Teaching public policy: Global convergence or difference?

Abstract

To the extent the policy outcomes depend on policy capacity, an important ingredient in that capacity is the training of public servants, and in particular through MPP and MPA programs. As the introduction to this journal issue dedicated to that theme, this article reviews debates about the content and convergence of such programs around the world. The appropriate nature and quality of that content has been the object of attention of accreditation schemes and best practice research, and in the spread of programs internationally. A framework for understanding that spread or diffusion is presented which highlights the interaction of national context, international dynamics, and institutional isomorphism. The articles in this issue clearly show that there has indeed been diffusion, but only modest convergence or programmatic isomorphism. At the same time, there is a persistent sense of an emergent epistemic community and practices in the field, suggesting that the next stage of research should focus on international networks in the field, and the connection between programs, practice, and capacity.

1 Introduction

The adage that “those who can’t do, teach” has its corollary: “those who do, must be taught.” The assumption typically is that those who “do better” have been “taught better,” or at the very least that their training and education has equipped them for their work. This applies as much to brain surgery as it does to public policy-making and administration. There is a clear link (we assume) between ability, or capacity, and training and education. This is the rationale for this issue and its articles, a rationale that springs from the growing interest in policy capacity and its constitutive components. As Wu, Ramesh, & Howlett (2015: 167) note: “the policy capacity of a government plays the key role in determining policy outcomes.” They go further and argue that, at the individual level of policy-makers, public managers, and policy analysts, policy capacity is determined by their knowledge and skills. Despite this clear connection between capacity and training, we know little about the key graduate programs that provide this training – programs in public policy, public administration, and public affairs (we shall refer to all of these generically as MPP/MPA). Howlett and colleagues have done the leading work on this question, surveying policy analysts in government and providing a sketch of their background education and training (which always includes public administration or some mix of social sciences), but they have not examined that education itself (Howlett, 2009; Howlett, 2015; Howlett & Migone, 2014; Howlett, Migone, Wellstead, & Evans, 2014; Howlett & Newman, 2010; Howlett & Wellstead, 2011, 2012). Most of the work on MPP/MPA programs has had a pedagogical and curricular focus (Breaux, Clynch, & Morris, 2003; Ellwood, 2008; Geva-May & Maslove, 2006; Hur & Hackbart, 2009; Straussman, 2008), though more recently there has been interest as well in their migration and spread (Fritzen, 2008; Geva-May, Nasi, Turrini, & Scott, 2008; Mahbubani, Yiannouka, Fritzen, Tuminez, & Tan, 2013).

The point is that if we are interested in policy capacity, we should be interested in a key ingredient in that capacity – the training of people who will be engaged in public policy and public administration, which includes those who will work within government, those who will work in organizations that develop advice for government, and those who will work in non-profit organizations that perform social functions that might otherwise be provided by government. The debate over what constitutes governance, and more importantly, “good governance,” reflects this link to the extent that civil service systems, training, and capacity are all assumed to be part of the mix (Fukuyama, 2004, 2011, 2013, 2014; Holt & Manning, 2014; Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011). When we consider that training, at least in the form of MPP/MPA programs, two basic research questions arise. One is the pedagogical content, and what is considered “essential” or core to the field. It is quite important to recognize that these programs are embedded in, and reflective of, the academic and practice fields of “public administration” and “public policy.” Fields are constituted in a variety of ways – canonical texts (e.g., Lindblom on incrementalism), textbooks which purport to introduce the field (usually summarizing and presenting the canonical texts – e.g., Dunn, Public Policy Analysis: An Introduction or Weimer and Vining, Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice), encyclopedia and handbooks, journals, and conferences. Academic programs (and the schools or departments in which they are housed) are the main “delivery” and replication mechanisms for the field. And this raises a second question about these programs, whether what is considered “essential” varies in systematic ways, or is in fact converging toward a general model. Is an MPP/MPA the same in Boston and in Beijing?

The articles in this issue explore the content of MPP/MPA programs through a comparative lens, with a focus on the overarching question of whether there is any global convergence toward a standard model in terms of content and pedagogy. The content question matters for capacity; the convergence question matters for what we might think of as “interoperability” of governance regimes through the spread of standards (Brunsson & Jacobsson, 2000; Rieneke, Gond, & Moon, 2012; Sahlin-Andersson, 2000). The “interoperability” of governance regimes works at several levels and through several mechanisms. We take it for granted, for example, that governments report their public accounts (more or less) according to certain accepted accounting standards (the UN Classification of Functions of Government, or COFOG), which in turn allows comparison. Transparency International provides an annual Corruptions Perceptions Index that actually ranks countries, on the assumption that there is a standard of good governance against which all can be measured. The work of international aid agencies in “capacity-building” and good governance assumes that some types of systems and practices work better than others. All of these together create a transnational space of governance principles and practices. On top of all that, we are seeing the emergence of global public policy regimes and transnational administration (more on this below), and the personnel who manage these regimes are increasingly part of an informal cadre of international public servants. The possible convergence of training in graduate programs may be an important, but unacknowledged, ingredient in the creation of global policy making.

2 What's in a name? The distinctions between MPP and MPA

Many have argued that the distinction between the MPA and MPP degrees has diminished in the half century since the latter degree was developed at Harvard, Berkeley and the other Ford Foundation funded programs. Indeed, as discussed in the Pal and Clark article in this issue, some of the long-established schools like Princeton and Columbia have maintained the name of the MPA degree, even though their curricula have evolved to offer a higher proportion of policy-oriented courses than many MPP programs.

NASPAA currently describes the two degrees as follows:

What is an MPA degree? The Masters of Public Administration (MPA) degree is the core professional degree for a management career in public service. The curriculum is designed to aid students in developing the skills and techniques used by leaders and managers to implement policies, projects, and programs that resolve important societal problems. Graduates of an MPA program work in all levels of government (federal, state, and local), in nonprofits, in international organizations, consulting firms, and in the private sector.

What is an MPP degree? The Masters of Public Policy (MPP) degree emphasizes analyzing and evaluating information to solve policy problems. As analysts, managers, and leaders, MPP graduates work with quantitative and qualitative data to develop, assess, and evaluate alternative approaches to current and emerging issues. Their careers are in variety of public service fields and in all levels of government (federal, state, and local), in nonprofits, international organizations, consulting firms, and in the private sector.

What's the difference between an MPA and an MPP? MPA and MPP programs have blended and converged as complements to one another, with courses and specializations often overlapping. Some schools combine the degrees and name them differently. … Others may offer a master's degree in public affairs (MPAff). … In general, MPA programs place more emphasis on management and implementation techniques, while MPP programs emphasize policy research and evaluation. For example, a course on analyzing policy methods would be more popular among MPP students, while a course in managerial economics may pertain more to MPA students. (NASPAA, 2016)

There are at least two important trends that are encouraging the degrees to become more similar − encouraging more policy analysis in MPA programs and more public management in MPP programs. The first is that MPP graduates recognize that they need management skills in order to “make a difference” in the policy areas that interest them. The second is that fewer applicants to MPP and MPA programs aspire to a career in government. John Ellwood, a Berkeley MPP professor, lays some of the blame on his fellow policy analysts:

Let's face it, who wants to spend their life managing a public bureaucracy? That is what one would think if one were to read what we write about public management. We love markets, and in our hearts we think of government bureaus as monopolies – so increasingly, we are enamored with management innovations that seek to build in market incentives into management actions (the New Public Management). Because of our inherent disapproval of the public provision of goods and services, we approve of shifting more and more public activities to the private and nonprofit sectors. This has led to what a number of us have labeled the hollow state, in which government provides almost no goods or services directly, but is mostly in the business of creating and monitoring contracts with those that do provide such goods and services. (Ellwood, 2008: 179)

As a result, both MPP and MPA programs now make explicit in their marketing pitches that the degrees provide leadership skills that will be useful outside as well as inside government.

In this article we will use the term MPP/MPA as a synonym for public affairs degrees, that is to all the degrees that resemble the MPA and MPP degrees, regardless of the precise name of the degree. Similarly, the term “public policy school” is used to refer to an institutional unit within a university which has as its primary Master's-level program, an MPP, MPA or similar degree.

In the remainder of this introduction, we highlight the detailed reasons why convergence matters, outline a model of variables that affect convergence and divergence, and present a summary of the articles in the issue.

3 MPP/MPA programs: a conceptual framework

The links between MPP/MPA content, convergence, and policy capacity are important for understanding at least some of the dynamics of contemporary public policy making. Let us list four obvious and not-so-obvious points in this regard. First, the historical inspiration for the creation of public administration as an academic discipline was clearly the improvement of governance (or what today we call policy capacity). Wilson (1887) is normally remembered for the politics/administration dichotomy, but he enunciated two themes that are still with us: (1) the role of a formal academic discipline in improving administration, and (2) international comparisons of leaders and laggards. On the first, he wrote that “…there should be a science of administration which shall seek to straighten the paths of government, to make its business less unbusinesslike, to strengthen and purify its organization, and to crown its duties with dutifulness.” On the second, he lamented that: “… in spite of our [the US] vast advantages in point of political liberty, and above all in point of practical political skill and sagacity, so many nations are ahead of us in administrative organization and administrative skill.” MPP/MPA programs have always been professional degrees that purport to provide rigorous and sophisticated graduate education for practitioners – the usual formula is some variation of “leaders in public service.” Policy analysts and managers come from a variety of disciplines, but the MPP/MPA is a crucial one, and in some countries arguably the pathway to senior positions (at least, that is the way that they are marketed). Indeed, some countries have national academies, with the French École Nationale d’Administration (ENA) as the exemplar, and in these cases the marketing matches the reality.

Second, as a consequence of being both professional degrees and quite possibly the training ground of the administrative and policy elite, a good deal of attention is paid to the quality and content of those programs. Illustrations of this can be seen in accreditation regimes and various efforts to recognize and reward “best practices.” On accreditation, there has been a good deal of work over the last decade by standards-setting bodies to describe the operation and content of high quality public administration and public policy programs. In 2009, NASPAA adopted the Accreditation Standards for Master's degree programs and provided a First Draft of Self Study Instructions, which included examples under each of five high-level competencies (leadership, contributing to the policy process, critical thinking and decision-making, public values, communication) (NASPAA, 2012). These standards themselves do not specify fields or courses, but in the aggregate do indicate what the content of a program – and hence public management as taught – should be. The European Association for Public Administration Accreditation (EAPAA) issued its accreditation criteria in September 2006, and they have been periodically revised, with the last revision (version 9) in January 2013. In May 2008, the UN/IASIA Task Force on Standards of Excellence for Public Administration Education and Training issued its Final Report (United Nations, 2008). It specified five components of a high-quality curriculum: management of public service organizations, the improvement of public sector processes, leadership in the public sector, application of quantitative and qualitative techniques of analysis, and understanding public policy and the organizational environment.

A related aspect to these efforts was the growth of best practice research in public administration, broadly linked to the new public management (NPM) movement. Several analyses of the best practices movement refer to the iconic Osborne and Gaebler book Reinventing Government (Osborne & Gaebler, 1993). The subtitle referred to transformation in the public sector through an “entrepreneurial spirit.” As Löffler puts it: “The New Public Management (NPM) of the 1980s and 1990s was accompanied by the rise to ascendancy of “best-practice” case analysis” (Löffler, 2000: 191). NPM's celebration of private sector practices also stimulated a renewed appreciation of the importance of the practical knowledge of senior public sector executives, of the buried wisdom in different cases of reform and effective management. Overman and Boyd identify Chase and Reveal's 1983 book, How to Manage in the Public Sector (Chase & Reveal, 1983), as the “quintessential contemporary statement of practical wisdom in public management” (Overman & Boyd, 1994: 70). Bardach said something similar only a few years later: “practitioner lore is abundant” (Bardach, 1987: 189). Sometime in this period an academic policy community allegedly coalesced around NPM, the local knowledge and wisdom of practitioners, and a determination to circulate and promote best practices in academic teaching: “The policy community of public management researchers began at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government where scholars looking enviously at the business school understood both research and reform to be tied to real cases of management practice and deliberating senior executives” (Overman & Boyd, 1994: 74).

A third point, one which flows from the two previous ones, is that MPP/MPA programs have been spreading internationally. The Atlas of Public Management (http://www.atlas101.ca/pm/) provides a database of 119 programs from around the world, and while it is not exhaustive, it is comprehensive enough to suggest a pattern of growth and spread from the Anglo-democracies, to western Europe, and then after the fall of the Soviet Union, to former Soviet Union republics and central and eastern Europe, and most recently to South America, Asia, and Africa. More detailed evidence on these developments is presented in the respective articles in this issue. At this point, we need only highlight some of the drivers behind the spread. At its most basic and fundamental, of course, if we consider public administration (and later, public policy analysis) as “technologies of the bureaucratic state,” then the spread of the discipline will parallel the spread of the modern bureaucratic state. A similar machinery needs similarly skilled technicians, particularly when that machinery is viewed as a competitive asset. Wilson, writing in 1887, was already worried about the US being behind in “administrative organization and administrative skill.” In more recent times this anxiety has been transposed into the desire to be “modern” and to “modernize.” This was clearly seen in the way in which a “global movement” around NPM coursed through national capitals (Kettl, 2005), and in the endless injunctions by international organizations like the OECD to “modernize” (OECD, 2005; Pal, 2008, 2012). An interesting puzzle is exactly how these programs and models spread. In some cases it is a matter of coercive policy transfer (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Hadjiisky, Pal, & Walker, 2017) through the governance programs of bilateral agencies and international organizations like the World Bank (Andrews, 2011, 2013; Pritchett, Woolcock, & Andrews, 2012). In others, it is a form of “franchising” leading programs, such as Harvard's Kennedy School MPP (Mahbubani et al., 2013). In others it is simply emulation channeled through epistemic communities that results in institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983).

This leads to our fourth, and somewhat less obvious point. One of the current frontiers of research is the transnationalization of public policy and the accompanying transnationalization of public administration, which Stone and Ladi define as “the regulation, management and implementation of global policies of a public nature by both private and public actors operating beyond the boundaries and jurisdictions of the state, but often in areas beneath the global level” (Stone & Ladi, 2015: 840). Following Kingsbury et al. (Kingsbury, Krisch, & Stewart, 2005), they propose five types of international administration:

(a) international administration, where formal international organizations are the main actors (e.g. the UN Security Council); (b) transnational networks, which are dominated by informal cooperation between state regulators (e.g. the Basel Committee); (c) distributed administration, when domestic agencies take decisions on issues of global and transnational concern (e.g. national environmental regulators implementing decisions on biodiversity conservation or greenhouse gas emissions) …, (d) hybrid intergovernmental–private administration, where private and governmental actors interact (e.g. the Codex Alimentarius Committee on food safety standards); and (e) administration by private institutions, when regulation is carried out by private bodies (e.g. the International Standardization Organization). (Stone & Ladi, 2015: 847–848)

The existence of these networks of transnational public administration and global policy making, something first noted by Slaughter over a decade ago (Slaughter, 2004), begs the question of “interoperability.” This is not a matter of speaking the same language (usually English) in a linguistic sense, but of being able to speak the same language in a conceptual sense. To know the argot, the acronyms, the professional terminology, to inhabit a common space of theory and practice. This does not imply agreement or automatic coordination, but it can establish a common set of references and touchstones of practice. This is evident at the national level. The national schools of public administration are explicitly designed to develop a skilled cadre of officials that will manage policy in a way consistent with national standards. The impulse was there as early as 1854 with the Northcote-Trevelyan Report, which recommended a professional, merit-based civil service (Northcote & Trevelyan, 1854). While the US lacks a national school, the NASPAA accreditation process seeks to achieve the same objective of professionalization and standards, as does EAPPA. It should not therefore be surprising that the OECD has established a Global Network of Schools of Government to strengthen “the link between international policy dialogue and national efforts to build capabilities in the public sector” (http://www.oecd.org/gov/global-network-schools-of-government.htm). Our point is that in order to understand the deeper dynamics of global public policy making and the “orchestration” that seems to be an emerging function of international organizations (Abbott, Genschel, Snidal, & Zangl, 2015), we need to have a better grasp of what the French rightly call the formation of national and international public policy actors.

Since we are at the beginning of this type of investigation, it would be premature to attempt a fully developed model of the dynamics of program spread and divergence/convergence. However, since convergence is a theme throughout the articles in this issue, we can provide a crude benchmark of what we have in mind. As a thought experiment, we might imagine an MPP program offered at University X. We’ll call it MPP-X. It's a two-year, four-semester, program with core courses, other requirements, etc., taught by a complement of 16 faculty. Let's say every semester, half the faculty get on a plane and go to Beijing, and teach exactly the same thing. Then they return home, do the second semester at University X while the other half of the faculty teach a semester in Beijing. This continues for four semesters until both cohorts of students graduate. All the students in both venues would receive the MPP-X from University X (maybe as a dual degree), but they would have had exactly the same program and degree. Now, continue the thought experiment, and imagine that these heroic faculty are academic super-heroes who can bend space and time (we’ll call them X-myn, since they are gender diverse), and appear everywhere simultaneously, teaching all MPP students on the planet. There would only therefore be one planetary MPP – same courses, same content, same professors. This would be the highest conceivable extent of convergence. X-myn, alas, do not exist, though there are some peripatetic academics who come close. Short of that, we can measure convergence against this fanciful standard in terms how similar programs are becoming in terms of requirements, content, length, faculty background etc.

Despite the points made immediately above, it is not obvious that MPP/MPA programs should converge on any single model – since they are rooted in national administrative practices and traditions, it could just as easily be expected that these programs will have strong national characteristics. Convergence then is an open question, a matter of degree, a reflection of trends as well as counter-trends. The accumulated work represented in the articles in this issue, however, point us in some fruitful directions. We can think of the dynamics of program diffusion as combining three sets of variables and drivers: national context, international dynamics, and institutional isomorphism.

3.1 National context

3.1.1 Post-secondary educational system

MPP/MPA programs are in most cases offered through universities, and universities are governed within a national post-secondary system. The variations in these systems have implications for the programs. Countries with a legacy of “national schools” – France's ENA, the former Soviet Union states whose party schools were converted to “national academies” – will have a different configuration of programs from countries that have a less hierarchical and more competitive university system. The programs offered in national schools will have more prestige, will be expected to reflect in some sense the national character and national circumstances, and to train those who will become the upper echelons of the public service. Added to this are national accreditation and quality assurance systems. This is another area that needs comparative research, but anecdotally, we can see that there are variations in quality assurance approaches. Europe has EAPAA (more on this below), the US has NASPAA, and both of these are embedded within wider quality assurance systems for post-secondary institutions as a whole. Most other countries have national (or in the case of some federations) and sub-national regulatory regimes that may stipulate not only the standards for MPP/MPA programs, but whether they can be offered at all. Several of the articles in this issue show how national programs are shaped by these national quality assurance regimes.

3.1.2 Character of social sciences and public administration

Social science and scholarship have the aspiration of universality, but are always grounded in the realities of national particularities such as language, the historical evolution and emphasis of social science disciplines, and national administrative traditions and realities. The US is often taken as the benchmark or standard in the social sciences, and its intellectual hegemony – not least through sheer number of universities (and the most highly ranked ones), programs, associations, and scholars – is clear. Notwithstanding that, there remain clear national variations that ultimately get reflected in MPP/MPA programs. Language alone is one barrier, and so the social sciences and public administration in different countries will have their own journals. Different “schools” or orientations in the social sciences will develop and establish themselves (Eisfeld & Pal, 2010), creating path dependencies that ultimately get reflected in teaching and research orientations. In Europe, for example, public administration in many countries was first developed in law faculties, and so programs there often have a stronger legal flavor than elsewhere, which then gets reflected in administrative practice (senior public servants there typically have law degrees).

3.2 International dynamics

3.2.1 International organizations and networks of public administration

Scholarship and university programs by their nature stem from the medieval stadium generale (Cobban, 1975), and consequently have always had an international or universalist character. Wilson in 1887 was arguing to borrow European standards of public administration teaching, so we should consider the international flow of knowledge, scholarship, teaching and consequently program models as quite normal. There was an intensification of this flow in the post-war period, however, linked in part to the emergence of public administration and governance as key ingredients in economic development. International organizations like the OECD and the World Bank became important catalysts in supporting an economic growth paradigm (Schmeltzer, 2016), and began to support networks around the development of governance practices that would support that paradigm. The OECD started early, sponsoring the first international conference on public administration in Madrid in 1978 (Pal, 2012). The World Bank got into the game somewhat belatedly (its Articles of Incorporation prevented it from getting involved in “politics”) in 1996, when it acknowledged that corruption and degraded state capacity were major impediments to growth (Arndt & Oman, 2006; Rose-Ackerman, 2016). These organizations and others became parts of overlapping sets of loose international networks (McNutt & Pal, 2011; Pal & Ireland, 2009) promoting the spread of best practices in public administration through capacity building projects in both government and academe. The networks consist of international governmental organizations, bilateral aid agencies, foundations, professional associations, consultants, and peripatetic academics, among others.

As an illustration, consider the development of public administration in the former Soviet space. With the collapse of communism, these states were left with an administrative apparatus organized around Marxist-Leninist planning principles, severely truncated social science disciplines, and no management faculties to speak of beyond central party schools. There were multiple entrants into the field. George Soros established the Open Society Foundation (OSF) and Central European University, both headquartered in Budapest. OSF branches were established throughout many capitals in central and eastern Europe, and began both civil society development programs, as well as governance capacity building programs, such as the Local Governance Initiative and the Think Tank Fund (the former is now discontinued). It launched a Policy Fellows Program in the 2000s, supporting young policy advocates from around the region for a year to work on open society projects, bringing them to Budapest for training with “international scholars” (public policy and public administration professors, typically from North America and the UK). At the same time, academics throughout the region realized that they lacked public management expertise, and in 1994 established the Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe (NISPAcee) – with funding from the US State Department, channeled through NASPAA, which provided advice, exchanges, and study tours to US MPP/MPA programs. The OECD and the European Union established SIGMA (Support for Improvement in Governance and Management) in 1992 to help Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia (as it was then), Hungary, Poland, and Romania prepare for eventual accession to the EU. Today, SIGMA is active in public governance capacity building in the EU Enlargement Countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey, as well as the EU Neighbourhood Countries of Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Georgia, Jordan, Lebanon, Moldova, Morocco, Tunisia, and Ukraine.

Every project among these networks and recipient countries has its own specific character, but in all cases involve the transfer of western models of governance and public administration, and in the academic field, western (usually US) MPP/MPA program designs. Of course, transfer does not happen without translation and adjustment to the national traditions and circumstances mentioned above, but it is an internationalizing dynamic that encourages convergence. We can mention two current, anecdotal examples. When the government of Kazakhstan launched its ambition to modernize its economy and join the top 50 global economies by 2050 (the “Kazakhstan 2050 Strategy”), it asked the OECD to conduct a diagnostique of its central government machinery (OECD, 2014). When the Russian Academy of Public Administration and National Economy (RANEPA) decided to review its public administration teaching programs in 2013, it received support from the World Bank to bring in an international consulting team of academics from leading international MPP/MPA schools. Based on their recommendations, RANEPA then launched an English-language Master of Global Public Policy in 2015 (disclosure: one of us, Pal, was part of the consulting team and teaches in the program).

3.2.2 Accreditation and quality assurance

We mentioned above that quality assurance is normally a matter of national post-secondary educational policy. However, professional disciplines have long had their own special configurations of quality assurance and accreditation, usually delegated from state authorities – the medical professions typically have colleges of some sort to oversee training and licensing, and there are similar arrangements in other professions such as teaching, accounting, and engineering. MBAs have developed their own national as well as international accreditation systems, to the point that no serious MBA program can exist without an international seal of approval from one or all three of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the Association of MBAs (AMBA), or the European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS). The pressure for accreditation in the MBA field comes from the high cost of the degree, the assumption that “management is management” and consequently is a generic set of skills that can be taught anywhere by anyone with no national advantage per se (hence expanding the competitive market). Indeed, a national focus in the MBA space is now possibly perceived as a disadvantage, given that so much business is global.

None of these factors have the same force in the MPP/MPA space, but there are the normal requirements for quality assurance. In the US that has developed, through NASPAA, into a robust accreditation system. Of its 300 members, 177 schools (191 programs) are accredited. Until the 2000s, NASPAA had deliberately avoided going outside the US, despite occasional requests, but now has started international accreditation, with Tsinghua University (Beijing), American University in Cairo (Egypt), and the KDI School of Public Policy and Management (South Korea) as accredited members. NASPAA's accreditation standards are competency based, and so are not a literal standard of US or western requirements. But the globalization of the accreditation process, and the spread of the idea of universal competencies, are themselves important markers of convergence around practices and some assumptions.

The European system is predictably multi-layered and acronym afflicted, but also illustrates a powerful driver toward convergence around commonly understood and accepted standards. EAPAA has only two official members, both of which are themselves associations of member programs – the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA) and NISPAcee. EAPAA itself is accredited through the European Quality Assurance Registry for Higher Education (EQAR) and the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE). As well, EAPAA collaborates closely with the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS), the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration (IASIA), and NASPAA.

3.3 Institutional isomorphism

Both national context and the international dynamics described above depend on explicit design and intent; on the one hand to reflect national particularities and traditions, on the other to spread common standards or best practices. But there are also informal factors that can encourage convergence within the MPP/MPA space. The very existence of an international journal like Policy & Society, read by professionals in the field, cited and used in classrooms from Singapore to Syracuse, becomes an intellectual grouting that connects academics, students, practitioners, and programs around the world. A global event like the International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP) brings together hundreds of academics representing MPP/MPA programs from every continent, and while most of the exchange is about research and theory, a good deal of the informal gossip is about programs, personalities, comparative salaries and working conditions, and the comical ineptitude of university administration.

DiMaggio and Powell's concept of institutional isomorphism captures these dynamics nicely (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). The MPP/MPA space clearly constitutes what they call an “organizational field.” They describe a process of institutional definition, or “structuration,” which consists of four parts, most notably (for our purposes) of “the development of a mutual awareness among participants in a set of organizations that they are involved in a common enterprise” (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983: 148). This field structuration is particularly characteristic of professions, and is subject to powerful forces that lead to what they call “institutional isomorphism.” The organizational actors within the field are responding and adjusting to each other, and early adopters of institutional innovation within the field establish a dominance so that, over time, while “organizations may try to change constantly…the aggregate effect of individual change is to lessen the extent of diversity within the field” (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983: 148–149). This isomorphism can arise from organizational competition within a given environment (market), so that the result is an equilibrium among competitors both in terms of numbers (what the environment or market can bear) and organizational form (the most efficient or rational). Corner gas stations are a good example of equilibrium and isomorphism: they may literally face each other across the street and be virtually identical in products and services. DiMaggio and Powell identify three mechanisms of institutional isomorphism – coercive, mimetic, and normative. Coercive isomorphism occurs in instances where organizations are dependent on other organizations or subject to their rules. This helps us explain isomorphism at the national (or in the EU case, regional) level – MPP/MPA programs are dependent on state authorities through quality assurance regimes and for budgets, and so will evince similar characteristics. But with respect to isomorphism across national boundaries – global convergence around certain models – mimetic and normative isomorphism hold more explanatory potential. Mimetic isomorphism occurs in conditions of uncertainty and goal ambiguity, inducing new organizations to search for “models” or what we termed “best practices.” This can be informal and even ritualistic and, ironically, a way of proving innovation: “Organizations tend to model themselves after similar organizations in their field that they perceive to be more legitimate or successful. The ubiquity of certain kinds of structural arrangements can more likely be credited to the universality of mimetic processes than to any concrete evidence that the adopted models enhance efficiency” (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983: 152).

Normative isomorphism is most characteristic of professionalization, and the spread of academic programs is a prime example. Professionalization of a field depends on the development of its “cognitive base” and the “growth and elaboration of professional networks that span organizations and across which new models diffuse rapidly” (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983: 152). MPP/MPA programs of course are anchored in the fields of public administration and public policy. The public administration field is the older of the two, with public policy emerging in the 1960s (deLeon, 1988, 2006; Radin, 2013). Institutional field development involved the creation of schools, journals, conferences, professional associations and the public policy sections within them, and Master's and doctoral programs. What DiMaggio and Powell refer to as the growth of “mutual awareness among participants” of the organizational field is further developed through the veneration of canonical articles and texts, and the publication of encyclopedia, handbooks, guides, and introductions (beginner and advanced). The modern apparatus of citation and h-indexes, journal rankings, and program (US News & World Report) and (global) university rankings rounds out the contours of a now reasonably well-defined academic organizational field of public administration and public policy. Disputes and contestation of course continue about the margins and the lines, but these are family quarrels in most cases, and indeed reinforce the sense of there is in fact a field to argue about.

Professional and mimetic isomorphism complement each other nicely in capturing the dynamics of field generation and replication (though coercive dynamics are also at play). We can take the RANEPA example above as an illustration. The university wanted to review its public management programs, and at the same time raise its profile since it was a newly created university that combined the previous Academy of National Economy and the Russian Academy of Public Administration. It enlisted the World Bank office in Moscow to organize a program review. As chair of the review committee, the Bank recruited a former senior administrator from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, who then in turn recruited two other members from two other internationally recognized schools (international recognition here reflecting the field consensus). The team was asked to recommend a Master's-level program that would be “global” – that is, recognized as top tier in the field. The resulting Master of Global Public Policy (MGPP) was designed with the informally acknowledged parameters of MPA and MPP programs in mind (leading models such as the Kennedy School, Georgetown, SIPA, etc.), but with “Russian accents.” The program is taught in English, recruits internationally, and is taught by a faculty cadre with the requisite training in the field, including international faculty who come to Moscow to teach intensive courses.

This pattern will be familiar to most readers – starting a new MPA or MPP program, or reviewing an existing one, will involve exactly the mimetic processes outlined by DiMaggio and Powell. The search and review will automatically reach for “models” and professionally accepted, if informal and somewhat indistinct, standards of program design. Advisors and reviewers themselves come from within the profession, often from the very model schools and programs that are the unspoken standard. This is all reinforced by the other aspects of mimetic and normative isomorphism mentioned above – a shared cognitive space, similar training of professionals, and increasingly similar career advancement requirements (e.g., standardized CVs, assessment of the quality of publications in terms of citation indexes, and at the rank of full professor, an assessment of international impact of one's scholarship).

Then why don’t all programs look like the Kennedy School? There are several obvious reasons, such as resources (Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School was explicitly modeled on Harvard, but had the resources to match its ambition), national language and national public administration systems (the MGPP's “Russian accents”), and specific national policy challenges (e.g., a resource-based economy, and hence an MPP with concentration on resource economics). Even within the institutional isomorphism framework, we would expect variation simply as a result of the absence of complete coercion – there is no global accreditation agency (though NASPAA's growing international accreditation work is intriguing in this respect), and the efforts to coordinate academic programs and the “field” at a global level (e.g., the OECD's Network of Schools of Government, the United Nations Public Administration Network, the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management) rest on voluntary compliance. However, these all imply that differentiation among programs is a bug, not a feature – the forces of convergence are the dominating logic, the barriers are accidental. But differentiation also may have its own logic, irrespective of national circumstances or local demands. The idea of “frequency dependent selection” in evolutionary biology suggests that being rare can be an advantage, as long as that rarity is only a slight variation from the norm (Pinker, 2002: 260–261). It casts some light on fashion, where slight but not extreme variations from the norm can convey status (e.g., narrow lapels or ties when everyone else has wide ones; longer or shorter skirts). Transposed to the MPP/MPA world, as the Pal and Clark article in this issue notes, we may consequently have an apparent paradox of more differentiated programs coupled with a more tightly integrated or harmonized set of practices and professional communities.

4 Articles in this issue

The articles in this issue assess the forces of convergence and divergence in MPP/MPA programs around the world. Pal and Clark examine the “Anglo-sphere” or the Anglo-democracies, defined as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Drawing on the Atlas of Public Management database, they analyze 99 programs across the five countries in terms of subject matter emphasis, the amount of required quantitative courses, and program length. Given the shared history and language of these countries, one would expect strong evidence of convergence here, if anywhere. By calculating a standard for courses and credits, they are able to compare programs in terms of required one-semester-equivalents, and find that the programs vary between 10 and 20, with most within a range of 12–18. Using another calculation (the proportion of enrolment-adjusted course offerings, or PEACO, in each subject), they can determine the relative weight of policy-oriented vs. management-oriented courses, and of mathematics-economics intensive courses versus other subjects. Combined, these then yield a comprehensive classification of curricular types, using the criteria: (1) course requirements (high, medium, low), (2) subject matter emphasis (policy or management), (3) mathematics-economics content (higher versus lower). Some of their findings:

•	US programs tend to have higher course requirements (the UK tends to have the lowest)
•	Australia/New Zealand are evenly split between low and high, while Canada shows a more even distribution across high-, medium-, and low-course requirements, though the tilt is clearly toward lower course requirements
•	Australia/New Zealand programs are 100% in the lower mathematics/economics (including quantitative methods); Canada has about two-thirds of its programs in the lower-mathematics category, the UK is almost evenly split; but the US is predominantly (80%) higher-mathematics.

These findings clearly challenge the convergence hypothesis, and the article cites some of the reasons mentioned above, but cannot resist mentioning that there remains a “vivid perception that the field as it is practiced and taught today is more closely bound.”

The article by Marleen Brans and Laurien Coenen looks at another case where we might expect convergence, less because of the anonymous forces of globalization, and more through the direct policy initiatives of the EU in the European space such as the European Credit Transfer System, and the harmonization of bachelor and master programs under the Bologna process. However, Brans and Coenen note that this has confronted traditionally divergent politico-administrative systems as well as varied “translations” of common trends such as NPM. They note that there is no single model of public administration teaching in Europe, nor a common institutional “home” in a single type of academic department. The article considers the effects of peer learning activities such as the Erasmus-Socrates collaborative networks, and intensified efforts around European accreditation of programs. The Erasmus-Socrates program bifurcated the disciplines of political science and public administration in 1997, and until 2006 had a program sponsoring a Thematic Network of Public Administration (TNPA) consisting of 122 higher education institutions that offered undergraduate and graduate programs in public administration and/or public management. The TNPA supported the dissemination of course content and pedagogy, case study development, and both intra-EU and international collaborations. It was engaged with NISPAcee, EAPAA, and supported the establishment of the European Public Administration Network (EPAN). EAPAA's mission of accreditation extends across all members of the Council of Europe, as well as the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and has flowed directly into the “Tuning” exercise around competency based education that was launched in Europe in the mid-2000s. Despite all these heroic efforts at convergence and harmonization, the article concludes that there remains “ongoing diversity in PA degree programs in Europe,” reflecting both national educational priorities and the relative autonomy of the academic community. There has been some convergence in the collective increase in the proportion of courses on European integration and comparative public administration, and an increased mobility among students and scholars. English is more prevalent, but not ubiquitous.

Katarína Staroňová and Gyorgy Gajduschek continue the analysis of Europe by addressing the central and Eastern European countries (CEE), focusing specifically on five of them: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. The distinction between CEE and “Europe” is somewhat artificial, of course, given that many countries in that region are now members of the EU (as are all five of the ones considered in the article). However, Staroňová and Gajduschek argue that these countries share important characteristics: the legacy of an extremely centralized state system under communism, the Soviet academic system's treatment of the social sciences (particularly political science and economics), the turbulence after the collapse in 1991, and the intensification of demands on universities to come up to international standards. As a result, MPA and public policy programs only began in the region after 1991, aided (as we noted above) through international support around initiatives like the creation of NISPAcee. Given this late start, the rupture from the previous system, and the open hunger to “catch up” with the west, we might expect rapid and deep convergence. However, Staroňová and Gajduschek show that in fact MPA programs in the region do not fit well with the mainstream model. A large proportion of programs continue to emphasize legal subjects with a theory-driven rather than practice oriented pedagogy. Moreover, they find that in terms of a shared “public administration identity” in CEE countries, variation is sometimes actually greater within countries than among them, and that the character of many programs seems to reflect accidents of design rather than clear pedagogical purpose. Like Pal and Clark, however, they cannot let go of the convergence hypothesis, pointing out that the proportion of legal subjects is declining, and that there may be more gradual convergence than their “snapshot” has detected.

Mikhail Pryadilnikov examines the development of public policy training and MPA programs in Russia, with a focus on the three leading institutions: RANEPA, Moscow State University, and the Higher School of Economics (HSE). The two fields have nonetheless become popular, with more than half of all Russian universities (of which there are over 1000) now offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in public administration). The Russian situation of course reflects the unique circumstances of the collapse of the communist state system, the exit of thousands of civil servants from the ancient regime, and the restructuring of both the public administration and the university system. Pryadilnikov notes a strong Continental influence in Russian higher education, with a focus on administrative law, as well as the German-like configuration of not having a centralized academy but rather a “dominant institution” (RANEPA) for the short- and long-term training of civil servants. RANEPA is matched in prestige by Moscow State and HSE (all three are recognized as top-tier research and teaching institutions by the Russian government), and all three have been developing MPP/MPA programs which, in Pryadilnikov's view, exhibit convergence toward international standards. But they have developed these programs against a historical backdrop of more direct state guidance on “standards” for public administration education. The most recent government standards in public administration were announced in 2011, and set strict guidelines for the number and content of courses. In 2012 however, the Ministry stepped away from detailed control over content and courses, and left universities responsible (though still requiring a licence). In reviewing MPA and MPP development in the three universities over the past decade, Pryadilnikov concludes that while they generally comply with NASPAA and EAPAA standards, there remain significant differences from those standards in the under-emphasis on “hard skills” (policy evaluation, statistical methods, advanced micro- and macro-economics), and over-emphasis on traditional pedagogy.

The article by Pablo Sanabria, Nadia Rubaii, and Gabriel Purón considers public affairs graduate education in Latin America as measured through a survey in 2015 of nearly 50 programs in the region, as compared to the datasets in the Atlas of Public Management and NASPAA's Data Center. Among their findings:

•	Whereas US programs usually opt for the designation of MPA or MPP, Latin American programs have a wider range, with frequent references to combinations of public policy, public management, development, administration, political science, government or governance.
•	Only 46% of faculty in the Latin American programs have a PhD, and roughly one-third (35%) hold full-time appointments. Of those with doctoral degrees, only 22% earned them in the US. They are more likely to have graduated with doctorates from their home country (51%) or from a European university (46%).
•	In the US, the most common specialization is non-profit management, but no Latin American programs reported this offering. Indeed, the range of specializations offered in Latin American programs is less than that in the US, reflecting later development.
•	In examining core courses by subject, it appears that most Latin American programs are heavily oriented toward policy analysis, managerial tools and quantitative analysis tools. Comparing this with the US and Europe, however, the authors find that Latin American programs are less focused on analysis and skills than the US, and more managerially oriented as well.

The article finds no evidence of widespread emulation or convergence to a US model, and indeed high diversity among countries in the region in terms of modes of operation, curricular content, specializations, and pedagogy. The low number of faculty with doctoral degrees means that they are less likely to be involved in international professional networks in the field (a factor that encourages isomorphism). Indeed, the professional networks tend to be more with Europe, though the authors note the increase in international exchange programs between the US and Latin America.

Alex Jingwei He, Allen Lai, and Xun Wu compare the teaching of policy analysis in China with the US. China has reflected the same growth and development of public policy programs around the world within its own system: in the 1990s only a handful of universities offered any courses in public policy, but by 2014 policy analysis had become one of the nine compulsory courses taught in MPA programs in more than 200 institutions. The article examines the course syllabi in top policy programs in the two countries in terms of the profiles of course instructors, coverage of main topics, value paradigms, and pedagogy. The authors are interested in the nature and extent of both programmatic convergence, and the role that positivist analytical approaches play in the overall curriculum. In terms of faculty resources, the article finds some stark contrasts: in comparison to the US, Chinese universities tend to appoint predominantly senior, male faculty to teach policy analysis courses. Somewhat against expectations, only about one-quarter of Chinese faculty teaching policy analysis were political scientists or economists, with the latter much more visibly represented in US faculty ranks. Turning to curricular content, the article applies a finely grained framework to assess the coverage of value paradigms, issues of analytical practice, policy environment, and policy stages. As one would expect, there is less comprehensive coverage among Chinese courses, despite the reliance on translated key US texts (such as Dunn's). The pedagogical approach also differs markedly, with less use of group work and case-related teaching in China. The article's overall conclusion is that the comparison shows some surprising patterns of convergence and divergence. Programs offer “remarkably similar” courses in substantive areas, often using the same textbooks. At the same time, Chinese programs are more theoretical and less analytical, possibly reflecting limited instructional capacity. China therefore, according to the authors, faces a challenge in strengthening analytical capacity for both policy professionals and civil servants.

Ken Rasmussen and Derrick Callan's article shifts our attention to a severely understudied aspect of policy schools – executive education. The presence of executive education in these schools comes from at least two directions. The first is that their main product, the MPP and MPA purport to be more than academic degrees, they train for practice, for people who “do.” In that sense the schools are both “academic” and “professional,” a balance that bedevils most programs around the world, given that most faculty come from the more traditional social science academic disciplines, and their own incentive structure is heavily weighted to research and publications in academic journals (which often disdain or are openly hostile to practice and practitioners). The second is the jagged isomorphism with “business management” degrees. The MPP/MPA has some mix of analysis and “management,” and “management” is consequently a shared conceptual and practical space, though most business schools would much prefer to have a complete monopoly over the term. The prevalence of “executive education” in the MBA space has inevitably provoked comparisons with the MPP/MPA space – if private sector managers get executive education, why can’t public sector managers get the same? The revenue generating potential is also not lost on MPP/MPA deans and directors. Rasmussen and Callan support this observation by showing how important executive education is in the MBA world, with its own University Consortium for Executive Education and ranking schemes of elite programs. The article then reviews a sample of policy and administration executive education programs from North America, Europe, and Asia. It finds that the majority of highly ranked American schools are actively in the business of executive education and see it as a strategic priority, with very little interest, aside from a handful of leading examples, outside of the US. Most non-US policy schools are simply not aggressively pursuing executive education. As the article notes, one reason for the lack of activity is that executive education requires substantially different curricula, pedagogy, and faculty – all more oriented toward practice than theory. However, most programs seem content with the traditional format of teaching full-time cohorts, and engaging practitioners through research-based forums rather than executive education.

5 Conclusion

The findings of our articles seem unambiguous – there is no strong convergence among MPP/MPA programs to either a “western” or US model, or more neutrally (in terms of the Atlas of Public Management's categorization of program length and focus) to any given “type.” Divergence is a marked characteristic of US programs, even with a robust accreditation regime through NASPAA and a highly competitive market. Indeed, programs across the “Anglo-sphere” show little convergence. Programs within the EU and the CEE show some slight tendencies to converge around certain central features, but the degree of convergence is minimal when compared to the efforts at the EU level to encourage isomorphism, and the programmatic bootstrapping that had to occur in the CEE after 1991. Latin America seems oddly insulated from US influences, with both a language barrier and something more of an orientation toward Europe. Ironically, Chinese programs use US textbooks and seem to have copied some curricular features, but diverge in terms of faculty profiles and curricular focus. In the field of executive education, US programs stand virtually alone in their dedication and enthusiasm.

And yet…almost every article in this issue ends with some misgivings about the evidence. Intuition and gut do not align with the empirics. In some cases, authors argue that it may be too early, that the processes of convergence are more gradual and perhaps subterranean. In other cases, it may be that convergence is occurring in some programmatic aspects (e.g., designations, textbooks, training of instructors), but not others (e.g., overall emphasis on law, absence of analytics).

There may be no clear answer, or it may be that we need more finely grained techniques to assess programs and what is actually taught in the classroom. In our view, future work needs to more carefully assess two aspects of institutional isomorphism that we could not address in this journal issue, given the focus on national/regional programs and convergence around models. One is the growing networks among programs through professional associations, conferences, joint and dual degrees, and faculty exchanges, to name just a few vectors of interaction. We think that some of the instincts of our authors are grounded in this felt reality – the human connections and networks that spider through the global assembly of programs. Isomorphism comes alive in the “mutual awareness of participants,” and through the Johnny Appleseeds that connect through their visits, research collaborations, consulting, and site visits.

The second is connection of programs to practice. As we said at the beginning of this introduction, those who do must be taught, and what they are taught presumably has some effect on what they do. This means that to fully understand modern policy making, which is increasingly weighted with global public policy and transnational administration, we will need to see the source of ideas, the anchors of the epistemes that form the communities. MPP/MPA programs are a key source, but in more than the obvious sense that X% of transnational public servants have an MPP/MPA from program Y. More interesting is the way in which programs provide a platform or testing ground for the dynamic generation of ideas that flow into practice and then back. We close with another anecdotal example that illustrates dynamics that are likely to be familiar to most readers. The Asian Productivity Organization, with a membership of 20 countries in the region (Bangladesh, Cambodia, Republic of China, Fiji, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Japan, Republic of Korea, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam) has, since 2011, included public sector productivity to its mandate of supporting productivity improvements in the private sector. In September 2016 it held a workshop on public sector performance. The three facilitators were professors in public policy programs from different parts of the world who had never met before. The various presentations they gave over five days were only lightly coordinated, but entirely consistent. They referred to the same canonical materials, to similar models, and the same set of international “best practices.” Their audience of some 30 public officials from the region would return to their countries enjoined to apply the ideas they learned in the workshop. Public policy formation across a dozen countries and multiple policy fields would carry the same ideational DNA. The professors were there because they were “experts,” but more importantly their academic affiliation to recognized MPP/MPA programs was itself an independent validation of their expertise. Their home programs were not perfectly converged or isomorphic, but were the platform that enabled them to share convergent and isomorphic ideas. Ideas taught to people who do.