Pittsburgh, 30 October - 1 November 1997

Taking the Measure of Government

A SOG conference centered around the theme of "Taking the Measure of Government" was held 30 October - 1 November 1997 at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. The conference received funding support from the University's Center for International Studies (UCIS), the Center for West European Studies (CWES), the Falk Professorship, and the University Professorship. Guy Peters and Bert Rockman, the holders respectively of the Falk and University Professorships, co-organized the conference, though in reality nothing would have happened without the true organizers, Peter Breil, then assistant director of the Center for West European Studies, the staff of CWES and the two editorial interns of Governance, Paul Mullen and Andrew Konitzer. We are greatly indebted to Burkart Holzner, the director of UCIS and Alberta Sbragia, the director of CWES, without whom the conference would not have taken place.

The conference was organized around the idea of concep-tualizing what aspects of government we can measure and to ascertain what indeed we have measures of and how ambiguous, complex, or straightforward (rarely the latter) those measures are.

The first day of the conference

began with a roundtable of Methods and Techniques of Data Gathering on Bureaucracy, Public Organizations, and Public Administration. The partici-pants were Joel Aberbach (UCLA-USA), Brian Hogwood (Strathclyde-UK), E. Wood Kelley (Cornell-USA) and Bert Rockman (Pittsburgh-USA). Needless to say, the discussion brought forth a variety of perspectives as to approach ranging from survey interviews of individual officials to the longitudinal tracking of organizations themselves.

Two additional sessions were held during the first afternoon. One focused on Theoretical Considerations and featured a paper by Thomas Hammond (Michigan State-USA) on "The Epistemology of Autonomy: If an Agency is Autonomous, How Would We Know It?" Hammond generates a unidimensional formal model of agency and other actors' preferences to specify the meaning of agency autonomy, but concludes that ambiguities remain and that empirical data on the preferences of both principals and agents are essential. William Keech (Carnegie-Mellon-USA) and Bert Rockman provided commentary.

The final session of day one focused on Institutional Perspectives on Public Organizations and featured a paper by Albrecht Funk (Pittsburgh-USA) "Effects of the Governance Structure of the EU on European Cooperation: The Challenge of Measuring and Assessing the Effects of Institutional Arrangements in a Multi-Layered System." Funk's paper emphasized the "joint decision trap" noted earlier by Fritz Scharpf and through which local veto positions were likely to be relevant in both national and supra-national systems. Funk, thus, emphasized the need for time-series analysis to understand changes in complex multi-layered systems. Guy Peters (Pittsburgh-USA) and Guido Dierickx (Antwerp-Belgium) provided commentary.

Day 2 featured a number of panels. The first focused on Vital Statistics: Births, Deaths and Marriages and featured a paper by Brian Hogwood on "The Quantitative Analysis of Agency Accountability: What It Can Tell Us and What Does It Miss Out?" Hogwood warns that a pure quantitative analysis of accountability misses much of the variety of accountability procedures and subterfuges, and urges that this variety be considered. William Coleman (McMaster-Canada) offered comments.

The second session of day 2 focused on issues of Central-ization/Decentralization for which Alberta Sbragia (Pittsburgh-USA) presented a discussion paper on "American Federalism, Public Investment, and Economic Development: The Search for Local Autonomy." Her paper emphasized the evolution of off-line governmental structures at the local level in the U.S. which were more clearly designed to play the role of economic development than of fulfilling democratic participation. Sandeep Shastri (Bangalore-India) and Hans-Ulrich Derlien (Bamberg-Germany) commented on the papers.

The first afternoon session of day 2 was organized around Networks and Communities and had two papers, one by William Coleman on "Policy Communities: Some Issues of Method" and the other by Mark Considine (Melbourne-Australia) and Jennifer Lewis (Melbourne-Australia) on "Governance Regimes as Latent Structures: Public Bureaucracy in the Age of Markets and Networks." Coleman's paper emphasized that the strength of policy community/network analysis lay in integrating different bodies of theory and knowledge in the study of policy-making, while its weaknesses lay in its so-far limited sensitivity to policy dynamics. Considine and Lewis, focusing on their own empirical investigation, note that a latent typology of orientations to governance can be abstracted from the attitudes of both governmental and non-governmental bureaucrats. They note, however, that managerial and market orientations may be cut more from the same cloth than not, despite distinctions drawn between the two both in the literature and analytically. Michele Micheletti (Stockholm-Sweden) and Robert Walters (Pittsburgh-USA) discussed the two papers.

The final topic of day 2 was Coordination, Control, and Policy Effectiveness. Papers were presented by Sandeep Shastri, "Economic Liberalization and Administrative Reform in India: An Assessment of the Policy Inititatives of the Federal Government" and LeeAnn Patterson (Pittsburgh-USA), "Conflict and Coordination in the EU Commission: A Case Study of Biotechnology Regulations." Shastri's paper expressed concern that the Indian liberalization failed to consider inequities, especially imbedded in the Indian social structure, and was likely, as constructed, to benefit the urban middle and affluent classes exclusively. Patterson's paper focused especially on the problems of both structural fragmentation and political and technocratic levels of decision-making within the EU on bio-technology regulation. She concluded that a commission with a strong chairman with high political backing provided the means to overcome these otherwise powerful tendencies toward fragmentation. Colin Campbell (Georgetown-USA) and the overworked William Coleman provided comments to the paper givers.

On the final morning of the conference, Hans-Ulrich Derlien and Guy Peters presented a joint paper entitled "Who Works for Government and What Do They Do? Common Trends and Structural Differences in U.S. and German Public Employment" under the general topic of Public Employment and Personnel. This data-rich paper uncovered a number of methodological complications, especially concerning functional equivalencies. What counts in each country is sometimes counted differently, among other things. Carolyn Ban (Pittsburgh-USA) offered her observations on the paper.

The final session of the conference, as was the first session, took the form of a roundtable. The topic was The End of the Big State? Partici-pants were Graham Wilson (Wisconsin-USA), Alberta Sbragia, Mark Peterson (Pittsburgh-USA), and Michele Micheletti. The roundtable produced a provocative discussion concerning change (if any) in the size and the character of the state and the consesquences of such change.

After lunch a SOG executive board meeting was held and sites for upcoming conferences were discussed, including the Oxford conference in July, 1998, a conference in Madison, Wisconsin for the spring of 1999 and one in Bangalore, India in the fall of 1999.

SOG conferees are known, like Napolean's army, to travel on their stomachs. Consequently, the conference participants went home knowledgeable, tired, and well-fed.

Bert Rockman