Introduction
Government failure by definion is the inability of a government or government agencies to achieve their goals and outcomes (Dollery and Wallis, p. 4). According to Dollery and Wallis (1997), there are three types of government failure, i.e. Legislative Failure, Bureaucratic Failure, and Rent-Seeking.
Weisbrod (1978), on his part, has a broader view of government failure, arguing that government failure should be looked at from 4 different levels, i.e legislative, administrative, judicial, and enforcement failure (Dollery and Wallis, 1997, p. 4).
Regardless of the form, government failure has been found to have a significant impact on policy analysis and the following paper will thus seek to analyze government failure and the role it plays in policy analysis in various areas.
Government Failures as Precursors for Policy Analysis
According to Dollery (1997), government failure forms an integral part of the lexicon of modern policy analysis. Vining et.al (2007, p. 156) supports this viewpoint, noting that public policy is as informed by an understanding of government failure as it is by market failure because the collective choices made by government organs have the potential not to promote social values in desired and predictable ways.
From a market theory perspective, Riley (2012) further argues that government failure is the best way of finding out what the consumer preferences are and then, based on these preferences, finding out how many among them are willing and able to pay for particular goods and services. As such, the success of the policy can be gauged.
The most important reason for using government failure as a precursor for policy analysis, however, is the fact that governments often opt to embark on projects when they do not have sufficient information that is needed for a proper cost-benefit analysis, many times leading to misguided policies with negative ramifications (Riley, 2012).
There have been several examples of failed government housing policies in the West in the last few years, for instance, and such failures must form the foundation for policy analysis to help prevent similar policy failures by goverments in future.
The Effect of Government Failures on Different Subject Areas
The effect of government failures on different subject areas is similar, with the most common thread being the fact that the effects are long term and far-reaching. This is because government policies are wide-reaching/ all encompassing spanning a large geographical scope and affecting a vast amount of people, a lot of times the entire population of a country (Byrnes, Dollery and Wallis 2011).
Housing and Transport, for instance, are different sectors yet the policies develped decades ago that regulate them have produced long term effects that are being felt today. The UK’s transport network has been facing long- term challenges due to poor long-term planning just as the housing sector in the US has suffered due to lack of foresight in policy- making.
Additionally, government failure has the same negative effect on both market and non market economies. In a non-market economy such as the Soviet Union, the market collapsed in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s due to poor policeis as did the US economy during the Great Depression in the 1930’s and the recent recession in 2007 due to the failed housing policy (Riley, 2012).
In both examples, a lot of people were affected and the effects were felt in the long term, not the short term.
Conclusion
Government failures, while damaging and unfortunate, are not the end of the world. They provide the opportunity for lessons to be learnt so that better, more flexible and adaptable policies are developed for the future. Government failures should thus act as the precursor for policy analysts when developing new policies so as to ensure that they do not make the same mistakes of their failed predecesors.
References
Byrnes, J., Dollery, B., and Wallis, J. (2001). Local Government Failure In Australia: An Empirical Analysis Of New South Wales. Web.
Riley, G. (2012). Government Failure – Introduction. Tutor2u. Web.
Vining, D., Weimer, L., and Aidan, R. (2007). Policy Analysis for Capella University, 5th Edition. USA: Pearson Learning Solutions.