Welfare State Politics in Privatization of Delivery

2014

Public Administration

This paper demonstrates that party-political orientations within governance communities can have strong effects on policy implementation. Empirical evidence is drawn from the Academy conversion scheme for secondary schools in England that was recently pursued by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government. The opt-in nature of the reform for individual schools makes it possible to discern the impact that nominally apolitical school governors have on the implementation of the policy. Several intriguing features of the distribution of schools that have converted to Academy status are documented. First, they are disproportionately found in more Conservative-voting constituencies. Second, this is due to varying school-level propensities to apply to convert, rather than varying propensities for the Department for Education to authorize conversions. Third, applications to convert are significantly more likely from schools in Conservative parliamentary seats that are under the control of Labour local authorities. Generalizing from these findings, it is argued that nominally apolitical policy participants may act in rather political ways, and that this has implications for our understanding of the involvement of civil society in the provision of public services. * I'm grateful to Lucy Barnes, Matt Hall, James Hicks, Gail McElroy, and Peter Stone for helpful discussions and comments regarding this project. I also wish to thank Becky Allen for generously sharing OFSTED data and Brian Cheal at the Local Government Chronicle Elections Centre, Plymouth Business School, for sharing data on local election results.

Section: Theorysupporting

confidence: 65%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Partisan Governance and Policy Implementation: The Politics of Academy Conversion Amongst English Schools

2014

Public Administration

“…This stepping-back of the state fits rather well with common ideological conceptions of left and right, and so seems more likely to be supported by those with other more rightist views (e.g. Boix 1997;Elinder and Jordahl 2013;Pierson 1998;Zehavi 2012). Ideally, there would be survey data available on the ideological views of school governors, which could then be assessed for its correlation with school conversions -an approach that would be analogous to the 'active bureaucratic representation' research that has been focused on the USA (e.g.…”

Section: Theorysupporting

confidence: 60%

“…It also contributes to a literature that has sought to provide political explanations for patterns of reform adoption in this sphere (e.g. Gingrich 2011;Klitgaard 2008;Zehavi 2012). To these studies of national-level policy choices, this paper adds a more nuanced understanding of the way in which these policies can be mediated through local policy elites.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Partisan Governance and Policy Implementation: The Politics of Academy Conversion Amongst English Schools

2017

Preprint

This article demonstrates that party-political orientations within governance communities can have strong effects on policy implementation. Empirical evidence is drawn from the Academy conversion scheme for secondary schools in England that was recently pursued by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government. The opt-in nature of the reform makes it possible to discern the impact that nominally apolitical school governors have on the implementation of the policy. Academy conversion is disproportionately found in more Conservative-voting constituencies due to varying school-level propensities to apply to convert, rather than varying propensities for the Department for Education to authorize conversions. Further, applications to convert are significantly more likely from schools in Conservative parliamentary seats that are under the control of Labour local authorities. Thus, nominally apolitical policy participants appear to act in rather political ways, which has implications for our understanding of the involvement of civil society in the provision of public services.

“…The past few decades have seen the diffusion of ideas relating to competition, privatisation and marketisation among education policy makers across a broad range of countries (e.g., Gingrich ; Klitgaard , ; Zehavi , ). While this diffusion has been relatively broad, there has been notable cross‐national variation in the extent to which it has found expression in public policy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequality, marketisation and the left: Schools policy in England and Sweden

European J Political Res

2015

It is argued in this article that the marketisation of schools policy has a tendency to produce twin effects: an increase in educational inequality, and an increase in general satisfaction with the schooling system. However, the effect on educational inequality is very much stronger where prevailing societal inequality is higher. The result is that cross-party political agreement on the desirability of such reforms is much more likely where societal inequality is lower (as the inequality effects are also lower). Counterintuitively, then, countries that are more egalitarian -and so typically thought of as being more left-wing -will have a higher likelihood of adopting marketisation than more unequal countries. Evidence is drawn from a paired comparison of English and Swedish schools policies from the 1980s to the present. Both the policy history and elite interviews lend considerable support for the theory in terms of both outcomes and mechanisms.