FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT $1[100$ MARKS$]$

Read the case study below and answer ALL the questions that follow.

Policy capacity in Public Administration

The majority of the policy work of government is done through the organizations that constitute the public bureaucracy.

Indeed, these organizations make a good deal of policy on their own through their delegated capacity to make secondary

legislation $($Kerwin$,2011$ Page, $2012).$ But even when the administrative organizations are acting more as agents for

political leaders they have a number of important roles to play in making policy and in making policies perform as intended

by the actors who had designed them. Although some policy capacity can be found in almost any public bureaucracy there

are variety of factors that influence the capacity for public administration to shape public policy. Bureaucracies as actors in

the policy process reside in a rather difficult position within the middle of increasingly complex policy processes $($Howlett &

Wellstead, $2011).$ On the one hand they are working upward to their nominal political masters, providing policy advice and

at times also thinly disguised political advice. They are also working downward, with implementation being a means through

which they not only make policy have real effects in society but also make policy as they exercise delegated powers. And

finally they are working outwards to the numerous stakeholders involved with their policies, attempting to balance the views

of the multiple actors and still maintain some commitment to a broader public interest. This paper will first discuss the policy

tasks of bureaucracies, and their $$policy work$($Colebatch$,$ Hoppe, & Noordegraaf, $2010)$ from the perspective of the

organizational and structural characteristics of these institutions. There is a tendency, in both academic and popular

discourse to speak of $$The Bureaucracy$$ as if it were an integrated whole. While there may be some institutional features

and some commonalities within the public bureaucracy of any country, it is generally a highly differentiated structure with

numerous organizations that believe they are more or less autonomous. Further, these organizations have political

connections of their own with clientele groups that provide them with support in their political battles with other

organizations, and with their nominal political masters.

The policy role of organizations within the public bureaucracy has some stable foundations but also has been influenced

significantly by continuing patterns of reform. Reforms have been endemic in the public bureaucracy but the period

beginning in the early $1980$s has had an unusually high level of reform activity. Although much of reform in administrative

organizations is oriented toward improving efficiency, it also has had significant consequences for public policy. Salamon

$(1981)$ argued that attempting to achieve efficiency through administrative reform was a $$will of the wisp$$ but that policy

change was more achievable through organizational change. Defining and measuring the capacity of political actors,

bureaucratic or not, to influence policy is difficult $($see Painter & Pierre, $2010),$ and it is also dependent upon context. For the

public bureaucracy the capacity to influence. Policy is dependent not only on its own internal capabilities but also on the

level of competition from other actors in society that are also influencing policy. A bureaucratic agency that faces think

tanks, political parties with research offices and an effective parliament may be less successful in shaping policy than one

with lesser capacity when it can have a virtual monopoly on policy advice.

As they must engage in the policy process they bring with them a number of important resources. These resources are

available not only to the organizations themselves but also more generally available to the public sector as a whole. This

dual role for bureaucracies is crucial for understanding how these organizations function and the political dynamics that will

define their role in governing. On the one hand, the bureaucracy is composed of specialized organizations designed to

deliver a relatively narrow range of services and to develop expertise in a particular policy area. On the other hand they are

part of a larger institution, and a larger government, that is meant to provide a full range of services and to do so in as

coordinated a manner as possible $($see Bouckaert, Peters, & Verhoest, $2010).$ These two meanings of the bureaucracy may

in fact conflict when attempting to shape public policy. Despite the usual negative descriptions of bureaucratic organizations

the individual organizations have policy ideas and attempt to have those ideas adopted as policy. Whether from selfaggrandizement

$($another typical stereotype of the bureaucracy$)$ or from sincere commitment to policies $($see Be$$land & Cox,

$2011)$ specialized organizations do push for policie