About the Book
This book contains an Open Access chapter.
Public policy actors spend considerable time writing policy, advising politicians, eliciting stakeholder views on policy concerns, and implementing initiatives. Yet, they also ‘hang out’ chatting at coffee machines, discuss developments in the hallway walking from one meeting to another, or wander outside to carparks for a quick word and to avoid prying eyes. Rather than interrogating the rules and procedures which govern how policies are made, this volume asks readers to begin with the informal as a concept and extend this to what people do, how they relate to each other, and how this matters.
Emerging from a desire to enquire into the lived experience of policy professionals, and to conceptualise afresh the informal in the making of public policy, Informality in Policymaking explores how informality manifests in different contexts, spaces, places, and policy arenas, and the implications of this. Including nine empirical chapters, this volume presents studies from around the world and across policy domains spanning the rural and urban, and the local to the supranational. The chapters employ interdisciplinary approaches and integrate creative elements, such as drawings of hand gestures and fieldwork photographs, in conjunction with ethnographic ‘thick descriptions’.
In unveiling the realities of how policy is made, this deeply meaningful and thoughtfully constructed collection argues that the formal is only part of the story of policymaking, and thus only part of the solutions it seeks to create. Informality in Policymaking will be of interest to researchers and policymakers alike.
Table of Contents:
Foreword; Richard Freeman
Introduction. From Informality and Formality to In|formality: Troubling Absolutism in Policymaking; Joanna Mason, E. Lianne Visser, Lindsey Garner-Knapp, and Tamara Mulherin
Setting the Stage of Informality
Chapter 1. “Knowing” the System: Public Administration and Informality during COVID-19; Claire Bynner
Chapter 2. The Informal Work of Policy Maintenance: Making Space for Local Knowledge in Indian Rural Electricity Governance; Meera Sudhakar
Informal Practices and Ethnomethodology
Chapter 3. Mastering Informality in Diplomacy; Kristin Anabel Eggeling and Larissa Versloot
Chapter 4. Bureaucratic Hustling and Knowledge Shuffling – Informality within Swiss Public Administration; Lisa Marie Borrelli
Chapter 5. Catching up with Catching up: Collaborative Policy Work, In|Formality and Connective Talk; E. Lianne Visser
Methods to Study Informality
Chapter 6. Visualising Informal Repair: Exploring Photographic ‘Routines’ in Ethnographic Methodology; Neha Mungekar OPEN ACCESS
Chapter 7. Traceless Transitions: Studying the Role of Drawings and Gestures in Construction Project Meetings; Evelijn Martinius
Chapter 8. Vehicles of In|formality – the Role of the Car as a Mobile Space of Policy and Relational Work; Tamara Mulherin
Concluding Thoughts
Chapter 9. Tracing Threads of In/Visibilities: The Knotty Mattering of Policymaking; Lindsey Garner-Knapp and Joanna Mason
Chapter 10. Dénouement: Why the How Comes to Matter; Tamara Mulherin and Lindsey Garner-Knapp
Afterword
Chapter 11. Afterword: Reflecting on In|formality; Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and Dvora Yanow
About the Author :
Lindsey Garner-Knapp is Doctoral Candidate at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
Joanna Mason is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Economics, University of Sydney, Australia.
Tamara Mulherin is Lecturer in Organisational Studies with the Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, UK.
E. Lianne Visser is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, the Netherlands.
Review :
Being able to think and act in the moment, as any administrator and politician knows, is the hallmark of being an effective practitioner. It is the only way to tame the intrinsic uncertainty and unpredictability of the organization and its environment. This insight, which is backed up by a sizeable literature - on practice, know how, tacit knowledge, improvisation, wisdom, administrative discretion, informal organization, playing the system – backs up this everyday observation. Yet, in policy analysis and political science this practical common sense is inexplicably ignored. Instead, the formal aspects of organizations – institutions, laws, rules, procedures, constitutions – are considered the standard of epistemic and social authority. One of the many achievements of this book is brings the voice of practice back into the conversation. It invites us to think in a non-dualist way about the formal-informal distinction. Another strength is the all-female line-up of contributors, which in itself is a commentary on the hegemonic distribution of epistemic authority in policy research. Nine detailed, carefully researched case studies demonstrate that only a thorough immersion in the formal aspects of policy and organization allows the practitioner to improvise on the spot to get things done and successfully solve problems, and also what that means for the organization. I expect this book to be a lasting contribution to bridging the divide between the formal and informal aspects of public policy and administration.
Brilliant and insightful, this forceful intervention challenges the taken-for-granted assumptions and paradigms in public administration and governance. This book tells an alternative, less-told story of in/formality in policy studies, one that is grounded in feminist methodologies, contextualized practices and localized knowledges. Broad in its scope, the book details how informality is used to negotiate boundaries, transfer knowledge and maintain infrastructure using a fascinating array of visual, material, and ethnographic methods. It is a must-read for anyone wishing to develop a complete understanding of how governance actually works on the ground.
This edited collection is an insightful reminder of the unseen interstitial spaces and occasions where the (hyphenated) work of doing policy gets done. Beautifully presented and full of rich ethnographic accounts from a range of contexts, a great read for practitioners, managers and academics alike.
This book vividly presents how informality gains shape in the daily practice of professional policymakers. The refreshing approach goes beyond binary thinking and considers the complex intertwining of informality with formality. It will be a key resource for anyone interested in informality in policymaking, and recommended reading for those who want to understand how informality always seems to elude definition.
This highly original book marks a significant advance in our understanding of how policy is made. It offers a welcome corrective to the continued appeal of formal theories of policy-making and a much-needed alternative to the many textbooks that elide what actually happens in everyday practice. With phenomenal nuance and insight, the authors take in-formality out of the shadows to move forward a relational and interpretive agenda of policy as practice.
