Anat GofenHebrew University of Jerusalem | HUJI · School of Public Policy
Anat Gofen
Professor
About
36
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Citations since 2017
Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (36)
Individuals who attain a higher education, whereas both their parents did not, embody the realization of social mobility. They are referred to as first-generation higher education students. Previous analyses had often portrayed them as succeeding despite their family background. This research suggests that although they face many challenges, their...
Noncompliance is most often understood in the public policy literature as a problem of implementation and enforcement. Yet, this perhaps normative focus misses the role of noncompliance as a source of policy change. To demonstrate this unexplored role, this study conceptualizes noncompliance and subsequent governmental responses as an interactive,...
Often portrayed as policymakers rather than policytakers, street-level bureaucrats play a key role in policy implementation.
It is now well accepted that the implementation actions of street-level workers frequently result in outcomes that differ
from those expected from formal policy. Although the adaptation of rules among street-level bureaucrats...
Commonly defined as observations inconsistent with general patterns in a data set, researchers often consider outliers to be undesirable because they do not fit well with hypothesized generalizations or because they exert disproportionate influence in commonly-used statistical estimation techniques. Less commonly, outliers are viewed as providing v...
Policy implementation is a formative stage of the policy process. It determines policy's form and effect while also lying at the intersection of politics, policy, and the public. Policy implementation takes place within a given institutional setting and requires specific structure and organization to conduct it both of which allocate decision power...
To better understand street-level bureaucracy in developing countries, this study focuses on street-level implementation as embedded within systemic corruption, which is well-documented in the developing world. Analysis focuses on a large city in Guanajuato, which exhibits among the highest corruption rates in Mexico. To allow for a broad perspecti...
Imposing significant challenges for both street‐level implementation and policy (re)design, crises alter the environment for street‐level policy entrepreneurship (SLPE), wherein street‐level bureaucrats engage in policy formulation processes to secure future policy outcomes. Nevertheless, like street‐level implementation in general, SLPE is studied...
Problem, research strategy, and findings
The current focus on power relationships in planning processes emphasizes socioeconomic characteristics of the general public, whose participation is often portrayed as one-time, idiosyncratic, nonprofessional, and relatively powerless. To shift attention to the understudied repeated participation in the gen...
The past decade has seen a rapid rise in the number of policy innovation labs (PILs). PILs that are found both inside and outside of government address a wide range of social issues. Many PILs share a few distinct common characteristics: a commitment to the design-thinking methodology, a focus on applying experimental approaches to testing and meas...
Research adopting an interdisciplinary, behavioural perspective on Public Policy and Public Administration is booming. Yet there has been little integration into mainstream public policy scholarship. Behavioural public administration (BPA) and behavioural public policy (BPP) have emerged largely as two disconnected subfields. We propose the overarc...
Crises' implications for street-level implementation are understudied despite street-level bureaucracy, as the operational arm of the state, by definition, serving on the frontline of crisis treatment. Drawing on multiple public services provided by varied street-level bureaucrats' professions in different countries, this special issue demonstrates...
In contrast to the well‐documented impacts of implementing performance management (PM) systems, the evolution of PM systems' design is understudied, despite the understanding that PM requires ongoing maintenance, continuing reconsideration, and constant adaption to local circumstances. This study employs a process perspective on PM by focusing on t...
Citizens' responses to dissatisfaction with public services are often portrayed as following one of four distinct patterns, each consistent with current provision structures: exit, voice, loyalty, or neglect (EVLN). Citizens may also initiate efforts to access public services through more subversive supply mechanisms. This study focuses on “gaming”...
What are the implications of governmental response to crises for street-level implementation? The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to compare the formal role that decision-makers require of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) during a crisis to normal conditions. Textual analysis of 36 legislative documents and emergency regulations in I...
To address both persistent and emerging social and environmental problems, governments around the world have been seeking innovative ways to generate policy solutions in collaboration with citizens. One prominent trend during recent decades is the proliferation of Policy Innovation Labs (PILs), in which the search for policy solutions is embedded w...
Often portrayed as social resistance fueled by authorities’ discrimination and legal racism, minorities’ noncompliance is considered to undermine the current order and commonly ascribed to distrust in government. To better understand noncompliance as a manifestation of distrust, this study focuses on the well-documented violation of planning, build...
Current interest in middle managers' compliance with performance management (PM) reforms focuses on their downward roles. To explore their understudied upward roles, this analysis draws on police chiefs' voice directed to senior management regarding the Israeli PM system as documented since its first introduction in 1999, and as reported both by ch...
To address both persistent and emerging social and environmental problems, governments around the world have been seeking innovative ways to generate policy solutions in collaboration with citizens. One prominent trend during recent decades is the proliferation of Policy Innovation Labs (PILs), in which the search for policy solutions is embedded w...
Although public managers are considered to substantially influence coproduction, current research concentrates on service users and communities’ perspectives, whereas the contribution of the public workers is understudied. Because direct-delivery interactions often depend on coproduction, this study explores coproduction from the perspective street...
Often portrayed as behaviour that is inconsistent with policy goals, public noncompliance poses a significant challenge for government. To explore what compliance efforts entail on‐ the‐ground, this study focuses on childhood immunization as a paradigmatic case where a failure to ensure compliance poses a public health risk. Analysis draws on 48 se...
Street-level implementation is exercised by individuals, during direct interactions with various clients, in different organizational settings, for the implementation of multiple policies of different professions, in different geographical areas. According to this outlook, different levels of analysis, including micro, meso, and macro-level, are re...
The contribution of this chapter is in its comparative overview of the graduate programs of public affairs/public policy in Israel, the assessment of their adherence to normative curricular practice in the United States, Canada and Europe, as well as their support of the public service in the Israeli context. With public policy analysis gradually b...
Introduction
This chapter has a threefold role in the context of the ILPA volume entitled Policy Analysis in Israel. It proposes to examine the contribution of the Programmes of Public Policy and/or Administration (a) to the public service in Israel at large; (b) to the instruction of public policy; (c) to the instruction of policy analysis. These...
Israel is considered a developed country yet both security issues and its frequently changing demographic makeup set Israel apart and imply that Israeli policy analysts must operate in a unique environment and grapple with exceptional challenges. This volume, part of the successful International Library of Policy Analysis series, brings together fo...
University social responsibility is an institutional commitment to answer for social needs at local, national and global levels. USR includes activities, programs, projects, regulations and policies initiated and undertaken by various actors in the institution – either top-down or bottoms-up – with the explicit aim to provide internal (within the u...
Parental involvement in public education is an expression of joint responsibility between parents and the state in which parents are expected to comply with current educational policy. Moreover, parents are often perceived as reactive, whereas the educational administration is seen as proactive, mainly by reducing barriers and establishing mechanis...
Citizens' local initiatives that are inconsistent with current policy challenge local authorities to act in response. How does local government react and what considerations are involved? Analysis draws on a recent trend in Israel: Dissatisfied parents have been establishing schools even though legal mechanisms enabling such initiatives are absent...
In public service provision, citizens are conventionally reactive, portrayed as ‘users’, ‘customers’, ‘co-producers’, or ‘participators.’ Occasionally, following dissatisfaction, citizens themselves proactively create alternative services, namely, entrepreneurial exit (EE). Laymen then become providers of previously governmental professional servic...
Charter school reforms are predicated on the existence of motivated groups or individuals that create these public schools of choice. Rhetoric concerning charter schools largely takes for granted the supply side and assumes that market forces will compel educational entrepreneurs to open schools. We argue that the motivations of charter school foun...
The first children in a family to attain a higher education embody the realization of social mobility. This study focuses on how the intergenerational cycle of disadvantage is broken. Data were drawn from the National Educational Longitudinal Study 88/2000, selecting only individuals whose parents did not attain college, and comparing the ones who...
Projects
Projects (7)
This ongoing research project focuses on the issue of street-level bureaucrats and their role in public policy processes. Specifically, I am interested in determining how and why the relationship between managers, frontline workers and clients has changed in an era of markets, managerialism, and choice.
Recent global proliferation of policy and social innovation labs (PS-iLabs) “labificate” social life by embedding the search for solutions to social problems within scientific experimental-like structures. Working within or for the government, applying scientific methods and principles to address social issues, and facilitating the “social turn” within policy design through citizens’ participatory and collaboration, PS-iLabs serve three masters: the state, science, and society. Nonetheless, the rapidly growing literature concentrates on historical roots and on PS-iLabs’ internal modes of operation, while overlooking PS-iLabs as a governing technique with broad social impacts. Focusing on the structural position of PS-iLabs as a “scientific” buffer between society and the state, this proposed project investigates the influences of PS-iLabs’ triple commitment on the ways through which contemporary social phenomena are transformed into policy issues, then to policy problems, and eventually to recommended policy solutions. Analysis will use institutional ethnography methods and will comprise three phases. First, documentation of PS-iLabs’ projects worldwide will be analyzed to explore intra- and inter-organizational processes. Second, interviews with managers of PS-iLabs and project stakeholders will complement intra- and inter-organizational analysis and uncover PS-iLabs’ extra-organizational effectiveness. Finally, a comparative analysis of a similar project within different PS-iLabs will identify labification dimensions and dynamics in different settings. Understanding labification as a nexus between society, the state, and science will provide new insights about how to enhance PS-iLabs’ positive contributions and inhibit negative consequences in policy innovation design, which in turn promotes public and social well-being.
Social science researchers often consider outliers as undesirable for not fitting well with hypothesized generalizations, for exerting disproportionate influence over commonly-used statistical estimation techniques, and sometimes for representing norms violation. Less common is to consider outliers as providing valuable information rather than being just unlucky realizations of random error. For policy researchers, who look for ways to promote change that improves public well-being, identifiable differences may contribute for innovative and desirable policy designs. Termed here as outlierism, this project aims to broaden our understanding of outliers' contribution to policy research and policy analysis.
