Reforming the Public Sector: How to Achieve Better Transparency, Service, and Leadership

13. Stakeholders' Inclusion: Measuring the Performance of Interactive Decisionmaking

Interactive decisionmaking has become an established practice, especially in local governments.1 Many administrations involve citizens, social organizations, and, broadly speaking, stakeholders in the early stages of policymaking , before concrete policy proposals are developed.2 The goal of what has come to be called interactive decisionmaking is to adopt better and more democratic policy decisions and to avoid recurrent problems that are encountered in usual“go it alone”decisionmaking by public officials. There are many pluses with interactive decisionmaking. It may enhance public administrations ’ intangible assets and establish bridging relationships with their citizens.3 Generally speaking,stakeholders can provide decisionmakers with information they would otherwise lack, leading to more informed solutions. Conflicts and use of veto powers may be avoided through timely information and consultation . Citizens and social organizations may support the implementation of policies that are regarded as more democratic and legitimate.4 Interaction can take place through many organizational arrangements: public hearings, referenda , participatory planning procedures, citizens’ juries, and others.5 Interactive policymaking is not without risks, however. Decisions as to who or what group constitutes a stakeholder group to be consulted and included in the process can lead to problems of democratic accountability; 260 13 Stakeholders’ Inclusion: Measuring the Performance of Interactive Decisionmaking mario ianniello, paolo fedele, and luca brusati This chapter presents the preliminary results of a research project partly supported by a grant awarded to Udine University, Gorizia, by the provincial administration of Gorizia, Italy. An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the seventeenth BledCom International Public Relations Research Symposium on Government Communication, held in Bled, Slovenia, July 2–3, 2010. vested interests may end up affecting decisions; and decisionmaking processes may become too time consuming.6 Although interactive policymaking has been widely debated, how to evaluate its effects is still underanalyzed.7 In this chapter our goal is to make a conceptual and empirical contribution to this debate. Our main research question is: How do organizational arrangements influence the outcomes of interactive decisionmaking?We propose that the organizational structures adopted in practice to manage an interactive process significantly influence its results,although they are mediated by some contextual factors. We base our analysis on two assumptions: the importance of network management and the influence of formal organizational structure in shaping behaviors.8 We have developed a model for qualitative analysis that builds on some previous contributions in the public administration literature.We then use the model to analyze five case studies, with minor adaptations suggested by the data collected during the research. The chapter presents the conceptual model and the results of five case studies. Theoretical Framework: Governance Networks, Interactive Decisionmaking, and Evaluation The work refers, broadly speaking, to the governance literature, and more specifically to the mainstream of that literature that focuses on governance networks.9 Interactive policymaking implies, in fact, that public policies are the outcome of interactions between interdependent actors.10 Other disciplinary fields have dealt with this subject, among them public relations studies, which here complement the previously mentioned governance mainstream. Governance and governance networks have been so widely debated that the concepts have become subject to conceptual stretching.11 In this chapter we focus on a specific aspect of this academic debate: the evaluation of networks. The matter can be viewed as simple: networks affect decisions on public policies and public spending. Is there a way to evaluate networks? As Robin Keast and his colleagues put it: are networks only about drinking a cup of tea, or are they about performance?12 If networks have to be evaluated, then criteria for evaluation need to be proposed. Interactive decisionmaking is different from traditional hierarchical approaches , but it is still, though not exclusively, about“making decisions.”Consequently , the adoption of a shared decision is one of its main purposes and can therefore be considered a relevant, although very rough, evaluation criterion. On the other hand, evaluation against a set of objectives spelled out beforehand , which is the most recurrent practice in public management, can hardly apply to networks, for widely acknowledged reasons: setting ex ante objectives Measuring the Performance of Interactive Decisionmaking 261 requires some form of hierarchical authority, which is by definition absent in a network; impacts of collaboration are hardly measured through performance measures; and learning through interaction by the parties involved in the process can render ex ante formulated objectives obsolete.13 So, how to further evaluate networks? The answer provided by many is...