The Reform of Planning
Practice, and the Practice of
Planning Reform, in English
Central Government
What do the ‘everyday’ practices of planning during the 2012-2014
National Planning Practice Guidance Review tell us about the dynamics
of planning reform in English central government?
Part 1: Untangling and Re-tangling the Coalition Government’s
Planning Reforms
Daniel J. Slade
Dr Olivier Sykes / Prof. Graham Haughton / Dr. David Dolowitz / John Healey MP
Outline
Project Summary
1.
Why is planning practice at the national level so under-researched?
2.
The ‘Taylor Review’
3.
'Summarising the conceptual framework
4.
Untangling and ‘Re-tangling’; The reform of practice and practice of reform
Early Findings
5.
This presentation's focus: The framework in action and early findings.
6.
Exploring policy contradiction, everyday practice and emergent properties
in the English planning system
7.
Summary
There is strangely
little research into
planning practice
in central
government
This is odd because:
1.
UK planning system remains highly centralised despite academic
fashion and political rhetoric to the contrary.
2.
Recent neoliberal reforms are ‘quintessentially’ driven by, and particularly
concentrated at, the level of the state. However, studies of ‘actually
existing’ neoliberalisation rarely focus on the practices which
constitute it at this level.
3.
Unlike the local and regional levels, planning practice at the national
level in general remains treated as a ‘hollow container’ or ‘black box’ and
abstracted notions of process are relied on. This also means that contexts
specific to the national level of practice (and therefore the rest) remain
unexplored.
There is a range of possible reasons.
“Perhaps it is time for students of planning to
subject this scale of planning to the same sort of
attention frequently given to the local or city
regional levels, in an attempt to put forward
more effective models which might fit better the
coming decades.” (Marshall, 2011)
Aim: “To explore the key characteristics of planning and
‘planning practice’ in English central government and
examine how these characteristics shape and are shaped
by existing structuring/re-structuring institutional and
discursive forces, in the context of recent waves of
reforms and the longer term process of restructuring
these reforms relate to.”
A very brief summary of the ‘Taylor Review’
•
National Planning Practice Guidance Review 2012-2014 (though ideas
earlier). Owned by DCLG, though (semi) external Review Group.
•
Guidance provides normative and technical advice to LPAs on how to
implement national policy. It constitutes a material consideration in
planning decisions (almost policy!).
•
Aim of PGGR was to consolidate an overly-complex suite of guidance,
as framed by classically neoliberal rhetoric (‘brake on growth’…) This did
received extremely widespread support from sector, in principle,
however.
•
Excellent case study: Cross-cutting and bridges various spheres,
modifies implementation of recent reforms according to perceived
successes/failures, introduces new techniques/practices/relationships
for first time at local level and in DCLG, and embodies much of the
Coalition’s approach to reform… and there’s no writing on the subject
yet!
PRACTICE THEORY
DISCURSIVE INSTITUTIONALISM
Practice are more than ‘work’:
‘specific configurations of action,
norms and knowledge’ (Wagenaar &
Cook 2003); a certain mode of
engagement with the social world
and way of creating meaning (similar
to phronesis)
Institutions are bundles of everyday
practices which remain more or less
stable over time - this is because they
determine practices whilst being
comprised of them.
Practice is generative – knowledge
and context are artefacts of practice
rather than vice versa. So can be
discourses and the public sphere.
Habitus: Internalised external
structures which shape and enable
preconscious action through
dispositions – a ‘conductorless
orchestra’.
You can’t ‘read off’ change from the
top…
This is via ‘structuration’ through rule,
ideational, material resources, carried
by habitus.
Planning
Practice and
Reform in
English
Central
Government
Deals with institutional change better
than the ‘new institutionalisms’ via
foreground (deliberation and
legitimation) and background discursive
abilities.
Interplays between different levels of
understanding (practice to (neoliberal)
discourse) and the level of practice.
These are spatial (Healey).
ACTUALLY EXISTING NEOLIBERALSIM
INTERPRETIVE POLICY ANALYSIS
Neoliberalism is an ‘operational
logic’ rather than a monolithic force.
Therefore its nature is completely
dependant upon local institutional
contexts – it is “systematically
variegated” across time and space.
Conflict and contradiction is
characteristic.
Heuristic for linking practices to
wider/’higher’ discursive & temporal
planning contexts which fit.
… and provides sensitising concepts
which help with these inquiries…
Subfield of policy analysis – variety
of approaches which share some
core similarities.
Planning
Practice and
Reform in
English
Central
Government
They studies the “political and
institutional dynamics of
policymaking processes, and the
complexities of policy in
interaction with life-worlds”
(Healey, 2011).
Emphasise Civil Service institutional
and cultural context critical to
understanding policy work in
central government (e.g.
relationships with ministers, onset
of eGovernance, everyday routines
such as the write-round process).
Project Summary
PART III: ‘DYNAMICS’
PART I: ‘STRUCTURE’
PART II: ‘AGENCY’
Theorises the relationship a
between processes
Assesses the key ‘everyday’
Explores how the key
identified in parts 1 & 2,
discursive, programmatic,
structural characteristics
and the key drivers of
and institutional forces
previously outlined directly
change identified.
shaping planning in Central
and indirectly shape
Government and the
planning practice in central
Guidance Review within the
government, and how these
context of ongoing reform.
practices in turn shape the
structural forces which act
upon them – or create new
structures.
The reform of practice / the
practice of reform
Un-tangling / Re-tangling
This part…
Aims to demonstrate:
•
The ongoing importance of studying everyday practices at national level for
understanding wider and longer-term system changes, and benefits of the
conceptual framework developed to studying planning reform at this level.
This talk focuses on:
•
How concurrent neoliberal reform programmes’ allocative structures interact
in Civil Servants’ everyday practices (rather than how they do so
subsequently - e.g. through sedimentation), and explores what the wider
consequences of these are for the system as a whole.
•
A critical reading of various official documents, personal experience, literature
review, policy review and early scoping work.
•
Several separate ‘vignettes’ drawn from the research which demonstrate the
above.
THE ENTANGLEMENT
OF PROGRAMMES
from the perspective of the
Guidance Review
THE GROWTH
AGENDA
Red Tape
Challenge
eGovernance
New
Technology
and
Analysis
Techniques
MANAGERIAL
-ISM
Open
Government
Data policy
‘Libertarian
Paternalism’
and ‘nudge’
theory.
The
Localism
Act
CORE HOUSING &
PLANNING REFORMS
HS
Review
NPPF
CIVIL SERVICE
REFORM
Increasing
power of
core
executive
LOCALISM
NEOLIBERALISM
looming in the
background
CORE PLANNING REFORMS
• The Review and framework provide an
excellent opportunity to explore how different
programmes which constitute different
parts of the same wave of
neoliberalisation, ostensibly trying to
achieve similar ends within different systems,
interact through the practices of agents
working in DCLG (often badly!) – and what
the consequences of these are the wider
system.
Interpretive Policy Analysis, Practice Theory,
Actually Existing and Discursive
Institutionalism help this endeavour.
•
•
Very broad example to begin with: Setting
scope of reviews in relation to workloads.
The
Localism
Act
CORE HOUSING &
PLANNING REFORMS
HS
Review
NPPF
THE GROWTH
AGENDA
Red Tape
Challenge
eGovernance
New
Technology
and
Analysis
Techniques
MANAGERIAL
-ISM
Open
Government
Data policy
‘Libertarian
Paternalism’
and ‘nudge’
theory.
CIVIL SERVICE
REFORM
Increasing
power of
core
executive
LOCALISM
The
Localism
Act
CORE HOUSING &
PLANNING REFORMS
HS
Review
NPPF
CLASHES BETWEEN DIFFERENT
DEREGULATORY EFFORTS
• Red Tape Challenge (RTC) and
Housing Standards Review (HSR)
parallels, with ostensibly the same aim.
Red Tape
Challenge
MANAGERIAL
-ISM
•
CIVIL SERVICE
REFORM
‘OITO’ : one-in-two out. Key feature of
RTC and arbitrary cross-cutting rule,
the aim of which is to reduce ‘regulatory’
burdens across government.
• OITO clashed with simplifying
regulatory proposals put forwards as
preferred by HSR and Guidance
Review.
Increasing
power of
core
executive
•
HSR preferred options changed, future
regulatory structure heavily impacted.
Also impacted Guidance Review… and
government berated for excessive ‘red
tape’!
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM DIRECTLY
AFFECTED THE REVIEW
• Tensions between roles demanded by
Civil Service Reforms and Planning
(traditionally) lead to concrete
changes in planning policy.
Red Tape
Challenge
MANAGERIAL
-ISM
CIVIL SERVICE
REFORM
Fluidity and dynamism encouraged,
this results in ‘churn’ of employees.
Recent evidence of this at various
levels in public sector.
•
•
Other related phenomena include
increasing reliance on consultants
and growing strength of ministers
(and a more supportive role for Civil
Servants).
•
Examples: Erosion of institutional
memory within Guidance Review
since NPPF. Also loss of knowledge
for niche subjects like CPOs.
Increasing
power of
core
executive
THE GROWTH
AGENDA
Red Tape
Challenge
eGovernance
New
Technology
and
Analysis
Techniques
MANAGERIAL
-ISM
Open
Government
Data policy
‘Libertarian
Paternalism’
and ‘nudge’
theory.
CIVIL SERVICE
REFORM
Increasing
power of
core
executive
LOCALISM
The
Localism
Act
CORE HOUSING &
PLANNING REFORMS
HS
Review
NPPF
CLASHES BETWEEN THE
LOCALISM AND GROWTH
AGENDAS
• Much of the Review defined by
these two areas of policy.
•
•
Tendencies towards centralisation
and decentralisation clash.
Attempts to resolve tensions with
‘Libertarian Paternalism’
(nudge theory!).
• Example: Housing market
assessments, and the Treasury’s
involvement during the write-round
process overriding debate.
THE GROWTH
AGENDA
‘Libertarian
Paternalism’
and ‘nudge’
theory.
LOCALISM
THE GROWTH
AGENDA
Red Tape
Challenge
eGovernance
New
Technology
and
Analysis
Techniques
MANAGERIAL
-ISM
Open
Government
Data policy
‘Libertarian
Paternalism’
and ‘nudge’
theory.
CIVIL SERVICE
REFORM
Increasing
power of
core
executive
LOCALISM
The
Localism
Act
CORE HOUSING &
PLANNING REFORMS
HS
Review
NPPF
eGovernance
New
Technology
and
Analysis
Techniques
Open
Government
Data policy
E-GOVERNANCE
• Guidance suite online: Hyperlinked, malleable,
mobile, commenting easy - a pragmatic solution
recommended by the Review panel, it fulfilled
various agendas including ‘digital by default’ and
‘open source planning’.
• Beta phase rather than consultation?
Demonstrates gap between legislation and use of
technology.
Changing local access and use – consultation
suggested local groups my find access difficult
(particularly neighbourhood groups!)
•
•
Instant updating may make policymaking
fundamentally more fluid.
Early findings
•
Interstitial or ‘fuzzy’ spaces between programmes are caused by inherently
contradictory tendencies characteristic of neoliberal planning reforms (either
within national level, or any other). These relate to clashing ‘allocative structures’.
•
Fuzzy spaces and their freedom from direct structuring forces, produce
interstitial ‘discretionary spaces’, which amplify the agential force of actors
working in central government. This reflects findings at the local level
(Allmendinger & Haughton, 2013).
•
The everyday actions of agents working in these spaces can produce new
‘emergent’ system properties which go on to shape structures, in unplanned
and unexpected ways. These feed back into the process.
•
This points to the fact that, in order to understand the systems shaping the
reform process, an agent and practice-focused approach in required, and in such
a centralised system the national level of practice is vital (even if it isn’t
‘planning’ as such, and some of the most important contexts aren’t
‘planning’!)
… continued
•
This is not to say that planning at the national level is too context-specific
and chaotic to theorise or generalise. This framework points to the
relatively orderly production of chaotic moments which amplify the
actions of individual agents. This needs to be addressed theoretically
through the prism of planning theory, as it has been in many ways at the
local level.
•
It also shows the strengths and needs for the framework and case study:
 Neoliberalism = context and logics for reform and decision making
 Practice theory = practice as generative, the mundane as valuable
 Interpretive policy analysis = un-bordered contexts, the significance of
Whitehall
 Discursive institutionalism = the conceptual glue
Thanks!
Daniel J. Slade
Twitter:
@_Dslade2
Email:
d.slade@Liverpool.ac.uk
LinkedIn:
uk.linkedin.com/in/danielslade
Dr Olivier Sykes / Prof. Graham Haughton / Dr. David Dolowitz / John Healey MP