, including integration of services and functions.

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