Reconceptualizing power through the theoretical lenses of public management and policy implementation: The disaster recovery of the Siaolin village

This paper addresses a gap between public management (PM) and policy implementation (PI) in explaining how power operates across policy design and implementation. While PM often begins from questions of institutional design and the management of public authority, PI emphasizes how policies are contested and adapted in practice. Rather than treating these perspectives as irreconcilable, this study develops a processual framework of institutionalized and negotiated power. Institutionalized power refers to power embedded in legal mandates, administrative roles, resources, and recognized participation channels held by both formal authorities and policy recipients, albeit in different forms. Negotiated power emerges when these institutionalized powers interact and contest during implementation. Empirically, this paper traces the post-Morakot housing reconstruction of Siaolin village in Taiwan by showing how an initial government–NGO permanent housing plan produced acceptance among some households but resistance among others. It shows that policy outcomes are neither simply delivered through formal authority nor spontaneously produced through local contestation, instead they emerge through recursive interaction between institutionalized arrangements and negotiated practice. The paper contributes to PM and PI scholarship by offering an integrated account of how formal design, implementation contestation, policy adaptation, and institutional learning are connected in disaster recovery governance.