Public Policy and Administration

This article explores the evolution of local government — voluntary and community sector relationships in Hungary since `The Change' of 1989. It does this in the context of a national policy framework concerned to develop the role of the latter sector as a key provider of essential public services at the local level. The article finds that the organic networks that enabled public policy development and implementation in the communist era continue to persevere in Hungary. This perseverance has meant that local voluntary and community groups privilege network skills above service domain skills — and that the pressure to provide public services has crowded out much of the capacity for civil society activity by these groups. The article concludes by considering the implications of this research for the wider group of accession states in Eastern Europe.

Considerable attention has recently been given to possible contradictions between public sector reform initiatives aimed at making agencies more responsive to political institutions and publics, and initiatives designed to make them more responsive to markets. This article reports on a study that demonstrates ways in which tensions and conflict can arise within a government agency when the aims of political responsiveness and market responsiveness are pursued simultaneously. The study also shows that conflict arises not only from contradictions between political and market responsiveness, but also from failures in organizational structure and change implementation strategies. Despite this, it is possible that the contradictions between the reforms need not be fatal if integrative structures are adopted and if conditions are created for effective participation and collaboration.

Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) are a central feature of a programme of local government modernization and public service reform in Scotland. CPPs are intended to ensure that local authorities, other local public agencies, the voluntary, community and private sectors develop a shared vision for their area and work in partnership to implement this. CPPs therefore have much in common with similar initiatives in other parts of the UK, such as communities strategies, Local Strategic Partnerships, and proposals contained in the 2007 Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill in England. This article discusses how the development of CPPs relates to devolution in Scotland. It identifies systemic dilemmas, if not contradictions, encountered in implementing community planning in Scotland. Tensions exist reconciling partnership working with local authority leadership; between community planning as an additional or core duty of public agencies; between community engagement and the practical demands of policy making; and between central government direction and local partnership autonomy.

The 1964—70 Labour Governments were formally committed to a major expansion and reorganization of education in Britain, at both secondary and higher levels. Alongside the commitment to `comprehensivisation' of secondary schools and the expansion of universities, Labour was also committed to raising the school leaving age from 15 to 16. However, the increasingly severe economic problems that affected Britain from 1966 onwards, culminating in devaluation in November 1967, prompted an urgent search for significant cutbacks in public expenditure, with one of the casualties being the raising of the school leaving age. A case study of this decision reveals several aspects of interest to students of public policy and administration, including the extent to which short-term economic exigencies were privileged over long-term social objectives. This enabled the Treasury to exercise dominance over spending Departments, with its senior officials presenting the options for financial savings in a manner that led almost ineluctably to the raising of the school leaving age being sacrificed. The decision also revealed the existence of tensions within the Cabinet, not merely on traditional ideological and inter-Departmental grounds, important though these were, but also, to some extent, in terms of the socio-educational backgrounds of Ministers. Consequently, the Treasury and its officials were able to pursue a subtle process of `divide and rule' among Ministers and their Departments.