- Email: [email protected]
Implementation, intergovernmental relations, and rural studies: A review
Journalof Rural Studies. Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 245-253, 1986 Printed in Great Britain
0713-0167186 $3.00 + 0.00 Pergamon Journals Ltd.
Review Essay
Implementation, Intergovernmental Relations, and Rural Studies: a Review Paul Cloke Department
of Geography,
Saint David’s University
College, Lampeter,
U.K.
Abstract - One essential part of rural studies is the investigation and understanding of planning and policy-making in rural localities. Recently, implementation has become a focal theme due to the recognition of a significant divide between the stated policies of rural planning agencies and what actually happens on the ground. Implementation can be conceptualised in different ways, ranging from the more traditional, rational approaches to more contemporary politicised viewpoints. The recent publication of three texts on the theme of policy-making and central-local government relations provide a useful context for a review of research in these areas. The conceptual framework laid down as a result of the ESRC research initiative on central-local relations appears to offer a useful springboard for rural researchers wishing to immerse themselves in contemporary and stimulating studies of policy and power.
ness of researchers localities.
Rural policy implementation
In the very first issue of this journal, the importance of vigorous research initiatives in rural planning and policy-making was stressed as an essential plank in the development of contemporary rural studies (Cloke, 198.5). It was further suggested that a fuller understanding of the distribution of power and of the operation of allocative mechanisms which impact on rural areas could well offer some scope as an integrative focus for rural researchers representing different paradigmatic traditions. The recent publication of three books relating to policy implementation and central-local government relations (Lewis and Wallace, 1984; Goldsmith, 1986; Laffin, 1986) provides a convenient opportunity to assess the current state of policy and planning studies and the degree to which contemporary concepts and evidence have filtered into the collective consciousA review of: (1) M. Goldsmith
whose major interest is ‘in rural
The need for an understanding of implementation in rural planning and policy is clear. Analyses of the success of planning are reaching the increasingly widespread conclusion that the contents of policies and promises for rural areas are not being matched by their supposed enactment. Whether the focus is on social problems of polarisation and disadvantage, economic problems of relocation, restructuring and recomposition, or land-use problems associated with landscape and wildlife conservation, there is clear evidence to suggest that planning has often failed significantly to regulate market-based trends in rural areas. Planning or no planning, these trends would have exacerbated rural problems, but our perception of what planning can or cannot achieve has been rather blindly optimistic in view of the lack of positive action and interventionist planning activities. In short, we have often suffered from too high an expectation of what planning can do (Hanrahan and Cloke, 1983).
(ed.) (1986) New Research in Cen-
tral-Local Relations, Gower, Famborough, 307 pp. (2) M. Laffin (1986) Professionalism and Policy: the Role of the Professions in the Central-Local Government Relationship, Gower, Farnborough, 228 pp. (3) D. Lewis and H. Wallace (eds) (1984) Policies into Practice - National and International Case Studies in Implementation, Heinemann, London, 234 pp.
What begins as a recognition of a simple ‘policyimplementation gap’ (Blacksell and Gilg, 1981), however, very quickly enmeshes the researcher in a complex conceptual environment of how to view the 245
246
Paul Cloke
relationship between various components of policy and action within the planning process. In an attempt to afford a simplified entry into this conceptual environment, two basic perspectives have been suggested (Cloke and Hanrahan, 1984) from which the yawning divide between planning intentions and planning practices might initially be viewed. The traditional wisdom would be for the policyimplementation gap to be attributed to implementation problems which would thus be diagnosed as the major cause of inadequate planning responses to perceived needs. According to this framework improvements in the performance of rura1 planning shouid not be problematic. Simply increase the efficiency of policy delivery systems and planning would make more of a positive impact in the amelioration of rural problems. Such an approach is spawned by a rational decision-making model which characterises implementation as one stage in a logical sequence of planning steps. Quite simply, implementation is the translation of policies into action. Any breakdown at this stage must be able to be put right otherwise it would become an illogicality in a logical progression, and the rationa approach would be exposed as an inadequate basis for conceptualisation. An alternative approach would be to suggest that ‘suitable’ policies for rural areas are being ruled out because of the politically complex manoeuvres which comprise planning. Thus planners are unable to fulfil their policy objectives because there is no rational dichotomy between policy and implementation. Full account must therefore be taken both of the complicated realities of how decisions are made within planning, and of the strength of planning’s internal survival mechanisms in repelling the adoption of socially progressive policies. Given the choice of the ‘implementation problem’ rational approach and attempts to understand the mechanisms of a political planning process, the latter option appears to be an increasingly attractive prospect for rural researchers. If the analysis of rural resource allocation is to take the latter course, then it appears extremely fruitful to mimic the progress made in urban and regional studies by setting rural policy and action in context as one activity within the much broader spectrum of government. Planning is thus inescapably to be viewed as part of the State and therefore enmeshed within the wider relationships between the State and civil society. Following this route, those wishing to pursue a contemporary analysis of planning and resource allocation in rural areas cannot shirk the (difficult) responsibility of total immersion in
theories of the State in both its central and local forms. For example. if anafysis of the State and its related agencies and institutions suggest that it performs a neutral role of arbitrating between competing resource applicants, then planning, as part of this overall State role could be viewed in a similarly neutral light. If, however, the State’s function is viewed as being a much more conservative one of maintaining status quo conditions within society so that the environment for capital accumulation is preserved (see, for example, Poulantzas, 1973) then planning must be interpreted as an essential ingredient in this overall role. As such significant doubt should be cast on any presumption that planning performs a neutral or apolitical function in its dealings with capital institutions and different class groupings. Evidence in support of the conservative rather than the neutral role of planning is becoming compelling. This theme is pursued in detail elsewhere (Cloke and Little, 1986a, b) but one clear ramification is that rural policy-makers are hamstrung, even before they begin any formal deliberations, by an artificially delimited range of options dictated to them as part of the State’s need to maintain status quo conditions. They therefore operate according to an externallyderived definition of ‘the art of the possible’ which exerts constraints on their activities in line with the current State-society relationship. Beneath this level of constraint, other restrictions may also be recognised which further limit the available options of policy-makers. Thus the relationships between central and local government, between different agencies involved in the planning process and between public and private sector interests all fall squarely in the viewfinder of the researcher seeking to conceptualise planning in rural areas. This review, prompted as it is by three particular publications, focusses chiefly on the first of these relationships in an attempt to demonstrate the potential scope for rural research within this broad conceptual schema. Central-local
government
relations
Recent years have witnessed a growth in the range of agencies representing the central and local levels of the State (Boddy, 1983). This increasingly complex network of agencies itself creates constraints on the implementation of rural policies. However, the foremost concern is not necessarily the degree of overlap and conflict arising between these various agencies but rather the relationship between the central State allocators of resources to rural areas
Review Essay and their local State equivalents. In particular, rural researchers should be interested both in the degree of discretion given to local elites and managers in the arrival at policy decisions, and, concomitantly, in the willingness of conservative elements in the local State to accept and make use of any such discretion. More and more often local decisions are having to be made in the light of central directives, and central monitoring of implementation programmes. Central government has in recent years made a series of high-profile incursions into the local State domain, not least with the ideologically motivated abolition of metropolitan authorities. It can therefore be proposed (see Harloe, 1981, for example), that local government is becoming increasingly fettered by and subordinated to externally defined priorities. Restrictive financial and legal controls over the local arena mean that the central State exerts significant and tangible restrictions over the policy decisions made at the local State level. It would be entirely inappropriate here to attempt any summary of the numerous attempts which have been made to conceptualise the state in both its central and local forms (see Saunders, 1979; Harloe, 1981; Boddy, 1983; Cooke, 1983; Dear and Clark, 1984; Ham and Hill, 1984; and many others for summary material). There has, however, been a considerable marshalling of conceptual effort in recent years in an attempt to build on Saunders’ (1981) approach to the understanding of the State via the incorporation of the strengths and weaknesses of foregoing conceptualisations - the dualistic model. Saunders delineates two separate elements of the State apparatus which necessitate separate conceptual treatment. This so-called dualism of the State occurs in the division between: a corporate sector located at national’and regional levels of government producing social investment policies designed to support capital accumulation . . and a competitive sector located principally at the local level of government and producing social consumption policies in response to popular pressures but within an overall context of political and economic contrast (Saunders, 1981, p. 45) According to this framework rural researchers should be acknowledging a corporate level of policy
intervention in support of capital interests (for example, through market regulation policies for agriculture) and a competitive level which operates social consumption policies in housing, education and so on for the dependent population. Nevertheless, the outcomes of these State policies will be conservative as the competitive level will only be permitted a delimited suite of policy options by the corporate level.
247
Although itself subject to considerable criticism (Harrington, 1983; King, 1983; Martlew, 1983 and others) the dual State concept appears to offer considerable scope for the fuller analysis of local State planning and policy-making within the wider State-society relationship. Yet much of rural studies in the last two decades has been characterised by a conservatism both of paradigmatic persuasion and consequently of research method. Do rural researchers really have to delve into theories of the State in order to produce useful and explanatory results about the mechanisms and impacts of resource allocation? Would it not be better to take a rational, positivist and empirical stance and allow others to interpret this material from some kind of political economy perspective? Of what utility is detailed research on policy and implementation in both the central and local State sectors to an understanding of rural change? The three recent books reviewed here throw considerable light on these issues and help the rural researcher not only to answer these questions but also to isolate key research priorities in the advancement of our knowledge of State activities in rural localities. Policies into practice?
The collection of essays edited by David Lewis and Helen Wallace has a very distinctive flavour. All but one of the contributors are current or recent members of the teaching staff of the Civil Service College the aim of which is ‘to improve the efficiency of civil servants in their work’. Although the editors view this common background as being vital in bridging the gap between academic analysis and the practical world, the extent to which the civil service background to discussions on implementation are a help or a hindrance to an integrated analysis of policy-making and practice is open to question. Traditional public wisdom would suggest that civil service training would emphasise the division between political policy-makers and administrative policy practitioners and, therefore, that a somewhat stilted view of policy and planning by the national and local States might emerge. In view of the book’s lineage, a great weight of responsibility lies on the editors to present an overall conceptual framework which ensures that potential biases of approach are recognised and, if necessary, eliminated. This important task falls to Masood Hyder who, in the opening chapter, presents an ‘evolutionary model’ of policy implementation which is subsequently referred to throughout the book. He begins by emphasising the scale of his problem in providing ‘relevant’ concepts to practicing administrators:
218 . . the actual practitioners of the art and craft of policy implementation, especially civil servants, remain sceptical about the relevance of theorising and question its utility to them. Practical administrators want to take the right decisions in particular, usually complex situations; they are not interested in implementation in general. They may argue that they already know a great deal about putting policies into practice, because they have been doing it all their working lives: what can an academic approach teach them? (p. 2). Perhaps because of these perceived difficulties in making concepts relevant, Masood’s review of topdown and bottom-up approaches to policy-making is rather cursory. Basically he is rather more concerned with devising strategies for implementation (presumably with the practitioner audience in mind) and as a result his focus is on the nature of particular policies, and the organisational context concerned. Following Berman (1980) he identifies two types of strategy: programmed - define goals, assign responsibilities and lay down clear and detailed programmes of action in order to achieve the goals without subsequent change or adjustment; (ii) adapfive - keep policy content flexible, give implementers scope to adapt policies according to prevailing circumstances, and in doing so clarify goals
(9
and suggests that ‘selecting the correct strategy for a particular problem should enable problems of interorganisational relations to be minimised’ (p. 5). In combining these two approaches Masood reaches his evolutionary model:
Cloke be deemed technically successful even if policy goals have been amended beyond recognition - a ‘Yes Minister’ syndrome. David Lewis’ implementation’ that:
concluding continues
chapter on ‘improving these themes. He argues
. . we may in fact find it impossible to say where policy-making stops and implementation begins. However extensive the links and overlaps between the two stages, there are nevertheless good reasons (in addition to the ordinary usage of words) for drawing a distinction between them (p. 204). Here, then, the book’s basic premise concerning implementation becomes fully exposed. Policymaking and implementation should be seen as separate. The key ‘problem’ of the implementation is to translate the language of politics (in which policies are set) into the language of administration (in which implementation is set). Once this task has been completed, ‘successful’ implementation can be evaluated in a suitably neutral manner: Some simplification can be introduced by treating implementation as a moralfy neutral concept [author’s italics] and deciding not to take into account in this particular context the justice or fairness of the original policy . . . Success thus becomes equivalent to effectiveness (p. 212) and defined
in very familiar
terms:
The ‘successful’ implementation of a policy is the costeffective use of appropriate mechanisms and procedures in such a way as to fulfil the expectations aroused by the policy and retain general public assent (p. 215).
In the harsh world of the 1980s the approach to implementation must be flexible and experimental, and pay the fullest attention to the environment. If the outcome of a policy is uncertain, then we must expect to have to adjust its content from time to time, to become as it were more systematically tentative in our approach to policy-making. In short, to regard the policy process as an evolutionary one (p. 14).
By this series of simple and seemingly logical conceptual steps, the implementation theme not only becomes legitimised as part of the cost-effective and utilitarian conservatism of the State, but also is given a canopy of political and moral neutrality.
Parts of the evolutionary process described here reflect the kind of disjointed incrementalism within the policy-action relationship as described by Barrett and Fudge (1981) and Healey et al. (1982). However, the notion that the correct balance between programmed and adaptive strategies will minimise inter-organisational conflict belies the evidence discussed above which suggests that such conflicts are inherent in the nature of the State in its broader societal context and are often therefore to be viewed as the cause of constraints on a range of policy-makers in reaching their goals rather than mere obstacles to be circumnavigated by flexible policies with flexible goals. A logical extension of this concept of balance is that implementation may
These limited conceptual conclusions rather overshadow the book’s useful case study evidence on the interrelations between central and local state. For example, the chapter by Coates and Wallace provides interesting examples of the discretion afforded by European Community policies; Metcalfe demonstrates inter-organisational turbulence in industrial policy and action; Nixon’s work on race relations shows how policy without full ideological support from the State permits local conservatism to preempt implementation; and Cohen’s case study shows how California’s Proposition 13, designed to reduce taxation, resulted in policy being dictated to by implementation. These and other case studies give useful evidence of inter-State and State policies
Review Essay being enacted in local contexts. Their utility to the rural researcher may unfortunately be limited by the rather stale conceptual bread which sandwiches them. The policy-implementation
divide
Despite its presentation in camera-ready typeface with all the usual optical displeasures for the reader, Michael Goldsmith’s collection of essays on how research in central-local relations offers contemporary conceptual insights for those who accept the need to understand policy and implementation in the State-society context. If Lewis and Wallace’s book represents the ‘implementation problem’ approach to the policy-implementation gaps recognisable in rural studies, Goldsmith’s volume is carried on the crest of a wave of contemporary research in the political idiom. Indeed the book reports the main findings from many of the research projects sponsored by the Economic and Social Science Research Council’s initiative on central-local government relations. The conceptual contrast between the two books is stark, with Barrett and Hill’s chapter giving full and cogent reasons for rejecting the separation of implementation as an administrative process (as suggested by Lewis above): must be regarded as . . , we argue that implementation an integral part of the policy process rather than an ‘follow-on’ from policy-making. The administrative political [author’s italics] processes by which policy is mediated, negotiated and modified during its formulation and legitimation do not stop when initial policy decisions have been made but continue to influence policy through the behaviour of those responsible for its implementation and those affected by policy acting to protect or enhance their own interests. This view of implementation takes us away from the traditional focus on formal organisational hierarchies, communication and control mechanisms, and places more emphasis on first, the multiplicity of actors and agencies involved and the variety of linkages between them; second, their value systems, interests, relative autonomies and power bases; third, the interactions taking place between them in particular negotiation and bargaining behaviour (pp. 35-36).
Contrary to the political/administrative distinction created in Policies into Practice, Barrett and Hill argue strongly that it is the same factors which give rise to compromise in policy-making that continue to impinge on and condition implementation. Conflicts of values and conflicts of interests are intermeshed and policy is made as it is implemented, and vice versa.
In taking such a critical stance against underlying liberal democratic assumptions in implementation
249
studies, Barrett and Hill acknowledge some common ground with neo-Marxist views of public policies which would regard as futile any conceptualisation of implementation in a way that relates policy goals with policy outcomes. Nevertheless, they are also critical of this radical stance because it denies any utility in studying implementation. Rather, they outline a conceptual middle ground between the liberal and radical extremes wherein implementation studies are important insofar as policy-makers have goals and are striving to enact them, and insofar as implementers and recipients of policy also have their own goals and strive to pursue these through a resistance of the intentions of the original policymakers. Such an approach places critical emphasis on the complexity of the policy-action relationship and the goal-conflicts and bargaining arising within it. A research agenda arises sphinx-like from this middle ground approach: cannot be confined to . . the study of implementation the behaviour of actors in their organisational roles and settings. We need also to look more widely at the relationship between groups of actors in inter-organisational settings, and at the wider environmental factors which crucially determine the ‘interests’ they seek to pursue. What are they bargaining about, with what power and under what constraints? . . Crucial issues are whether or not goal consensus is regarded as important, and whether or not bargaining is seen as a positive or zero sum ‘game’ (p. 46) and nowhere is the need for answers to such questions more apparent than in the area of centrallocal State relations.
Intergovernmental
relations
In part, the growing importance of central-local relations has come about due to particular factors occurring in Britain. Although many other countries have experienced a fiscal and Welfare State crisis, few of them have witnessed such a bitter conflict between central and local government over how to tackle the crisis. Goldsmith’s introduction to the book traces this context, and contrasts Britain’s centralising strategy with the decentralising solutions adopted by most other nations in the face of economic depression. Paradoxically given this trend towards central State power, the local State continues to deliver most services within the Welfare State, thus creating significant organisational potential for conflict. The major catalyst for such conflict has been the recent ideological commitment from central government to monetarist philosophies, the outworking of which has meant reduced public expenditure, extensive privatisation of State services, a shrinkage of the Welfare State, and a
250
Paul Cloke
reduction in the scope of government action. All of these factors have clashed with the existing discretion granted to local authorities over the scaie and strategy of the delivery of their services. So far as central fiscal controls over local authorities are concerned, Meadows and Jackson’s analysis of alternative economic strategies concludes that the economic case is unproven. Nevertheless local authorities have reacted differentiy according to their political affiliation. Davies er al. show that in budgetary terms, the Conservative-controlled shire counties have, relatively speaking, adopted a supine position and allowed themselves to be flattened by the central government steamroller, whereas the Labour-controlled (especially metropolitan} councils have persistently resisted central restrictions but have been squashed all the same with somewhat messier, and in the case of metropolitan counties, terminal, results. These factors clearly demonstrate the importance of the topic, so what then are the key themes to emerge from this intensive research on central-local relations? Perhaps the principal concept-maker for the entire ESRC programme of research has been Rod Rhodes, who established an initial theoretical framework for the programme, and in an important chapter in this book, reviews that framework in the light of the research which ensued. In simple terms he advises that the cenrrai-focal focus be replaced by an intergoyernmentaf viewpoint. Such a change permits researchers to concentrate on the notions of policy communities and policy networks, unencumbered by the institutional emphasis prevalent in straightforward studies of central and local government. For example, our treatment of ‘centrat government’ as a unified source of power is shown to be potentially misleading, as the mechanisms through which such power is exerted demonstrate qualities of both centralisation and fragmentation. Rhodes states: In terms of fragmentation, ~nctional differentiation in British government has produced a set of professionalbureaucratic complexes, or policy communities, each of which has personnel sharing an ideology, expertise and a career structure and spans the boundaries of government institutions, national and sub-national . . . But fragmentation and dispersion should not be treated as equivalent to decentralisation. Fragmentation refers to the distribution of authority between pohcy communities and not its redistribution away from central departments. Fragmentation and centralisation co-exist at the centre (p. 18). Waving established the existence and importance of policy communities, Rhodes commends a detailed examination of policy networks, which Benson
(1983) has defined as a cluster of organisations connected to each other by resource dependencies and distinguished from other clusters by discontinuities in the structure of resource dependencies. In the context of British Government, Rhodes shows that these networks are usually coincident with policy communities: Policy communities are relatively stable with continuity of membership. Decisions are taken within the communities and this process is substantially closed, commonly to other communities and, invariably to the general public (including Parliament). Policy communities are, therefore, integrated networks (p. 22).
There appear to be several advantages in studying intergovernmental relations through the metaphoric vehicles of policy networks and policy communities:
(9 given the multiplicity of networks at the centre,
(ii)
(iii) (iv) fv)
we need to compare different policy areas and reflect on the integration within, and articulation between different networks. Policy content is thus afforded due significance; the ,networks between organisations are more important than the organisations themselves in explaining policy processes and policy outcomes; networks focus attention on negotiation and bargaining activities; networks link micro- and meso-scales of analysis; networks facilitate the analysis of the distribution of resources.
Rhodes’ theoretical exposition is investigatively pursued in several areas of intergovernmental relations throughout the book. Two such treatments are selected here for brief review because of their immediate relevance to the concerns of rural researchers. Politics and the professions Gyford’s chapter on the role of parties and politics in central-local government relations takes a distinctive look at one important aspect of policy communities. He records the spread of party politics in local government and examines the emergence of parallel groups of party politicians at the central and local levels of government. The tendency for rural shire counties to be politically conservative (if not Conservative) could imply pot&itial co-operation with a Conservative central government during the 1980s thus providing a cogent political input to policy communities and networks. The degree to which local government politicians are in cahoots with their national counterparts is therefore an
Review Essay important issue in explaining policy outcomes. Gyford analyses the distribution of five types of resource - constitutional, hierarchical, financial, informational and politicat - which are potentially available to the centre and to the locality. His conclusion is clear: . . . the distribution of resources is such that neither national nor local politicians can automatically command the loyalty and obedience of their party colleagues of the other level of government. On that basis the relations between national and local politicians of the same party might be expected to accord more with the notion of stratarchy than with the unitary model (p. 102).
Moreover the changeover from the previously dominant Keynesian Welfare State paradigm of public policy to the new monetarist philosophies has broken down the appreciative systems formerly shared by central and local politicians and has thereby exposed the stratarchy to the internal divisions born of a lack of common assumptions. Gyford political political Labour, overlap
argues that, since 1979, intergovernmental conflict has been not between two cohesive stratarchies representing Conservative and but rather between three groupings which party boundaries:
individualists, who define local democracy from the point of view of minimising the demands on the local ratepayer and therefore support monetarist Conservative phiIosophies; (ii) collectivists, whose focus on working class communities aligns them with the Labour left; (iii) localists, whose view of democracy relies on elected councillors representing local electorates and as a result tends to uphold the institutions of local government. This grouping embraces a ragbag of formal political affiliations from the two main parties, and also from the Alliance parties.
(9
According to this taxonomy, local government can appear to be parasitic (individualists), an arena of class struggle (collectivists) and a democratic institution to be defended (localists) and, as a consequence, political battles over central-local relations have been three-cornered and fought within as well as between the two main parties. The analysis of political aspects of policy communities and networks is thus rather more complex than often portrayed. In Gyford’s own terms: The exigencies of the contest however have led to the creation of a sometimes uneasy alliance between the Iocalists and the collectivists against the individualists. The alliance was rendered all the more possible by the
251
increasing severity of (individualist) central government policy towards local government . . These proposals effectively threw the localists and collectivists into one another’s arms at least temporarily, a process facilitated by the wiliingness of many collectivists to wage the battle for pubhc opinion on the terms of the localists, by raising the banner of local democracy rather than of local socialism (p. 106).
These complexities require full integration into the analysis of different policy communities, and have particular relevance for policy networks impacting on rural areas where the in-migration of a new middle class is in some areas diluting traditional landowner Tory politics and replacing them with various combinations of individualists and localists. A second major component of the analysis of policy communities is that of the role of professionals. Martin Laffin’s chapter in Goldsmith’s collection summarises the detailed conceptual and case study analyses of professionalism presented in his own book. Along with his other work (Laffin and Young, 1987), Laffin exposes professionalism to be both one of the most significant features of British central and local government policy-making arenas and one of the most under-researched. We are ail conscious that both the professions in general and professional officers in particular play an important role in policymaking arenas affecting rural areas, and Laffin’s work begins to put flesh on the bare bones of this influence in the initiation, formulation and implementation of policy. First, he places professionals alongside poIiticians and interest groups representing policy impacts as the three main ingredients of a policy community. Then he identifies different ways in which professionals exert influence within policy communities: by serving as an accredited source of new knowledge for policy-makers and thereby introducing innovation; by claiming the need to be self-governing and self-regulating in certain ‘technical’ matters and thereby influencing the values which are acceptable and prevalent within policy communities; by managing the emergence of problem perception and definitions within the public pohcy arena, for example by fixing agendas, and so on. Central government policy towards local govemment in Britain is seen to have a strong inbuilt bias towards the professionalisation of services, and Laffin concludes that: in many policy areas the existence of a well-organised profession has been a more important factor in the development of poiicy than the division of powers between centraf and local govemment (p. 119) and that:
Paul Cloke
252
it seems almost inevitable that professional officials will continue to enjoy considerable power (p. 20).
Once again, analyses affecting rural areas
of planning and policy-making have paid little heed to these
influences within policy communities. Laffin’s work, and indeed much of that included in Goldsmith’s book provide powerful and often inescapable pointers to necessary research directions in rural studies.
Rural studies and policy research
This very brief review of three important texts highlights a number of issues directly relevant to rural studies. It is not the intention here to enter into the debate as to whether ‘rural’ as a distinctive or explanatory category is made redundant by radical structural analyses of policy-making and political economy. This issue has been discussed elsewhere (Cloke, 1985) with the conclusion that if only for the sake of a kind of counterbalancing pragmatism, rural localities should be studied with equal vigour and conceptual rigour as their more illustrious urban and regional counterparts. Yet it is blindingly obvious that studies of policy and implementation as they impact on rural communities are lagging behind contemporary research on intergovernmental relations. One of the major lessons to be learned from these texts is that empirical and investigative research programmes in these areas will falter without proper attention to the conceptual issues which underlie the State, intergovernmental relations, and the policy process. The conceptual path in Lewis and Wallace’s text suggests merit in separating the political and administrative environments of policy and implementation. In some ways rural researchers have followed this path, albeit implicitly, in their conventional analyses of planning processes. From the collected wisdoms stemming from the ESRC initiative on central-local relations have emerged a series of conceptual tools which appear to have considerable utility in gaining a real understanding of policies for rural areas. There are already some researchers who have taken up this challenge (see Newby et al., 1978, and more recently Cloke, 1987 and Cloke and Little, 1988). Many questions remain unanswered however: are there any distinctive qualities of the local State in rural localities, central State assumptive worlds regarding rural areas, or policy communities and networks impacting on rural people? how important are the respective roles of political and professional segments of policy comunities
and, indeed, to what extent have professionals become politicised? what forms of bargaining and negotiation are prevalent in rural policy arenas? to what extent are policy networks integrated or the differences between them clearly articulated? what are the wider environmental factors which determine the interests pursued within policy networks? to what extent is rural policy-making consensusseeking? Above all, our analysis should be able to link different scales within the policy process and differentiate between the various goals involved at different levels of decision-making. Otherwise we have little hope of breaking down the often misleading inferential links between policy and action which have hitherto dominated our (somewhat naive) investigations of planning and policy-making for rural areas. References
Barrett, S. and Fudge, C. (eds) (1981) Policy and Action. Methuen, London. Benson, J. (1983) Networks and policy sectors: a framework for extending interorganisational analyses. In Interorganisational Co-ordination, Rogers, D. and Whetton, D. (eds). Iowa State University Press, Ames. Berman, P. (1980) Thinking about programmed and adaptive implementation. In Why Policies Succeed or Fail, Ingram, H.M. and Mann, D.E. (eds). Sage, Beverly Hills. Blacksell, M. and Gilg, A. (1981) The Countryside: Planning and Change. Allen & Unwin, London. Boddy, M. (1983) Central-local government relations: theory and practice. Political Geography Quarterly 2, 119-138. Cloke, P.J. (1985) Whither rural studies? Journal of Rural Studies 1, l-9. Cloke, P.J. (ed.) (1987) Rural Planning: Policies into Action? Harper & Row, London. Cloke, P.J. and Hanrahan, P.J. (1984) Policy and implementation in rural planning. Geoforum 15,261-269.
Cloke, P.J. and Little, J.K. (1986a) Implementation and county structure plan policies for rural areas. Planning Perspectives (forthcoming). Cloke, P.J. and Little, J.K. (1986b) The implementation of rural policies: a survey of county planning authorities. Town Planning Review (forthcoming). Cloke, P.J. and Little, J.K. (1988) The Limits to Planning in Rural Society (forthcoming). Cooke, P. (1983) Theories of Planning and Spatial Development. Hutchinson, London. Dear, M. and Clark, G. (1984) State Apparatus: Structures and Language of Legitimacy. Allen & Unwin, Boston. Ham, C. and Hill, M. (1984) The Policy Process in the Modern Capitalist State. Wheatsheaf Press, Brighton. Hanrahan, P.J. and Cloke, P.J. (1983) Towards a critical appraisal of rural settlement planning in England and Wales. Sociologia Ruralis 23, 109-129. Harloe, M. (ed.) (1981) New Perspectives in Urban Change and Conflict. Heinemann, London.
Review Harrington, T. (1983) Explaining state policy-making: a critique of some recent ‘dualist’ models. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 7. 202-218. Healey, P., McDougall, G. and Thomas, M.J. (eds) (1982) Planning Theory: Prospects for the 1980s. Pergamon Press, Oxford. King, R. (1983) Capital and Politics. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Laffin, M. and Young, K. (1987) Professionalism Change and Challenge: the Local Authority Chief Officer in Modern British Politics. Allen & Unwin,
London.
Essay
253
Martlew, C. (1983) The state and local government finance. Public Administration 61, 127-147. Poulantzas, N. (1973) The problems of the capitalist state. In Power in Britain, Urry, J. and Wakeford, J. (eds). Heinemann, London. Saunders, P. (1979) Urban Politics: a Sociological Interpretation. Hutchinson, London. Saunders, P. (1981) Community power, urban managerialism and the local state. In New Perspectives in Urban Change and Conflict, Harloe, M. (ed.). Heinemann, London.
0713-0167186 $3.00 + 0.00 Pergamon Journals Ltd.
Review Essay
Implementation, Intergovernmental Relations, and Rural Studies: a Review Paul Cloke Department
of Geography,
Saint David’s University
College, Lampeter,
U.K.
Abstract - One essential part of rural studies is the investigation and understanding of planning and policy-making in rural localities. Recently, implementation has become a focal theme due to the recognition of a significant divide between the stated policies of rural planning agencies and what actually happens on the ground. Implementation can be conceptualised in different ways, ranging from the more traditional, rational approaches to more contemporary politicised viewpoints. The recent publication of three texts on the theme of policy-making and central-local government relations provide a useful context for a review of research in these areas. The conceptual framework laid down as a result of the ESRC research initiative on central-local relations appears to offer a useful springboard for rural researchers wishing to immerse themselves in contemporary and stimulating studies of policy and power.
ness of researchers localities.
Rural policy implementation
In the very first issue of this journal, the importance of vigorous research initiatives in rural planning and policy-making was stressed as an essential plank in the development of contemporary rural studies (Cloke, 198.5). It was further suggested that a fuller understanding of the distribution of power and of the operation of allocative mechanisms which impact on rural areas could well offer some scope as an integrative focus for rural researchers representing different paradigmatic traditions. The recent publication of three books relating to policy implementation and central-local government relations (Lewis and Wallace, 1984; Goldsmith, 1986; Laffin, 1986) provides a convenient opportunity to assess the current state of policy and planning studies and the degree to which contemporary concepts and evidence have filtered into the collective consciousA review of: (1) M. Goldsmith
whose major interest is ‘in rural
The need for an understanding of implementation in rural planning and policy is clear. Analyses of the success of planning are reaching the increasingly widespread conclusion that the contents of policies and promises for rural areas are not being matched by their supposed enactment. Whether the focus is on social problems of polarisation and disadvantage, economic problems of relocation, restructuring and recomposition, or land-use problems associated with landscape and wildlife conservation, there is clear evidence to suggest that planning has often failed significantly to regulate market-based trends in rural areas. Planning or no planning, these trends would have exacerbated rural problems, but our perception of what planning can or cannot achieve has been rather blindly optimistic in view of the lack of positive action and interventionist planning activities. In short, we have often suffered from too high an expectation of what planning can do (Hanrahan and Cloke, 1983).
(ed.) (1986) New Research in Cen-
tral-Local Relations, Gower, Famborough, 307 pp. (2) M. Laffin (1986) Professionalism and Policy: the Role of the Professions in the Central-Local Government Relationship, Gower, Farnborough, 228 pp. (3) D. Lewis and H. Wallace (eds) (1984) Policies into Practice - National and International Case Studies in Implementation, Heinemann, London, 234 pp.
What begins as a recognition of a simple ‘policyimplementation gap’ (Blacksell and Gilg, 1981), however, very quickly enmeshes the researcher in a complex conceptual environment of how to view the 245
246
Paul Cloke
relationship between various components of policy and action within the planning process. In an attempt to afford a simplified entry into this conceptual environment, two basic perspectives have been suggested (Cloke and Hanrahan, 1984) from which the yawning divide between planning intentions and planning practices might initially be viewed. The traditional wisdom would be for the policyimplementation gap to be attributed to implementation problems which would thus be diagnosed as the major cause of inadequate planning responses to perceived needs. According to this framework improvements in the performance of rura1 planning shouid not be problematic. Simply increase the efficiency of policy delivery systems and planning would make more of a positive impact in the amelioration of rural problems. Such an approach is spawned by a rational decision-making model which characterises implementation as one stage in a logical sequence of planning steps. Quite simply, implementation is the translation of policies into action. Any breakdown at this stage must be able to be put right otherwise it would become an illogicality in a logical progression, and the rationa approach would be exposed as an inadequate basis for conceptualisation. An alternative approach would be to suggest that ‘suitable’ policies for rural areas are being ruled out because of the politically complex manoeuvres which comprise planning. Thus planners are unable to fulfil their policy objectives because there is no rational dichotomy between policy and implementation. Full account must therefore be taken both of the complicated realities of how decisions are made within planning, and of the strength of planning’s internal survival mechanisms in repelling the adoption of socially progressive policies. Given the choice of the ‘implementation problem’ rational approach and attempts to understand the mechanisms of a political planning process, the latter option appears to be an increasingly attractive prospect for rural researchers. If the analysis of rural resource allocation is to take the latter course, then it appears extremely fruitful to mimic the progress made in urban and regional studies by setting rural policy and action in context as one activity within the much broader spectrum of government. Planning is thus inescapably to be viewed as part of the State and therefore enmeshed within the wider relationships between the State and civil society. Following this route, those wishing to pursue a contemporary analysis of planning and resource allocation in rural areas cannot shirk the (difficult) responsibility of total immersion in
theories of the State in both its central and local forms. For example. if anafysis of the State and its related agencies and institutions suggest that it performs a neutral role of arbitrating between competing resource applicants, then planning, as part of this overall State role could be viewed in a similarly neutral light. If, however, the State’s function is viewed as being a much more conservative one of maintaining status quo conditions within society so that the environment for capital accumulation is preserved (see, for example, Poulantzas, 1973) then planning must be interpreted as an essential ingredient in this overall role. As such significant doubt should be cast on any presumption that planning performs a neutral or apolitical function in its dealings with capital institutions and different class groupings. Evidence in support of the conservative rather than the neutral role of planning is becoming compelling. This theme is pursued in detail elsewhere (Cloke and Little, 1986a, b) but one clear ramification is that rural policy-makers are hamstrung, even before they begin any formal deliberations, by an artificially delimited range of options dictated to them as part of the State’s need to maintain status quo conditions. They therefore operate according to an externallyderived definition of ‘the art of the possible’ which exerts constraints on their activities in line with the current State-society relationship. Beneath this level of constraint, other restrictions may also be recognised which further limit the available options of policy-makers. Thus the relationships between central and local government, between different agencies involved in the planning process and between public and private sector interests all fall squarely in the viewfinder of the researcher seeking to conceptualise planning in rural areas. This review, prompted as it is by three particular publications, focusses chiefly on the first of these relationships in an attempt to demonstrate the potential scope for rural research within this broad conceptual schema. Central-local
government
relations
Recent years have witnessed a growth in the range of agencies representing the central and local levels of the State (Boddy, 1983). This increasingly complex network of agencies itself creates constraints on the implementation of rural policies. However, the foremost concern is not necessarily the degree of overlap and conflict arising between these various agencies but rather the relationship between the central State allocators of resources to rural areas
Review Essay and their local State equivalents. In particular, rural researchers should be interested both in the degree of discretion given to local elites and managers in the arrival at policy decisions, and, concomitantly, in the willingness of conservative elements in the local State to accept and make use of any such discretion. More and more often local decisions are having to be made in the light of central directives, and central monitoring of implementation programmes. Central government has in recent years made a series of high-profile incursions into the local State domain, not least with the ideologically motivated abolition of metropolitan authorities. It can therefore be proposed (see Harloe, 1981, for example), that local government is becoming increasingly fettered by and subordinated to externally defined priorities. Restrictive financial and legal controls over the local arena mean that the central State exerts significant and tangible restrictions over the policy decisions made at the local State level. It would be entirely inappropriate here to attempt any summary of the numerous attempts which have been made to conceptualise the state in both its central and local forms (see Saunders, 1979; Harloe, 1981; Boddy, 1983; Cooke, 1983; Dear and Clark, 1984; Ham and Hill, 1984; and many others for summary material). There has, however, been a considerable marshalling of conceptual effort in recent years in an attempt to build on Saunders’ (1981) approach to the understanding of the State via the incorporation of the strengths and weaknesses of foregoing conceptualisations - the dualistic model. Saunders delineates two separate elements of the State apparatus which necessitate separate conceptual treatment. This so-called dualism of the State occurs in the division between: a corporate sector located at national’and regional levels of government producing social investment policies designed to support capital accumulation . . and a competitive sector located principally at the local level of government and producing social consumption policies in response to popular pressures but within an overall context of political and economic contrast (Saunders, 1981, p. 45) According to this framework rural researchers should be acknowledging a corporate level of policy
intervention in support of capital interests (for example, through market regulation policies for agriculture) and a competitive level which operates social consumption policies in housing, education and so on for the dependent population. Nevertheless, the outcomes of these State policies will be conservative as the competitive level will only be permitted a delimited suite of policy options by the corporate level.
247
Although itself subject to considerable criticism (Harrington, 1983; King, 1983; Martlew, 1983 and others) the dual State concept appears to offer considerable scope for the fuller analysis of local State planning and policy-making within the wider State-society relationship. Yet much of rural studies in the last two decades has been characterised by a conservatism both of paradigmatic persuasion and consequently of research method. Do rural researchers really have to delve into theories of the State in order to produce useful and explanatory results about the mechanisms and impacts of resource allocation? Would it not be better to take a rational, positivist and empirical stance and allow others to interpret this material from some kind of political economy perspective? Of what utility is detailed research on policy and implementation in both the central and local State sectors to an understanding of rural change? The three recent books reviewed here throw considerable light on these issues and help the rural researcher not only to answer these questions but also to isolate key research priorities in the advancement of our knowledge of State activities in rural localities. Policies into practice?
The collection of essays edited by David Lewis and Helen Wallace has a very distinctive flavour. All but one of the contributors are current or recent members of the teaching staff of the Civil Service College the aim of which is ‘to improve the efficiency of civil servants in their work’. Although the editors view this common background as being vital in bridging the gap between academic analysis and the practical world, the extent to which the civil service background to discussions on implementation are a help or a hindrance to an integrated analysis of policy-making and practice is open to question. Traditional public wisdom would suggest that civil service training would emphasise the division between political policy-makers and administrative policy practitioners and, therefore, that a somewhat stilted view of policy and planning by the national and local States might emerge. In view of the book’s lineage, a great weight of responsibility lies on the editors to present an overall conceptual framework which ensures that potential biases of approach are recognised and, if necessary, eliminated. This important task falls to Masood Hyder who, in the opening chapter, presents an ‘evolutionary model’ of policy implementation which is subsequently referred to throughout the book. He begins by emphasising the scale of his problem in providing ‘relevant’ concepts to practicing administrators:
218 . . the actual practitioners of the art and craft of policy implementation, especially civil servants, remain sceptical about the relevance of theorising and question its utility to them. Practical administrators want to take the right decisions in particular, usually complex situations; they are not interested in implementation in general. They may argue that they already know a great deal about putting policies into practice, because they have been doing it all their working lives: what can an academic approach teach them? (p. 2). Perhaps because of these perceived difficulties in making concepts relevant, Masood’s review of topdown and bottom-up approaches to policy-making is rather cursory. Basically he is rather more concerned with devising strategies for implementation (presumably with the practitioner audience in mind) and as a result his focus is on the nature of particular policies, and the organisational context concerned. Following Berman (1980) he identifies two types of strategy: programmed - define goals, assign responsibilities and lay down clear and detailed programmes of action in order to achieve the goals without subsequent change or adjustment; (ii) adapfive - keep policy content flexible, give implementers scope to adapt policies according to prevailing circumstances, and in doing so clarify goals
(9
and suggests that ‘selecting the correct strategy for a particular problem should enable problems of interorganisational relations to be minimised’ (p. 5). In combining these two approaches Masood reaches his evolutionary model:
Cloke be deemed technically successful even if policy goals have been amended beyond recognition - a ‘Yes Minister’ syndrome. David Lewis’ implementation’ that:
concluding continues
chapter on ‘improving these themes. He argues
. . we may in fact find it impossible to say where policy-making stops and implementation begins. However extensive the links and overlaps between the two stages, there are nevertheless good reasons (in addition to the ordinary usage of words) for drawing a distinction between them (p. 204). Here, then, the book’s basic premise concerning implementation becomes fully exposed. Policymaking and implementation should be seen as separate. The key ‘problem’ of the implementation is to translate the language of politics (in which policies are set) into the language of administration (in which implementation is set). Once this task has been completed, ‘successful’ implementation can be evaluated in a suitably neutral manner: Some simplification can be introduced by treating implementation as a moralfy neutral concept [author’s italics] and deciding not to take into account in this particular context the justice or fairness of the original policy . . . Success thus becomes equivalent to effectiveness (p. 212) and defined
in very familiar
terms:
The ‘successful’ implementation of a policy is the costeffective use of appropriate mechanisms and procedures in such a way as to fulfil the expectations aroused by the policy and retain general public assent (p. 215).
In the harsh world of the 1980s the approach to implementation must be flexible and experimental, and pay the fullest attention to the environment. If the outcome of a policy is uncertain, then we must expect to have to adjust its content from time to time, to become as it were more systematically tentative in our approach to policy-making. In short, to regard the policy process as an evolutionary one (p. 14).
By this series of simple and seemingly logical conceptual steps, the implementation theme not only becomes legitimised as part of the cost-effective and utilitarian conservatism of the State, but also is given a canopy of political and moral neutrality.
Parts of the evolutionary process described here reflect the kind of disjointed incrementalism within the policy-action relationship as described by Barrett and Fudge (1981) and Healey et al. (1982). However, the notion that the correct balance between programmed and adaptive strategies will minimise inter-organisational conflict belies the evidence discussed above which suggests that such conflicts are inherent in the nature of the State in its broader societal context and are often therefore to be viewed as the cause of constraints on a range of policy-makers in reaching their goals rather than mere obstacles to be circumnavigated by flexible policies with flexible goals. A logical extension of this concept of balance is that implementation may
These limited conceptual conclusions rather overshadow the book’s useful case study evidence on the interrelations between central and local state. For example, the chapter by Coates and Wallace provides interesting examples of the discretion afforded by European Community policies; Metcalfe demonstrates inter-organisational turbulence in industrial policy and action; Nixon’s work on race relations shows how policy without full ideological support from the State permits local conservatism to preempt implementation; and Cohen’s case study shows how California’s Proposition 13, designed to reduce taxation, resulted in policy being dictated to by implementation. These and other case studies give useful evidence of inter-State and State policies
Review Essay being enacted in local contexts. Their utility to the rural researcher may unfortunately be limited by the rather stale conceptual bread which sandwiches them. The policy-implementation
divide
Despite its presentation in camera-ready typeface with all the usual optical displeasures for the reader, Michael Goldsmith’s collection of essays on how research in central-local relations offers contemporary conceptual insights for those who accept the need to understand policy and implementation in the State-society context. If Lewis and Wallace’s book represents the ‘implementation problem’ approach to the policy-implementation gaps recognisable in rural studies, Goldsmith’s volume is carried on the crest of a wave of contemporary research in the political idiom. Indeed the book reports the main findings from many of the research projects sponsored by the Economic and Social Science Research Council’s initiative on central-local government relations. The conceptual contrast between the two books is stark, with Barrett and Hill’s chapter giving full and cogent reasons for rejecting the separation of implementation as an administrative process (as suggested by Lewis above): must be regarded as . . , we argue that implementation an integral part of the policy process rather than an ‘follow-on’ from policy-making. The administrative political [author’s italics] processes by which policy is mediated, negotiated and modified during its formulation and legitimation do not stop when initial policy decisions have been made but continue to influence policy through the behaviour of those responsible for its implementation and those affected by policy acting to protect or enhance their own interests. This view of implementation takes us away from the traditional focus on formal organisational hierarchies, communication and control mechanisms, and places more emphasis on first, the multiplicity of actors and agencies involved and the variety of linkages between them; second, their value systems, interests, relative autonomies and power bases; third, the interactions taking place between them in particular negotiation and bargaining behaviour (pp. 35-36).
Contrary to the political/administrative distinction created in Policies into Practice, Barrett and Hill argue strongly that it is the same factors which give rise to compromise in policy-making that continue to impinge on and condition implementation. Conflicts of values and conflicts of interests are intermeshed and policy is made as it is implemented, and vice versa.
In taking such a critical stance against underlying liberal democratic assumptions in implementation
249
studies, Barrett and Hill acknowledge some common ground with neo-Marxist views of public policies which would regard as futile any conceptualisation of implementation in a way that relates policy goals with policy outcomes. Nevertheless, they are also critical of this radical stance because it denies any utility in studying implementation. Rather, they outline a conceptual middle ground between the liberal and radical extremes wherein implementation studies are important insofar as policy-makers have goals and are striving to enact them, and insofar as implementers and recipients of policy also have their own goals and strive to pursue these through a resistance of the intentions of the original policymakers. Such an approach places critical emphasis on the complexity of the policy-action relationship and the goal-conflicts and bargaining arising within it. A research agenda arises sphinx-like from this middle ground approach: cannot be confined to . . the study of implementation the behaviour of actors in their organisational roles and settings. We need also to look more widely at the relationship between groups of actors in inter-organisational settings, and at the wider environmental factors which crucially determine the ‘interests’ they seek to pursue. What are they bargaining about, with what power and under what constraints? . . Crucial issues are whether or not goal consensus is regarded as important, and whether or not bargaining is seen as a positive or zero sum ‘game’ (p. 46) and nowhere is the need for answers to such questions more apparent than in the area of centrallocal State relations.
Intergovernmental
relations
In part, the growing importance of central-local relations has come about due to particular factors occurring in Britain. Although many other countries have experienced a fiscal and Welfare State crisis, few of them have witnessed such a bitter conflict between central and local government over how to tackle the crisis. Goldsmith’s introduction to the book traces this context, and contrasts Britain’s centralising strategy with the decentralising solutions adopted by most other nations in the face of economic depression. Paradoxically given this trend towards central State power, the local State continues to deliver most services within the Welfare State, thus creating significant organisational potential for conflict. The major catalyst for such conflict has been the recent ideological commitment from central government to monetarist philosophies, the outworking of which has meant reduced public expenditure, extensive privatisation of State services, a shrinkage of the Welfare State, and a
250
Paul Cloke
reduction in the scope of government action. All of these factors have clashed with the existing discretion granted to local authorities over the scaie and strategy of the delivery of their services. So far as central fiscal controls over local authorities are concerned, Meadows and Jackson’s analysis of alternative economic strategies concludes that the economic case is unproven. Nevertheless local authorities have reacted differentiy according to their political affiliation. Davies er al. show that in budgetary terms, the Conservative-controlled shire counties have, relatively speaking, adopted a supine position and allowed themselves to be flattened by the central government steamroller, whereas the Labour-controlled (especially metropolitan} councils have persistently resisted central restrictions but have been squashed all the same with somewhat messier, and in the case of metropolitan counties, terminal, results. These factors clearly demonstrate the importance of the topic, so what then are the key themes to emerge from this intensive research on central-local relations? Perhaps the principal concept-maker for the entire ESRC programme of research has been Rod Rhodes, who established an initial theoretical framework for the programme, and in an important chapter in this book, reviews that framework in the light of the research which ensued. In simple terms he advises that the cenrrai-focal focus be replaced by an intergoyernmentaf viewpoint. Such a change permits researchers to concentrate on the notions of policy communities and policy networks, unencumbered by the institutional emphasis prevalent in straightforward studies of central and local government. For example, our treatment of ‘centrat government’ as a unified source of power is shown to be potentially misleading, as the mechanisms through which such power is exerted demonstrate qualities of both centralisation and fragmentation. Rhodes states: In terms of fragmentation, ~nctional differentiation in British government has produced a set of professionalbureaucratic complexes, or policy communities, each of which has personnel sharing an ideology, expertise and a career structure and spans the boundaries of government institutions, national and sub-national . . . But fragmentation and dispersion should not be treated as equivalent to decentralisation. Fragmentation refers to the distribution of authority between pohcy communities and not its redistribution away from central departments. Fragmentation and centralisation co-exist at the centre (p. 18). Waving established the existence and importance of policy communities, Rhodes commends a detailed examination of policy networks, which Benson
(1983) has defined as a cluster of organisations connected to each other by resource dependencies and distinguished from other clusters by discontinuities in the structure of resource dependencies. In the context of British Government, Rhodes shows that these networks are usually coincident with policy communities: Policy communities are relatively stable with continuity of membership. Decisions are taken within the communities and this process is substantially closed, commonly to other communities and, invariably to the general public (including Parliament). Policy communities are, therefore, integrated networks (p. 22).
There appear to be several advantages in studying intergovernmental relations through the metaphoric vehicles of policy networks and policy communities:
(9 given the multiplicity of networks at the centre,
(ii)
(iii) (iv) fv)
we need to compare different policy areas and reflect on the integration within, and articulation between different networks. Policy content is thus afforded due significance; the ,networks between organisations are more important than the organisations themselves in explaining policy processes and policy outcomes; networks focus attention on negotiation and bargaining activities; networks link micro- and meso-scales of analysis; networks facilitate the analysis of the distribution of resources.
Rhodes’ theoretical exposition is investigatively pursued in several areas of intergovernmental relations throughout the book. Two such treatments are selected here for brief review because of their immediate relevance to the concerns of rural researchers. Politics and the professions Gyford’s chapter on the role of parties and politics in central-local government relations takes a distinctive look at one important aspect of policy communities. He records the spread of party politics in local government and examines the emergence of parallel groups of party politicians at the central and local levels of government. The tendency for rural shire counties to be politically conservative (if not Conservative) could imply pot&itial co-operation with a Conservative central government during the 1980s thus providing a cogent political input to policy communities and networks. The degree to which local government politicians are in cahoots with their national counterparts is therefore an
Review Essay important issue in explaining policy outcomes. Gyford analyses the distribution of five types of resource - constitutional, hierarchical, financial, informational and politicat - which are potentially available to the centre and to the locality. His conclusion is clear: . . . the distribution of resources is such that neither national nor local politicians can automatically command the loyalty and obedience of their party colleagues of the other level of government. On that basis the relations between national and local politicians of the same party might be expected to accord more with the notion of stratarchy than with the unitary model (p. 102).
Moreover the changeover from the previously dominant Keynesian Welfare State paradigm of public policy to the new monetarist philosophies has broken down the appreciative systems formerly shared by central and local politicians and has thereby exposed the stratarchy to the internal divisions born of a lack of common assumptions. Gyford political political Labour, overlap
argues that, since 1979, intergovernmental conflict has been not between two cohesive stratarchies representing Conservative and but rather between three groupings which party boundaries:
individualists, who define local democracy from the point of view of minimising the demands on the local ratepayer and therefore support monetarist Conservative phiIosophies; (ii) collectivists, whose focus on working class communities aligns them with the Labour left; (iii) localists, whose view of democracy relies on elected councillors representing local electorates and as a result tends to uphold the institutions of local government. This grouping embraces a ragbag of formal political affiliations from the two main parties, and also from the Alliance parties.
(9
According to this taxonomy, local government can appear to be parasitic (individualists), an arena of class struggle (collectivists) and a democratic institution to be defended (localists) and, as a consequence, political battles over central-local relations have been three-cornered and fought within as well as between the two main parties. The analysis of political aspects of policy communities and networks is thus rather more complex than often portrayed. In Gyford’s own terms: The exigencies of the contest however have led to the creation of a sometimes uneasy alliance between the Iocalists and the collectivists against the individualists. The alliance was rendered all the more possible by the
251
increasing severity of (individualist) central government policy towards local government . . These proposals effectively threw the localists and collectivists into one another’s arms at least temporarily, a process facilitated by the wiliingness of many collectivists to wage the battle for pubhc opinion on the terms of the localists, by raising the banner of local democracy rather than of local socialism (p. 106).
These complexities require full integration into the analysis of different policy communities, and have particular relevance for policy networks impacting on rural areas where the in-migration of a new middle class is in some areas diluting traditional landowner Tory politics and replacing them with various combinations of individualists and localists. A second major component of the analysis of policy communities is that of the role of professionals. Martin Laffin’s chapter in Goldsmith’s collection summarises the detailed conceptual and case study analyses of professionalism presented in his own book. Along with his other work (Laffin and Young, 1987), Laffin exposes professionalism to be both one of the most significant features of British central and local government policy-making arenas and one of the most under-researched. We are ail conscious that both the professions in general and professional officers in particular play an important role in policymaking arenas affecting rural areas, and Laffin’s work begins to put flesh on the bare bones of this influence in the initiation, formulation and implementation of policy. First, he places professionals alongside poIiticians and interest groups representing policy impacts as the three main ingredients of a policy community. Then he identifies different ways in which professionals exert influence within policy communities: by serving as an accredited source of new knowledge for policy-makers and thereby introducing innovation; by claiming the need to be self-governing and self-regulating in certain ‘technical’ matters and thereby influencing the values which are acceptable and prevalent within policy communities; by managing the emergence of problem perception and definitions within the public pohcy arena, for example by fixing agendas, and so on. Central government policy towards local govemment in Britain is seen to have a strong inbuilt bias towards the professionalisation of services, and Laffin concludes that: in many policy areas the existence of a well-organised profession has been a more important factor in the development of poiicy than the division of powers between centraf and local govemment (p. 119) and that:
Paul Cloke
252
it seems almost inevitable that professional officials will continue to enjoy considerable power (p. 20).
Once again, analyses affecting rural areas
of planning and policy-making have paid little heed to these
influences within policy communities. Laffin’s work, and indeed much of that included in Goldsmith’s book provide powerful and often inescapable pointers to necessary research directions in rural studies.
Rural studies and policy research
This very brief review of three important texts highlights a number of issues directly relevant to rural studies. It is not the intention here to enter into the debate as to whether ‘rural’ as a distinctive or explanatory category is made redundant by radical structural analyses of policy-making and political economy. This issue has been discussed elsewhere (Cloke, 1985) with the conclusion that if only for the sake of a kind of counterbalancing pragmatism, rural localities should be studied with equal vigour and conceptual rigour as their more illustrious urban and regional counterparts. Yet it is blindingly obvious that studies of policy and implementation as they impact on rural communities are lagging behind contemporary research on intergovernmental relations. One of the major lessons to be learned from these texts is that empirical and investigative research programmes in these areas will falter without proper attention to the conceptual issues which underlie the State, intergovernmental relations, and the policy process. The conceptual path in Lewis and Wallace’s text suggests merit in separating the political and administrative environments of policy and implementation. In some ways rural researchers have followed this path, albeit implicitly, in their conventional analyses of planning processes. From the collected wisdoms stemming from the ESRC initiative on central-local relations have emerged a series of conceptual tools which appear to have considerable utility in gaining a real understanding of policies for rural areas. There are already some researchers who have taken up this challenge (see Newby et al., 1978, and more recently Cloke, 1987 and Cloke and Little, 1988). Many questions remain unanswered however: are there any distinctive qualities of the local State in rural localities, central State assumptive worlds regarding rural areas, or policy communities and networks impacting on rural people? how important are the respective roles of political and professional segments of policy comunities
and, indeed, to what extent have professionals become politicised? what forms of bargaining and negotiation are prevalent in rural policy arenas? to what extent are policy networks integrated or the differences between them clearly articulated? what are the wider environmental factors which determine the interests pursued within policy networks? to what extent is rural policy-making consensusseeking? Above all, our analysis should be able to link different scales within the policy process and differentiate between the various goals involved at different levels of decision-making. Otherwise we have little hope of breaking down the often misleading inferential links between policy and action which have hitherto dominated our (somewhat naive) investigations of planning and policy-making for rural areas. References
Barrett, S. and Fudge, C. (eds) (1981) Policy and Action. Methuen, London. Benson, J. (1983) Networks and policy sectors: a framework for extending interorganisational analyses. In Interorganisational Co-ordination, Rogers, D. and Whetton, D. (eds). Iowa State University Press, Ames. Berman, P. (1980) Thinking about programmed and adaptive implementation. In Why Policies Succeed or Fail, Ingram, H.M. and Mann, D.E. (eds). Sage, Beverly Hills. Blacksell, M. and Gilg, A. (1981) The Countryside: Planning and Change. Allen & Unwin, London. Boddy, M. (1983) Central-local government relations: theory and practice. Political Geography Quarterly 2, 119-138. Cloke, P.J. (1985) Whither rural studies? Journal of Rural Studies 1, l-9. Cloke, P.J. (ed.) (1987) Rural Planning: Policies into Action? Harper & Row, London. Cloke, P.J. and Hanrahan, P.J. (1984) Policy and implementation in rural planning. Geoforum 15,261-269.
Cloke, P.J. and Little, J.K. (1986a) Implementation and county structure plan policies for rural areas. Planning Perspectives (forthcoming). Cloke, P.J. and Little, J.K. (1986b) The implementation of rural policies: a survey of county planning authorities. Town Planning Review (forthcoming). Cloke, P.J. and Little, J.K. (1988) The Limits to Planning in Rural Society (forthcoming). Cooke, P. (1983) Theories of Planning and Spatial Development. Hutchinson, London. Dear, M. and Clark, G. (1984) State Apparatus: Structures and Language of Legitimacy. Allen & Unwin, Boston. Ham, C. and Hill, M. (1984) The Policy Process in the Modern Capitalist State. Wheatsheaf Press, Brighton. Hanrahan, P.J. and Cloke, P.J. (1983) Towards a critical appraisal of rural settlement planning in England and Wales. Sociologia Ruralis 23, 109-129. Harloe, M. (ed.) (1981) New Perspectives in Urban Change and Conflict. Heinemann, London.
Review Harrington, T. (1983) Explaining state policy-making: a critique of some recent ‘dualist’ models. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 7. 202-218. Healey, P., McDougall, G. and Thomas, M.J. (eds) (1982) Planning Theory: Prospects for the 1980s. Pergamon Press, Oxford. King, R. (1983) Capital and Politics. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Laffin, M. and Young, K. (1987) Professionalism Change and Challenge: the Local Authority Chief Officer in Modern British Politics. Allen & Unwin,
London.
Essay
253
Martlew, C. (1983) The state and local government finance. Public Administration 61, 127-147. Poulantzas, N. (1973) The problems of the capitalist state. In Power in Britain, Urry, J. and Wakeford, J. (eds). Heinemann, London. Saunders, P. (1979) Urban Politics: a Sociological Interpretation. Hutchinson, London. Saunders, P. (1981) Community power, urban managerialism and the local state. In New Perspectives in Urban Change and Conflict, Harloe, M. (ed.). Heinemann, London.