Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-hqlzj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-20T11:11:53.431Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The International Diffusion of Public-Sector Downsizing: Network Emulation and Theory-Driven Learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2006

Chang Kil Lee  and
David Strang
Chang Kil Lee
Affiliation:
Sejong University, Korea, hhchang300@hanmail.net
David Strang
Affiliation:
Cornell University, ds20@cornell.edu
Get access

Abstract

We examine change in the size of the public sector between 1980 and 1997 across twenty-six Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member nations, with particular attention to diffusion dynamics. General method of moments (GMM) analyses demonstrate imitation of shifts in government employment within the United States and mutual influence among nations that are geographically proximate and that trade extensively. Disaggregated analyses show that downsizing is contagious while upsizing is not: proximate downsizers but not upsizers are imitated, and states act on evidence that downsizing is economically beneficial while ignoring evidence that it is harmful. We argue that these asymmetries in emulation and learning are a product of the dominance of neoliberal and managerialist discourses that legitimate and theorize shrinking the public sector.An earlier version of this article was given at the International Diffusion of Political and Economic Liberalization Conference, Harvard University, October 2003. We thank Frank Dobbin, Geoffrey Garrett, and Beth Simmons for organizing the conference and this symposium; Sarah Babb, Jeeyang Baum, Torben Iversen, Michael Mann, Steve Morgan, Fred Pampel, Deok-Seob Shim, conference participants, and IO's editor and reviewers for their helpful comments; and Thomas Cusack for his generosity in sharing public employment data.

Information

Type
SYMPOSIUM: DIFFUSION OF LIBERALISM
Information
International Organization , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , October 2006 , pp. 883 - 909
Copyright
© 2006 The IO Foundation and Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Arellano, Manuel, and Stephen Bond. 1991. Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations. Review of Economic Studies 58 (2):277–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Babb, Sarah, and Ariel Buira. 2004. Mission Creep, Mission Push and Discretion in Sociological Perspective: The Case of IMF Conditionality. Paper presented at the XVIII G24 Technical Group Meeting, March, Geneva.
Baum, Jeeyang R. 2002. Presidents Have Problems Too: The Logic of Intra-Branch Delegation in New Democracies (Korea, Taiwan, China). Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles.
Baumol, William J., Alan S. Blinder, and Edward N. Wolff. 2003. Downsizing in America: Reality, Causes, and Consequences. New York: Russell Sage.
Brown, Lawrence D. 1983. Politics and Health Care Organization. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution.
Budros, Art. 1997. The New Capitalism and Organizational Rationality: The Adoption of Downsizing Programs, 1979–1994. Social Forces 76 (1):229–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burt, Ronald S. 1987. Social Contagion and Innovation: Cohesion Versus Structural Equivalence. American Journal of Sociology 92 (6):1287–1335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castles, Francis. 1989. Big Government in Weak States: The Paradox of State Size in the English-Speaking Nations of Advanced Capitalism. Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 27 (3):267–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cusack, Thomas R., Ton Notemans, and Martin Rein. 1989. Political-Economic Aspects of Public Employment. European Journal of Political Research 17 (4):471–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Gerald F., and Henrich R. Greve. 1997. Corporate Elite Networks and Governance Changes in the 1980s. American Journal of Sociology 103 (1):1–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Meuse, Kenneth P., and Paul A. Vanderheiden. 1994. Announced Layoffs: Their Effect on Corporate Financial Performance. Human Resource Management 33 (4):509–530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell. 1983. The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields. American Sociological Review 48 (2):147–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flora, Peter, and Arnold J. Heidenheimer, eds. 1981. The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.
Gilovich, Thomas. 1993. How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life. New York: Free Press.
Greene, William H. 1993. Econometric Analysis. New York: MacMillan.
Ha, Yeon-Seob. 2004. Budgetary and Financial Management Reforms in Korea: Financial Crisis, New Public Management, and Fiscal Administration. International Review of Administrative Sciences 70 (3):511–525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Peter A. 1993. Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain. Comparative Politics 25 (3):275–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halligan, John. 1996. The Diffusion of Civil Service Reform. In Civil Service Systems in Comparative Perspective, edited by Hans A. G. M. Bekke, James L. Perry, and Theo A. J. Toonen, 288–317. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hansen, Lars Peter. 1982. Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moments Estimators. Econometrica 50 (4):1029–1054.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haunschild, Pamela R., and Anne S. Miner. 1997. Modes of Interorganizational Imitation: The Effects of Outcome Salience and Uncertainty. Administrative Science Quarterly 42 (3):472–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahler, Miles. 1990. Orthodoxy and Its Alternatives: Explaining Approaches to Stabilization and Adjustment. In Economic Crisis and Policy Choice: The Politics of Adjustment in the Third World, edited by Joan M. Nelson, 33–62. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Kim, Pan Suk, and M. Jae Moon. 2002. Current Public Sector Reform in Korea: New Public Management in Practice. Journal of Comparative Asian Development 1 (1):49–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kjaer, Peter, and Ove K. Pedersen. 2001. Translating Liberalization: Neoliberalism in the Danish Negotiated Economy. In The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis, edited by John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen, 219–248. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Kuhn, Thomas. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lee, Chang Kil. 2001. The Institutionalization of Growth and Decline in Government Employment: Economics, Politics, and Imitation. Ph.D. diss., Cornell University.
Lord, Charles G., Lee Ross, and Mark R. Lepper. 1979. Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (11):2098–2109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKinley, William, Mark A. Mone, and Vincent L. Barker III 1998. Some Ideological Foundations of Organizational Downsizing. Journal of Management Inquiry 7 (3):198–212.Google Scholar
Meyer, John W., John Boli, George M. Thomas, and Francisco O. Ramirez. 1997. World Society and the Nation-State. American Journal of Sociology 103 (1):144–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moon, Myung-Jae, and Patricia Ingraham. 1998. Shaping Administrative Reform and Governance: An Examination of the Political Nexus Triads in Three Asian Countries. Governance 11 (1):77–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mosley, Paul, Jane Harrigan, and John Toye. 1991. Aid and Power: The World Bank & Policy-based Lending. London: Routledge.
Niskanen, William. 1971. Bureaucracy and Representative Government. Chicago: Aldine.
O'Connor, James. 1973. The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 1995. Governance in Transition: Public Management Reforms in OECD Countries. Paris: OECD.
Offe, Claus. 1984. Contradictions of the Welfare State. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Osborne, David, and Ted Gaebler. 1993. Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector. New York: Plume.
Pampel, Fred C., and John B. Williamson. 1988. Welfare Spending in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 1950–1980. American Journal of Sociology 93 (6):1424–1456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierson, Paul 1994. Dismantling the Welfare State?: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Piore, Michael J., and Charles F. Sabel. 1984. The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity. New York: Basic Books.
Republic of Korea. Ministry of Government Administration. 1997. Sin Jungbu Hyuksinron (“New Government Reforms”). Seoul: DonMyungSa.
Republic of Korea. Ministry of Planning and Budget. 2003. How Korea Reformed the Public Sector. Seoul: Ministry of Planning and Budget.
Rogers, Everett M. 1995. Diffusion of Innovations. 4th ed. New York: Free Press.
Strang, David, and Ellen M. Bradburn. 2001. Theorizing Legitimacy or Legitimating Theory? Neoliberal Discourse and HMO Policy, 1970–89. In The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis, edited by John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen, 129–158. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Strang, David, and Young-Mi Kim. 2005. The Diffusion and Domestication of Managerial Innovations: The Spread of Scientific Management, Quality Circles, and Total Quality Management between the United States and Japan. In The Oxford Handbook of Work & Organization, edited by Stephen Ackroyd, Rosemary Batt, Paul Thompson, and Pamela S. Tolbert, 177–199. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Strang, David, and Michael W. Macy. 2001. In Search of Excellence: Fads, Success Stories, and Adaptive Emulation. American Journal of Sociology 107 (1):147–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strang, David, and John W. Meyer. 1993. Institutional Conditions for Diffusion. Theory and Society 22 (4):487–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strang, David, and Sarah A. Soule. 1998. Diffusion in Organizations and Social Movements: From Hybrid Corn to Poison Pills. Annual Review of Sociology 24:265–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, George M., John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez, and John Boli. 1987. Institutional Structure: Constituting State, Society, and the Individual. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage.
Walker, Jack L. 1969. The Diffusion of Innovations Among the American States. American Political Science Review 63 (3):880–899.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilensky, Harold L. 1975. The Welfare State and Equality: Structural and Ideological Roots of Public Expenditures. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Woldendorp, Jaap, Hans Keman, and Ian Budge. 1998. Party Government in 20 Democracies: An Update (1990–1995). European Journal of Political Research 33 (1):125–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar