California State University Long Beach

Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration

Summer 2002, Third Session

PPA 590 WOMEN & PUBLIC POLICY

TERMINATION

            What is termination? How does it fit into public administration? Is it important, and, if so, why? How can it be made a more realistic option? Termination means the end of something, conclusion or cessation, a result or outcome of something. Divorce, death, retirement, bankruptcy, revolution, and surrender can all be viewed as terminations.

            Termination in public administration means the deliberate cessation or conclusion of government functions, organizations, policies or programs. There is also partial termination, in which the government entity or service is significantly re⌐directed so as to continue its justified existence. The inclusion of the termination option is a recognition that a policy or program need not live forever, once its objectives are reached. If its relevance or applicability are found to be outmoded, it should be reconsidered, and, if found redundant or even dysfunctional, terminated.

            Government functions are what economists have called public goods, such as national defense, or regulation of public utilities and housing codes. These functions or obligations are assumed by government to fill an otherwise unmet need. Terminating them would cause hardship or even suffering.

            Organizations are designed to last. This makes them difficult to terminate. The longer one has been in existance the more difficult it is to terminate. For example, the Dept. of the Treasury had Federal agents dedicated to enforcing laws against prohibition. When prohibition was repealed, they adapted to enforcing laws against alcohol, firearms, and tobacco. The U.S. Horse Cavalry survived well into the twentieth century, after the close of world war II.

            Policies are general approaches or strategies to solving particular problems. An organization will be more willing to let go of a policy than to be terminated itself. A policy is also more easily evaluated than the organization, which can have multiple policies. Programs are the easiest to end, as they have the fewest political resources for their protection and represent the smallest investment on the part of the organization. Termination is important. It can be both an end and a beginning: the end of a program that has outlived its usefulness, and the beginning of a process intended to correct the problem.

What are the obstacles to termination?

1. Psychological reluctance. People do not readily confront issues like death, or even symbolic death. Sometimes this results in a denial of the implications of changing reality for the organization's purposes and objectives. For example, the machine gun, rapid fire artillery, and barbed wire made the horse cavalry obsolete, yet it persisted well after World War II, with disasters in many wars discounted or explained away.

2. Institutional permanence. Policies are deliberately designed to perpetuate a service or a relationship whose demands are expected to outlive any single sponsor or bureaucrat. One of the strengths of organization is adaptation in order to survive. The adaptive nature of organizations insulate them from easy termination. Termination is not seen as in the interests of the bureaucracy or its clients, because programs are designed for long life and permanence.

3. Dynamic Conservatism. An organization represents a commitment of resources, or sunk costs. There is a reluctance to admit that all the time and effort that went into establishing the organization was wrong or is not longer needed. The successful attainment of an objectives is not seen as grounds for disbanding the organization, which represents a great deal of organizational learning. For example, when the Salk vaccine was found which could prevent polio, the March of Dimes did not disband, but shifted its emphasis to other diseases which were still incurable, such as multiple sclerosis. The WMCA and YWCA are more concerned with recreational facilities than with saving souls.

4. Anti-termination coalitions. Members of an organization and their supporters will work against terminations. For example, in 1969 President Nixon ordered that all stocks of biological weapons be destroyed, but the director of the CIA's biological weapons research lab ignored the order, because they claimed that their were chemical weapons. The following year another order was issued that all biological and chemical toxins be destroyed, but the CIA pointed out that the memo was directed to the Department of Defense, of which they were not a part. Also, agencies will enlist the support of unions or other allies, even public support, to resist termination. They will target their most popular program in order to raise public outcry against termination.

5. High Costs of Termination. An agency may be crucially undermined if one of its chief programs is terminated. There may be discontent. Slow termination may seem more humane but may result in the organizational members' abandoning the program before the end date. Quick termination results in high costs for the people who cannot be reassigned.

How can termination be made more realistic?

1) Termination has strong negative connotations; Westerners are almost pathologically unable to examine death with any degree of detachment. Often termination is viewed as failure, e.g., divorce, retirement, bankruptcy. Termination must be viewed as part of the policy process, with termination signalling new beginnings as well as endings, as opportunities for starting over. The employee counselor and the management consultant are no longer viewed as ominous persons, as the hatchetman, program assassin, or hired gun.

2) There are few cases of actual termination in the public sector. In a study of public agencies at the Federal level, Kaufman found only 27 agencies that had been terminated in 50 years, out of a total of 421 (15%). Termination must be a viable option for the evaluation process. More recently there have been well⌐documented cases of termination of highly visible programs. Government resources are increasingly restricted, which does not allow for programs which do not contribute their full share to solving social problems.

3) The act of termination is very difficult. Almost any means will be sought to avoid termination: fine tuning, reorganization, realignment, etc. Natural points must be found at which termination can be made more easily, such as a turnover in administration, the retirement of a key person, a reorganization, or at the end of a "sunset" period. Also, viable alternatives can be presented to the agency, e.g., the draft was ended with the beginning of the all-volunteer force. Another way to make termination more palatable would be to allow the agency to keep the money it saves through termination to put toward other projects.