CAPACITY

The president holds the power to ask for and ensure the production of strategic planning, whether through formal or informal channels. Line ministries, most notably the Ministry of Finance, and the president’s advisory ministry (the Secretaría General de la Presidencia, or Segpres), have considerable influence in strategic planning processes. Meetings between strategic planning staff and the head of government are held frequently.

Strategic planning, planning of policy and regulatory reforms, budget planning, and ex ante evaluation of government policies and public investment programs are carried out by specialized units and departments inside the various ministries. While there is no explicit multiyear budget planning process in place in Chile, this takes place implicitly due to the fiscal rule that links (by law) overall government expenditure to forward-looking estimates of long-term government revenue, based growth trends and copper price projections. These forecasts are provided in a transparent way by specialized budgetary commissions comprised of academic and private-sector experts (mostly professional economists).

The resources for strategic planning directly available to the president are impressive. Other than the formal structures in the Executive Office of the President, which have a statutory basis, the White House has an impressive number of senior policy assistants, the most well-known of whom is the assistant to the president for national security affairs, who chairs the National Security Council with a staff of 250. In addition, there are assistants for health care, climate change and energy, intergovernmental relations, urban affairs, political affairs and a legislative liaison with a staff of 440 professionals alone. How much influence is given to long-term, general plans varies with the president and with circumstances. For example, during the Obama administration, long-term fiscal planning considerations have been sacrificed to short-term anti-recession goals. Legislative measures that affect spending and revenues are required to be accompanied by 10-year projections of fiscal impact, approved by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Nevertheless, the projections often assume future actions (such as permitting the expiration of a tax cut) that are unlikely to transpire. Policies are often designed with heavy emphasis on short-term electoral considerations. For example, the mandates for individual purchases of health care insurance in the Obama Health Care reform will not go into effect until 2014.

The Commonwealth public service makes extensive use of committees to undertake strategic planning, and these committees are generally geared towards their peak of activity immediately before and after the transition to a new government, and in the pre-budget period. The public service also maintains a single department, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, with the aim of coordinating and directing strategic planning across the government as a whole.

The Labor government elected in 2007 appears to have increased emphasis on strategic planning, thus commissioning numerous reviews, inquiries and committees in 2008 on a range of policy domains, including pensions, taxes and climate change. The Labor government has also emphasized a “whole of government” approach to policy-making and service delivery. In response, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet prepared a detailed set of recommendations in a discussion paper “Ahead of the Game: Blueprint for the Reform of Australian Government Administration,” which is currently under consideration. The paper has 28 recommendations focused mainly around the provision of effective service delivery, strategic planning, and creating a skilled and responsive public service.

Planning in government is not only possible when there is a unit with the word “planning” attached to it. The last unit with an explicit planning mandate in its name was the Treasury Board’s Planning Secretariat, which was disbanded in the late 1970s. Its ineffectiveness may explain its demise. Neither the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) nor the Privy Council Office (PCO) has an official planning unit today. The Policy Research Initiative (PRI), established in 1997 under the PCO to promote and organize horizontal research within the federal government, could have potentially developed a strategic planning function. However, this unit had not reported through the PCO since 2007. Given the uncertainties and unpredictability of the modern world, at both the national and international level, many consider long-term strategic planning suspect, or at least not a priority, and hence an inappropriate use of limited resources. Nevertheless, there are thousands of public servants employed by the PCO, the Department of Finance and the Treasury Board (close to 3,000 individuals in all) who have no program responsibility. Their purpose is to manage politically sensitive files and to plan. Therefore, one can argue that the planning capacity of the government of Canada is as strong – and sometimes stronger – as that of other Western countries.

The amount of strategic thinking in Danish government administration varies across different ministries. It also depends on the decision style of the ministry head. Major reforms in Denmark are usually prepared through committees or commissions established to produce a report outlining issues and options. However, one of the conclusions in a major research project on power in Denmark in the beginning of the new millennium was that “Denmark has never had strong traditions for basing political decisions on accessible knowledge ¬– as opposed to Sweden, for instance. The scientific/analytical level in Danish white papers has generally been low. White papers have often seemed negotiated rather than analytical presentations of political issues. Trends in recent years point toward a further weakening of the knowledge base of decision-making. Fewer and fewer bills are prepared in commissions, and when the commissions are formed, their time frame is often narrower than previously.”
It is not clear whether this conclusion still stands. In recent years there have been a number of commissions appointed (Strukturkommissionen, Velfærdskommissionen, Arbejdsmarkedskommissionen, Skattekommissionen and so on) to prepare inputs for important policy discussions and reforms. Moreover, professionalism in ministries has increased.
More overarching strategic policy plans or documents with a strong focus on economic policy in recent times are the government’s 2010 plan and the 2015 plan. The former was launched by the government under Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen in 2000, and later adopted with minor modifications by the government under Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The 2015 plan is a revision and update of the 2010 plan, and a 2020 plan is expected by the end of 2010.
It should also be taken into account that government policies traditionally have been consensus-driven. This applies both in parliament, as most governments have been minority governments, and in relation to negotiations involving organizations and the political system, most notably in relation to labor market issues.
Additionally, a new type of forum has been developed which brings high-profile policymakers (ministers), representatives from society, and experts together in globalization councils (globaliserings rådet) or growth forums (vækstforum) to discuss important policy issues. This can be seen as a new instrument in the consensus-driven policy approach.

Strategic planning has considerable influence on decision-making. Strategic goals of the government program are recorded in specific government strategy documents. These strategy documents refer to a one-year period and include a plan for pursuing the priority goals, notice of intent for key decisions to be made and indicators for evaluating the government’s performance in achieving its strategic goals. The implementation of the government program is assessed by a half-time report which defines how strategic goals should be reached in the remaining cabinet period. The Prime Minister’s Office assists the prime minister and the government in their work, and is also responsible for the planning of social policy legislation that does not fall within the competence of any other ministry. The cabinet launches policy programs that cover broad-based inter-sectoral issues to ensure the attainment of the government’s key objectives; the preparation and monitoring of the programs are delegated to ministerial groups. During the legislative period, government presents a long-term report on the future to the parliament; this report is jointly prepared by ministerial and specialist working groups. In addition, the parliamentary Committee for the Future deals with long-term strategic planning.

The core executive in New Zealand is shaped according to new public management approaches and methods. Most importantly, contracts are negotiated between ministers and chief executives in a large number of departments and ministries. With 35 government departments and ministries, taking a whole government approach to policy development can be complex and time-consuming. After 1999, the Labour-led governments reacted to concerns about fragmentation and silos by recentralizing the steering capacity of the core executive. The most important government departments involved in strategic planning and policy formation are the central agencies of Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC), the State Services Commission (SSC) and the Treasury. All contracts (performance agreements, departmental statements of intent) support a cooperative and whole government policy approach, though evaluation of the performance assessment of chief executives has a strong focus on departmental achievements. The new National-led government in the period under review decided to seek substantial efficiency reforms without a major reorganization of public sector departments and ministries. This has led to various initiatives, such as greater rationalization and coordination with respect to back-office functions (such as IT, payroll and procurement) with a view to achieving savings which can be shifted to delivering front-line services. Since chief executives are on contract and employ the staff, these changes can only occur with their support and cannot be imposed on individual departments.
Developing strategies to enhance public sector performance management has been progressing for some time. At the end of 2008, DPMC, SSC and the Treasury released “The Capability Toolkit,” “a tool to promote and inform capability management” and strengthen the management and efficiency of government departments. A “Performance Improvement Framework” was published in late 2009 and is now being used for both self-assessment and external review of the performance of government departments and ministries. Since the government has imposed a cap on the size of the state sector, these measures are aimed at securing greater efficiency, effectiveness and performance across the state sector.
There is only a moderate strategic planning capacity that the prime minister can make use of (policy advisory group) vis-à-vis the ministers and increasingly, more ad hoc groups, often including some outside expertise, are complementing the policy advisory work of government agencies. For example, the design of the government’s tax reform package was aided by the work of an independent tax policy working group outside of government that had brought together experts to debate issues and provide advice to the government. The National-led government has found this approach attractive in that it connects the government to expertise while also allowing ideas to be debated by the public prior to decision-making. As pressures on government spending grow in areas such as social security benefits, police, justice and corrections, health and education services, and so on, the government is seeking public-private partnerships and more practical and low-cost solutions which involve greater self- or community-help. One notable initiative is the Whanau Ora program, a policy developed by a minister from the Maori Party, which has pooled funding from government agencies to develop and deliver service to Maori and their families/tribes which are more holistic, tailored and effective in achieving better outcomes.

Significant strategic planning takes place in the course of government decision-making. The typical procedure for major decisions is the following. First, the government appoints an ad-hoc committee tasked with delivering a detailed report on a particular issue. Some of these committees are composed exclusively of experts, while others have a broader membership that includes politicians and representatives of interested parties such as unions, business confederations and other non-governmental organizations.
For instance, a report to the Ministry of Finance would typically be drafted by high-profile academic economists, representatives of unions, employers and the central bank. When this procedure leads to legislative action, a proposal is drafted and distributed to interested parties, who are invited to make comments and suggestions (a period of three months for comments is recommended, and six weeks is the minimum stipulated).
Only after comments have been received will the government prepare a proposal for parliament (sometimes in the form of a parliamentary bill, but sometimes only as an initial white paper). Governments deviate from this procedure only in cases of emergency, and any attempt to circumvent it would lead to public criticism.
This convention of careful, deliberate, consensual and slow decision making has served the country well. The procedure leading up to the 2009 pension reform is a case in point. Yet two major recent reforms have turned out to be remarkable and costly failures: health care reform (certainly) and social security reform (probably). These failures may be due to a dogmatic overconfidence in the efficacy of bureaucratic centralization and should raise serious questions about strategic capacity.
There is an established procedure for the approval of the annual budget. The activity starts one year in advance, when the government holds three conferences on the budget proposal. The finance minister presents an initial proposal to parliament in the first week of October. A parliamentary committee plays an active role in the budget process and makes concrete proposals on the distribution of resources. This proposal becomes the basis of parliamentary discussion. After the parliament approves a proposal for the allocation of resources, it becomes binding for subsequent, more detailed discussions that take place in various parliamentary committees. By December 15, this work is concluded, and the final budget is approved by the full parliament.

Government decision-making in general tends to be a mixture of long-term strategic planning and short-term programs and specific measures. The Central Government Office (CGO, Regeringskansliet) staff emphasizes in interviews and questionnaire responses that short-term thinking and strategies tend to become more important, at the expense of more long-term strategic planning. This is not to suggest that long-term planning is being considered as not very important. In the Finance Ministry and the prime minister’s secretariat, there is extensive financial and political planning. Also, the CGO has currently embarked on internal reform to enhance its internal coordination and its capacity to steer agencies. But the CGO has to deal with day-to-day politics and is exposed to the media. That means that short-term considerations play a large role in the decision-making although often short-term decisions are embedded in more long-term plans.
A related factor to bear in mind when assessing meetings with strategic planning staff and the head of government in Sweden is the collective nature of the government. The government (cabinet) makes all decisions as a collective body. That means that strategic planning staff may not meet only with the head of government but with the Cabinet as a whole.
Traditionally, the backbone of strategic planning in Swedish politics was the so-called “Royal Commissions” (Swedish Government Official Reports, SOUs). The frequency of such commissions declined in the most recent past. And in contrast to the past, in contemporary commissions, party politicians dominate. Hence, the inclusion of interest groups and scientific experts is diminishing. The incumbent center-right government switched the planning strategies from SOUs to institutionalized advisory councils, one example being the introduction of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council (in which exclusively economists are engaged who prepare specific reports and report annually on fiscal policies in Sweden) or the Globalization Council (which is institutionally linked to the CGO and in which scientists provide particular studies, and in which politicians as well as selected members from interest organizations formulate policy recommendations).

Each minister (as well as each secretary of state, i.e., junior minister) works closely with his or her own team of collaborators (cabinet ministériel or cellule stratégique). The meetings take place often and the team designs policies in line with both with the minister’s objectives and the government agreement. (Belgium’s coalition governments set a government agreement prior to the formation of a government. It details a range of action points for the entire legislature.) The minister and his or her advisory team are then responsible for drafting projects which are then submitted to the government during weekly meetings. The most important issues are first discussed in special inter-cabinet meetings (réunions intercabinets) and arbitrated by a small group of leading politicians comprised of the prime minister and a deputy prime minister from each coalition party.
Regarding long-term planning, one must note that the knowledge accumulated by the minister’s collaborators is essentially lost at the end of a legislature, since the team is attached directly to a given minister. Public administration is run by civil servants who serve longer tenures than do ministerial collaborators, but these groups do not generally participate in the minister’s strategic decisions. Very long-term planning (beyond a legislature’s term) is therefore made difficult by the organizational structure of the government. The main rationale for relying on the minister’s team instead of civil servants is that the former are close allies to the minister and are more flexible in terms of working hours, such as in addressing emergency situations.

One of the important events in Mexican governance is the production, at or near the beginning of each new presidential term, of an official plan. The law requires such a plan to be produced. The current plan covers the period from 2007 – 2012. Plans are inevitably in some respects aspirational. There is no formal sanction for official noncompliance, and some of the targets may indeed be too optimistic, though some of the more recent economic problems were unforeseeable when the current plan was being drawn up. There is also an interministerial system of coordination on planning targets, and each ministry also has its own planning unit. Allowing for the vagaries of economic cycles and other unknowables, it is reasonable to conclude that Mexico takes its planning process seriously.

The Tusk government has undertaken substantial attempts at improving strategic planning. In particular, it established a Board of Strategic Advisers in charge of supporting the planning units in the Department for Strategic Analysis in the Prime Minister’s Office. The Board has been consulted frequently by Prime Minister Tusk and has prepared a number of important documents, most notably the “Report on the intellectual capital of Poland” (Raport o kapitale intelektualnym Polski, 2008) and the “Report on Poland 2030. Development Challenges” (Raport Polska 2030. Wyzwania rozwojowe, 2009). These reports have been widely discussed and have helped to provide a long-term perspective for policy-making.

Strategic planning remains an important factor in Korean governance. The content of this strategic planning has changed dramatically, from an earlier concentration on democratization, market-oriented reforms and the expansion of social security to a focus on economic growth, business-friendly policies and “green growth.” Given the strengthened position of the president and his comfortable majority in parliament, the political context for strategic planning has improved as compared with that facing the Roh administration. Compared to previous administrations, the Lee government is much more pragmatic, but also much more short-term oriented. Instead of being concerned with long-term goals, President Lee views the government as operating in a similar manner to a company, reacting pragmatically to challenges in order to remain competitive in the process of economic globalization.

Compared to his predecessor, Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke far less about a coherent strategy, partly because he wanted to distance himself from Tony Blair’s legacy as embodied in the “New Labour” brand (and against whose market-driven reforms he had often provided internal opposition), but also because he felt that the British people had tired of the grand designs to which they had often been subjected in the past.

Although the United Kingdom’s political system is one of the most centralized in the world, resources directly at the disposal of the prime minister are relatively few, as there is no prime minister’s department. The Prime Minister’s Office was reorganized in 2001, and that organization was not affected by the change in government from Blair to Brown. Direct support for the prime minister comes from the Number 10 Policy Unit, which under Brown comprised 10 hand-picked advisers (several of whom had previously advised Brown at the Treasury); further support is concentrated in the Cabinet Office, which houses the prime minister’s Strategy Unit.

Manifestly, the last two years have been dominated by the need to manage the crises in the financial sector and in the real economy. In these circumstances, the government did not display the same strategic outlook as in the preceding period.

When planning strategically in the past, the prime minister had to take into account the considerable resources of the most important department, namely the Treasury (which combines narrow finance-ministry functions with a significant policy steering capacity). However, Prime Minister Brown faced no such competition. This goes to show that institutional capacity (considerable) and actual use of strategic planning (relatively high under Blair; somewhat less so under Brown) are two different things.

In 2007, on the day before Gordon Brown took over as prime minister, a report by the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee on “Governing the Future” was published, setting out government thinking about strategic planning in the core executive. That document has served as a blueprint ever since.

The concept of strategic planning is not particularly developed in the Italian governmental and administrative culture. This is in part due to the fact that governments have been largely preoccupied with coalitional problems, and that the administration is predominantly guided by a legalistic culture. However, in the last several cabinets (Berlusconi II and III, Prodi II and he current Berlusconi IV), relatively more detailed coalition and government programs have become an important instrument for organizing and planning government activity. Within the government office (called the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, or Presidenza del Consiglio), a special department guided by a minister without portfolio has been created to oversee the implementation of this program. This department produces an annual report on the program’s implementation status. The financial aspect of strategic planning is more developed, as the Treasury has to implement rigorous budgetary stability goals, and works within a triennial perspective.

The new DPJ-led government aims at fostering a higher level of prime ministerial leadership and strategic government planning, inter alia by setting up a National Strategy Office (to be turned into a full bureau after appropriate legal changes are made), to be chaired by the prime minister and directed by a state minister (initially Naoto Kan, then Yukio Edano). The new organ is tasked with prioritizing policies, providing orientation and setting basic directions for policies across the spectrum of issues; it is also meant to underline the fact that elected politicians, not bureaucrats, are responsible for policymaking. At a more abstract level, the National Strategy Bureau (NSB) is tasked with highlighting the state of Japanese politics and society.

One of the core aims behind the establishment of the NSB was to restructure and centralize the functions of the Cabinet Secretariat, which had become bloated since Koizumi’s time in office. Councils had been established to address a wide variety of topics, and had the secretariat had lost orientation as a consequence. The NSB is thus designed to reestablish order within the Cabinet Secretariat, endowing the latter with “centripetal power.” However, it is important to note that final decisions can only be taken by the cabinet, not by the NSB.

Portugal’s situation remains much the same as outlined in the SGI 2009 report, with strategic planning having a considerable influence on governmental decision-making, due both to domestic and supranational frameworks. On the domestic side, this is grounded by Law 43/91 (the Framework Law of Planning), which defines three types of national planning: the so-called Major Planning Options (Grandes Opções do Plano, GOP) , which have to be approved in parliament; yearly plans; and medium-term plans. The GOP serve to define the “strategic orientation of the economic and social development policy.” These are thus fairly long documents, dealing with a wide variety of fields (the current plan, for 2010 – 2013, runs to 114 pages). The yearly plans describe economic and social policy measures that the government intends to carry out each year, and correspond with budgetary policy; the medium-term plans reflect national, sectoral and regional plans to be implemented over the term of a legislature. However, even beyond this domestic institutional framework, the notion of strategic planning continues to gain ground in Portugal, as highlighted in the SGI 2009 report.
The supranational framework is also generating additional pressures to engage in strategic planning. Along with the need for such planning in order to access regional and structural funds, and as a part of implementing EU policy, Portugal’s membership in the single currency played a crucial role with respect to planning in the 2008 – 2010 period. The Stability and Growth Program (SGP) has become Portugal’s foremost instrument of planning in terms of economic policy, superseding domestic instruments (including the budget). This was evidenced in early 2010, when the bulk of measures were presented not in the budget of January 2010 but in the SGP of March 2010.
Strategic planning is also becoming increasingly evident in the course of government operations. The government uses specially designated expert task forces comprised of outside experts, or permanent “offices” consisting of government employees, in formulating policies. Examples include the Departamento de Prospectiva e Planeamento do Ministério do Ambiente, do Ordenamento do Território e Desenvolvimento Regional; the Direcção Geral de Estudos, Estatística, e Planeamento (concerning employment); and the Gabinete de Estudos das Pescas. Most of the ministries have some kind of center or group for strategic planning.

Although meetings between Prime Minister Zapatero and strategic planning staff are not frequent, the Prime Minister’s Private Office (PM’s Private Office) is a large advisory department which includes a research and analysis unit, and more importantly the Economic Office of the Prime Minister (formerly a separate department, but merged with the PM’s Private Office in 2008). The director of the Economic Office is also the national coordinator for the implementation of the National Reform Program (the so-called post-Lisbon EU 2020 Strategy), and is thus quite influential in defining mid-term Spanish economic policy and goals regarding job creation, education, R&D, poverty and climate change.
The cabinet office or Ministry of the Presidency (Ministerio de la Presidencia), whose minister is also the first deputy prime minister, and the Ministry of Economy and Finance, whose minister is also the second deputy prime minister, are responsible for some strategic tasks as well, as they play a coordinating role with regard to the other ministries. Furthermore, during the preparation of Spain’s turn in the rotating EU presidency (which took place in the first half of 2010), the Spanish government created a special unit and reinforced the horizontal powers of the Secretariat of State for the EU to define the strategic framework for the EU Council during 2010 and 201, along with the Belgian and the Hungarian governments, the other two member states of the EU presidency trio.

The Undersecretariat of State Planning Organization (formerly SPO) was established in 1960 as the major consulting body to the prime minister’s office in issues of sectoral planning and development. Planning is a part of the constitutional policy framework (Article 41 Protection of the Family, Article 45 Protection of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, and of Persons Engaged in These Activities, Article 56 Health Services and Conservation of the Environment and Article 166 on Planning). According to Law No. 5018 on Public Financial Management and Control of 2003 and Bylaw on Principles and Procedures for Strategic Planning in Public Administrations of 2006, all public institutions, including municipalities and special provincial administrations (Law Nos. 5216, 5302 and 5393), but excluding regulatory and supervisory bodies, must prepare strategic plans. The basic objective of strategic planning is to establish an institutional connection between plans, programs and budgets. In this respect, performance programs and activity reports are complimentary. Recently, all ministerial bodies also designated a separate department for developing strategy and coordination. However, these are not yet sufficiently functional. The General Directorate of Budget and Fiscal Control has prepared a guide for performance-based budgeting. The Department of Strategy Development, associated with the prime minister’s office, is basically entitled to monitor the implementation of legislation and plans, define the issues related to implementation, define the guidelines for any relevant studies and coordinate the activities.
Since the first phase of strategic planning (2006 – 2010) was not supported by performance-based budgeting, and lacked activity reports prepared according to the legal requirements, no clear positive impact was evident. Even in crucial institutions, institutional capacity is not fully satisfactory for full-fledged strategic planning. No cumulative statistics about the frequency of meetings between strategic planning staff and the head of government exist, but these meetings were generally held once a year, especially during the preparation period. According to the results of a survey (Erkan, 2008), in many public administration sectors there has been an ongoing process of restructuring and regulatory reform. It is argued that these changes may result in changes in mission, which will definitely influence strategic planning processes negatively over time.

In lieu of the overarching advisory agencies used for strategic planning in the immediate post-war era, governments now revert to special ad hoc commissions or personal advisers. This implies the danger that opportunism may prevail over real strategic planning. For instance, after his election, President Sarkozy put in place dozens of such committees, the most ambitious being the Attali committee (named after Jacque Attali, a former chief adviser of President Mitterrand), which reviewed all impediments and/or potentialities for growth in the forthcoming years. The report, published in January 2008, suggested several hundred reform measures; several of them were put in place fully or in part.

Policy-making in the period under review has been dominated by short-term crisis-management. The two cabinet committees that had been established in 2006 in order to develop long-term strategies – the Committee of State Reform (ÁRB) and the Development Policy Steering Board (FIT) – ended their activities in July 2007 and April 2008 respectively. However, the New Hungary Development Plan (ÚMFT), an outline of Hungary’s socioeconomic development from 2007 – 2013 prepared by the FIT in October 2006, proved vital in getting and absorbing EU transfers while providing some strategic guidance.

In the past, the government was guided on key economic and social issues by (1) five-year “national development plans” and (2) shorter-term “national understandings,” which evolved out of national wage agreements but which expanded to include statements of principle on a very wide range of social and economic issues. There has also been a proliferation of planning units in the ministries and personal advisory cabinets for ministers. Expenditure on this type of advice has ballooned in recent years.
However, since 2008, government decision-making has been dominated by short-term crisis management. Keeping the Irish banking system afloat amid the global financial crisis of September 2008 has been the dominant concern, followed closely by attempts to limit the growth of the fiscal deficit. This has left little room for longer-term strategic planning, although a report outlining ideas about a “smart economy” was published in 2009 (see also Research and Innovation Policy).
In the wake of the crisis, the government recruited advisers from academia to assist in the formation of an anti-crisis plan. These advisers have had significant influence on policy.
In response to the urgent need to reduce day-to-day spending by a significant percentage, the government commissioned an outsider from academia to chair the Special Group on Public Sector Numbers and Expenditure Programs (better known as An Bord Snip Nua, which in a mixture of Gaelic and English roughly means the “New Cuts Board,” referring to a predecessor board known by a similar name in the 1980s). In July 2009, this group delivered a set of proposals to reduce public spending by identifying over €5 billion in potential savings. These recommendations had some influence on the changes to current spending contained in the 2010 budget, and will continue to influence policy going forward.
In planning Ireland’s response to climate change, there has also been a reliance on planning units and external advisers. There is no empirical data detailing how frequently ministers or the head of government meet with strategic staff, but regular meetings do occur.

As a country with several sociocultural minorities, a considerable floating vote, a multiparty system and proportional representation, Dutch governments are frequently minimal winning coalition cabinets. Strategic (political and policy) planning is formally laid down in a government policy accord (regeerakkoord), which formally brings coalition-building and cabinet formation to an end. Strategic issues in the policy accord are derived from three sources: political party platforms; strategy documents drafted by top-level senior civil servants within a ministerial department during the period between the fall of one and the establishment of a new cabinet; and specially prepared strategic documents by formal knowledge institutes (e.g., the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, CPB, or the Health Council, Gr, or the Scientific Council for Government Policy, WRR), but also by powerful lobbies and interest groups (like trade unions and employers’ associations; but also Greenpeace, the Association of Homeowners or Automobile Owners).
Formally, the prime minister is responsible for coordinating policy across the government. The Balkenende IV cabinet sought to maintain a strategic focus within government and guarantee consistency in planning by installing six coordinating ministers (a weak “core cabinet”) and chairing six cabinet committees derived from the six programmatic pillars in the government’s “Work Together, Live Together” agreement. After a 100-day “meet-and-talk-to-the-citizens” period, the cabinet selected 10 projects per programmatic pillar. The minister of finance also coordinates government policy, but has considerable more budgetary resources and surveillance instruments (including regulatory impact assessments, see RIAs) at his disposal than the prime minister. If both ministerial posts are in fact occupied by the political leaders of the major political parties making up a coalition cabinet, stalemates or arduous compromise are sure to follow (as was the case during the Balkenende IV cabinet from 2008 to 2010) since these individuals will closely monitor other ministers of the same political party. The rivalry between Prime Minister Balkenende and his minister of finance, both of whom were keen on keeping a strong party-political profile in contemporary Dutch drama-democracy, especially during and after the financial-economic crisis, was the root cause of the fall of his cabinet’s demise in March 2010. The brief history of Balkenende IV is a painful reminder of the limits to strategic capacity on the cabinet level. It is telling that this cabinet, in response to the budgetary problems that resulted from the bank bailouts during the financial crisis, assigned 20 working groups of civil servants to create ideas on how to cut back €28 billion per year without any ideological-strategic political guidelines or constraints whatsoever.

As a consequence of an almost perfectly proportional electoral system, Austria has been governed by a coalition consisting of two parties since 1983. Following the general elections of 2006 und 2008, the government has been formed by the two biggest parties, the social democratic SPÖ and the conservative ÖVP. Since both parties were almost equally strong, each of them nominated the same number of ministers.
Any coalition of the two major parties reduces the strength of the opposition (at the moment consisting of three parties). It also mitigates the ability of the head of government (chancellor) to maintain overall control of the cabinet. The chancellor’s power is checked by the vice chancellor, an office occupied by the leader of the other governing party. The Chancellery has no strategy unit.
The role of the head of state (federal president) is limited by the need to form a cabinet based on the majority in the National Council, the lower house of the Austrian parliament.
This situation leads to a fragmentation of strategic decision-making. The cabinet has an informal small working committee, comprising an equal number of members from both coalition partners. The decision-making process within the cabinet consists of three steps: First, the two factions within the cabinet meet separately at the beginning of each week. Second, the two factions meet informally to search for common denominators. The third step is the weekly formal cabinet meeting. Since cabinet decisions must be unanimous, government decisions are de facto compromises made between the coalition partners. This procedure is defined by its inclusiveness rather than efficiency.

There is little strategic planning in government decision-making. No government office in charge of strategic planning exists. The medium-term framework for policy-making is set by the government’s manifesto, which is presented to the Chamber of Deputies by asking for a confidence vote. In the period under review, there were two such presentations of government manifestos. The first was made by the Topolánek government in January 2007, the second by the Fischer government in May 2009. Both were substantial documents that followed negotiation between coalition partners. A rare case of strategic planning is represented by the Independent Panel on the Assessment of the Czech Republic’s Long-Term Energy Requirements. This body was founded in 2007 by the government office, and is responsible for developing policy proposals that span more than one electoral term.

In its final years, the grand coalition did not make any attempt at substantial strategic planning. Indeed, the government parties’ strategic planning efforts were mainly concerned with how best to position themselves for the upcoming elections. Nor has the new government, consisting of a coalition between the Liberal Democrats (FDP) and the Christian Democratic parties (the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU)), introduced any important organizational devices for strategic planning. The new head of the chancellery (PMO) again has the status of a minister without portfolio, strengthening his position vis-á-vis the minister-presidents of the federal states and the heads of the various federal ministries. The head of the planning department does not strategically plan the tasks and timing of government policies, but is more concerned with the standing of Chancellor Merkel in public opinion.
Although the federal chancellery is staffed by up to 500 employees, the organizational structure of the German government is not well equipped for strategic planning. Instead, there is strong party politicization, and all important decisions are made by the heads of the parties. In addition, ministerial autonomy contributes to the fragmentation of the governmental process, hindering the development of a coherent policy orientation. Cabinet meetings are unable to compensate for this fragmentation, as previous compromises made between the coalition partners and the minister-presidents of the federal states undermine the meetings’ relevance.

In Greece there are some planning units and advisory cabinets, but their role is circumscribed. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is not a functional equivalent of a strategic planning unit, as its role is to monitor the work of ministers and follow up the evolution of government policies. The PMO is primarily a coordinating agency.
Each minister is entitled to hire a group of advisers, many of whom are experts and/or academics. Strategic planning units can be found within some ministries. While most ministries do not possess a permanent strategic planning unit, some ministries have acquired the functional equivalent of such a unit. For instance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has recourse to a council composed of experts on foreign policy and professors of international relations. However, the minister of foreign affairs does not regularly seek their opinions. In the Ministry of Finance, there is a more established institution, the Council of Economic Experts. Its members are academics, and the minister in charge often asks for their advice. Indeed, after the Greek debt crisis erupted, the Papandreou government used members of that council as advisers and negotiators in the encounters between official representatives of Greece and the European Commission and in the negotiations with the IMF.
Before the October 2009 government turnover, meetings between ministers and the strategic planning units were infrequent. The situation changed dramatically after the turnover, particularly in the winter of 2009 – 2010 as the government was obliged to tackle the fiscal crisis on an emergency basis.
The long-term pattern of the government administration as a whole has sustained a state of chronically weak coordination, with little capacity for strategic planning.

The Luxembourg state apparatus lacks the critical mass to have an authoritative and competent policy advisory capacity. In most cases, the administration is fully occupied with daily operations and has neither personal advisory unit for ministers nor extra-governmental bodies to do strategic planning. The most outstanding exception is the Ministry of Social Security, which has a long tradition in medium- and long-term social programming, namely of the actuarial balance of the pension system. New capacities are developing in the recently created Ministry of Sustainable Development and Infrastructure.

A good example of the lack of planning capacity is the Hospital Plan. Some critics have pointed out that what is supposed to be a plan for the future does not go beyond a description of the current situation and the management of practical constraints.
The only major research facility in the socioeconomic field is the publicly financed Centre d’Etudes de Populations, de Pauvreté et de Politiques Socio-Economiques / International Network for Studies in Technology, Environment, Alternatives, Development (CEPS/INSTEAD), which, like the central statistics office STATEC, has no policy planning capacities.

Strategic planning is not important in Switzerland, because most decisions are made on an ad-hoc basis. Strategic planning is made difficult by the fact that the country has a quasi-presidential political system, with a collegial government, a strong militia element, a consociational decision-making structure, a strong corporatist relationship between a weak federal state and outside interest organizations, and uncertainty due to the system of direct democracy.
The Swiss government is not a parliamentary government and does not have a policy agenda comparable to a “normal” parliamentary government. Furthermore, all seven members of the government have equal rights and powers; there is no prime minister. The president of the government is primus inter pares. He or she is not leader of the government in the sense of a prime minister.

There is little substantial research on the influence of strategic planning on government decision-making in Iceland. However, researchers more or less agree that long-term strategic planning in Iceland is often vague and lacks plans for execution, supervision and revision. When specific objectives are laid down through planning, there will typically be no guarantees ensuring that they will be met. As a result, the government often has a certain degree of flexibility to stall or change strategic planning. A clear example of this is that every fourth year the parliament approves a strategic plan on regional policy for the following four years (the Stefnumótandi byggðaáætlun). This strategic plan lacks the status of a law and is only a resolution. This means that the government has no binding obligation to implement this plan. Over the years, only some elements of these four-year plans have been implemented, while others have gone unaddressed.
The nine-volume, 2,400-page report from the parliament‘s Special Investigation Commission (SIC) delivered a devastatingly critical account of incompetence and lack of coordination among ministries, the Central Bank and the Financial Supervisory Authority (FME) before the financial crash of 2008. The SIC singled out three ministers and four public officials who showed neglect in the exercise of their duties, opening the possibility that some or all of the seven might be prosecuted.

The institutional capacity for strategic planning in Slovakia is weak. Capacities for planning in the ministries are limited, and there is no central policy planning unit in the Government Office. The Fico government showed little interest in strategic planning and did not develop any long-term strategies. Policy-making strongly relied on informal and intransparent agreements in the coalition council, which consists of the three leaders of the government parties only.