In some ways an innovative and continuously evolving journal such as Public Money & Management is akin to a palimpsest, with the original aims and older versions remaining, but overlain by new ideas and novel approaches. This issue is no exception in that, although it is one of our general issues and as such has no clear linking theme, nonetheless, it is replete with contributions that demand the attention of an audience of practitioners and applied researchers.
David Walker’s opening debate article discusses some of the more intriguing aspects, contradictions and demands faced daily by public managers in the current UK system and, indeed, with some impact much further globally. In particular, the paradox of ideologydriven reforms that denigrate aspects of public service, while demanding better delivery and quality of those services. In many ways these are topics returned to repeatedly in this issue, with evidence drawn from various organizations in Europe, the USA, Asia and Australia suggesting that the unintended and often unforeseen consequences of policies introduced by governments of different political hues are as interesting to academics and as frustrating to managers as those effects and deliverables that are actually envisioned by their framers.
The contributions in this issue address a diverse range of financial and managerial reforms and problems across a range of countries, but all to a greater or lesser extent point up the problem of delivery. Delivery (and its sequential concomitant, evaluation) needs to be measured, but against what do we measure it? The dynamic for policy arises from a variety of sources, but in all politically-driven reforms there has to be support for major changes from ministers and their appointees. This means that even changes to structure and delivery originating from public managers themselves, those designed to tidy-up delivery or rationalize procedures, require political support and champions or risk failure. While those driven through on a political and ideologically-charged imperative risk a range of unintended consequences that may have quite different impacts to those the framers sought. Measuring success against original goals and intended outcomes becomes fraught when the achievement of those outcomes causes unintended problems that on occasion outweigh the benefits of a particular reform in the long run. While ‘simple’ procedural change may have political consequences wholly unforeseen by those drafting them, especially in the global, regulatory and juridicalized context of contemporary public management. The papers in this issue range far and wide over these subjects. Perhaps the best public managers can hope for in many circumstances is to abide by a modern version of the Hippocratic Oath— and do no harm.
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Notes on contributors
Andrew Massey
Andrew Massey is Professor of Public Administration, University of Exeter, UK and Editor of Public Money & Management.