Between Policy Promises and Program Implementation
This chapter raises a concern about participatory budgeting in New York City (PBNYC): in the implementation stage, the city council member is also the program administrator, leading to many of the concerns that this book raises. We detail the theoretical
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Between Policy Promises and Program Implementation
Abstract This chapter raises a concern about participatory budgeting in New York City (PBNYC): in the implementation stage, the city council member is also the program administrator, leading to many of the concerns that this book raises. We detail the theoretical constructs of power, clientelism, interest groups, and the possible role of experts in determining if citizens have real money and real power. Keywords Implementation · Power · Clientalism · Interest groups
As Pressman and Wildavsky (1973) found almost 50 years ago, a program’s promise and design can falter at the implementation stage. Most implementation literature from then to now focuses on the bureaucratic implementation of policies that are, at least nominally, made by a separate legislative body. This reflects the “steering” vs “rowing” metaphor later used in the reinventing government literature (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992) as a nudge for privatization, but removed one step, with the legislature steering and the governmental agent rowing. Pressman and Wildavsky suggest that there actually needs to be a much closer relationship between the two, with the policy maker remaining engaged during the implementation stage. More recent literature continues to treat the role of the policy champion as important (Hendy & Barlow, 2012; McTigue, Rye, & Monios, © The Author(s) 2020 D. Williams and D. Waisanen, Real Money, Real Power?, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59201-1_3
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2018). Yet, what if the policy maker not only steers, but also rows? How is this related to implementation? With the New York City model of participatory budgeting, implementation is never handed off to the bureaucracy; instead it is made part of the legislative office’s function. Can we treat this as a policy or does it remain a political activity? For this project, the following integrates the literature with a set of research topics, looking between the ideal policy promises and the real program implementation of initiatives like participatory budgeting. These themes form a foundation for each of the multiple angles and approaches we take with PBNYC. The methods used in this study are addressed in context in the discussion and summarized in Appendix A.
What Primary Implementation Issues Does PB Focus? To examine this form of implementation in PBNYC, we turn to four concepts that the existence of these processes underscore. Given their important roles for our research design, we conducted this project with each of them in mind. Power The overt claim underlying participatory budgeting is that it provides “real power” over “real money” for “real people,” as we’ve described. We can discount the claim of real money, as PB’s relative share of the New York City capital budget is 0.1%. As the capital budget is approximately one half the size of the expense budget, PB’s net share of the total annual expenditure plan is 0.03%. While the gross sum of money, $1 million per council district, sounds like real mon
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