Best Practices from Everywhere? Global Networks in Public Services Design and Delivery

Excellence in service delivery has been a mantra – sometimes a fig-leaf – in government reform and fiscal austerity exercises in the past decade. Standards of excellence are no longer defined exclusively in national or... [ view full abstract ]

Excellence in service delivery has been a mantra – sometimes a fig-leaf – in government reform and fiscal austerity exercises in the past decade. Standards of excellence are no longer defined exclusively in national or domestic terms. Members of the European Union (EU), for example, are committed to EU standards and practices in service delivery, but most countries now look to international “best practices” in service delivery design and citizen satisfaction strategies. The question at the heart of this paper is: where do they get their ideas from, and how?

Focusing strictly on the state-to-state exchange of ideas about service delivery approaches obscures the ideational contributions of a rich and complex network of actors. Furthermore, limiting the focus of study to state-to-state policy transfer may conceal less direct mechanisms for policy transfer and the influence of a diverse collection on non-state actors.

This paper seeks to broaden the scope of analysis by studying the global policy advisory systems (GPAS) that exchange ideas and standards about public service delivery.  Using Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) events as a point of entry, we will collect empirical data about the actors engaged in identifying “best practices” and international standards for service delivery.  We will use UCINET and NetDraw, two social network analysis tools, to map and analyze the data collected.  This paper will consider: What types of actors are involved in these GPAS? Under what conditions do they operate? And how do the structure of these networks facilitate (or not) the flow of information and ideas? 

We seek to map a dynamic international network of actors engaged in developing public service delivery models, and to consider how these GPAS transform our understanding of how ideas about public service delivery are exchanged.  In particular, this paper will examine the interface between these GPAS and governments at the local and national-levels that are tasked with delivering services to their citizens.