What role do policy design teams within government play in shaping reforms and in the conflicts that are created when they are introduced by political leaders? This analysis of causes of political decentralisation in Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina, from Harvard University, suggests that the importance of design teams to the political economy of reform remains understudied and under-appreciated.
The case studies tell a consistent story about reform. In each of the case studies, small groups were asked to make recommendations about how political institutions could work more effectively. The political leaders who appointed these groups did not articulate clear problems that required solutions. Rather, they asked the groups to define both problem and solution. In their work, the design teams considered the transaction costs in getting public business done and a variety of principal-agent problems of transparency, accountability, and performance. They also considered how the reforms would affect political and economic interests, but in none of the cases was there clear evidence that a principal dynamic of the design teams was the reflection of group conflict. More evidence of conflict over institutional change emerged after ideas were developed. Then teams and the politicians who advocated change attempted to negotiate away some of the conflict without at the same time undermining the impact that reform would have on the political system.
These cases reiterate that small groups located in the executive are often central actors in defining reform initiatives and the problems that need solving. They also (in their recommended solutions to these problems) prefigure the political conflicts that will surround reform initiatives when they become public. The cases suggest:
- Reform contents should not be taken as given.
- How these teams decided to organise their activities was important in generating political support or dealing with opposition to their plans.
- Design teams were dependent on the willingness of political leaders (who control the timing of reforms) to take up their recommendations and commit themselves to gaining legitimacy for them.
- Interest group politics are not the primary dynamic responsible for the content of many reform initiatives. Specific proposals for reform are hatched in the executive, often in the absence of mobilised pressure for them.
- In the deliberations and activities of the design teams, the electoral calculations of politicians appeared to take back seat to concerns about the integrity of the proposals and how they would work in practice.
- Even when proposals were championed by politicians electoral calculations explained only part of their interest in the reforms.
At the most general level, the cases suggest that:
- Reform initiatives may begin as exercises in problem definition and problem solving, including problem solving about political conflict.
- Design teams deserve to be the focus of greater analysis about reform politics.
- In considering the role of these teams in reform initiatives, important questions about how initiatives are defined and how they get on national political agendas can be assessed more carefully.
- Assumptions about the motivations of political leaders who support reform initiatives should be questioned.
