Weber and the Politics of the Covid-19 Crisis

14/04/2020 / inlogov / 1 Comment

Koen Bartels

Now our wonderful Polish cleaner can no longer come by, we are cleaning our house ourselves. While I was cleaning downstairs last weekend, I was listening to my favourite Dutch radio programme. The Dutch Minister of Culture, Sports and Education was being interviewed. The presenter asked her how difficult she finds it to do politics at this time of crisis. She replied that she’s doing very little politics actually because people don’t want politics, they want action and problem-solving.

‘That makes sense’, I found myself thinking while dusting my bookshelves. Doing politics is too time-consuming. Right now, we need governments to act fast. We should not distract those in charge with too much unnecessary debate.

But then I laid eyes on book by Max Weber. His over a century-old work on bureaucracy continues to shape our understanding of modern government. A key element of which is that politics and administration are fundamentally different activities and should be kept separate based on a strict division of roles and responsibilities. Politics is about thinking, debate, making decisions, the public interest, values. Administration is about doing, following rules, rational expertise, efficiency. As Woodrow Wilson on the other side of the pond declared around the same time as Weber: “Administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics. Administrative questions are not political questions” (Wilson, 1887, p. 210).

It was this politics-administration dichotomy that the Minister was invoking and which has resounded across the globe during the Covid-19 crisis. Political leaders shun responsibility for decisions because everything they do is informed by ‘science’. Emergency interventions and safety nets from governments are ‘the most optimal solutions in a bad situation’. Nobody can challenge their noble intentions and expertise when all they are doing is ‘protecting the most vulnerable’.

Yet, the politics-administration dichotomy is a fallacy. And a dangerous one at that. Already in 1900, Frank Goodnow argued that the distinction between politics and administration was analytically possible, but non-existent in practice. One of the most widely accepted insights in our field nowadays are that public managers operate in a political environment. Another is that even bureaucrats working at the front line are significant policy-makers. Ignoring or trying to suppress the politics of administration is not just inaccurate, it is deceitful.

Weber developed the dichotomy as a heuristic. That is, a sense-making device for studying the actual behaviour and relationships of politicians and bureaucrats. Weber argued that the very core of how government works is determined by how bureaucrats balance the formal rationality of their organisation (adhering to hierarchical orders and formal procedures) and its substantive rationality (making decisions about what public values to pursue). Weber’s central purpose was to reveal how this balancing act translated into the ways in which authoritative organisations dominate society and limit individual freedom.

So let’s remain aware that all responses to the current crisis are political. Each and every decision and intervention is based on certain values and a consideration of interests. Who is considered ‘eligible’ for state support or who counts as ‘vulnerable’ are political decisions. Procedures and criteria drawn up under great pressure are bound to fail those whose needs are the largest and most complex.

In the crisis management literature, the politics of it all is a key premise. Crisis are highly complex and uncertain. The imperative to act quickly means those in charge fixate on short term interests and rely on dominant values. Structural causes of the crises and long term implications for equality and justice, not so much of a concern. The shocking disproportionate Covid-19 related death rate of the African-American population in the USA is a case in point. Poverty, poor housing and insufficient infrastructure all serve to weaken health and increase exposure.

Politics is about who gets what, when and how, as Harold Lasswell famously declared in 1936. Also, or especially in a time of crisis. Our cleaner, for instance, gets little to none now. In Weber’s spirit, therefore, we need to put public values and power at the heart of our responses to the Covid-19 crisis.

Koen Bartels joined INLOGOV in October 2018 as Senior Lecturer in Public Management. He holds a BSc and MPhil in Public Administration from Leiden University (the Netherlands) and a PhD in Politics from the University of Glasgow. His research focuses on public encounters between front-line workers and citizens in an urban context. He teaches courses in leadership, performance, participation, and public management. He is also co-convener of the ECPR Standing Group on Theoretical Perspectives on Policy Analysis and editorial board member for Administrative Theory & Praxis.

Situational irony, coronavirus and the French local elections

06/04/2020 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Chris Game

One of Birmingham’s most enterprising theatres is one of its smallest, the Old Joint Stock – a studio theatre above a pub that was once the Birmingham Joint Stock Bank – which found itself an early and particularly unfortunate Covid-19 victim. For the Government’s March 16^th announcement of the effective closure of all theatres came literally on the eve of the OJS’s five-day run of The White Plague, the scheduled second leg of a European tour, following a successful launch at Greenwich Theatre the previous week.

The title derives from an IRA-era sci-fi novel by Frank Herbert, whose vengeful Irish molecular biologist creates a particularly discriminating (in both senses) plague, in that, while men are the carriers, it kills only women. The feature of this Ferodo Bridges theatre production, though, is that audience members are given masks or goggles that ‘white out’ their vision, thereby supposedly immersing them in the world of the blinded victims.

I was sorry to miss such a topical example of immersive theatre, but found some consolation in its ill-timed cancellation providing a rather classier example of situational irony than the standard fire station burning down, or the Facebook complaint about how useless Facebook is.

Which was neat, as the same week offered a further, and more democratically pertinent, Covid-19 example of situational irony in France’s municipal elections – partly in the results, but mainly in their happening at all.

President Macron faced a dilemma. French municipal and mayoral elections happen only every six years. This year’s, therefore, would be the first since he became President in 2017, thanks rather amazingly to his newly created LREM party, La République En Marche!, winning a substantial majority in the National Assembly elections.

This, therefore, should have been Macron’s big chance to establish a grassroots power base. In Paris City Hall, Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo, notwithstanding a radical manifesto – including a referendum on Airbnb, plans for a “100 percent bicycle” city centre, and a municipal police force comprising 50% women – looked vulnerable, and there were early visions of scores of LREM mayors and thousands of councillors across the country.

That’s right, thousands – this is France, with over 900,000 candidates contesting seats in over 35,000 villages, towns and cities, though excluding this time, rather sadly, the 757 British citizens currently serving as municipal councillors – which, incidentally, is nearly 300 more than in all seven West Midlands metropolitan boroughs combined.

Macron himself, however, was at less than peak popularity, following months of protests and strikes – by the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement against rising fuel taxes, then by rail and health care workers, teachers and others against under-funding and pension reforms. Added to which, LREM’s Paris mayoral hopeful had had to abandon his candidacy in a sex video scandal – on Valentine’s Day!

And now France was showing the second highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Europe. Yet, having himself just shut down restaurants, museums, big sporting events, most stores, and the whole education system, Macron announced that the coming Sunday’s first round of the two-round municipal elections would go ahead – with strict sanitary conditions imposed, naturally.

The situational irony: the one man who could have saved his very personal party from a probable serious electoral thrashing, by doing the apparently responsible, expected thing and without any loss of face, chose not to.

Having merely a global citizen’s concern with French public health, I was actually quite pleased. Partly because French local elections are always fun to write about, but especially following the outcome of our own head of government’s Flip-Flop Friday.

In the morning of, yes, unlucky Friday 13^th, Number 10 insisted – “driven by the experts”, of course – that May 7th’s local, mayoral, and Police & Crime Commissioner elections would go ahead, in defiance of the Electoral Commission’s postponement recommendation and Electoral Administrators’ warning of possibly insufficient polling station staff.

But then, literally within hours, all elections were off – and not, as proposed by the Electoral Commission, until the autumn, but for a year.

What makes French local elections fun? Well, not least – and making Macron’s go-ahead seem even more extraordinary than Johnson’s dithering – because there are just so many of them and they really are so genuinely local.

England’s local government currently comprises 341 principal councils, of which just Rutland, fractionally, has a population of under 40,000. By contrast, over 98% of France’s 35,000+ communes have under 20,000, and over half under 500.

Voting – in larger communes at least – is by proportional representation, potentially over two rounds, and mainly through party lists, which Parity Laws decree must comprise as many women as men, listed alternately. Mayors are indirectly elected: voters electing the council, the council then electing the mayor.

Most impressive attribute of French local elections, though, is that voters like them, and like voting in them, much more than in National Assembly elections. Evidence Exhibit 1: in reporting turnout in even local elections, the French way is to cite not the turnout percentage but ‘Abstentions’ – and then to worry when in 2014 the 36.45% abstentions (they’re also very precise) constituted “a record high” .

Exhibit 2: my favourite English language election preview, bemoaning how coronavirus was “eclipsing the elections in national conversation”, because “87% of the French people are discussing the coronavirus, while ONLY 52% are discussing the upcoming elections” (my emphasis). The last time over half an English electorate were caught discussing upcoming local elections being …?

Nevertheless, there clearly was concern that, even with voters queuing three feet apart, their own pens poised to sign the register, and voting machines wiped with hydro-alcoholic gel, polling stations were almost custom-made germ-spreading venues, particularly for older people.

Still, however, they recorded an estimated abstention rate of “up to 56%”, and a turnout therefore of around 45% – immediately seized on by the media as an “historic low”. In context, though, the last time turnout in our metropolitan district elections, for example, touched 45% in a non-General Election year was 1990 – poll tax year. The recent average is 33%.

Macron’s decision was surprising, avoidable, predictably politically costly, and – given the second round’s almost immediate cancellation – probably wrong. It was not, though, without its integrity.

Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan. He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.

Making the Green Book green, fair and transformational

30/03/202023/04/2020 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Stephen Hughes

Even after Coronavirus has been resolved, the Government faces significant economic and social challenges. Meeting net zero carbon emissions by 2050, closing the economic gap to those left behind and massive infrastructure investments to improve productivity are urgent tasks.

Getting it done is primarily about political will, but Government is complex, and it helps if the internal drivers for action are aligned with the direction of political will. Otherwise usual practice can override and frustrate the policy priorities.

To this end, it seems that the rules of the Treasury’s “Green Book” are worth examining in detail. The Green Book sets the framework through which all significant public spending proposals are evaluated. The rules are critical in determining what does go ahead and what is blocked.

Here I want to provides an introductory look as to what might need to be changed in the Green Book rules to help deliver the new key priorities of Government. The discussion here is drawn from a longer, more in-depth report, which can be accessed by clicking here.

At its heart, the Green Book uses orthodox neo-classical static equilibrium analysis, aiming to maximise collective “utility” as revealed by market prices as a measure of societal value. It is an excellent tool for deciding between marginal projects set in a fixed landscape, but how well can it manage changes that are designed to change the equilibrium?

To tackle current weaknesses and to help better deliver the policy priorities I conclude that the Green Book and associated guidance should be amended in six main ways:

As evaluation methodology is inherently value laden, set out clearly that the purpose of evaluation is to help deliver transformational change for the economy, reduce income and wealth inequality between groups and regions, and deliver a sustainable environment including meeting carbon reduction targets.
Expand the viability testing of projects to include tests for a sustainable environment as well as public sector finances.
Ensure that projects are not evaluated in isolation from the contribution from all projects and programmes that impact on the social objective being pursued, so its value and priority is seen in the context all alternatives. This process will test the assumption that only additional spending is required to achieve improvement, when changing the structure and use of existing programmes may deliver outcomes more effectively.
In order to assess intergenerational equity, include assessments as a comparator that as appropriate either exclude discount rates or demonstrate no deterioration in the environmental balance sheet.
Include a methodology for assessing the quality of evaluations and business cases in order to test how well projects meet the objectives as an additional challenge to the viability tests.
Get better use of the commercial and management tools available and assess how well this has been achieved in order to reduce the failure rate of public projects.

In addition, a new Government should consider other changes to the way policy is developed and evaluated, especially:

Requiring all public spending, capital and revenue (not just new programmes and projects) to be subjected to the new evaluation criteria (transformational change, greater equity and environmental sustainability) to test its fitness for purpose. Ensuring that current projects are tested as well as future ones.
Making allocations of new infrastructure funds conditional on a review of existing spend to ensure that it also prioritises the new objectives.
Create carbon budgets for every Government Department for both their own spend and for those parts of the economy they are responsible for. These can be used to test environmental viability with the same absolute rigour that applies to funding.
Create or consolidate central support resources, to provide critical technical advice on the use and application of new evaluation techniques, to assess the quality of their application and to ensure that proper commercial considerations have been built into project design and delivery.

Here I have provided an introductory look as to what might need to be changed in the Green Book rules to help deliver the new key priorities of Government. I hope it stimulates debate and helps make the needed changes, as the issues we are concerned about are urgent and can’t wait.

Stephen Hughes is the former Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council. He has worked at local government associations and run finances at Islington, Brent and Birmingham. Since leaving Birmingham he has been a consultant and is currently a Non-Executive Director at HS2, the VOA and chairs Housing 21, and Associate at INLOGOV.

Co-production: the ‘give’ and ‘take game…

23/03/2020 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Catherine Durose

Co-production is a process aiming to bring together those with different experiences and expertise to address a shared concern, for example about a public policy or service. As part of a recent Fellowship with the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, I ran a session about co-production involving around a hundred civil servants drawn from state and national governments in Australia and New Zealand, and we played a game.

The game involved dividing the group into pairs, and agreeing who is the ‘giver’ and the ‘taker’. The ‘givers’ were asked to hand over an item of personal value to the ‘taker’ and then leave the room. Instructions were then shared with the ‘takers’, who were then told that the ‘givers’ will have one minute to negotiate the return of their item, but that the ‘takers’ should only return it if the ‘giver’ negotiates with the question ‘what will it take to return the item?’. When the ‘givers’ came back into the room, they were just told that they had one minute to get their item back.

The game provoked a lively response, and enthusiastic reactions. Some got their item back, most didn’t. Bribery and emotional blackmail were common. But this was a game with a point.

In discussions about co-production, the positives of greater inclusion, often push out reflection about questions about the politics involved. This can create a challenge when the ideals of co-production come up against the messier realities of practice. By using the ‘give’ and ‘take’ game, students were able to bring the question of power, and of emotion into the room. Our discussions centred on how it felt like to wield power, and to be denied it; who sets the rules of the game, and how these may operate, and to whose exclusion. Also, how people felt: frustration and discomfort were in evidence.

I first encountered this game through Jez Hall, one of my co-researchers as part of an event run as part of the Jam and Justice: co-producing urban governance project. Jez’s point in using the game, made more widely through our research, is that we need to humanise the process of co-production.

When citizens and public officials engage in co-production, the process does not begin with a blank sheet, it is coloured by prior experiences, and by dynamics of power. It is also a human contact sport, with emotional highs and lows. Yet, these aspects of the experience are often cleansed from accounts of co-production. Instead, we need to recognise and discuss what prior experiences people bring with their participation, make power visible and give space for the expression of a range of emotions. Doing so, will allow people to build relationships with each other and credible commitment to the process.

If co-production is going to have the transformative impact many claim for it, power needs to be made visible and we need to give space to emotion.

Catherine Durose is a Reader in Policy Sciences at the Institute of Local Government Studies and recent Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange for the School of Government at the University of Birmingham. Catherine is a leading expert on urban governance and public policy, interested in questions of how we initiate and facilitate inclusive decision-making and social change in urban contexts. She has sought to address this question in her research, with particular focus on issues such as intermediation, participation, decentralisation and democratic innovation.

Co-production in urban governance: why, when, with who, where and how?

13/03/2020 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Catherine Durose

Debates on the future of governance are shaped by a growing recognition that no single actor has the expertise to address complex problems. This acknowledgement has in part inspired the growing scope of participation in public policy making and governance. The argument here is that government cannot govern alone as effectively as it could in collaboration with citizens. It in this context that interest in co-production has surged.

We can understand co-production as a process bringing together different forms of expertise and experience from different groups, such as public officials and citizens. For seminal thinkers, such as Nobel Prize Winner, Elinor Ostrom, co-production was a response to not only some of the myths around efficiency perpetuated through new public management. But also a call to arms to focus on the synergies that may be forged by working across traditional boundaries, rather than being paralysed by them.

The appeal of co-production is now wide-reaching, but it is a term that is often conceptually stretched. Discussing why, when, how, where and with who to co-produce was the focus of sessions with a group of a hundred civil servants drawn from state and national governments in Australia and New Zealand, during a recent Fellowship at the Australia and New Zealand School of Government.

Using insights from research I have been involved with as part of the Jam and Justice: co-producing urban governance project, we debated the following insights:

Why co-produce?

We should not engage in co-production unless it helps us to advance our core values, for example, effectiveness, justice or legitimacy of public policy.

When to co-produce?

Co-production isn’t universally advantageous, we shouldn’t co-produce everything. But co-production is a useful tool, particularly when problems are complex and defy traditional solutions, where the conditions and solutions are not clear or are contested.

With who to co-produce?

Co-production isn’t about engaging for the sake of it, but rather engaging those with a stake in it.

How to co-produce?

Co-production is a necessarily intensive process that demands an investment of time and effort into building relationships between those involved, in order to find common purpose.

Where to co-produce?

Co-production works best when it can be locally tailored. Spreading co-production isn’t about scaling up, but scaling out.

Co-production can help to opening up policy-making and governance process, creating synergies and seeding change. The promise of co-production is seductive, but there’s no quick fix here.

Where next for England’s city regions? How will the new government and Brexit impact devolution and combined authorities?

10/03/202010/03/2020 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Dr. Max Lemprière & Professor Vivien Lowndes

If you’re a local authority leader today you will doubtless be considering opportunities to gain devolved powers and funding from central government as part of a Combined Authority (CA) deal. Or perhaps you are already part of the joint leadership of a new Combined Authority (CA)? Since the emergence of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority in 2011, a further nine have been formed, with eight in total holding elections for directly elected mayors. New deals are in the pipeline, and those who have yet to strike one fear being left behind.

We’ve spent the last few years following these developments, asking what their emergence tells us about the nature of devolution and central-local relations. We’ve highlighted the role of well-defined leadership, existing institutional structures that favour joint working, and a range of locally specific factors, like shared identities and partnership culture.

But what is also clear is that English devolution policy is constantly evolving, responding to (and seeking to capitalise upon) broader political and economic trends. It is that which we want to discuss here.

CAs are voluntary collaborations between elected local authorities in England that have received devolved powers and funding from central government to support infrastructure and economic development, on the basis of negotiated settlements. Since 2010, central government has championed CAs as a vehicle for stimulating regional economic growth and rebalancing the economy away from London and the South East. They vary in terms of their powers, funding, priorities and governance. New CAs have been formed at different points since 2010, and are working to different deadlines for performance reporting to central government and negotiating follow-on packages of additional funding and devolved powers

We have argued elsewhere that the devolution policy underpinning CAs represents a noticeable shift in central-local relations. Rather than imposing a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model of devolution, the policy has been based upon bespoke negotiated agreements between groups of local authorities and Whitehall. The policy is also morphing in response to developments in Westminster and beyond.

The most significant developments are the arrival of Boris Johnson as prime minister, in the context of the 2019 Conservative landslide, and the ongoing Brexit agenda.

What these highlight is that the political saliency of the CA agenda varies depending on the will of political leadership at the national level and their existing policy priorities. What’s more, they show that, as CAs become more empowered and begin to bed-in and develop trajectories and momentum of their own, a tussle emerges between the CA and national level, particularly in the on-going battle for a further devolution of powers and funding. For example, the Greater Manchester CA has made vocal appeals for repatriated powers and funding over transport and skills training to land at the regional rather than national level.

Boris Johnson is a former directly elected mayor of London. In the 2019 general election, he based his claims to be able to ‘get things done’ as PM on his record at London mayor. Johnson’s power and influence in that role, and personal visibility, owed everything to New Labour’s devolution policy, which had created the mayorality and Greater London Assembly in 2000. He has now promised to ‘do devolution properly’, signalling an opportunity for existing CAs to expand their capacity and influence, especially in the North of England. Many CAs represent areas in the former ‘Red Wall’, where support for Labour crumbled and voters ‘lent’ their support to Johnson’s Conservatives. Now, many see an opportunity to call in the favour and make demands for further devolution.

Overshadowing all of this is Brexit. Voters in these regions shifted their allegiance towards the Conservative Party in order to ‘get Brexit done’, but Brexit itself presents opportunities and potential pitfalls for existing and proposed CAs. Many see an opportunity emerging for CAs (rather than Whitehall) to claim some of the powers being repatriated to Britain. Could Brexit lead to regions ‘taking back control’ as well as the national government? Johnson’s premiership represents a critical juncture for the devolution policy, which had stalled between 2016-19 in the face of struggles over Brexit, and an ideal opportunity for regional leaders to strengthen their calls for further powers

Johnson is on record as supporting the CA agenda. New CAs are currently being negotiated with the Treasury (for example in Yorkshire and Lancashire), and Johnson has advocated for further devolution of funding and powers to existing CAs, particularly over transport and infrastructure, in line with his government’s broader domestic agenda. The commitment to a Northern Powerhouse Rail programme suggests the agenda may be gaining traction. Regional leaders are hoping that Johnson has learnt about the benefits of locally controlled infrastructure from his experience at the helm of the most well developed regional transport body, Transport for London.

This new breath of life for the devolution policy follows a period of uncertainty following the departure of Chancellor George Osborne in 2016. Under David Cameron’s government, Osborne had been the architect of the CA agenda, personally pushing the agenda and getting the deals signed off the deals. Following the Brexit referendum, Theresa May’s government let the devolution policy flounder, preoccupied with the fall-out from the ‘leave’ vote.

The CA agenda may well be gaining new traction, as a result of both bottom-up and top-down demands. Recent years have seen many success stories, from the Greater Manchester poster-child, to ongoing negotiations with Lancashire, to further rounds of devolution for some of the UKs biggest cities. As time goes on, CAs are likely to gain the confidence they need to challenge central government in the on-going tit-for-tat that has characterises UK central-local relations. This isn’t to say that there haven’t been failures; our own research for example has shown how the North East Combined Authority failed to negotiate a meaningful devolution package with central government due to poorly constructed economic and political geographies and a lack of congruence or leadership. Having said that, a new North of Tyne Combined Authority has arisen from its ashes and negotiated a successful deal with central government.

But this also points to the way that CAs will continue to evolve in the future. Brexit was, to some extent, a product of social division, and a distrust amongst those at the local level about politics and priorities driven by Westminster and Whitehall. Beyond London and the South East there was a particularly powerful distrust of elites and a feeling among many that they had been ‘left behind’ by the dominant economic model. Indeed, the CA agenda itself was an attempt to alleviate growing regional discontent in England in the aftermath of New Labour’s devolution to the Scottish government and Welsh. Renewing the CA policy provides an opportunity to decentralize responses to the demand to ‘take back control’. English devolution has the potential to rebalance the economy whilst also reducing social division and mistrust in Westminster politics.

It remains to be seen whether combined authorities are able to capitalise on these opportunities, and indeed whether Westminster is serious about pursuing them. What we also need to watch out for is whether it is only those existing CAs, which have already proved themselves to be adept at bidding for power and funding (Greater Manchester and the West Midlands come to mind), that will be able to win the tussle for extra post-Brexit powers, or whether the bounty will be shared more evenly. The danger is, of course, that what is already seen by some as an uneven distribution of powers and funding away from Westminster will be aggravated further.

Max Lempriere is an Associate at INLOGOV. His research interests lie in local governance, institutions, sustainable development and urban planning. He completed a PhD in the politics of sustainable urban development.

Vivien Lowndes is Professor of Public Policy at INLOGOV. She undertakes research, teaching and knowledge transfer on local governance, political institutions, citizen participation, gender and migration. Professor Lowndes is Chair of the Politics and International Studies Sub-Panel for REF 2021, the UK’s periodic assessment of research quality.

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