What is it about?
This book chapter explores the conceptual basis for performance measurement within political economy. It shows that competing perspectives in economic theory suggest different approaches to measuring performance — and that some perspectives even suggest such measurement is irrelevant or potentially counter-productive. It explores how key concepts in performance measurement are handled differently in each school of political economy, highlights the self-reinforcing nature of many of the questions asked within political economy, and offers some lessons from conflicting paradigms of performance measurement.
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Why is it important?
It is possible to use performance measures to signposts towards desired end-states, as critical success factors, as process signals and warning flags, and as publicity devices. However, each of these uses depends to some extent on the political economy model which lies behind the choice of PIs. This is a factor to which little attention has been paid to date. Consequently, there has been the danger - and sometimes the practice - of interpreting PIs as demonstrating the truth of some propositions (e.g. the superior efficiency of private sector operations in a specific service) which in fact had been used as assumptions in the design of the PI system. It seems important, therefore, that stakeholders be made aware of the full political economy model on which any given set of PIs has been constructed. This will enable them not only to identify possible biases in the data but also tautologies in the interpretation of this data. It might also lead, eventually, to a greater public understanding that in matters of political economy there is a choice of position and that it does matter which one is chosen. For some stakeholders - if rarely for the dominant coalition - it is likely to be important that the public learns to beware of the slogan "There is no alternative - no other way works!". Stakeholders contending for power may need to promote, as a more appropriate vision in public decisionmaking, the line: "There are some alternatives - each of the ways of measuring their success shows a different result - we have chosen alternative X, because of our interpretation of the data - but look for yourselves!"
Perspectives
It is likely that there will eventually be a crisis of confidence in current ways of developing, using and reporting performance measures. Some of the key models of political economy, such as public choice theory, are currently being espoused by governments which simultaneously are using mechanistic measurement systems for performance totally at odds with the assumptions of their political economy paradigm. It seems reasonable in these circumstances to expect that either the PI systems will quickly go out of vogue, or that politicians will swap political economy models in mid-stream. A good PI for public management theorists would be whether or not they can spot the next vogue! There is, of course, another possibility - that performance measurement fulfils an essentially symbolic purpose and that its results are not actually of interest to any of the stakeholders concerned, whose politicking is based on more vivid, directly relevant (if often anecdotal) material. At least in the British context, it is usually justified to assume that actors are motivated more by pragmatic than by philosophical considerations. Social scientists should bear this in mind as they continue to watch the clash of the political economy heavyweights.
Professor Tony Bovaird
University of Birmingham
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This page is a summary of: Political Economy Perspectives on Performance Measurement, January 2008, Nature,
DOI: 10.1057/9780230288942_14.
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