Chris Skelcher
Biographic Data
| ID | 4128437 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Chris Skelcher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Chris |
| FAMILY NAME | Skelcher |
| SIGNATURE | SKELCHER C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Birmingham |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 784 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Corporatization in the Public Sector: Explaining the Growth of Local Government Companies
The creation of companies by local governments to provide public services—referred to as “corporatization”—is an example of systemic public entrepreneurship that is popular across the world. To build knowledge of the antecedents of public sector entrepreneurship, the authors investigate the factors that lead local governments to create companies for public service delivery. Using zero‐inflated negative binomial regressions to analyze secondary da…
The Impact of Societal-Level Institutional Logics on Hybridity: Evidence from Nonprofit Organizations in England and France
We examine how societal-level institutional logics impact the way in which hybridity develops in nonprofit organizations using international, comparative and qualitative case studies of community regeneration organizations in England and France. The research applies theoretically based conjectures about types of hybridity to empirical data generated from 20 interviews, document analysis and observation in five nonprofits in the city of Lyon and f…
An enterprising municipality? Municipalisation, corporatisation and the political economy of Birmingham City Council in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries
English local authorities not only have a high level of path dependency but also are capable of significant path-breaking innovations. Conventional ‘great man’ and punctuated equilibrium explanations of path-switching undervalue material factors. Theoretical sampling is used to develop and illuminate the way in which material conditions impact two significant changes in the institutional path of Birmingham City Council – the late nineteenth-centu…
Governing at arm’s length: Eroding or enhancing democracy?
This review article debates the democratic consequences of arm’s length governance challenging the prevailing view that its use is necessarily counter-democratic and a poor substitute for direct control by elected politicians. The article explores the roots of the dominant ‘democratic deficit’ perspective on arm’s length bodies in the agency problems generated by political delegation, but also addresses the potential for democratic enhancement po…
Abolishing the Audit Commission: Framing, Discourse Coalitions and Administrative Reform
The abolition of the Audit Commission in England raises questions about how a major reform was achieved with so little controversy, why the agency lacked the institutional stickiness commonly described in the literature on organisational reform and why it did not strategise to survive. In this paper, we apply argumentative discourse analysis to rich empirical data to reveal the pattern and evolution of storylines and discourse coalitions, and the…
Theorizing Hybridity: Institutional Logics, Complex Organizations, and Actor Identities: The Case of Nonprofits
We propose a novel approach to theorizing hybridity in public and nonprofit organizations. The concept of hybridity is widely used to describe organizational responses to changes in governance, but the literature seldom explains how hybrids arise or what forms they take. Transaction cost and organizational design literatures offer some solutions, but lack a theory of agency. We use the institutional logics approach to theorize hybrids as entities…
Did they ‘Read Before Burning’? The Coalition and Quangos
Attitudes to quangos are paradoxical. On the one hand they are perceived to be undemocratic, unaccountable organisations, while on the other they are seen to improve effectiveness, limit political interference and increase public confidence in government. This paradox is reflected in the behaviour of political parties, which generally adopt a harsh line towards quangos in opposition, but come to rely on these bodies in office. Ahead of the 2010 g…
Different Regulatory Regimes in Different Parts of the UK? A Comparison of Narrative and Practice in Relation to Poor Performance in Local Government
This article addresses whether there are differences in regulatory regimes in the devolved nations of the UK. It focuses on the divergence between rhetoric and practice around improving performance of local authorities. By discussing general understanding of public sector quality and the possible role for regulators in ensuring quality it shows that Scotland and Wales have developed different approaches since devolution of power in 1999. By compa…
Explaining the Democratic Anchorage of Governance Networks: Evidence from Four European Countries
Advances in understanding the democratic anchorage of governance networks require carefully designed and contextually grounded empirical analysis that take into account contextual factors. The article uses a conjectural framework to study the impact of the national democratic milieu on the relationship between network governance and representative institutions in four European countries: the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Denma…
Democratic Subjectivities in Network Governance: A Q Methodology Study of English and Dutch Public Managers
Network forms of governance enable public managers to exercise considerable agency in shaping the institutions through which government interacts with citizens, civil society organizations and business. These network institutions configure democratic legitimacy and accountability in various ways, but little is known about how managers‐as‐designers think about democracy. This Q methodology study identifies five democratic subjectivities. Pragmatis…
Unlocking the Power of Networks: Keys to High-Performance Government - Edited by Donald F. Kettl and Stephen Goldsmith
Improving democratic governance through institutional design: Civic participation and democratic ownership in Europe
In this article we provide a conceptual and argumentative framework for studying how institutional design can enhance civic participation and ultimately increase citizens' sense of democratic ownership of governmental processes. First, we set out the socio‐political context for enhancing the democratic governance of regulatory policies in Europe, and highlight the way in which civic participation and democratic ownership is given equal weight to …
Democratic Milieu: Analysing Democratic Practice in the New Governance
Understanding emerging democratic practices in the context of the wider, and changing, system of governance in which they operate poses problems for research, not least because broader concepts, such as political culture, focus on historical patterns and are not able to capture contemporary developments. We approach this problems by proposing the concept ‘democratic milieu’ as a focus for interpretive understanding of the way in which the structu…
Analysing Democracy in Third-Party Government: Business Improvement Districts in the US and UK
Institutional designs for third-party governance have proliferated in the US and Europe, but there has been little systematic analysis of their democratic performance. A comparative analysis of business improvement districts (BIDs) in the US and UK documents an approach to the democratic analysis of third-party public governance institutions and finds variation in institutional designs and democratic performance within - as well as between - coun…
Visions of Urban Reform: Comparing English and U.S. Strategies for Improving City Government
This article compares the logics and institutional consequences of urban government reform in the United States and in England. We focus on the politics of ideas, identifying four common visions of urban reform: efficient public interest management, improved representation, local political leadership, and metropolitan-wide governance. National pressure groups, locality effects, and the status of city charters and council constitutions are key fac…
Partnership Governance and Democratic Effectiveness: Community Leaders and Public Managers as Dual Intermediaries
The design and evaluation of partnerships delivering public policy goals should consider questions of democratic performance as much as matters of service delivery. The flexibility afforded to partnership working places a premium on managerial action loosely coupled to political oversight. Yet the goals of partnerships are inherently political choices in which the public interest should be represented. This article examines the way in which commu…
Democracy and Governance Networks: Compatible or Not
This paper investigates the relationship between representative democracy and governance networks at a theoretical level. It does so by offering four conjectures and their implications for theory and practice. The incompatibility conjectures rests on the primacy of politics and sees governance networks as a threat. The complementarity conjecture presents governance networks as a means of enabling greater participation in the policy process and se…
Evaluating Democratic Performance: Methodologies for Assessing the Relationship between Network Governance and Citizens
Network governance can enhance democratic practice by furnishing new routes for actors to deliberate, make, and execute public policy. But it is hindered by a lack of political oversight, limited democratic competence of new organizational forms, and informality of operation. Little research has been conducted on the democratic performance of governance networks, and the methodology is poorly developed. Quality‐of‐democracy studies of national go…
Jurisdictional Integrity, Polycentrism, and the Design of Democratic Governance
Political and managerial processes are creating polycentric networks that transcend the traditional ideas of jurisdictional integrity in state-centric systems. Jurisdictional integrity refers to the political and legal competence of a unit of government to operate within a spatial and functional realm. An intrinsic element of jurisdictional integrity in a democratic system is that citizens are enabled to give consent to and pass judgment on the e…
The Public Governance of Collaborative Spaces: Discourse, Design and Democracy
This article investigates the relationship between democratic practices and the design of institutions operating in collaborative spaces, those policy and spatial domains where multiple public, private and non-profit actors join together to shape, make and implement public policy. Partnerships are organizational manifestations of institutional design for collaboration. They offer flexibility and stakeholder engagement, but are loosely coupled to …
Working Across Boundaries: Collaboration in Public Services
Governing Communities: Parish-Pump Politics or Strategic Partnerships
The parish pump and the strategic partnership provide two contrasting images of the governance of local communities. The former emphasises local self-government by citizens through democratic processes. The latter concentrates on partnership board meetings where key public, private and voluntary sector actors shape the nature of the local community. An historical perspective is used to demonstrate that the context for UK local governance in the e…
Working Across Boundaries
Changing images of the State: Overloaded, Hollowed-Out, Congested
Three conceptualisations of the UK's state are identified: the overloaded state of the 1960s/1970s; the hollowed-out state of the 1980s/early 1990s; the congested state of the late 1990s. In this latter period the creation of collaborative institutions has become a core strategy in all areas of UK public policy. This rich web of linkages arose in response to the problems inherent in the fragmentation arising from hollowing-out. The resulting part…
The Dynamics of Multi‐organizational Partnerships: An Analysis of Changing Modes of Governance
Multi‐organizational partnerships are now an important means of governing and managing public programmes. They typically involve business, community and not‐for‐profit agencies alongside government bodies. Partnerships are frequently contrasted with competitive markets and bureaucratic hierarchies. A more complex reality is revealed once partnerships as an organizational form are distinguished from networks as a mode of social co‐ordination or go…
Theorizing Hybridity: Institutional Logics, Complex Organizations, and Actor Identities: The Case of Nonprofits
We propose a novel approach to theorizing hybridity in public and nonprofit organizations. The concept of hybridity is widely used to describe organizational responses to changes in governance, but the literature seldom explains how hybrids arise or what forms they take. Transaction cost and organizational design literatures offer some solutions, but lack a theory of agency. We use the institutional logics approach to theorize hybrids as entities…
The Dynamics of Multi‐organizational Partnerships: An Analysis of Changing Modes of Governance
Multi‐organizational partnerships are now an important means of governing and managing public programmes. They typically involve business, community and not‐for‐profit agencies alongside government bodies. Partnerships are frequently contrasted with competitive markets and bureaucratic hierarchies. A more complex reality is revealed once partnerships as an organizational form are distinguished from networks as a mode of social co‐ordination or go…
Democracy and Governance Networks: Compatible or Not
This paper investigates the relationship between representative democracy and governance networks at a theoretical level. It does so by offering four conjectures and their implications for theory and practice. The incompatibility conjectures rests on the primacy of politics and sees governance networks as a threat. The complementarity conjecture presents governance networks as a means of enabling greater participation in the policy process and se…
The Public Governance of Collaborative Spaces: Discourse, Design and Democracy
This article investigates the relationship between democratic practices and the design of institutions operating in collaborative spaces, those policy and spatial domains where multiple public, private and non-profit actors join together to shape, make and implement public policy. Partnerships are organizational manifestations of institutional design for collaboration. They offer flexibility and stakeholder engagement, but are loosely coupled to …
Improving democratic governance through institutional design: Civic participation and democratic ownership in Europe
In this article we provide a conceptual and argumentative framework for studying how institutional design can enhance civic participation and ultimately increase citizens' sense of democratic ownership of governmental processes. First, we set out the socio‐political context for enhancing the democratic governance of regulatory policies in Europe, and highlight the way in which civic participation and democratic ownership is given equal weight to …
Changing images of the State: Overloaded, Hollowed-Out, Congested
Three conceptualisations of the UK's state are identified: the overloaded state of the 1960s/1970s; the hollowed-out state of the 1980s/early 1990s; the congested state of the late 1990s. In this latter period the creation of collaborative institutions has become a core strategy in all areas of UK public policy. This rich web of linkages arose in response to the problems inherent in the fragmentation arising from hollowing-out. The resulting part…
Working Across Boundaries: Collaboration in Public Services
Democratic Subjectivities in Network Governance: A Q Methodology Study of English and Dutch Public Managers
Network forms of governance enable public managers to exercise considerable agency in shaping the institutions through which government interacts with citizens, civil society organizations and business. These network institutions configure democratic legitimacy and accountability in various ways, but little is known about how managers‐as‐designers think about democracy. This Q methodology study identifies five democratic subjectivities. Pragmatis…
An enterprising municipality? Municipalisation, corporatisation and the political economy of Birmingham City Council in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries
English local authorities not only have a high level of path dependency but also are capable of significant path-breaking innovations. Conventional ‘great man’ and punctuated equilibrium explanations of path-switching undervalue material factors. Theoretical sampling is used to develop and illuminate the way in which material conditions impact two significant changes in the institutional path of Birmingham City Council – the late nineteenth-centu…
Governing Communities: Parish-Pump Politics or Strategic Partnerships
The parish pump and the strategic partnership provide two contrasting images of the governance of local communities. The former emphasises local self-government by citizens through democratic processes. The latter concentrates on partnership board meetings where key public, private and voluntary sector actors shape the nature of the local community. An historical perspective is used to demonstrate that the context for UK local governance in the e…
The Impact of Societal-Level Institutional Logics on Hybridity: Evidence from Nonprofit Organizations in England and France
We examine how societal-level institutional logics impact the way in which hybridity develops in nonprofit organizations using international, comparative and qualitative case studies of community regeneration organizations in England and France. The research applies theoretically based conjectures about types of hybridity to empirical data generated from 20 interviews, document analysis and observation in five nonprofits in the city of Lyon and f…
Explaining the Democratic Anchorage of Governance Networks: Evidence from Four European Countries
Advances in understanding the democratic anchorage of governance networks require carefully designed and contextually grounded empirical analysis that take into account contextual factors. The article uses a conjectural framework to study the impact of the national democratic milieu on the relationship between network governance and representative institutions in four European countries: the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Denma…
Explaining Less Accountability: The Growth of Local Quangos
There has been substantial growth in the number of non‐elected public bodies – or quangos – operating at the local level. This development presents a marked change from the model of elected local authorities as the main focus for the governance and delivery of local public services. Four interpretations of this change are examined: agency‐type, ideological control, managerial restructuring and regulationist explanations. Agency‐type explanations …
Reforming the Quangos
From Programme Budgeting to Policy Analysis: Corporate Approaches in Local Government
Partnership Governance and Democratic Effectiveness: Community Leaders and Public Managers as Dual Intermediaries
The design and evaluation of partnerships delivering public policy goals should consider questions of democratic performance as much as matters of service delivery. The flexibility afforded to partnership working places a premium on managerial action loosely coupled to political oversight. Yet the goals of partnerships are inherently political choices in which the public interest should be represented. This article examines the way in which commu…
Did they ‘Read Before Burning’? The Coalition and Quangos
Attitudes to quangos are paradoxical. On the one hand they are perceived to be undemocratic, unaccountable organisations, while on the other they are seen to improve effectiveness, limit political interference and increase public confidence in government. This paradox is reflected in the behaviour of political parties, which generally adopt a harsh line towards quangos in opposition, but come to rely on these bodies in office. Ahead of the 2010 g…
Abolishing the Audit Commission: Framing, Discourse Coalitions and Administrative Reform
The abolition of the Audit Commission in England raises questions about how a major reform was achieved with so little controversy, why the agency lacked the institutional stickiness commonly described in the literature on organisational reform and why it did not strategise to survive. In this paper, we apply argumentative discourse analysis to rich empirical data to reveal the pattern and evolution of storylines and discourse coalitions, and the…
Uses and abuses of policy planning systems
Analysing Democracy in Third-Party Government: Business Improvement Districts in the US and UK
Institutional designs for third-party governance have proliferated in the US and Europe, but there has been little systematic analysis of their democratic performance. A comparative analysis of business improvement districts (BIDs) in the US and UK documents an approach to the democratic analysis of third-party public governance institutions and finds variation in institutional designs and democratic performance within - as well as between - coun…
Democratic Milieu: Analysing Democratic Practice in the New Governance
Understanding emerging democratic practices in the context of the wider, and changing, system of governance in which they operate poses problems for research, not least because broader concepts, such as political culture, focus on historical patterns and are not able to capture contemporary developments. We approach this problems by proposing the concept ‘democratic milieu’ as a focus for interpretive understanding of the way in which the structu…
Visions of Urban Reform: Comparing English and U.S. Strategies for Improving City Government
This article compares the logics and institutional consequences of urban government reform in the United States and in England. We focus on the politics of ideas, identifying four common visions of urban reform: efficient public interest management, improved representation, local political leadership, and metropolitan-wide governance. National pressure groups, locality effects, and the status of city charters and council constitutions are key fac…
Understanding the new magistracy: A study of characteristics and attitudes
Manifestos and other manifestations of local party politics ‐ the spread of party politics since reorganisation
1983). 3.1 Manifestos and other manifestations of local party politics ‐ the spread of party politics since reorganisation. Local Government Studies: Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 29-33
Center–Local Linkages: The Impact of Policy Planning Systems
This paper examines policy planning systems in British central-local government relations, and in particular the formal, structured relationship in the local transport policy sector, as a means of exploring the impact in intergovernmental relations of the form of linkage between institutions. This impact is analysed in terms of central government's ability to use the planning system to promote policy processes and promote and regulate policy cont…
Devolution
From Programme Budgeting to Policy Analysis: Corporate Approaches in Local Government
Corporate planning
Manifestos and other manifestations of local party politics ‐ the spread of party politics since reorganisation
1983). 3.1 Manifestos and other manifestations of local party politics ‐ the spread of party politics since reorganisation. Local Government Studies: Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 29-33
Uses and abuses of policy planning systems
Towards salaried councillors?—the special responsibility allowances
Center–Local Linkages: The Impact of Policy Planning Systems
This paper examines policy planning systems in British central-local government relations, and in particular the formal, structured relationship in the local transport policy sector, as a means of exploring the impact in intergovernmental relations of the form of linkage between institutions. This impact is analysed in terms of central government's ability to use the planning system to promote policy processes and promote and regulate policy cont…
Resource choice and the abolition process
Understanding the new magistracy: A study of characteristics and attitudes
Explaining Less Accountability: The Growth of Local Quangos
There has been substantial growth in the number of non‐elected public bodies – or quangos – operating at the local level. This development presents a marked change from the model of elected local authorities as the main focus for the governance and delivery of local public services. Four interpretations of this change are examined: agency‐type, ideological control, managerial restructuring and regulationist explanations. Agency‐type explanations …
The Dynamics of Multi‐organizational Partnerships: An Analysis of Changing Modes of Governance
Multi‐organizational partnerships are now an important means of governing and managing public programmes. They typically involve business, community and not‐for‐profit agencies alongside government bodies. Partnerships are frequently contrasted with competitive markets and bureaucratic hierarchies. A more complex reality is revealed once partnerships as an organizational form are distinguished from networks as a mode of social co‐ordination or go…
Reforming the Quangos
Changing images of the State: Overloaded, Hollowed-Out, Congested
Three conceptualisations of the UK's state are identified: the overloaded state of the 1960s/1970s; the hollowed-out state of the 1980s/early 1990s; the congested state of the late 1990s. In this latter period the creation of collaborative institutions has become a core strategy in all areas of UK public policy. This rich web of linkages arose in response to the problems inherent in the fragmentation arising from hollowing-out. The resulting part…
Working Across Boundaries
Working Across Boundaries: Collaboration in Public Services
Governing Communities: Parish-Pump Politics or Strategic Partnerships
The parish pump and the strategic partnership provide two contrasting images of the governance of local communities. The former emphasises local self-government by citizens through democratic processes. The latter concentrates on partnership board meetings where key public, private and voluntary sector actors shape the nature of the local community. An historical perspective is used to demonstrate that the context for UK local governance in the e…
Jurisdictional Integrity, Polycentrism, and the Design of Democratic Governance
Political and managerial processes are creating polycentric networks that transcend the traditional ideas of jurisdictional integrity in state-centric systems. Jurisdictional integrity refers to the political and legal competence of a unit of government to operate within a spatial and functional realm. An intrinsic element of jurisdictional integrity in a democratic system is that citizens are enabled to give consent to and pass judgment on the e…
The Public Governance of Collaborative Spaces: Discourse, Design and Democracy
This article investigates the relationship between democratic practices and the design of institutions operating in collaborative spaces, those policy and spatial domains where multiple public, private and non-profit actors join together to shape, make and implement public policy. Partnerships are organizational manifestations of institutional design for collaboration. They offer flexibility and stakeholder engagement, but are loosely coupled to …
Democracy and Governance Networks: Compatible or Not
This paper investigates the relationship between representative democracy and governance networks at a theoretical level. It does so by offering four conjectures and their implications for theory and practice. The incompatibility conjectures rests on the primacy of politics and sees governance networks as a threat. The complementarity conjecture presents governance networks as a means of enabling greater participation in the policy process and se…
Evaluating Democratic Performance: Methodologies for Assessing the Relationship between Network Governance and Citizens
Network governance can enhance democratic practice by furnishing new routes for actors to deliberate, make, and execute public policy. But it is hindered by a lack of political oversight, limited democratic competence of new organizational forms, and informality of operation. Little research has been conducted on the democratic performance of governance networks, and the methodology is poorly developed. Quality‐of‐democracy studies of national go…
Visions of Urban Reform: Comparing English and U.S. Strategies for Improving City Government
This article compares the logics and institutional consequences of urban government reform in the United States and in England. We focus on the politics of ideas, identifying four common visions of urban reform: efficient public interest management, improved representation, local political leadership, and metropolitan-wide governance. National pressure groups, locality effects, and the status of city charters and council constitutions are key fac…
Partnership Governance and Democratic Effectiveness: Community Leaders and Public Managers as Dual Intermediaries
The design and evaluation of partnerships delivering public policy goals should consider questions of democratic performance as much as matters of service delivery. The flexibility afforded to partnership working places a premium on managerial action loosely coupled to political oversight. Yet the goals of partnerships are inherently political choices in which the public interest should be represented. This article examines the way in which commu…
Analysing Democracy in Third-Party Government: Business Improvement Districts in the US and UK
Institutional designs for third-party governance have proliferated in the US and Europe, but there has been little systematic analysis of their democratic performance. A comparative analysis of business improvement districts (BIDs) in the US and UK documents an approach to the democratic analysis of third-party public governance institutions and finds variation in institutional designs and democratic performance within - as well as between - coun…
Unlocking the Power of Networks: Keys to High-Performance Government - Edited by Donald F. Kettl and Stephen Goldsmith
Improving democratic governance through institutional design: Civic participation and democratic ownership in Europe
In this article we provide a conceptual and argumentative framework for studying how institutional design can enhance civic participation and ultimately increase citizens' sense of democratic ownership of governmental processes. First, we set out the socio‐political context for enhancing the democratic governance of regulatory policies in Europe, and highlight the way in which civic participation and democratic ownership is given equal weight to …
Political science (30 works) · Public Administration (26 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Economics (23 works) · Politics (22 works) · Public Administration (21 works) · Law (19 works) · Public Policy and Administration Research (18 works) · Corporate governance (16 works) · Law (16 works)