Public Governance for Results: A Conceptual and Operational Framework

Francis Fukuyama (2004.42) wrote "... today, the claim that institutions are the key development variable is already part of conventional wisdom." In recent years, the focus of analysis has moved from the contents of public policy towards the ways of doing politics. While it is still crucial to succeed in the design of each specific policy, what matters fundamentally now is how the whole cycle of public policy-making develops; that is, the ways by which the agenda is formed, and public policies are implemented and evaluated. This change of perspective leads directly to the actors in these processes, the values they embody, the ways in which they express their preferences and interests, the interactions that occur between them, and the rules, written and unwritten, that govern all these actors and their relational patterns. What matters, nowadays, is to analyze the quality of the frameworks and institutional arrangements that shape the governance model acting in each case.