A core claim about agricultural policy making is that it is 'compartmentalized' and 'exceptional'. In this picture, the policy process is insulated from other policy concerns, has a distinctive system of actors and institutional structures, and rooted in extensive governmental intervention in the market and the redistribution of resources from taxpayers to food producers. Recently there have been suggestions that a 'post-exceptional' agricultural politics has emerged, which is more market-driven, has reduced state intervention, and where policies reflect influences relating to non-food issues such as the environment. This contribution discusses the concepts of compartmentalization and exceptionalism and then applies 'indicators of change' to a case study of the 2013 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It concludes that the reform provides evidence for 'shallow' post-exceptionalism where a historically persistent 2 | P a g e agricultural policy subsystem has opened up to new actors, incorporated some programme change but left the ideational framework largely intact.
Both service users and providers convey a generally positive message about the health sector decentralization. The active involvement of service users, providers, policy-makers in the process of decentralization and clear national and local policy agendas may bring positive changes in district health services.
Review of the selected studies in triangulation with health services data has revealed that decentralisation in many cases has improved access to, utilisation of, and management of health services. The effects on other performance dimensions such as policy, equity, quality and service effectiveness are poorly investigated topics in the literature. The findings suggest that the successful implementation of decentralisation requires a broader context of institutional capacity building and resource management, and underlines the need for their consideration during implementation processes, and further investigation.
Local Public Spending Bodies (LPSBs) occupy an important position in the contemporary structures of governance in the UK. As exemplars of many of the diverse characteristics of the New Public Management, LPSBs inhabit the fuzzy space between the public and private spheres, both in terms of organizational structure and service delivery. One finding from recent research into the internal governance of three kinds of LPSBs – Further Education Colleges, Housing Associations and Training and Enterprise Councils – was that the language of strategy predominated over that of policy on the boards of such organizations. In this article we assess the significance of this finding. We contend that the two terms are not interchangeable and that a vital distinction needs to be maintained between them. Specifically we argue that policy refers to collections of decisions grounded in public values whereas the concept of strategy, particularly as currently understood in the context of the New Public Management, refers to the positioning of an organization in its struggle to survive and grow. We conclude that LPSBs have been invited to behave strategically within a framework of increasingly centralized policy objectives and resource allocations.
This paper takes a comparative case–study approach, located within the literature on policy networks, to organic agriculture policy in the United Kingdom and Ireland since the late 1980s. An examination of policy development for the organic sector focuses primarily on regulatory arrangements. The core of the analysis applies some prominent themes in the policy network literature to the organic sector: the debate about sectoral and sub–sectoral networks, the relationship between networks, context and outcomes, and the role of the state and ideas in promoting policy change.
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