53 results
Clinical management of delirium: The response depends on the subtypes. An observational cohort study in 602 patients
- Carl Moritz Zipser, Silvana Knoepfel, Peter Hayoz, Maria Schubert, Jutta Ernst, Roland von Känel, Soenke Boettger
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- Palliative & Supportive Care / Volume 18 / Issue 1 / February 2020
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- 11 September 2019, pp. 4-11
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Objective
The hypoactive, hyperactive, and mixed subtypes of delirium differently impact patient management and prognosis, yet the evidence remains sparse. Therefore, we examined the outcome of varying management strategies in the subtypes of delirium.
MethodsIn this observational cohort study, 602 patients were managed for delirium over 20 days with the following strategies: supportive care alone or in combination with psychotropics, single, dual, or triple+ psychotropic regimens. Cox regression models were calculated for time to remission and benefit rates (BRs) of management strategies.
ResultsGenerally, the mixed subtype of delirium caused more severe and persistent delirium, and the hypoactive subtype was more persistent than the hyperactive subtype. The subtypes of delirium were similarly predictive for mortality (P = 0.697) and transfer to inpatient psychiatric care (P = 0.320). In the mixed subtype, overall, psychotropic drugs were administered more often (P = 0.016), and particularly triple+ regimens were administered more commonly compared to hypoactive delirium (P = 0.007). Patients on supportive care benefited most, whereas those on triple+ regimens did worst in terms of remission in all groups of hypoactive, hyperactive, and mixed subtypes (BR: 4.59, CI 2.01–10.48; BR: 4.59, CI 1.76–31.66; BR: 3.36, CI 1.73–6.52; all P < 0.05).
Significance of resultsThe mixed subtype was more persistent to management than the hypoactive and hyperactive subtypes. Delirium management remains controversial and, generally, supportive care benefited patients most. Psychopharmacological management for delirium requires careful choosing of and limiting the number of psychotropics.
Part I - Foundations and analytical dimensions
- Peter Knoepfel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
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Introduction
- Peter Knoepfel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
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Summary
Any observer of the public or private actors involved in the production of public action will encounter frequent complaints about the lack of resources available to these actors. A common statement likely to be heard in this context is: ‘I would like to take action, but I do not have the necessary money, legal basis, people, time etc.’ Surprisingly, such statements are made not only by marginal actors but also, and perhaps even more often, by individuals and groups that the observer would identify as powerful political-administrative, economic or social actors who enjoy a high degree of public visibility and a strong presence in a considerable number of policy contexts. Moreover, this observation is not limited to the development of new activities that may be initiated by these actors; it also concerns the implementation of follow-up interventions or inventions involving the production of public action in existing areas.
Aside from the fact that these complaints form part of the daily rituals of political-administrative actors and are made with a view to ensuring the maintenance or enlargement of their resource portfolios, the size of which is generally considered a reflection of their ‘power’ and political importance, in many cases they constitute a justified response to the budgetary cuts that affect the actors’ scope for manoeuvre and, as a result, the effectiveness of ‘their’ policies.
The critical observer will confirm, however, that these complaints are frequently focused on known action resources that have been the subject of debate since time immemorial. The resources in question here are financial, legal, human and, of course, temporal in nature. One of the core messages of the concept of policy actors’ resources consists, however, in the firm premise that there are at least six other categories of resources, which surprisingly receive little attention in the debates surrounding public policy resources. The resources in question here include Information, Organization, Consensus, Property, Political Support and, one of the oldest resources of all, which I refer to as Force.
As discussed in detail in this book, in many cases a lack of traditional resources may be compensated for by the use of one or other of the other resources that tend to receive less attention but are nonetheless vital to the conduct of any policy that aims to be effective.
3 - Context: A survey of the literature
- Peter Knoepfel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
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Summary
This chapter aims to provide an element missing from my approach hitherto by contextualizing it within the scientific literature that uses identical or similar dimensions to characterize the power of actors involved in public policies. The conceptualization developed with my colleagues in 2001 was initially based on the studies carried out by the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations (CSO) in the 1970s and in particular, the key contributions of Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg entitled Actors and systems (1981) and of Fritz Scharpf entitled Games real actors play: Actor-centered institutionalism in public policy research of 1997. For an analysis of these studies, I refer to our basic textbook (Knoepfel et al, 2006: 13ff, 69ff).
Hence the real purpose of this chapter is not to revisit the literature relating to the historical origins of our approach, but to examine other (complementary, competing or similar) conceptualizations of public policy actors’ resources.
To do this I carried out a documentary survey with the help of the Google search engine using the terms ‘resources’ combined with the 10 qualifiers (force, law, personnel, money etc) and ‘public policies’ as keywords. This relatively time-consuming process, which was carried out twice – in 2013 and 2015 – enabled me to find a large number of documents and to identify around 500 that deal with phenomena that could be considered as public action resources in the sense of the definition used here of the power available to actors. With the help of further research, I sorted these documents on the basis of their relevance for the topic (elimination of around 450 irrelevant ones), and classified the remaining contributions in two groups based on whether they deal with an isolated resource (often: Time, Property, Money) or whether they cover all of the resources ranked on the basis of a given typology. Only the latter were ultimately included in the survey. Given that I wish to focus on more recent texts or texts explicitly dedicated to the question of resources, the classical contributions by Fritz Scharpf (1997) and Crozier and Friedberg (1981), which were already referred to in our basic textbook, are also excluded, as are those by Dahl (1957, 1961).
12 - Organization
- Peter Knoepfel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
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Definition
This resource involves two partly complementary dimensions: first, the internal organizational characteristics of the different actors and, second, the quality of the network that links the different actors within a policy configuration or network. Thus the organizational resources available to actors vary according to the actors’ characteristics (relevance of the organization of an actor's administrative structures) as does the quality of the network that keeps them in contact with the world outside the organization. Therefore the capacity of an actor to bring together or link other actors involved in a given public policy space in a network that links them to each other and in which they occupy a central position is a good example of the mobilization of this interactive resource. There is no doubt that this resource is also fundamental to the organizations that represent the interests of policy beneficiaries and target groups.
An organization that is functionally adapted to its institutional, physical, political and social environment makes it possible to improve the quality of the services provided while reducing the use of some resources (for example, personnel and time) or increasing the use of others (for example, consensus and information). Thus a strongly hierarchized structure tends to undermine the accountability of officials working in direct contact with the administered citizens or “clients”. Moreover this kind of organization tends to fragment the processes for the management of dossiers and this, in turn, can alter the quality of administrative services. Nor does it allow the introduction of transverse coordination and monitoring functions which ensure the coherence of public policy programming and implementation, for example, in the conduct of environmental impact studies. According to the new wording of the Federal Act on the Organization of the Government and Administration Organization Act (GAOA), in terms of federal public actors, organizational competency for the creation and modification of federal offices and their allocations reverts to the Federal Council. (Knoepfel et al, 2010: 64-5)
Specifics
For a public policy's political-administrative actors and its two groups of social actors, the mobilization of Organization means involving other actors that, based on their mission, are part of the same public policy structure.
References
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13 - Consensus
- Peter Knoepfel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
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Definition
The implementation of a public policy requires at least minimal agreement between the actors of its basic triangle. Thus a certain level of consensus must exist between the political-administrative actors, the end beneficiaries and the target groups in relation to the modalities of production and content of the policy implementation acts. This enables the actors to establish the minimum trust necessary for all cooperation. From the point of view of the administration, it becomes very difficult to give concrete form to a public policy without the support of the social groups involved.
Consensus must not be confused with the resource political support.… The latter provides the primary legitimacy of sectoral policies through democratic decision-making mechanisms that operate outside the policy space. Consensus enables the conferring of a second kind of legitimacy referred to as “secondary” through the relationships between the actors belonging to the triangle of the policy in question. This other legitimacy depends on the perception by the actors of the quality of either the policy's implementation acts (administrative achievements – outputs) or the procedure…. In addition, trust assumes particular importance: if it happens to be lacking it can undermine the legitimacy of the state during concrete public intervention processes.
Consensus constitutes an increasingly important factor in the execution of public policies, for example, construction of new roads or power lines, storage of nuclear waste, education reform, public health, hospital closures etc. It would appear, therefore, that this resource is not only precious but also very fragile. The research carried out on participative approaches, in particular, teaches us that a “culture of consensus” requires a certain degree of continuity over time, an equal openness to all actors, standardized conflict-resolution methods, flexible political-administrative practice that enables adaptation to change, and, finally, an adequate routine for exchange between the bodies involved to avoid the structures being too dependent on the turnover of people. Recent examples of measures aimed at strengthening this resource include the establishment of conciliation groups in relation to energy policy (nuclear waste, hydropower, high voltage power lines) and the publication of recommendations by the Confederation for the negotiation of environmental conflicts (DETEC 2004).
Part III - The 10 public action resources
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Logic behind the chapter presentations: possession, modalities of use and exchange
In terms of volume alone, this third part of the book is its pièce de résistance. Its aim is essentially illustrative in that it serves to apply the concept of public action resources presented and developed in the first two parts of this book with the help of a wide range of practical examples. The logic on which its presentation is based is simple: each chapter is dedicated to one of the 10 public action resources, which the text aims to illustrate by presenting their mobilization by each of the three main actors that feature in public policy analysis, that is, the political-administrative actors, the target groups and the beneficiaries.
The majority of the examples provided are taken from the Swiss context in the period 2012 to 2015; however, they are intended to be generic in that they could also come from other countries, in particular, European ones. Despite trying to avoid it, the fact that my work tends to be focused on environmental policies and natural resources probably results in a bias in the selection of examples. For educational reasons, sources are not documented as they have been simplified with a view to highlighting the main characteristics. A large proportion of the examples come from practical studies carried out as part of our courses at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) and other universities, both in Switzerland and abroad, and this enabled me to cover a relatively broad field of substantive public policies. Furthermore, the reader will realise that the detailed structure of the following chapters sometimes forces me to supplement these wide-ranging examples from real life with some stylized and extrapolated ones. The structure also gives rise to some redundancies as observations of one particular social phenomenon served as an illustration for several resources and/or to illustrate the mobilization activities of two or even three actors. These overlaps clearly reflect the variety of the world of resource mobilization, particularly at the level of public policy implementation processes.
The relatively rigid basic structure necessitates processes of definition that are not always obvious but that prove productive due to their systematic limits.
16 - Public policy management by actors’ endowment
- Peter Knoepfel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
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The focus of this chapter is limited to the use of public action resources by the political-administrative actors. It is inspired by the widespread emergence of action plans that arise in connection with almost every public policy today. We have already identified action plans as a separate product of the public policy cycle located between the programming and production of individual and concrete outputs. It should be remembered, nonetheless, that such plans can also be used to manage public policy interventions carried out by large organizations of target groups or beneficiaries. They play a primordial role in public policy implementation processes.
This chapter begins with some reflections on the fundamental premise concerning the efficient and effective use of resources in the conduct of public policies, particularly in the context of their implementation. It then revisits our definition of action plans as a product whose objective is to allocate public action resources in a more targeted way than was the case prior to their – relatively recent – emergence, and demonstrates the key role they assume in the management of public policy implementation. The chapter concludes with some reflections on service-level agreements, a form of contract I consider a category of action plan.
Basic premise for policy implementation: the efficient and effective use of public action resources
The analysis of public action resources facilitates a rational debate on the relationship between the premise of efficiency and that of effectiveness. Efficiency is generally defined as the measurement of the comparative costs of the production of outputs by unit. The measurement is usually limited to traditional resources like Time, Personnel, Money and Property. In contrast, the measurement of effectiveness also includes the impacts (changes in the behaviour of the target groups) and the outcomes of the public action (the contribution of the policy implementation activities, which incur a certain cost, to the resolution of the public problem the policy sets out to resolve).
An efficient administration is not necessarily an effective administration. Of course, economies made at the level of the production of outputs – for example, by means of an acceleration in production (Time), the rationalization of production (Personnel through alteration of the adopted procedures) or not taking the position of opposing actors into account (Consensus) – can reduce the cost of their production.
Part II - New conceptual developments: Resource-based approach and analytical dimensions
- Peter Knoepfel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
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Reminders
It is important to remember, first, that our conceptualization of the relationship between actors and resources starts with the idea that this relationship is strongly structured by the basic institutional rules of the political system – the Swiss political system in my case (for example, rule of law, human rights, executive federalism, principle of direct democracy). This structure is reflected in institutional rules governing possession (right to dispose of and thus mobilize a resource), behavioural institutional rules (permitted and prohibited use of a resource) and decisional institutional rules (time and space for mobilization based on the different stages of the public policy cycle). Neither the appropriation nor mobilization of these resources by the actors are chaotic processes; they are regulated like a Swiss timepiece, particularly during the implementation stage. Thus one can hardly refer to the mobilization of public action resources without referring to the rules that govern these processes. Hence the conclusion already drawn in the previous chapters to the effect that an actor who holds a relatively weak portfolio of resources can emerge victorious from an actors’ game thanks to the intelligent activation of these rules that are sometimes enacted to protect such vulnerable actors.
Second, it should be recalled that the purpose of the mobilization of public policy resources is to influence the competent public actor(s) in relation to the decisions taken on each of the six products of the public policy cycle. Thus it is not primarily a question of influencing the social, economic or socio-cultural behaviour of a partner or adversary actor. Accordingly, in the area of company mergers, the mobilization of an actor's resources for the acquisition of a competitor company consists in the simple mobilization of these societal, economic and social resources ‘outside of public policies’. Given that the crucial product of the public policy on cartels is the approval or rejection of this cartel by the regulator (COMCO, the Competition Commission, in the case of Switzerland), the actor purchaser will mobilize specific public action resources to ‘convince’ COMCO that, despite this purchase, it will not assume a dominant position in the market, a development that would contravene the aims of competition policy.
15 - Political Support
- Peter Knoepfel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
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Definition
According to the democratic rules applicable under the rule of law, when any public policy is established or undergoes a major change to its content, it needs a legal basis that has been approved by a parliamentary majority (sometimes also the population and, possibly, the cantons). This approval gives it “primary” legitimation which differs from “secondary” legitimacy, which depends on the assessment of the policy services and implementation procedure by social groups (see … “resource Consensus”). Hence, while consensus is associated more with the implementation stage, this resource … refers to the capacity to produce legislation within the political-administrative programme (PAP). In particular, it is … the priority weapon of public actors and enables them to assert themselves through the legal resource that it legitimizes vis-à-vis minority social groups.
However, even in the case of legislation supported by a comfortable majority of the executive, the implementation of a public policy can experience periods of crisis, during which this majority support can fluctuate. For example, a public policy can lose its legitimacy and acceptability in the eyes of the majority if the measures are challenged due to adverse affects or impacts that run contrary to the policy objectives (for example, in the absence of accompanying measures, a policy for the restriction of parking in a town or city centre can lead to the transfer of the problem to peripheral communes), or due to conflicting interpretations of the effects of certain provisions (for example, challenging of the right of appeal for organizations by the political right, which see it as a source of unhelpful blockages, while the left consider this right indispensable for the protection of the environment). Indications of the weakening of this resource are reflected in the submission of an increasing number of parliamentary intervention demanding changes to the legislation.
The resource … makes it possible to save on the use of other resources, or in the case of its absence it can lead to their use or, indeed, abuse. Public policy actors that enjoy extensive political support can temporarily dispense with other resources, for example consensus (for example, nuclear policy in France in the 1970s), law (defence policy), time (acceleration and simplification of an intervention while short-circuiting procedures considered as too costly) and the cognitive resource….
17 - Advice for practical application
- Peter Knoepfel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
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Summary
This final chapter is composed entirely of the results of my teaching activities, over the course of which my students carried out various empirical studies on public action resources in relation to freely selected, and therefore very wide-ranging, public policies with a view to analysing the relations of power between the policy actors. Between five and eight different federal or cantonal policies were analysed in the courses held over each year. Given the limited time available and the desirable comparability of the results, the proposed process necessitated a certain standardization of the empirical approach to facilitate the feasibility of the work. Obliged to choose between conceptual ‘purity’ and practical feasibility that would enable the students to experience the pleasure of discovering new issues, I opted for pragmatic guidance. This concerned the units of measurement used for qualifying the observed resources, a comparative model for the visualization of the actors’ resource portfolios and a simple method for identifying exchanges of resources. This chapter ends with a checklist to enable the explanatory role of the actor games to be identified in terms of public policy results.
Units of measurement and indicators
Table 17.1 presents the units of measurement adopted, on the basis of our practical experience, for each of the 10 resources, specified, if required, for each of the three actor groups. It also presents a sample of particular indicators that may, however, vary considerably in reality.
The utility of the units of measurement suggested here is intentionally generic. The indicators also enable the analysis of power relations between public policy actors for descriptive purposes, for example, for discussing the relevance of strategies for changing these power relations with a view to instigating administrative or political reforms in a particular political system.
Identification of the resource portfolios of public policy actors
It is imperative that both the policy analyst and those who hold strategic positions within the actor groups are aware of all of the resources at their own disposal and that of the two other groups. We refer to this as the portfolio of resources, for which an inventory may be carried out for a given moment in time using different tools.
Part IV - Outlook and advice for practical application
- Peter Knoepfel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
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Summary
In this final part of the book I begin by examining a practical application of crucial importance for public policy management, that of involving the targeted allocation of public action resources to the political-administrative actors on the basis of action plans or, more specifically, the instrument generally referred to in Switzerland as ‘service-level agreements’ (see Chapter 16).
Chapter 17 presents some practical advice for researching portfolios of public action resources, and carrying out explanatory analyses that relate the results of decision-making processes and the activities of different actor groups to the mobilization of resources. This should facilitate the evaluation of power relations between actors and the outcomes of public action in specific areas.
Index
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2 - Definition of public action resources
- Peter Knoepfel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
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Overview (reminders)
The action resources of public policy actors constitute the means of action available to each of the public and private actors affected by the collective problem to be resolved. Throughout the policy cycle, the actors mobilize a number of resources that are available to them for the purpose of attaining their objectives. These resources enable them to act within this space, that is to position themselves in relation to the other actors, either on the basis of logics of cooperation (coalitions, apprenticeships) or logics of confrontation (conflicts, obstacles, opposition). The action resources constitute the actors’ power which, according to the classical definition by Max Weber (Weber 1978), consists in the capacity of an actor to impose a particular behaviour on another actor that the latter would not have adopted if it had not been imposed by the former. Thus the resources available to an actor are fundamentally relational in that they constitute a lever of action for the latter in the context of the relationships it maintains with the other actors…. (Knoepfel et al, 2010: 61)
The specifics: ‘Resource-related’ definition of public action resources
The definition of a public action resource as presented in our basic textbook on the analysis of Swiss environmental policies aims to eliminate the ambiguity that continues to exist around the notion of power with the aim of enabling its more advanced application in empirical research and in the everyday management of resources. It is at the heart of this book, which adopts the finite number of these resources hic et nunc along with their qualifiers. However, I would like to extend its basis by referring to studies carried out over the last 20 years on institutional resource regimes (IRR) (see Gerber et al, 2009; de Buren, 2015) and concerning regimes for the management of natural resources. This research is based on a combination of approaches originating from institutional economics (particularly in relation to the environment) and public policy analysis. It focused initially on the area of renewable natural resources (water, air, climate, soil and forests) but progressively extended its interest to manufactured resources, both material (for example, water and aviation infrastructure) and immaterial (landscapes, documented information and labelled heritage).
9 - Money
- Peter Knoepfel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
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Definition
This resource is indispensable to public policy actors in that it enables them to procure many other resources (for example, the promoters of a shopping centre exchange the resources money for law by financing the improvement of access to the site by public transport, pedestrians and cyclists in exchange for the granting of planning permission). This resource draws its importance from the fact that it is very easy to exchange, particularly as many actors enjoy a certain level of budgetary autonomy. This is precisely the reason why the annual and rigid budgetary process of public administrations is the subject of criticism by analysts who support the trend of new public management. They suggest that multi-annual budgets be replaced by service contracts which would enable the more flexible management of this resource. (Knoepfel et al, 2010: 62-3)
Specifics
The saying that ‘money has no smell’ (pecunia non olet) can give us the wrong idea, that is, that money should be seen as a ‘super resource’ and dominant in the hierarchy of all public action resources. In my view, this is not the case at all. First, it is important to differentiate this resource from the resource Property (administrative and financial assets) held in public or private hands. The constitutive values of administrative assets (which render an actor ‘rich’ or ‘poor’) are usually unsaleable and cannot therefore be converted into money. The value of financial assets, although convertible into money, is not always ‘available’ as it is associated with objects with varying degrees of saleability. Thus it is advisable not to consider financial assets as forming part of the resource Money in all cases.
Furthermore, the use of this resource, which is universally available in civil society, is far more limited and regulated than other public action resources in the public policy sphere (for example, measures to prevent corruption, misappropriation of funds and other abuses by the authorities, public procurement, the strict regulation of the use of subsidies). In this sense, as a public action resource, Money does indeed have a traceable ‘smell’ that is consciously regulated by multiple possession, behavioural and decisional institutional rules and, moreover, by substantive public policies (such as anti-money laundering policy and monetary policy).
Contents
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Conclusion: Strengths and weaknesses of the proposed approach
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In order to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the approach presented in this book, which was written over the last four years with numerous interruptions and periods of doubt and reflection, let us return to its initial objectives. The aim was – and still is – to produce a textbook aimed at Master's and doctoral students and the heads of administrative services, private consultancies, NGOs and the staff of professional associations that protect the interests of target groups during public policy processes. The initial objective was to assemble and structure the experiences encountered in the context of their own activities as analysts and/or managers, and to process them in light of concepts already largely developed in our initial textbook of 2006 on public policy analysis and management (first version: 2001, English translation 2011).
What I did not intend initially was to attempt to combine the public action resources approach with that of institutional resource regimes (IRR), which was developed simultaneously on the basis of theoretical and practical research in the area of natural resources. This research initially concerned sustainable development in the area of natural resources (water, forests, landscape, climate and the genetic programme) and subsequently, in the areas of manufactured resources (for example, national memory, stock of rental buildings) and social resources. Today we can confirm that the latter development (presented, essentially, in Part II of this book) constitutes a real innovation that will, however, require future conceptual development.
Throughout the compilation of this book I battled with certain difficulties that I feel I have not quite succeeded in overcoming in this final version (see ‘Weaknesses’). Other aspects of it have proved to be more successful (see ‘Strengths’), at least in their application in the context of teaching and in the development of doctoral theses.
Strengths
Like several other authors who have addressed the topic of public action resources (see Chapter 3), my main preoccupation is to consider these resources as transferrable, objectifiable and in principle, dissociable from their actor-users. It was possible to sustain this conceptual belief throughout the book. This is not something that emerged in the course of my initial teaching or during the compilation of the basic textbook on policy analysis and management.
7 - Law
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Definition
It [the law] is the ultimate source of legitimation of all public action. The different actors are allocated legal resources by all of the general rules of constitutional, civil and public law and by the rules specific to a given sectoral policy. By way of illustration, we can refer here to the right of appeal of NGOs, the rights guaranteed under private law contracts and property rights, the permanent legal basis enabling a public authority to impose speed limits and driving bans (for example, to reduce smog levels in Berlin), the rule defining standing or locus standi for the formulation of opposition in the context of submission to a public enquiry. As a resource, the law consists in the capacity of an actor to act by means of legal norms and provisions.… It is common … for an actor to be unable to mobilize the resource law due to an institutional rule prohibiting this (for example, impossibility of appealing a decision further when all other means of appeal have been exhausted). (Knoepfel et al, 2010: 61-2)
Specifics
Let us recall the identification of the four functions of the law (as specified at the end of Chapter 3): it cannot be stressed enough that only the mobilization of the law (the fourth function) is used to define the resource Law. This function describes the law ‘as an important resource of the public action whose main service that can be mobilized by an actor is the right to be able to impose a behaviour that complies with the objective law on another actor based on their authority (political-administrative actor, including the courts).’ To be able to mobilize this service the actor must have a right of use (opposable subjective right) that is conferred on them by a rule that features in the objective law. For the public actors, this right consists in an explicit norm of competency. It should be noted that the nature of the mobilization can be highly varied and range from a simple substantiation to misappropriation, circumvention or innovation (Schweizer, 2015: 80ff)
Legal rules are obviously also decisive for the recourse to all other public action resources.
6 - Force
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- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 14 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 14 August 2018, pp 109-120
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Summary
Definition
… constraint through force is easy to understand. In effect, the closure of plants considered as illegal by the authorities (for example, the closure of a plant that emits hazardous pollutants through police control), physical control and violence on the part of the law enforcement agencies in response to the opposition of target groups or beneficiaries (for example, occupation of lands intended for the construction of a controversial road) are all examples of the use of force which can be dissociated conceptually from the other resources, even if they are legitimated by the law and generally dependent on human resources.
Public policy actors do not often avail of this resource. First, entire policy sectors do not have access to specialized police forces that can act in this way (for example, specialized police brigades allocated as a priority to a particular area are rare) and, second, the solution involved here is deployed as a last resort. Nonetheless the capacity of public actors to physically constrain an individual or target group of a policy with a view to modifying a behaviour should not be neglected. To this end, the threat of recourse to force can be a determining factor in the policy implementation process.
To avoid being arbitrary, the use of force by a public authority must always be proportional to the intended objective and be based on a legislative provision. When target groups or beneficiaries use violence by deploying mostly illegal means (for example, “ecoterrorist” actions such as the blockage of a property-related resource available to another actor, for example, a nuclear waste convoy), they are seeking a resource that enables them to express claims that are perceived as legitimate but not legally recognized.
The use of force is a very delicate matter and generally requires Political support. In the absence of such support, it runs the risk of prompting the loss of the resource Consensus for a long period of time. Moreover, in certain situations the recourse to Force should be highly publicized to be effective. In the area of road safety, for example, it would appear to be impossible to physically control those who contravene the rules of the road at all times and in all places.