Despite the concentrated attention to the Coronavirus Pandemic situation and attempts to advise decision makers and the analysts who work for them, two problems seem to have been ignored that can be gleaned from the public policy and public administration literature.

While defining these problems provides several new approaches to this complex issue, they do not simplify it. It is hard to escape defining this as a classic “wicked problem” (Rittel & Webber, 1973). The first involves the process of labeling the issue itself and linking it to previous policy situations. The second focuses on the dimensions of the issue that relate to the implementation process. This article explores both topics and suggests that there may be some ways of approaching them that is useful.

Labeling the Issue 
Most students of public policy begin their analysis deciding whether the issue they are confronting is unique or is similar to some other problem. The coronavirus pandemic—this dramatic life and death issue—is both. It is both different from and similar to what we have experienced in other issues. 

While lessons can be drawn from the experience of earlier plagues or virus situations, the 21st century creates many differences as well as similarities between this current situation and the past. As a result, it is hard to evaluate the alternatives that might have been considered when the issue surfaced early in 2020.
​
We do know that many decision makers bring their familiar patterns to issues that resemble questions that they have confronted in the past. In that sense, it is not surprising that the advice that is given reflects many different perspectives based on geography, racial and ethnic backgrounds, density of population, and other descriptors of the multiple societies affected by this almost mysterious development. 

​As a result, it is not surprising that some decision makers define their focus on the specifics of tasks related to achieving what they identify as familiar goals. Questions of efficiency, equity, or effectiveness are all likely to emerge and conflict with one another. While this is understandable, we also need to pay attention to the way that similar issues operate in a setting where other often unfamiliar issues and experiences are involved. For example, is there a link between this virus and climate change, between this virus and food safety, or between this virus and travel?

Implementation
Bringing any policy to life is an art form and requires attention to a broad range of issues. When a policy problem is as vast as this one, it can be overwhelming. Students of policy call this broad topic implementation. Implementation emerged as a field of study when proponents of the Lyndon Johnson era War on Poverty realized that some of the policies that they had crafted did not achieve the results that they had assumed would emerge from their advice.1 We learned that the players who had responsibility for designing the policy did not focus on the issues that might appear at implementation—the next stage of the policy process.2 Yet inattention to implementation at the formulation or design stage guaranteed problems at implementation.

Implementation is the stage of the policy process that challenges decision makers to understand contradictory principles. They are likely to conclude that issues may differ in some ways from their past experience but, at the same time, have areas of similarity. The implementation approach requires that decision makers and policy planners begin their process by mapping the environment in which the policy will be carried out. Such a conceptual map asks them to define the past and probable stakeholders and even reach for players who don’t seem likely to be involved.

Developing this map calls on policy analysts and staff to be creative. Nontraditional processes such as role playing
turn out to be an effective way to consider issues that may emerge from important but less visible players. Planners
are challenged to view the policy problem as emerging from demands that are somewhat predictable. Yet they
often require the development of strategies that touch many other actors who may be required to change their own
behaviors.

A process that stimulates the identification of possible issues early in the mapping process has the ability to define a
role or at least an interest by a range of players. But at the same time, it is fluid enough to give attention to the uniqueness of the specific situation or crisis and acknowledge that it is likely to require that the stakeholders generate new ideas and approaches. The balance between the two challenges is very difficult to attain. It is likely to be full of contradictions, messy, and hard to explain.

Ignoring the Transition Process, the U.S. Government Structure, and History
The major problem that was built into the coronavirus situation of 2020 was the failure to look at the context in which
any policy has to be implemented. Policy issues rarely confront a tabula rosa situation. Rather, they are constrained
by history and past practices and, as a result, it is important to look at the history of past efforts. In this case,
the past was just days away. A significant element in the current situation was the failure by the Trump staff to use
the transition process from Obama to Trump as a way to learn about this complex issue. Michael Lewis’ book, The Fifth Risk, focused on this experience showing that Trump staff actually failed to look at the materials that were created
for them by Obama staff. Obama had appreciated the materials that Bush had left for him and sought to return the “favor.” Thus, the Trump staff failed to use materials that had been developed by both of the earlier Presidents (one a Democrat and the other a Republican) for just such a challenge.

Ignoring the experience of the past might be appropriate in some settings (especially if it led to even more difficult situations than the original problem). But large and complex democracies that seek to carry out democratic values are likely to experience problems when they ignore the lessons of history. And history does remind us that the structure of shared powers in the United States is often the element in our system that is also ignored. Yet the debate surrounding the coronavirus issue constantly revolved around attempts to ignore federalism as well as shared powers between the three branches of government. Over and over again the constitutional role of Congress was ignored.

The systems of shared powers found in most democracies are designed to require actors in decision making to share common space and to find new ways to negotiate and craft agreement on approaches. As a result, conflict is frequently inevitable between branches and levels of government. And conflict seems to constantly produce contradictions. It cannot be ignored or eliminated but it must be managed.3 This management task is incredibly complex; it requires that players are willing to create new ways to achieve at least partial success.\

Frequently failure to acknowledge the conflict that emerges from the shared powers systems has led to a number of things that might make the task even more difficult than participants assumed. By ignoring both scientific and institutional expertise, the relevant participants lack the ability to create new alternatives. In addition, failing to even consider differences between experience in the private sector and that in the public sector can lead to dead ends.

Instead of generating new possibilities, this process simply fed conflict. When participants use communication techniques
that rely on filibustering, defensive behavior, and overpromises, they make it difficult to define even limited shared views. We talk about the importance of creating testing mechanisms but do not differentiate between victims or carriers of the virus. This can limit the utility of new information (even when it is collected).

We all hope that the lessons that might emerge from this experience will generate new areas of creativity and make it clear that we have all suffered as a result of our experience during the months when planet earth seemed to have gone
crazy. It is clearly hard to dig ourselves out of this conflict and the management demands it has created.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes
1. The classic work in this area is by Jeffrey T. Pressman and Aaron B. Wildavsky (1973).
2. The various stages of the policy process usually begin with agenda setting, move to formulation, adoption, implementation, and evaluation.
3. See Beryl A. Radin (2012).

​References
Pressman, J. T., & Wildavsky, A. B. (1973). Implementation. University of California Press.
Radin, B. A. (2012). Federal management reform in a world of contradictions. Georgetown University Press.
Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169.

Author Biography
Beryl A. Radin is an author, researcher, and academic who has now retired from teaching. An elected member of the National Academy of Public Administration, she has written more than a dozen books and many articles on public policy and public management issues. Much of her work has focused on policy analysis, intergovernmental relationships, and federal management change. She is a recipient of the International Research Society for Public Management’s Routledge Prize, the John Gaus Award, the H. George Frederickson Award, and the Donald Stone Award.

American Review of Public Administration 1–3
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1) JCPA has been celebrating its 20th anniversary as the only explicitly comparative journal of policy analytic studies since 1998. Why should clients and their policy analysts be interested in comparative work?

One should not be surprised that the field of policy analysis has found ways to acknowledge an interest in comparative work as globalization has become more prominent during the 21st century.  Policy analysts have been struck by both similarities and differences across the globe and international conferences have become a way to deal with the issues that have emerged from a world of change and conflict.  This variation has led to two different approaches.  In one setting a belief seems to have developed that what works on one setting can be easily transferred to another.  In another setting players believe that differences prevent this from happening.  Similarly, the split in the policy field between policy researchers and policy analysts seems to have minimized attention to unique attributes in different settings.

2) Do we know if they are actually interested and what they want?

Potential clients of issues dealing with comparative dimensions seem to be less interested in the work of researchers.  Clients who are in decision making roles want to find policy analysts who understand the constraints they are facing and the complex situations in which they find themselves.  Increasingly clients acknowledge that they share authority with others and want analysts who understand this source of complexity.  At the same time, the clients want information about what they believe to be effective.  That is information that respects their belief in the unique qualities of their situation and details that tell them what their colleagues in similar situations might be doing.  In a sense, they are looking for the kind of information that might be viewed as peer to peer technical assistance.

3) Does the supply of such work meet the needs of policy practitioners?

It is fairly rare that researchers are attentive to those unique qualities.  They find that the presence of multiple clients, areas of conflict and constant change create complex situations that are not always documented in existing data systems.  Analytic techniques that rely on quantitative methods do not always lend themselves to conflict and change.  And qualitative approaches such as comparative case studies are time consuming and require research support.

4) Has JCPA managed to bridge this gap?

While JCPA has managed to bridge some aspects of this gap, it is still fairly unusual to find articles that are sensitive to these issues.  I do not know how many articles in the journal emerged from collaborative work between individuals who are actually located in different settings.  It is my impression that a single author (or two or three joint authors) is likely to be responsible for understanding the diverse multiple constraints that are found in the research effort.  I also believe that similarity of experience and perspectives is more likely to lead to a focus on similarities rather than differences of experience, values and interpretation of past efforts.

5) You mention three key future challenges for JCPA authors, editors and reviewers. Challenge 1: Careful consideration of the context in which the policy operates.

Attention to differences in context has not received the general attention that I think it deserves in the policy analysis field.  We have not paid much attention to the structure of government, especially the differences between parliamentary and shared power systems.  And increasingly networks and shared power systems have made real demands on the creativity and care with which a policy analyst should approach the assignment.  We also fail to carefully examine the value differences at play in democratic systems compared to non democratic forms.  Shifts in the boundary lines in many countries have created tensions that are an important part of the context of the policy and reflect both language and religious differences within the country.

Challenge 2: The role of subnational levels.

The level of centralization and decentralization in the structure of a national government can create major problems for a policy analyst.  Federal systems are very diverse and led to varied relationships by policy area and the level of resources available in different states or provinces.  For example, provinces that have oil (no matter what the country) are likely to play controlling roles within the country.  Yet I would doubt that this level of detail would have shown up in a comparative analysis.  We need to develop frameworks and typologies that can emerge from the complexity of the contemporary comparative policy setting.

Challenge 3: Focus on the role of the policy analyst.

I believe that an effective policy analyst dealing with comparative policy issues will find many challenges involved in this task.  While it may be easier to deal the task wearing the hat of the researcher, I believe that has a limited payoff.

6) Any closing remarks of comments?

Several years ago Richard Simeon and I did a comparison of Canadian and US federalism.  While we had many shared values and views, we found ourselves talking almost different languages.  We could agree on descriptions of expected reactions but disagreed on our categorization of a larger framework.  Were the two systems similar or different?  That question created a situation where we both valued comparison.  It helped to clarify explanations for both variation and similarity.  And it created a setting where we could learn from one other.

Thank you Beryl!

[i] Beryl A. Radin is a member of the faculty at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. An elected member of the National Academy of Public Administration, she was the Managing Editor of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory from 2000 to 2005. She was the Editor of the Georgetown University Press book series, Public Management and Change.  She also served as the president of APPAM.  Her government service included two years as a Special Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Management and Budget of the US Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies.

[ii] Athanassios Gouglas is Lecturer in Politics & Public Policy at the Department of Politics, University of Exeter, United Kingdom. He has previously worked as a civil servant in the Hellenic Civil Service and as political and policy adviser in two ministerial offices in Greece.

The year is 2068. The lakes in the Adirondack Mountain region in New York State have experienced flooding over the last several years. Three Syracuse University faculty members decided to visit Minnowbrook Lodge (a structure in the Adirondacks that is owned by the University) to determine whether the lodge withstood the flooding. 

​They found that the Lodge itself was intact but the ground around the structure was in turmoil. There were so many objects poking out of the ground that they thought that the area had been used as some sort of a cemetery. The faculty members contacted colleagues from the archeology department and asked them to visit the area to make sure that professionals were involved in exploring these ruins.

The archeologists’ dig uncovered graves of pets, remnants of garbage, and what seemed to be a sealed time capsule. The faculty group opened the capsule carefully and discovered a stack of papers inside as well as a newspaper. They found an agenda for a conference titled Minnowbrook at 50 that was attended by approximately 50 people.
 
According to the newspaper that was included in the capsule the conference took place in a very turbulent time in U.S. history. There seemed to be a concern that a leader was in place who was challenging many of the principles in the US political and administrative system. As they examined the papers they discovered that the conference was the fourth in a series of conferences organized by the Maxwell School in Syracuse – the public administration school. First held in 1968, the 2018 meeting (like its predecessors) brought scholars in public administration and management together to discuss the state of the field and its future.

The bulk of the papers in the capsule seemed to be quite short (usually about 3 or 4 pages long). They were written by the attendees at the conference before the meeting was held and were defined as “concept papers” that discussed a critical issue or topic that was important to both the participant and to the field. 

One of the archeologists in the group was fascinated by this array of papers. He was interested in the historical development of academic fields and looked for ruins of both universities and libraries for evidence of patterns in the way that academic programs were conceptualized. These papers, by contrast, allowed him to move beyond the ruins of buildings and to use the papers to glimpse both the status and uncertainties contained in an important intellectual field. 

Because the authorship of the papers was identifiable, it was possible for the archeologist to make some generalizations about the participants. He noted that it seemed that 50% of the paper writers were men and 50% were women. He couldn’t determine the nationality or race of many of the authors but did note that a few people had Middle Eastern names and a few had Hispanic names. He did not find anyone among the authors with an Asian name. Other names suggested European family backgrounds. 

After he read and reread the papers more than five times, he emerged with a picture of the field of public administration in 2018. He was able to produce a document that listed his observations about the papers. As he wrote, he found that the observations were similar to what he thought were the assumptions of the current people in that field in 2068. 

Here is his list:

1. Participants in the conference did not appear to share similar views of problems, opportunities, and constraints. It was clear that the group was not able to describe the field as a unified intellectual enterprise with agreement on its parameters or values. In fact, it seemed that the intellectual divisions within the field kept participants from developing shared agendas.

2. The cast of characters in the field (both the players and leaders) included a number of people representing institutions, individual views, politicians, professionals, experts and citizens. But it was not clear who played leadership roles in the field or even whether all those listed were considered to be appropriate players.

3. The issues that were discussed in the papers often relied on past meetings and discussions. There was a sense of nostalgia about the past but a feeling of fear about the future. One could see that the participants were overwhelmed by the current set of pressures in the US at that time.

4. A significant number of the papers were concerned about issues of equity and diversity facing individuals in the field. It seemed that some of the participants believed that there had been some progress over the years but still continued to highlight disparities. It appeared that these issues had been raised at earlier conferences but it was not clear whether much progress had been made in the field since then. Others did not focus on equity values but highlighted efficiency norms, often relying on private sector (rather than public) approaches.

5. Some of the participants described the public administration field through analytic approaches that provided a sense of neutrality. Several defined their expectations through reliance on data. Others commented on the general benefits of technology. 

6. It was difficult to get a sense of the causes of the problems that were facing the field and the society at large. Some participants seemed to fear politics and sought ways to avoid it. Others highlighted the role of citizens in the public administration sphere. 

7. Although a few of the papers were written by practitioners of public administration (bureaucrats or relevant non-government organizations), the relationship between academics and practitioners was not clear. Was the purpose of the meeting to develop ways to warn decisionmakers about issues or to help them deal with them?
​
The archeologist had tried to find other information about the three previous Minnowbrook conferences but the on-line sources did not provide him with relevant information. Were the other conferences successful? And he wondered what had happened in the public administration field in the past 50 years? He was intrigued about its development. Perhaps he would find another time capsule that would help him understand this important field of study.

There are many ways to describe the impact of the passage of time. Many of us mark our experiences through births, deaths, marriages and other family related events. Years pass by and it is usual for us to be aware of patterns that have developed clearly within the family as the months progress. Sometimes these patterns seem to be interrupted as dramatic changes in the society move into the world that had appeared to be personal and somewhat insulated from broader shifts.

I have recently been faced with such a collision. Ironically, I finished writing a personal memoir just about the time that Donald Trump was elected president. I reached the age of 80 when my memoir was published. The title summarizes its focus: Leaving South Dakota: A Memoir of a Jewish Feminist Academic. I tried to tell the story of a Jewish girl growing up in South Dakota, leaving home at a time of immense change in the US, and trying to find a way to make sense of a constantly changing environment.

The memoir dealt with three themes. The first shows that people change but usually maintain attributes of their early life. The second highlights the contradictions and conflicts that continued throughout my life. And the third acknowledges that change comes in unexpected ways as a result of unanticipated experiences.

Clearly, I did not anticipate the presidency of Donald Trump. Trump challenged many of my basic beliefs. His election not only tested my political and social beliefs but has actually confronted the story that I have told about my life. I look at the memoir today and start questioning my interpretation of the basic parameters of my life. Was I really a Jewish girl who described herself always living in multiple worlds, balancing change and tradition, operating outside and inside the system, being both a practitioner and an academic, and an advocate and an analyst?

Like many of the people I know, Trump’s presidency has contributed to my daily personal problems. I am uncertain about the future. This uncertainty seems to have contributed to health issues that limit my mobility and (even though I am over 80) makes me worry about my professional and personal future. And it causes me to worry about the younger members of the family and how they will survive this depressing environment. What should my twin great-nieces expect for their future?

This is not surprising. But I do find myself wondering how people I knew escaped from the suicides of the Stock Market crash of 1929 or learned how to deal with their shifting role in the world (as did UK citizens when the British empire diminished in size and impact in the post-World War II period). But those comparisons are largely theoretical or at least abstract.

Its when I pick up a copy of my memoir today that I am struck by the Trump impact. Writing the memoir had allowed me to reexamine my experience. But it didn’t give me a hint about the disjuncture between my assumptions and those that emerged from Trump. I told the story of a family of immigrants (I was a first generation American) who found a way to be proud Americans and contribute to all of the ways available to the US society. My parents lived through the depression, continued to identify as Jews to the broader society, valued education, and – interesting enough – were good citizens in a small city in South Dakota. The term “immigrant” evokes a different reaction today than it did as I was growing up.

My memoir did include the description of some experiences that showed that anti-Semitism was not dead but when it did surface it did not control our lives. As I have subsequently learned since the publication of the memoir, my experiences growing up in Aberdeen, South Dakota were both familiar and yet different from those of my colleagues. While those colleagues do seem to have differentiated between our experiences, it did not take the classic forms of anti-Semitism.
What would I say if I were writing that memoir today? 

Would I emphasize the experiences that had anti-Semitic overlays? Would I spend more time on the experiences that made me skeptical of traditional Judaism? Would I believe that J Street could withstand the pressures both inside the US and in Israel that ignored the values of Judaism that I had supported? 

Would I characterize my experience as more of that of an outsider than an insider? Would I note that I didn’t have a desire to return to Aberdeen and instead explore the world and find friendships and experiences across the globe? Would I have become an academic who valued information, research and the ability to be skeptical about “truths”, especially those masquerading as “fake news”? 

Would I believe in the ability of the US democratic system to withstand challenges to its way of sharing power across sectors and deal with complexity? And perhaps most importantly, would I calculate cost and profit margins as my single measure of success, ignoring values of equity and effectiveness?

History is always written in new ways as historians deal with the realities of the present as they present the past. That can happen in one’s personal history as well. 

While I was not an attendee at the first Minnowbrook conference 50 years ago, I was deeply involved in the issues that had motivated the meeting.  As I wrote about it for the 2nd Minnowbrook meeting, the first conference was often described as the realization that the academics who were looking at the demonstrations in the street from their academic perchs were feeling guilty about their absence from the action.  That was not my issue.  From 1961 on, I had been involved in the civil rights movement both in the street and as a staff member of the US Commission on Civil Rights.  By 1968, many things had changed and a malaise and depression followed the results of the 1968 election.  My personal response to that environment in Washington was to leave town by starting a PhD program in Social Policy Planning at the University of California at Berkeley. 

In many ways the mood of Washington today mirrors those feelings.  But I’m too old to start over.  Instead, I’m trying to figure out what the world of public management and policy has been doing that contributed to the state that we are in today.  What have we done (or failed to do) that has supported the erosion of the public sector that we have all been studying and, in the process, trying to advance suggestions for improvement? 

Increasingly I come back to one of the most basic issues in our field:  the difference between the public sector and the private sector.  What are the differences between the two and what can we expect from each of them?   This is a question that is found recurrently in the history of public management.  Attempts to sort out the similarities and differences between the two sectors are found in a wide range of journals and books.   The exchange takes many different forms as it responds to developments within the society that generate skepticism about one or the other of the two sectors.

While some have attempted to sort out clear roles for the two, others have found that there is a dynamic process that creates pendulum swings related to changes in the environment (technological, social and economic) that move public views from one sector to the other.   Albert Hirschman called this “shifting involvements” and wrote that they occur when the public is disappointed with one or the other sector. 

While this framework is appealing, it seems to me that we have focused on a range of approaches and issues that seems to have stuck us in a place where the unique attributes and values of the public sector have been lost.  I find that the triad of efficiency, effectiveness and equity (generating the need to trade off between them) has been replaced by a deference only to efficiency.  Over the past several decades we have lost much of the complicated identity of the public sector. 

I have identified five areas that I feel have suffered from this loss.  While as academics we cannot require decisionmakers to move the pendulum to include issues that reflect effectiveness and equity values as well as efficiency values, our work can point to the consequences of the overwhelming move to adopt policies and practices from the private sector. 
​

1. The impact of the increase in contracting out programs and services.  We should remind ourselves of the consequences of contracting out programs and services.  As Joseph Califano once said, “HHS doesn’t deliver services.  It delivers dollars and regulations.”  We know that this has led to the hollow state but we have lost sight of the substantive consequences of block grants and disappearance of the federal government in the design and evaluation of programs.  It is one thing to substitute private sector contracts for products available on the market but it is quite different to contract out the actual services paid for by federal government dollars.   We rarely point to this difference in our evaluation of programs and, instead, hold federal employees accountable for services that are beyond their control.
2.  Financial issues appear to drive everything.  Discussion of programs is almost always in budget terms.  Even though we don’t have a clear alternative to the profit motive we seem to have decided to ignore assessments that include both effectiveness and equity goals.
3. Performance definitions seem to be directly borrowed from the private sector and fail to reflect attributes of the public sector role.  There seems to be an assumption that individual bureaucrats have the ability to have an impact on program outcomes and that information about outputs and processes are not important measures of performance.  There is minimal attention to performance measures that reflect goals related to due process or transparency issues.  These are objectives that are often very difficult to quantify.
4. Increasingly studies and research efforts ignore the reality of politics, particularly the way that the unstable external environment has an impact on the quality of government work.  There is a tendency for researchers to move to a micro behavioral level which sometimes appears to be like an ostrich burying its head in the sand.  At the same time, a number of research efforts seem to demean the effectiveness of incremental strategies since they don’t appear to have significant impact on reaching the program goals.
   
5. There is a tendency for researchers to ignore the constitutional complexity of the US system.  This complexity includes shared powers between the three branches  of government as well as federalism issues.  This reinforces the tendency in the field to focus only on the powers within the executive branch and thus repeat strategies that have not been effective in the past (e.g. reorganization and other management reform efforts).

For more than 60 years advocates for improving the substance of public policy in the US have argued that this goal can be best accomplished through the use of information.   This argument emerged during the 1960s with adoption of the Planning, Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS). That initiative reflected a belief in the potential of analytic skills to devise a rational framework that could produce useful and agreed-upon data that would support policies that are most effective, most efficient and, even sometimes most equitable.          
 
It assumed that such information was available to decision makers, that it was possible for participants to agree on cause and effect relationships, and that almost all activities could be quantified and measured.  The set of assumptions underlying the PPBS system crossed political lines and had the support of both Republicans and Democrats. 

​The most recent example of this rationality-based strategy was found in the Report of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking, a bipartisan group created by Congress in 2016 to develop a strategy for increasing the availability and use of data in order to build evidence about government programs that would be the basis of policy-making.   The Commission’s report, issued in September, called for “a future in which rigorous evidence is created efficiently, as a routine part of government operations, and used to construct effective public policy.” 

Indeed, it is more than a little ironic that such a Commission issued its report in the current political climate.  Attempts to apply the norms and values of science to the public sector has always been difficult.  But today, in a world of “fake news” charges and disputes about the accuracy and legitimacy of information, the barriers to success seem overwhelming.  
 
If we are to understand the limitations of the effort to rely on what is often called neutral evidence, it is useful to review past experiences. The constraints established in the US constitutional structure require players to look for multiple perspectives.  Many issues in our complex system involve players with different perspectives and impose limits on any one player’s ability to define the kinds of information deemed appropriate.   Recent attempts to impose private sector values (especially profit) on a public system have created conflicts not envisioned by the US system architects.
 
A classic New Yorker cartoon probably provides the clearest definition of the problem: a drawing of a file cabinet with drawers labeled “Our facts”, “Absolute facts”, “Their facts”, “Bare facts”, “Neutral Facts, “Unsubstantiated facts”, “Disputable facts,” and “Indisputable facts.”

Despite these conflicts, many advocates for reliance on neutral information believe that data sources exist, or could emerge, that would allow decision-makers to avoid the constraints that emerge from the Constitution and the US political process.  These advocates are convinced that they could draw on their academic training for a set of skills deemed appropriate for a data-driven process.  At the same time, social scientists (including economists, psychologists and sociologists) began to appear on the evaluation and policy analysis staffs of multiple federal agencies.  

Skeptics also appeared.  Alice Rivlin, the first head of the Congressional Budget Office, reminisced about the early days in Washington of  the evaluation field.  She noted:  “HEW in the late 60s was a wonderful place to be.  The Congress had recently passed a raft of new programs.  …  Both advocates and evaluators were naïve by today’s standards… It gradually dawned on all of us that progress was going to be more complicated.”      
 
Several well-known writers emerged during the late 1970s and early 1980s who provided a picture of that complexity. Lindblom and Cohen’s work, Useable Knowledge:  Social Science and Social Problem Solving, contrasted the approach to information that emerges from academic social science with “ordinary knowledge”, the information that emerges from common sense speculation.  They noted that too many policy analysts and researchers greatly underestimated the use and effectiveness of ordinary knowledge, laden as it was with intuition and more emotional responses and values.

Carol Weiss, a evaluation specialist, provided a somewhat different although related perspective.  She characterized information tasks as  the three “I”s – information, ideology and interests.” As early as 1983 she noted that “Observers who expect the subcategory of information that is social science research to have immediate and independent power in the process, and who bitterly complain about the intrusion of ‘politics’…  into the use of research, implicitly hold a distorted view of how decisions are made.”
     
An Italian academic,  Giandomenico Majone, in Evidence, Argument, and Persuasion in the Policy Process,  substituted the idea of argument and evidence for the approach used by applied social scientists. Majone viewed the analyst as one who plays the role of participant and mediator rather than objective scientist.  For him, evidence was much closer to the process applied in legal reasoning. Majone noted:  “Argumentation is the key process through which citizens and policymakers arrive at moral judgments and policy choices.” 

The combined message from these individuals, and others, led some academics and policy-makers to recognize the existence of what Majone called the “uncritical acceptance of the ‘scientific method’.”   It had turned into a mechanistic process.  The concept of “the public good” (developed by economist Paul Samuelson) seems to have vanished from the debate, suggesting that private sector values (profit and efficiency)  have drowned out collective concerns within our society.   Neither the recent Commission report nor much of the literature on evidence-based policy provides a reader with a useful sense of the insights and skepticism that had been developing.  Yet the advocates of what has come to be termed “the evidence movement” continue to believe in its potential. 

But this interest may not take us very far.  Some have attempted to focus on an important aspect of this increased interest, namely  expanding our understanding of what constitutes useful and useable evidence, not simply arguing that all information is appropriate.   Such a focus may be a useful way of acknowledging that we are a society that contains multiple values.  These diverse values challenge the ability of information, alone, to deal with the conflicts that emerge during policy discussion. 

​As a result, the concept of “evidence-based” decision-making cannot be disentangled from a series of value, structural, and political attributes that make such agreement difficult.   We continue to search for ways to identify a range of approaches that are effective, efficient and most equitable to a diverse citizenry.

I have a hard time remembering when I first met Paul Posner.  I know it was more than 30 years ago and was when he was at GAO working on federalism issues and I was teaching at the USC campus in Washington.  

Over the years we found that we had many areas of shared interest covering a range of topics.  We were both focused on public administration issues, public policy issues and – of course – federalism.  We had similar backgrounds and interests.  That led us to somewhat unusual places.  I doubt that few if any APSA members besides the two of us who visited Azerbaijan (at different times)  decided to visit an ancient community of Mountain Jews in Guba – a city in the Caucuses where the Jewish residents continued to use a language that was derived from Persian.  (Their migration northward from Persia  probably took place just after the destruction of the first temple.)  

Both of us were hard to characterize and we didn’t fit into clear categories.  We both wore several hats, moving between the world of practice and the academy.  Over the years we wrote together, planned conferences, especially within the NAPA and other professional organizational frameworks. We didn’t always agree but both of us appreciated the other’s perspective.  Paul’s review of one of my books, Federal Management Reform in a World of Contradictions, in PUBLIUS in 2013 is something that I really treasure.  He picked up on my use of the myth of Sisyphus and agreed with my warning that continuing to pursue traditional management reform efforts was dangerous.  He wrote that “Ill begotten reforms that are destined to bring about waves of disenchantment and disillusionment can only hurt the cause that the [reformers] believe in.”

I appreciated Paul’s ability to understand and operate effectively in both the world of the academic and that of the practitioner. I think that was always something that he sought.  He continued to include this duality to the days before he died.

Paul never abandoned the sensitivities that he developed as a practitioner. He was able to bring those sensitivities to his writing, his teaching, and his role as a leader in the fields that are represented by this panel.  He didn’t threaten the people who did not agree with him. He never lost the perspective that flowed from his years in a congressional agency – GAO.  He was able to remind his colleagues of the reality of our shared powers governmental structure. He made sure that we considered the realities of federalism. Unlike many of his colleagues in our fields, he often focused on the congressional role and its powers, moving beyond the traditional executive branch perspective. For an organization like NAPA, that perspective was likely to be ignored and it was Paul who often raised those important issues.  I will never forget Paul’s comments at a conference on performance measurement when he reminded the audience that a one size fits all approach that was coming out of OMB wasn’t the only approach that could be considered.  

Its difficult to know what constitutes a good colleague.  But I believe it extends beyond publications and teaching syllabi. I think its important to look beyond Paul’s own research work to include the contributions he made as a citizen and professional. Paul’s perspective went beyond traditional measures of collegiality that are normally found inside academia.  As the editor of the Georgetown University Press book series on Public Management and Change I could always rely on his assessments and suggestions for authors in his reviews. In fact, I cannot think of any time that he turned down my requests;  the books in our series reflect his input. Sometimes it took a little nudging to get his review but it was worth it.  

I’d like to conclude my presentation today by discussing the concern that Paul and I shared about pracademics --  the term used to describe the synergy between the worlds of the academy and that of practitioners. Paul wrote an article in Public Budgeting and Finance in the Spring of 2009, laying out a call for the development of what he called a “healthy relationship that is vital to the success of both practitioners and academics.” He wrote the piece as a part of a tribute to the life of Dick Zody, another Virginian but from Blacksburg who was described by Paul.  This piece – while a tribute to Zody – tells us what he believed was important. It's incredibly relevant to our current attempt to assess Paul’s contributions. 

“One of Dick Zody's greatest strengths was his anchoring in both academic and public service worlds. The fact that Dick was able to stretch over many different communities is no surprise, of course, to those of us who knew him. Boundless energy, infectious enthusiasm, passion for both people and ideas—this characterized someone whose life and career would not be contained or bound by one path, institution or discipline. Many aspire to careers like this, but few actually accomplish it. Multi-tasking is the watchword for many today, but let us remember what Dick exemplified—not just doing many things, but doing them well. Dick's career exemplifies the integration of academic teaching and research with the communities of practice that public administration has aspired to achieve since its founding as a field. As Dick Zody's path reminds us, there is no substitute for creative, proactive leadership to start a renewed dialogue that will lead to productive institutional change.”  This piece is a model for us today.

When I had the opportunity to address some of these issues in the Gaus lecture that I gave 5 years later, I echoed some of the same issues that had been important to Paul.  But my sense was that the years that had elapsed contributed to forces that made it even more difficult to find ways to continue to encourage faculty to find ways to blend the two roles of academic and practitioner.

Despite the fact that the history of our fields allowed people – indeed encouraged them – to wear both hats, it was clear that there were more obstacles to these opportunities than had existed in the past.

I noted that limited opportunities now exist for faculty members in public management, public policy, and related fields to move between the academy and the world of practitioners.  As a result, I created the Pracademic Fellowship Program administered by the APSA Centennial Center for Political Science and Public Affairs, that seeks to create opportunities for a generation of mid career faculty members to recreate the historical experience of joining theory and practice.
 The fellowship provides APSA member academics with practical, hands-on experience built around the reality of the decision-making world. It seeks to give participants a close view of decisionmaking that may not emerge from a traditional research orientation.  The recipients can take this experience back to their institutions and classrooms to help build bridges between the academic and practitioner worlds.

An informal advisory committee was created around the program and Paul became a very important member of the small group.  A year ago a panel was organized at the Philadelphia APSA conference to provide a discussion of the program, focusing on the experience of two individuals who had spent a semester in different parts of EPA as part of a pilot effort. And Paul was a participant in that panel.  In his comments he noted both the importance of programs like the pracademic fellowship but, at the same time, the difficulties that constrained their influence.  His absence on the advisory committee will be obvious as the program hopes to expand this year.  

As others on this panel have noted, Paul’s spirit and influence are very much alive. I will miss my friend.

​More than 25 years ago I decided I wanted to apply for a Fulbright grant to India. There were a number of reasons for this decision that encompassed a range of realities.  I am an American with very limited language facility.  I had found that my earlier time in Australia allowed me to avoid my language limitations but still learn from a different culture.  About the same time, I was a devotee of the British television series Jewel in the Crown and was intrigued by India’s transition from a colonial situation to independence.  I enriched my knowledge by delving into the rich fictional literature about India available in English and took a course at the Smithsonian Institute on Indian Art and Architecture to learn about highlights of Indian history and to identify sites that I wanted to visit.

Increasingly I began to see parallels between India and the US.  My earlier research had focused on American federalism and the constant search for ways that a national government could deal with a system of states with very different expectations, cultures, and populations.  About the same time that I applied for the Fulbright I was able to meet with a group of individual Indians who were leaders of democratically operated grassroots social change movements in India, supporting the empowerment of dalits, tribal people, women and religious minorities.  

This group of Indian activists was brought to Washington, DC by the Ford Foundation and these individuals worked with an American group called the Advocacy Institute to expose them to the advocacy efforts within the US.  This organization had devised strategies and approaches that made sense in the US and provided a setting that was useful to people from another large country with dramatic differences within its population and the need for economic development.  As our conversations developed I began to understand both the similarities and differences between the two systems, both of which were dealing with political, economic and social changes over time and seemed to be constantly in flux.   While the Indian experience with independence and colonial institutions was much more recent than that in the US, both countries searched for ways to make it possible for democratic principles come alive.  

By the time I had to sit down and write my application for the Fulbright I had become aware of two elements in the Indian Constitution that provided me with new ways of thinking about federalism in both countries.  First, I was struck by the way that the Indian constitution had divided the power of the states and the central government into three lists:  the union list, the state list, and the concurrent list. That categorization provided a framework that acknowledged differences between very different policy roles within different jurisdictional structures and seemed to be the only model for issues that required the involvement of both sets of institutions.   

By contrast, the US system, following a Civil War, danced around the division of powers through an argument that referred to issues that involved interstate commerce and did not attempt to classify specific lists of activities that were appropriate for the central government, the states, or both.   It was not until Deil Wright developed what he called the “overlapping model of intergovernmental relations” in the late 1970s that something in the US approached the concept of the concurrent list.   

The second element that became clear to me as I prepared for a visit to India involved attention to the role of the bureaucracy in the Indian constitution. The Indian Administrative Service was one of the very few administrative systems that I had encountered that was established in a constitution as an instrument of federalism, with IAS officers serving as an intermediary between the states and the national government. By contrast, the US Constitution did not really deal with the role of the bureaucracy at any level.   In that sense the US system was similar to that of most political systems where each level of government was equipped with its own set of administrative instrumentalities and mechanisms.   Countries such as Australia and the US have separate and distinct levels of public administration that tend to emphasize the differences between the levels of government rather than to accentuate areas of interdependencies.  My research efforts involving implementation of national policies in different states in the US had shown me that these differences were extremely important.

But back to India. The process of negotiating a Fulbright position in India is never simple.  But in this instance the months involved in my negotiation provided me with an opportunity to build on my growing interest in both issues -- concurrent powers and the IAS.  When I arrived in Delhi at the end of May, I was not only greeted by pre monsoon heat but also an agreement with the Indian Institute of Public Administration in Delhi.   I would spend my three months as a senior Fulbright scholar based there, meeting senior IAS officers both in the classroom and informally, visiting other training institutes throughout the country, and taking advantage of the expertise of colleagues on the faculty and others in Delhi and across the country.  I hadn’t realized it at the time but it turned out that I was the first American to be posted at the IIPA under a Fulbright.  My colleagues at the Institute said that the faculty was always skeptical about accepting previous applicants, believing that they were likely to be somehow attached to the CIA. For whatever reason, I was viewed as different.   Probably my concerns about issues in the US (especially civil rights issues) played a part in this.

I spent the three months combining IIPA based activities with visits to training institutes across the country arranged by IIPA staff, the Fulbright Office, and the U. S. Information Service.  I was able to speak to IAS officers in Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Trivandrum, and several other places.  I spent a week at the training academy in Mussoorie – perhaps the institution anywhere in the world that has invested more in training bureaucrats than anyone else has done.  I was able to see both the strengths and the weaknesses of those training efforts.  When it was possible I also met with individuals from advocacy organizations in those places.   In subsequent trips to India, I visited other parts of the country and returned to earlier places.  By the turn of the 21st century, I was immersed in questions about India.   I was more likely to know what I didn’t understand than to pronounce any expertise.

The years that elapsed between my Fulbright in 1990 and my last trip in 2007 gave me a picture of a constantly changing India.  Two main changes were extremely important to my understanding of issues related to federalism.  The first was the emergence of the private sector.  Its presence was noted in areas which had been characterized by strong (almost monopolistic) government action. Global attention had turned to the contribution of the Indian technology private sector. New actors from the private sector were likely to both demand and assist in a role in decisionmaking.   These players further complexified the demands on all of the three lists defined in the Constitution but clearly made the concurrent list particularly difficult to manage.

The second change emerged from the development of state specific political parties across the states. The appearance of these political parties in the 1980s challenged the ability of the Congress Party to win elections in a number of states.   As a result, it became increasingly common for elections to be won by coalitions of political parties.  These coalitions often included a range of national parties and state-specific parties and gave state political leaders the ability to make demands on issues and areas which had not been possible in the past.   It was possible – at least theoretically -- for the Chief Ministers to indirectly use the skills of their IAS cadres to push for specific policy directions even when they were posted in Delhi.  These individuals seem to serve  an interconnecting role as they share a common background but find themselves representing different governments. Federalism, thus, had to be defined to include these new players as a part of the context of decisionmaking either directly as players or as individuals who changed the way that they defined their power position and roles.  

Similar changes were taking place within the US during this same period.  Increased use of contracting out functions at all levels of government made it difficult to think of a clear differentiation between public and private roles. Reliance on legal and structural definitions of federalism was modified and often replaced by the concept of intergovernmental relationships. That term was used to support a view that not only included private sector groups but focused on processes that stemmed from a set of overlaps among national, state and local units simultaneously.  In many cases, increased globalization meant that the relationships spanned national boundaries.  Both governments and private sector actors began to recognize the involvement of organized actors outside the government; these non government organizations became gradually recognized as agents and partners of governments.  These overlaps constrained the levels of autonomy and discretion in any single public or private player. In addition, they stimulated complex multiunit interactions which are non hierarchical in nature.  It became more difficult to fit the traditional role of “bureaucrats” into these behaviors since their traditional role as deliverer of services was dramatically modified.  Yet while some called this development “the hollow state”, governments still continued to exert essential functions in the process (such as raising money, negotiating contracts, establishing program standards). Bureaucracies might have changed but they still have a residue of power.  

In 2015 Bob Agranoff and I published an article in Publius:  The Journal of  Federalism that reminded scholars of Deil Wright’s overlapping model of contemporary relationships (Robert Agranoff and Beryl A. Radin, 2015, “Deil Wright’s Overlapping Model of Intergovernmental Relations:  The Basis for Contemporary Intergovernmental Relationships,” , PUBLIUS:  THE JOURNAL OF FEDERALISM.).  The six elements that he described within this model seemed to fit the changing situation in both India and the US.   They were:

• Limited and dispersed power
• Modest and uncertain areas of autonomy
• High degree of potential or actual interdependence
• Simultaneous competition and cooperation
• Bargain-exchange relationships
• Negotiation as a strategy for reaching agreement

​At the same time that these complex changes were occurring in the US, economic conditions and skepticism about the effectiveness of the public sector were also increasing.   Thus two developments are currently present that do not easily lend themselves to clear strategies: the first is the concept of networks and the second is the use of performance assessment processes to devise accountability mechanisms.   The concept of networks is now a widely used term in many different contexts, ranging from informal networks of associates to formal structures.  The proliferation of these governing networks reflects not only the expansion of intergovernmental programs to reach across jurisdictions but also  captures important activities of the actors who are present in contemporary settings.  The network activity in the US has varied in many different directions.   Networks have been identified in two diametrically opposite ways.  They have been praised for their ability to serve as a venue for collaborative or cooperative decisionmaking processes. But it is not always clear what people mean by “cooperative federalism” in the US.  The term has been used by advocates of both national, state, and local governments as well as NGOs to justify their involvement in efforts to solve common problems.  But it also has been used as a critique of the status quo by those who believe that policies are dominated by the national government.
   
But at the same time some have emphasized the potential of collaborative processes, networks have also been characterized as the source for many different forms of conflict that emerge from overlapping authority.  One could actually see the roots of the collaboration/conflict dichotomy in the original Indian concurrent list approach.  It was never clear to me what kind of relationships the authors of the Constitution thought would emerge from that third list – collaborative or conflictual? 

If this source of uncertainty is not confusing enough, the US emphasis on performance assessment to devise accountability mechanisms further complicates the contemporary situation. A range of efforts have been put in place to hold third parties accountable for the use of federal dollars and, at the same time, seek to provide those third parties discretion in the way they use those federal monies.  

The complexities of the current era have clearly compounded the difficulties of implementing the overlapping model.  Both India and the US have moved beyond the original cast of actors, broadened some of the venues of decisionmaking, brought on more networks and potential for collaboration, increased opportunities for political and substantive policy conflict, and also increased performance concern with third party involvement.   

While differences between the two systems are clear, examining both sets of players and pressures can prove to be useful to students in both settings.   Both countries are constantly changing and provide a hospitable setting for a range of researchable questions. I’m particularly interested in various forms of comparative analysis that might emerge.  Comparative analysis approaches can be used to examine the differences between the two countries.  But comparative approaches can also be used to devise studies that focus on differences between the strategies employed by states within a single country.  For example, I think there is potential in an analysis of collaborative vs. conflictual strategies used in different states in India.  I hope that these remarks might stimulate people in this audience to search for these and other researchable questions.

After a dozen years, the book series, PUBLIC MANAGEMENT AND CHANGE, is coming to an end.   While the existing books will continue to be on the  Georgetown University Press list, no new books will be published.  There will be 33 books in the series – many of which have won awards and become widely cited volumes.   When I created the series I had hopes that it would represent important issues and approaches in public management.  I was not disappointed.  Some of the authors in the series celebrated this contribution during the Public Management  Research Conference in Washington in June, 2017.  

Here are two photos from the celebration:

​As a result of the 2016 election, many Americans are examining the very core of the American democracy and attempting to determine the vulnerability of the U.S. institutional structure to radical change. For many citizens, the deconstruction of constitutional democracy that has emerged from the Trump administration suggests a real attack on this structure. It is difficult to make such an assessment without recognizing that the responsibility for this set of developments may have emerged from different quarters from those who orchestrate Trump's agenda. Indeed, there may be a large group of citizens who have argued for changes that have made our democracy more vulnerable.

One of the contradictions built into the American system involves the relationship between the values of the public sector and those of the private sector. This relationship was an important part of the concept of American exceptionalism. The founders of the American democracy were always skeptical of concentrated power in government (such as that which emerged in monarchies, religious orders, or other non-democratic systems).

We know that our complex shared power system was designed to keep any part of the shared power structure from destroying the autonomy of another part. Another important part of that design was an acknowledgment that there is a difference between the values tied to the public role and those tied to the private sector. Public sector values emphasize social justice, fairness, equity, and the quality of public services. Private sector values emerge from a desire to run government like a business, focusing on efficiency and the profit motive. In addition, the public sector operates more openly with unclear boundaries about its participants’ authority.

The appropriate balance between public and private has always been under dispute. Economist Albert Hirschman provided a creative approach to this issue by defining the balance not as a clear sorting out of the roles of the two sectors but as a dynamic process. Calling this process “Shifting Involvements,” he focused on the changes in technological, social, or economic conditions that cause a shift in the balance between public and private. He describes this process as “disappointment”—one that occurs because citizens find that their expectations have not been met and thus they swing from one sector to the other. This dynamic is often caused by external events (such as economic crises, wars, revolutions) and seems to explain the changes that have occurred within the United States. And it explains the contradictions that always seem to be present in the American society.

For more than 25 years, the swing in the United States has been toward a predominance of values that emerge from the private sector. Today—in contrast to the dynamics of the 1930s—economic conditions and fiscal scarcity have pushed efficiency values to the top of the list, overpowering both equity and effectiveness values. The problems created by the Wall Street crash did not generate increased reliance on the public sector. It is assumed—although not always understood—that the experience of the private sector is directly transferable to the public domain.

This pattern is expressed directly in interesting ways. Public sector employees use the term “company” to describe their public sector organizations. Analysts assume that quantitative data that mirrors the concept of profit margins is the way to determine whether public sector policies are effective. And perhaps most importantly, they assume that contracting out formerly public sector–provided services will adequately address public sector roles. Private sector contractors expect that their views about proprietary information carry over to their government contracts. At times, even nonprofit organizations have a hard time competing with for-profit contractors.

We are now in the midst of what is perhaps the strongest belief that the private sector can be the way to deconstruct the public sector. It is time to confront this set of assumptions. Public administration scholars and practitioners owe the public some hard truths about the unfortunate realities of its predilection for excessive reliance on the private sector.

First published in Public Admin Review, Volume 77, Issue 3, May/June 2017, Page 325.