Exercising government's will

Since the beginning of the industrial age the topic of regulation of private activity for the public good has been essential for the health and safety of the public. The economics of externalities and public harms are too powerful to permit private actors to conduct their affairs purely according to the dictates of profit and private interest. The desolation of the River Irk described in Engels' The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 was powerful evidence of this dynamic in the nineteenth century, and need for the protection of health and safety in the food industry, the protection of air and water quality, and establishment of regulations ensuring safe operation of industrial, chemical, and nuclear plants became evident in the middle of the twentieth century. (Of course it goes without saying that our current administration no longer concedes this point.)

A fundamental problem for understanding the mechanics of government is the question of how the will and intentions of government (policies and regulatory regimes) are conveyed from the sites of decision-making to the behavior of the actors whom these policies are meant to influence.

The familiar principal-agent problem designates precisely this complex of issues. Applying a government policy or regulation requires a chain of behaviors by multiple agents within an extended network of governmental and non-governmental offices. It is all too evident that actors at various levels have interests and intentions that are important to their choices; and blind obedience to commands from above is not a common practice within any organization. Instead, actors within an office or bureau have some degree of freedom to act strategically with regard to their own preferences and interests. What, then, are the arrangements that the principal can put in place that makes conformance by the agent more complete?

Further, there are commonly a range of non-governmental entities and actors who are affected by governmental policies and regulations. They too have the ability to act strategically in consideration of their preferences and interests. And some of the actions that are available to non-governmental actors have the capacity to significantly influence the impact and form of various governmental policies and regulations. The corporations that own nuclear power plants, for example, have an ability to constrain and deflect the inspection schedules to which their properties are subject through influence on legislators, and the regulatory agency may be seriously hampered in its ability to apply existing safety regulations.

This is a problem of social ontology: what kind of thing is a governmental agency, how does it work internally, and through what kinds of mechanisms does it influence the world around it (firms, criminals, citizens, local government, …)?

Two related ideas about the nature of organizations are relevant in this context. The idea of organizations as “strategic action fields” that is developed by Fligstein and McAdam (A Theory of Fields) fits the situation of a governmental agency. And the earlier work by Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg offer a similar account of the strategic action that jointly determines the workings of an organization. Here is a representative passage from Crozier and Friedberg:

The reader should not misconstrue the significance of this theoretical bet. We have not sought to formulate a set of general laws concerning the substance, the properties and the stages of development of organizations and systems. We do not have the advantage of being able to furnish normative precepts like those offered by management specialists who always believe they can elaborate a model of “good organization” and present a guide to the means and measures necessary to realize it. We present of series of simple propositions on the problems raised by the existence of these complex but integrated ensembles that we call organizations, and on the means and instruments that people have invented to surmount these problems; that is to say, to assure and develop their cooperation in view of the common goals.” L’acteur et le système, p. 11

(Here are some earlier discussions of these theories; link, link, link.  And here is a related discussion of Mayer Zald's treatment of organizations; link.)

Also relevant from the point of view of the ontology of government organization is the new theory of institutional logics. Patricia Thornton, William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury describe new theoretical developments within the general framework of new institutionalism in The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process. Here is how they define their understanding of "institutional logic":

... as the socially constructed, historical patterns of cultural symbols and material practices, including assumptions, values, and beliefs, by which individuals and organizations provide meaning to their daily activity, organize time and space, and reproduce their lives and experiences. (2)

The institutional logics perspective is a metatheoretical framework for analyzing the interrelationships among institutions, individuals, and organizations in social systems. It aids researchers in questions of how individual and organizational actors are influenced by their situation in multiple social locations in an interinstitutional system, for example the institutional orders of the family, religion, state, market, professions, and corporations. Conceptualized as a theoretical model, each institutional order of the interinstitutional system distinguishes unique organizing principles, practices, and symbols that influence individual and organizational behavior. Institutional logics represent frames of reference that condition actors' choices for sensemaking, the vocabulary they use to motivate action, and their sense of self and identity. The principles, practices, and symbols of each institutional order differentially shape how reasoning takes place and how rationality is perceived and experienced. (2)

Here is a discussion of institutional logics; link.

So what can we say about the ontology of policy implementation, compliance, and executive decisions? We can say that --

• it proceeds through individual actors in particular circumstances guided by particular interests and preferences; 
• implementation is likely to be imperfect in the best of circumstances and entirely ineffectual in other circumstances; 
• implementation is affected by the strategic non-governmental actors and organizations it is designed to influence, leading to further distortion and incompleteness. 

We can also, more positively, identify specific mechanisms that governments and executives introduce to increase the effectiveness of implementation of their policies. These include --

• internal audit and discipline functions, 
• communications and training strategies designed at enhancing conformance by intermediate actors, 
• periodic purges of non-conformant sub-officials and powerful non-governmental actors, 
• and dozens of other strategies and mechanisms of conformance.

Most fundamentally we can say that any model of government that postulates frictionless application and implementation of policy is flawed at its core. Such a model overlooks an ontological fundamental about government and other organizations, large and small: that organizational action is never automatic, algorithmic, or exact; that it is always conveyed by intermediate actors who have their own understandings and preferences about policy; and that it works in an environment where powerful non-governmental actors are almost always in positions to blunt the effectiveness of “the will of government”.

This topic unavoidably introduces the idea of corruption into the discussion (link, link). Sometimes the contrarian behavior of internal actors derives from private benefits offered them by outsiders influenced by the actions of government. (Hotels in Moscow?) More generally, however, it raises the question of conflicts of commitment, mission, role obligations, and organizational ethics.