Never Change a Winning Policy? Public Sector Performance and Politicians' Preferences for Reforms

• Author: Rune J. Sørensen,Benny Geys
• Published date: 01 March 2018
• Date: 01 March 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12824

206 Public Administration Review • March | April 2018

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 78, Iss. 2, pp. 206–216. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12824.

Rune J. Sørensen is professor of

economics at the Norwegian Business

School (BI) in Oslo. His interests include

public administration, political economy,

and health economy. His research has been

published in the

British Journal of Political

Science, Public Administration, European

Journal of Political Research, Journal

of Human Resources, Journal of Public

Economics, Journal of Health Economics,

and

Health Economics

.

E-mail: rune.sorensen@bi.no

Benny Geys is professor of economics

at the Norwegian Business School (BI)

in Oslo and research professor at Vrije

Universiteit Brussel in Brussels. His research

focuses on political accountability, (local)

public policy, and civic engagement. Some

of his work has appeared in the

Economic

Journal

,

Journal of the European Economic

Association

,

Journal of Urban Economics

,

Organization Studies

,

Leadership Quarterly

,

Public Opinion Quarterly, European Journal

of Political Research

,

Public Administration,

and

British Journal of Sociology

.

E-mail: benny.geys@bi.no

Abstract: Despite the increasing stress on performance in public sector organizations, there is still little empirical

evidence on whether—and if so, how—politicians respond to performance information. This article addresses this

research gap by linking registry statistics on school performance in Norway ’ s 428 municipalities with data from an

information experiment embedded in a survey of local politicians. Findings show that school performance bears

only a weak relationship to politicians ’ preferences for resource-related reforms, but it strongly affects preferences for

governance-related reforms, indicating the importance of accounting for heterogeneity across alternative types of

(school) reforms. Moreover, local politicians are, on average, well informed about school performance. This reflects

the force of local inhabitants ’ high infor mation level on politicians ’ accountability.

Evidence for Practice

• Performance information influences reform preferences and can be crucial for politicians to support structural

policy changes.

• Politicians are well informed about the relative performance of local schools, which suggests that performance

statistics do not disappear into a “black hole.”

• Indicators of school performance have little bearing on politicians ’ preferences for resource-related reforms

but strongly affect their position regarding governance-related reforms. This has direct implications for the

design and focus of performance management strategies.

Benny Geys

Rune J. Sørensen

Norwegian Business School BI

Never Change a Winning Policy? Public Sector Performance

and Politicians ’ Preferences for Reforms

“We shall describe as a ‘bureaucratic system of

organization’ any system of organization where

the feedback process … does not function well,

and where consequently there cannot be any quick

readjustment of the programs of action in view of

the errors committed.”

—Michel Crozier,  e Bureaucratic Phenomenon

(1964, 186–87)

A s indicated by Michel Crozier ’ s description of

bureaucratic systems, public sector

organizations are often assumed to be

characterized by substantial rigidity. This may leave

little potential for the increasing stress on performance

in public sector organizations to trigger reforms,

as a rigid organization “cannot correct its behavior

by learning from its errors” (Crozier 1964 , 187).

Moreover, organizational learning can only arise

when performance information is actively sought and

used by policy makers, and the extent to which this

happens remains debated (Andersen and Jakobsen

2017 ; Andersen and Moynihan 2016 ; Bjørnholt,

Bækgaard, and Houlberg 2016 ; Ter Bogt 2004; for

a review, see Kroll 2015 ). From an empirical and

policy perspective, this raises the important question

of whether—and, if so, how—policy makers want

to initiate policy reforms in response to performance

information.

Most existing work on the extent and antecedents of

performance information use is based on self-reports

(Kroll 2015 ). It addresses whether and how frequently

actors take into account performance information

(e.g., Moynihan and Pandey 2010 ) or how important

they think such information is to their decisions

(e.g., Askim 2007 ). More recent scholarship also

investigates how observed performance in the public

sector affects preferences for, and the probability of,

policy reforms. For instance, Salge ( 2011 ) shows

that performance problems positively affect the

search for innovations in a sample of 154 public

hospitals. Nielsen ( 2014 ) similarly finds that Danish

school principals prioritize issues with observable

underperformance when performance is weak, while

Nicholson-Crotty, Nicholson-Crotty, and Fernandez

( 2017 ) show that performance affects the level of

risk-taking by employees in U.S. federal agencies.

Finally, Askim, Johnsen, and Christophersen highlight

that performance information obtained through