Sonia van der Arend & Bertie Broekhans

 

Both in policy practice and in policy studies, policy success is generally treated as the clear-cut outcome of simply applying criteria of goal achievement to a policy. From an interpretivist perspective, however, success can only be seen as part of the everyday social construction of meaning that is endemic to any policy process. In other words, success as much as failure are socially produced. This issue has not yet received the same critical attention it needs.

Hence, in this introduction paper, we will do an initial attempt to open up the black box of policy success and failure. We feel that scrutiny of this issue is all the more relevant, now that policy making is perceived as a deliberative, participatory, goal-seeking process rather than as a rationalist, goal-oriented project. The primary goal of the interpretive analyses of policy success and failure is not to show that claimed policy successes are often true or false - indeed they often are. We aim to delve deeper into the intricacies of policy success and failure.

 Our first entrance into the social construction of policy success and failure is through the public and non-public debates that we would like to call "clashes of evaluations", where diverging claims on the achievements of a policy compete. Several case studies show that these policy successes have many interpretations and faces. In a policy field, the success of an actor's interpretation of success (or failure) needs confirmation. Therefore, actors will seek to protect their evaluation through the validation of other actors and try to undermine alternative interpretations.

 Secondly, some case studies show that any judgment of a policy's success depends on the circumstances under which it is produced. Policy evaluations change over time; they may also be a typical product of the method of investigation. The rise of participatory modes of governance is a significant development here, as policies in participatory mode may be seen to produce their own evaluation in the process of policy making. If all parties have agreed to the outcome, which evaluator would deny the policy's success?

 Thirdly, once the success of a policy is officially claimed and successfully secured, it can be put to use. The case studies in the panel show several types of uses, including the marketing of policies and policy models. And then we are full circle: success is used to breed success. Once success is produced, it can be used to produce more success. Hence, success is much more than just a positive evaluation. It could well be a vital precondition for the reproduction of policies, policy models and policy professionals.

Peter Matthews

New Life for Urban Scotland was an ambitious urban regeneration (renewal) policy launched in 1988 aiming to "turn around" four deprived peripheral social housing estates in Scotland over ten years. The "official" ex post evaluation, published in 1999, suggested that the policy had only had mixed success, mainly regarding physical renewal. The finding of evaluations of similar area-based initiation across the UK suggested that they "failed" as they could not tackle the spatial inequalities across cities that produced concentrated deprivation in the first place.

 This paper reflects on fieldwork that enabled New Life for Urban Scotland to be "re-evaluated" 20 years after it was launched. This enabled a more nuanced interpretation of "success" to be accessed through ethnographic methods, particularly the way the places had been re-constructed by the most committed local residents through their interaction with public policy. Most strikingly, in one case study, a continued decline in social outcomes has led the neighbourhood to be labelled a "failure", particularly through official statistics. The commitment of local residents challenges these interpretations of policy failure within "so-called deprived communities". This suggests we need a much more nuanced view of success, particularly when policy is interacting with deprived communities and those that have been excluded from decision-making, or patronised within deliberative processes.

Lili Di Puppo

The paper aims at analysing the production of success in the anti-corruption field in Georgia. Drawing on Mosse's analysis of success and failure in development, success in anti-corruption is understood as being socially constructed.

The field of anti-corruption is characterised by the difficulty of demonstrating success. First, the classical definition of corruption as the "abuse of public office for private interests" is based on a Weberian bureaucratic model that presupposes a distinction between a public and a private sphere. Anthropologists have argued that this definition is too euro-centric and have contested its validity for other cultural contexts. Second, the objective measurement of corruption is problematic. As corruption is a hidden practice, measurements of corruption tend to be subjective and based on perceptions rather than real corrupt practices. Third, the impact of an anti-corruption programme on the levels of corruption is difficult to prove, as it cannot be isolated from other factors that can also influence corruption. As a result, it is impossible to measure objectively the impact of anti-corruption strategies that are translated in programmes and projects on a phenomenon like corruption.     

My hypothesis is that anti-corruption actors respond to this challenge by producing success through building a representation of their activities. This representation is based on establishing a coherent link between certain theoretical assumptions on the fight against corruption and the practices of anti-corruption projects. Furthermore, anti-corruption actors seek the approval of other actors to sustain these representations by enrolling supporters and building "interpretive communities". As Mosse remarks, success or failure are an interpretation of events rather than an objective description of reality. As a result, failure is a failure of interpretation and "projects do not fail; they are failed by wider networks of support and validation."

I will examine the production of success in anti-corruption in Georgia through the study of three different actors and their strategies: international organisations, the Georgian government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). These actors seek at the same time to protect their representations through the validation of other actors and to assert their position in the field by undermining alternative representations. They alternatively employ different strategies: the construction of a self-representation in opposition to other actors in the field, the delegitimisation of other representations and simultaneously, the common search for a validation of these representations.

I will examine two case studies to illustrate these interactions between anti-corruption actors: the implementation of a national anti-corruption strategy in Georgia and the reform of the Chamber of Control.

Liudmila Mikalayeva

Several important international conventions have a monitoring mechanism attached to them. Within this mechanism States submit reports on their respect of the obligations undertaken to a special body within the international organization. This body then, considering the report as well as other information available, judges on the compliance of the State with the standards laid out in the convention and, eventually, recommends further improvements or changes. Such is the mechanism, for example, for the United Nations' Covenant for Civic and Political Rights and the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM). I claim that the written exchange within such monitoring mechanisms is a written negotiation between the State and the international organization in question on the (degree of) respect of the convention, but also on the interpretation of the domestic policy in light of the international obligations produced by the ratification.

The aim of the suggested paper is to analyze discursive strategies of the parties to this negotiation. On the one hand, I will focus on the discursive strategies that States use in their reports to display their policy in the respective areas in a favourable light, and also strategies of presenting the changes to the practices introduced from one to another round of monitoring. On the other hand, I will consider the strategies deployed by the special body within the international organization in order to commend or criticize certain policies and practices, with a special attention to the diplomatic practice of 'face saving' and to the communicative consequences of specific strategies chosen (by looking at the response to concrete claims in the State's comments on the opinion). The material for this analysis is the exchange of written documents on the respect of the Council of Europe's FCNM by Estonia through two cycles of monitoring (1999 - 2005).

Madelinde Winnubst

This paper presents the multiple faces of success in river policy. After a literature review concerning policy success, two policy processes in the framework of the Dutch Room for the River programme will be discussed. The first is the dike relocation in Lent in which the government plan to relocate the dike won after a close finish between the government plan and the residents' alternative, but an ill-feeling left among the officials involved. The second is the terps plan in Overdiep polder, a citizens' initiative to redesign their polder into a retention area that must be a success for both governments and citizens involved. However, each of them interpreted it differently. It turned out that policy success has many faces which are depending on various factors, including the relationship between the actors involved, their culture and traditions, and their use of power and frames. The relationship between actors is important whether the policy process is claimed to be a success by one of the actors or by both. Actors in a conflicting relationship will be divided on the outcome of the policy process, while actors in an alliance will be both strive towards success, although this could be interpreted differently. In addition, the actors' culture and traditions may have a considerable impact on their actions in the policy process, and thus on the outcome, whether this would be successful or not. Also the actors' use of power and frames is considered relevant as they are using these to influence the policy process and also the outcome. Actors may use various types of power based on coercion, legitimacy, obstruction, reward, knowledge, and performance in an attempt to influence the policy process in their direction. Similarly, they may use various frames in order to shape the policy process in a preferred direction. 

Jeroen Warner & Arwin van Buuren

Selling 'Space for the River' as a Policy Success: Contested river management frames in the Netherlands.

Since 1995 the Netherlands have experimented with non-traditional forms of river management. Rather than building embankments, the new interventions combines widening and/or deepening the river, creating natural banks, and natural, economic and safety values. Other interventions such as floating houses, and building far below sea level, complement an image of daring but responsible engineering. Unlike e.g. traffic infrastructure (HSL, Betuwelijn), the Dutch have proved adept at selling their water innovations abroad as successes both in terms of safety, spatial quality, consensus and time and cost control. 'Space for the River' is widely hailed in science and policy as a new and successful paradigm, playgrounds of a successful 'transition', and evaluated as an administrative success.

However, many regional 'Space for the River' projects have also proved highly controversial and contested, especially from a citizen perspective, leading to delays and lawsuits. Also, some observers have expressed doubt that changes are all that substantial. This raises the question what is a policy success, in whose terms, and what is the role of political marketing? Based on two in-depth case studies, we will peek below the surface of the interventions, and strategies for selling them as a success from the start.

The cases will be analysed as competing policy frames, enriched by a focus on hegemony and contest. We will make a preliminary analysis of the framing (or "branding") strategies to market (and to contest) Space for the River as a success. Our analysis will shed light upon the various mechanisms to include and exclude various process and content elements in the dominant "success frame" of a water project.

Lilla Balázs, Liudmila Mikalayeva

 In the process of the last two rounds of EU enlargement, the candidate States were expected to comply with a wide range of requirements before they could be considered as ready for joining the club. The respect for national minorities was introduced as a prerequisite for candidate countries because of the belief in the destabilizing effect of national and ethnic tensions and in the special vulnerability of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in this domain. In its periodic reports on the progress towards accession, the European Commission considered the State's compliance with this criterion together with other political developments, and for some countries, such as Estonia, Latvia or Romania, concrete demands were formulated as to what progress had to be made in specific areas (language policy, education, citizenship) for the State to advance on its way to the membership.

 The suggested paper will focus on the way the European Commission formulated its specific demands and subsequently judged on the compliance or non-compliance of the State with these demands. Based on the analysis of the legislation and policy changes and on the evaluations of the minority policy by the Council of Europe and other international and domestic actors, the claim is made that in many cases the interpretation of the compliance of the State with the demands by the EU was flawed. Thus, in some cases, negative developments were accepted as compliance, in other cases no real change was judged enough while the same situation one year earlier was considered as non-compliance. As an example of, in our opinion, inconsistent evaluation of the policy by the EU, the issues of language requirements in the professional sphere in Estonia and restrictions in the use of foreign languages in dealings with authorities in Latvia may be cited. These negative changes were decried by the European Commission and other international organizations, but all the pressure resulted in minor limitations of the scope of the restrictions, which were finally considered compatible with the international obligations of these States, although de facto represented a step back in the protection of national minorities.

Such cases put forward two questions: first, why in certain cases success or failure of the State policy was considered as compliance by the European Commission against the evidence of the contrary; second, how this inconsistency in the interpretation of the compliance by the EU influence the conclusions on the success or failure of the policy of conditionality. We advance that such interpretations are beneficial for both the State (because no major adjustment of the policy is needed) and the EU (because presenting partial non-compliance as compliance saves the 'face' of the EU). It also seems reasonable to assume that the inconsistent evaluations jeopardize the argument for the efficiency of conditionality in politically sensitive areas such as national minorities' policy.

Sylvain Barone, Christelle Gramaglia, Gabrielle Bouleau

The European Commission recently launched an infringement procedure against France for not complying with the EU Protocol for the Protection of the Mediterranean Sea Against Pollution from Land-based Sources (the Athens Protocol) in the Etang de Berre, a lagoon closed to Marseilles. The judicial decision of the European court of justice, ruling in favor of the Commission, contributed to reshaping local stakeholders' political configuration. Elected officials of the area decided to work together within a new organization, GIPREB (Groupement d'intérêt public pour la réhabilitation de l'étang de Berre), to design a collaborative plan for restoring the lagoon. The success-story of etang de Thau, another Mediterranean lagoon on the other side of the Rhone Delta, could have played a pivotal role in inspiring GIPREB members to set objectives of Berre restoration, as it is regularly mentioned in various documents and often talked about. Moreover, it seems that the story of Thau exerts its influence beyond the GIPREB. For instance, one of the most critical actors opposed to the GIPREB's project, a local environmental NGO, similarly refers to the Thau model of sustainable management to promote alternative plans. In this article, we analyze how cross-case comparisons circulate between sites in narratives and policies and how they perform political legitimacy. We propose an analytic framework to understand the emergence of commensurable comparison between sites and the political use of such comparisons. We first argue that ecological science was the first vehicle for diffusing the reference to the etang de Thau to other lagoons. Thau benefited from early ecological studies which ecological scientists later cited as they expanded biological inventories. They naturalized this comparison based on physical criteria. Then we explain how such a comparison supports critical environmental accounts urging for a different water management. Indeed, scientific citations of Thau in studies of Berre legitimize the commensurability of both sites, supporting the argument that the path followed by Thau constitutes a realistic alternative for Berre. Last, we shift the focus toward political actors of the etang de Thau and local governmental officials. We intend to show that they actively contribute to developing and diffusing the exemplarity of Thau. Whether this strategy sustains the legitimacy of local political actors and the relevance of the territory of Thau is unclear. It could rather benefit state actors as they promote a new form of modernity based on environmental protection. We conclude by questioning the role of such cases constructed as models in environmental policy making.

 

Ernesto d’Albergo

The construction and use of success and failure as a political stake in three national urban agendas (France, Germany and the United Kingdom)

The paper will focus on the processes through which the discursive categories of policy success and/or failure are constructed, as well as on the use that different actors make of them when setting policy agendas. An empirical basis for such a focus is provided by a comparative desk research on some of the initiatives through which the national political systems of France, Germany and the UK have been addressing the

challenges affecting their cities since the nineties and even before. In particular, area based programmes will be focused on, such as the French Politique de la ville, the German Soziale Stadt and Stadtumbau East and West, the New Deal for Communities, Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, and several others in the UK. Even though such policies are often launched in order to urgently deal with urban crises raising social alarm, they

tend to endure for many years. Only to some extent is the continuation of such policies sensitive to criticisms, as they tend to be carried on even when official assessment and/or academic research point out more limitations than successes and, even though specific positions and justifications are differentiated, on the whole sceptical opinions do prevail, as it happens in France and the UK.

 The paper will address questions concerning the characteristics of the perceptions, definitions and representations of success and failure provided by the actors involved in the policy process (political entrepreneurs, national and local managing authorities, official evaluators, academics...), as well as the actual relationship between such representations and the reframing or rearrangement of the analyzed policies. This will make it possible to verify which use is made of success and failure when the emergence of public problems and the reflections on previous cycles of policy meet one another in the agenda-setting of nation states' urban policies. In particular, the discourses and argumentations that legitimate changes and adjustments of the policy strategies (visions, goals, instruments, evaluation parameters and public expenditures) over time tend to be based on narratives of success and failure, even when at a deeper analysis political needs of policy entrepreneurs seem to prevail over rational or deliberative reflection about policy outcomes. Success and failure are then to be somehow considered political stakes. The relationship between the definition of previous actions' success/failure and the changing interpretations of policy problems also turns out to be important in the shaping of the agendas of urban policy, as the latter appear to be socially and politically (re)constructed over time as well.

 Moreover, the paper will take account of the role played in the interactive construction of policy success and failure and in providing different actors with power of influencing such a construction by some factors that are not always considered, such as the existence and contents of institutional policy assessments, political cleavages and political change, interest-driven policy controversies, the relationships between specific national features and the trans-national normative and cognitive frames of different kinds of neo-liberalism.

 In the paper interpretative hypotheses and still open questions will be tentatively articulated and answered also with a view to future field research.