Public sector reform has arguably been one of the defining features of the public policy landscape for the past three decades (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011). Public organizations are faced with an ever-increasing array of problems, are expected to implement and develop strategies necessary to respond in an efficient manner to complex social, economic and political challenges. At the same time, there are numerous instances where they are seen as part or even the source for these problems. Thus, public organizations are a constant subject to rigorous and extensive management reforms (Andrews et al. 2013, 2014).
Strategic planning is an excellent tool that local governments can (and should) use in order to deal efficiently with change. Poister and Streib (2005) demonstrated the benefits that cities gain when using strategic planning: increased focus of major stakeholders and political leaders on the mission, goals and priorities of the locality, improved communication between stakeholders, better general management and decision making inside the organization, improved employee professional development and a general improvement of organizational performance. One can argue that these fall into the general category of increasing effectiveness and quality, elements that are a constant of public sector reform (Pollitt et al. 2007).
Looking into this direction the most prodigious public sector reform models in the last 30 years could be considered: (1) New Public Management (NPM) that has taken the spotlight starting with the 1980s and has had a lot of attention from both scholars and practitioners in the following two decades, with the jury still out on its real impact; (2) Neo-Weberian State (NWS) (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004, 2011; Drechsler 2005), a reinterpretation of Max Weber’s theory, describing a model that takes the positive elements of NPM and places them on a Weberian foundation as a reaction to concerns with the inadequacies of NPM and overly managerial focused reforms mostly imported from the USA (Dunn and Miller 2007) and (3) New Public Governance (NPG) (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004, 2011) that brings the concept of governance at center stage, implying a redefinition of the state’s role (but not necessarily a reduction), and emphasis on complex organization networks, partnerships, negotiations and mutual adjustments between different actors. We tried to use these three theoretical models in order to frame the strategic planning practices in line with public sector reform movement.
The current book presents a multinational comparative research project that tackles directly two pressing issues in the field: (1) general scarcity of empirical data from across countries on the topic of strategic planning and (2) focusing the analysis on local governments. Research efforts related to strategic planning are usually concentrating on national governments, central government and agencies but do not go further with the analysis toward the local government.
Consequently, this volume tries to fill a knowledge gap existing in comparative research regarding strategic planning in local governments. We designed our research around the following questions
- What do local authorities in each country understand through strategic planning? What is a strategic plan at local level? Are there multiple forms and how do we distinguish between them? (definition of planning)
- What is the local (country) context and how does it influence both the understanding of strategic planning and the actual planning process? (context)
- What are the main motivators/causes that trigger such an effort at local level? (purpose)
- What are the specific elements of the planning process? Sub-questions would fall in the following lines: What are the main steps/stages of the process? Who is involved (stakeholders) and in what phase? What specific instruments do local authorities use for data collection and analysis? What is the level of participation of major stakeholders? Are there any institutional frameworks specifically responsible for the process—if yes how are they set up and how do they function? Are good governance principles reflected in any way by the process? Does the process display any elements of administrative reform models (NPM, NPG, NWS)? (process)
- What are the main outputs of such an effort? What are the main benefits perceived by local authorities? What about the main challenges faced during and after the process? Are there implementation, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms in place, at institutional level? How effective are they? (results)
Having these questions in mind, our research tries to develop a comprehensive perspective on the entire strategic planning process at local level, leading to the following:
- A clear image regarding what strategic planning (or a strategic plan) means in each country case (we expected a lot of diversity here).
- Rich data (quantitative and qualitative) regarding the actual process of planning (how it is done), covering the three main pillars (purpose, process, results). We expected even greater diversity here.
- General conclusion linked (if possible) with a wider process of managerial reform—can the process, based on your own findings, be linked in any way with a broader reform movement of the public sector—if yes, what would be the elements indicating this, can we link them to any theoretical framework (mostly NWS, NPM, NPG but others may be proposed). Also, how does this process stack up to the theoretical models of strategic planning in the public sector?
Through this volume we aim to contribute to the field of strategic planning by providing knowledge on (1) the main approaches of local governments across seven countries on strategic planning, (2) how contextual country factors influence the planning process, (3) whether these approaches display any elements of public administration reform models (NPM/NWS/NPG) and (4) increased understanding on strategic planning at local level through a cross-country perspective. The seven countries selected to take part in the study—France, Hungary, Romania, Russia, Spain, Turkey and USA—offer a very wide and diverse picture of the implementation of this concept, which is one of the main assets of the book. The volume will cover an important gap in the academic literature on strategic planning that is mostly focused on national governments and in most (if not all) cases deals with Anglo-Saxon countries.
1 Book Outline
The proposed volume is constructed around the following research question:
What approaches in strategic planning do local governments adopt in their efforts for local development and how can they be explained from a cross-country perspective?
The book is structured on nine chapters—an introduction chapter (this one), seven chapters on the countries and a final chapter (Chap. 9) that represents a transnational analysis of the findings and general conclusions of the research.
Each country chapter has the following outline:
- National context—includes information concerning: administrative system—main elements of the system that influence the planning process (institutional structure, power distribution, center-local government relations); legal framework—regulation that is relevant and influences the planning process; cultural antecedents/factors—any specific cultural elements that may influence planning at local level; political factors—role played by politics in planning, issues concerning political migration, distribution of funds, political support for the process; reform process—whether there are any links between planning at local level and reform initiatives or if specific elements of administrative reform models are present (NPM, NWS, NPG).
- Methodology—information on methodology used in each case. In general we used a mixed method approach for each country, a quantitative research based on a survey on local authorities and a qualitative approach based on document analysis and case studies. However, given the intrinsic diversity expected from the country selection, contributors had the possibility to add specific methods depending on contextual factors of their own country.
- Results—for each country, results of the research are analyzed in relation to our research questions. We tried to highlight the specifics of the planning process, as this is one of the main assets of the research. Findings of the quantitative research are structured along the following lines Purpose: What are the main reasons that determine local public authorities to initiate and implement strategic planning efforts? What motivates them? Process: What are the main steps included in the planning process? What are the basic principles guiding this process? What is the level of stakeholder participation? In which stages do they participate? What are the elements that local authorities feel are most important to them in the process and why? Are there any particularities of the process (specific to each country) that make it unique? How does this process fit into the bigger picture of good governance, public administration reform? Results of the planning process: What are the major output/outcomes of strategic planning? Major benefits and challenges for local authorities? Can we explain why they face these challenges? Using the results of the quantitative analysis as input, in each country case studies considered representative for the planning process are analyzed in detail, aiming to give more depth to the quantitative data gathered in phase one. The focus of the cases is to point out specifics of the process that were not highlighted by the survey—good practices, specific country’s elements of the planning process, barriers identified, trends, perspectives and challenges.
- Conclusions and recommendations
The final chapter (Chap. 9) represents a cross-national analysis of local governments’ strategic planning efforts, focusing on three major themes: (1) common elements of strategic planning based on what we observed in each country; (2) country-specific elements of strategic planning—we found high levels of diversity with specific “influence factors” that shape the process; (3) elements of administrative reform models—although some elements of each of the three models were identified, diversity between the countries is quite high.
We started our research with an assumption that although there will be some diversity in how local authorities use planning, we will find general trends and patterns that transcend national (and cultural) context, as planning is at its core a managerial instrument. We were surprised to see that this is not really the case, and that even inside a specific country there is high variety on both the understanding and implementation of strategic planning. Both large-scale factors like history, culture, political system, administrative framework, economic development and small-scale ones like inter...