Performance Federalism and Local Democracy: Theory and Evidence from School Tax Referenda

Federal governments are increasingly employing empirical measures of lower‐level government performance to ensure that provincial and local jurisdictions pursue national policy goals. We call this burgeoning phenomenon “performance federalism” and argue that it can distort democratic accountability in lower‐level elections. We estimate the impact of a widely publicized federal indicator of local school district performance—one that we show does not allow voters to draw valid inferences about the quality of local educational institutions—on voter support for school tax levies in a U.S. state uniquely appropriate for this analysis. The results indicate that a signal of poor district performance increases the probability of levy failure, a substantively large and robust effect that disproportionately affects impoverished communities. The analysis employs a number of identification strategies and tests for multiple behavioral mechanisms to support the causal interpretation of these findings.     

The effect of child support on welfare exits and re‐entries

Much of the literature on welfare dynamics has focused on the effects of recipient characteristics and state‐level characteristics such as welfare benefits and economic conditions; there has been very little analysis on the effects of child support. This paper, using the 1979‐1996 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, examines whether child support affects the likelihood of leaving and re‐entering welfare. The results indicate that strong child support enforcement is important in helping young mothers exit and stay off welfare. Women with $1000 child support payments in the previous year were 18 percent more likely to exit welfare and 12 percent less likely to re‐enter welfare. Compared with women in states that pursued child support least vigorously, women in states that had passed extensive child support enforcement legislation and that spent more money on child support enforcement were 79 percent more likely to exit welfare and about 60 percent less likely to re‐enter welfare. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Exploring the relationship between performance management and program impact: A case study of the job training partnership act

Programs that involve multiple levels of government may suffer from a principal‐agent problem: Lower levels of government may wish to pursue different objectives than the higher level of government that provides funding. One strategy for dealing with this problem is to establish a performance management system where units operating the program are accountable for meeting performance standards and are rewarded or sanctioned depending on how well they perform. Title II‐A of the Job Training Partnership Act provides training for economically disadvantaged adults and has operated under a performance management system since 1983 when the program was established. The federal government's goal for the program is to maximize impact on the employment and earnings of participants, but because control groups are not available for the 640 local programs, proxy measures of performance must be used. In this paper, data from an experiment in 16 sites are used to determine how closely measured performance corresponds to program impact. It is concluded that there is only a weak correspondence between the two measures and that the Department of Labor should avoid making significant rewards or sanctions based on the current performance management system. © 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

When Do Regression‐Adjusted Performance Measures Track Longer‐Term Program Impacts? A Case Study for Job Corps

The use of performance management systems has increased since the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993. While these systems share the goal of trying to improve service delivery and participant outcomes, they do not necessarily provide information on the causal (value‐added) effects of a program, which requires a rigorous impact evaluation. One approach for potentially improving the association between program performance measures and impacts is to adjust performance measures for differences across performance units in participant characteristics and local economic conditions. This article develops a statistical model that describes the conditions under which regression adjustment improves the performance–impact correlation. We then use the model to examine the performance–impact association using extensive data from a large‐scale random assignment evaluation of Job Corps, the nation's largest training program for disadvantaged youths. We find that while regression adjustment changes the Job Corps center performance measures, the adjusted performance measures are not correlated with the impact estimates. The main reasons are the weak associations between the unadjusted Job Corps performance measures and participants’ longer‐term outcomes as measured by the evaluation, as well as the likely presence of unobserved factors across centers that are correlated with outcomes.     

Welfare reform and paternity establishment: A social experiment

From March 1988 through September 1989, a demonstration study was conducted in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, on procedures for expediting paternity establishment. The issue of paternity establishment is central to current concerns about child support. In the 1988 Family Support Act, for example, administrative reforms to expedite paternity establishment are prominently featured. The results of the Cuyahoga demonstration provide early evidence of the likely impact of the 1988 reforms. At the implementation stage, the demonstration points up the complex interorganizational dependencies that are likely to limit the impact of mandated performance standards and associated sanctions directed at state and local child support agencies. As to the impact on paternity establishment outcomes, interventions directed at expediting administrative processes are likely to have a positive effect. However, the results of the demonstration indicate that noncooperative behavior among a significant portion of the client population is likely to seriously limit the effectiveness of expedited processes.     

Incentives,Selection, and Teacher Performance: Evidence from IMPACT

Teachers in the United States are compensated largely on the basis of fixed schedules that reward experience and credentials. However, there is a growing interest in whether performance‐based incentives based on rigorous teacher evaluations can improve teacher retention and performance. The evidence available to date has been mixed at best. This study presents novel evidence on this topic based on IMPACT, the controversial teacher‐evaluation system introduced in the District of Columbia Public Schools by then‐Chancellor Michelle Rhee. IMPACT implemented uniquely high‐powered incentives linked to multiple measures of teacher performance (i.e., several structured observational measures as well as test performance). We present regression‐discontinuity (RD) estimates that compare the retention and performance outcomes among low‐performing teachers whose ratings placed them near the threshold that implied a strong dismissal threat. We also compare outcomes among high‐performing teachers whose rating placed them near a threshold that implied an unusually large financial incentive. Our RD results indicate that dismissal threats increased the voluntary attrition of low‐performing teachers by 11 percentage points (i.e., more than 50 percent) and improved the performance of teachers who remained by 0.27 of a teacher‐level standard deviation. We also find evidence that financial incentives further improved the performance of high‐performing teachers (effect size = 0.24).     

Accountability via Performance Measurement: The Case of Child Protection Services

Since the 1980s child protection agencies have been subject to enormous scrutiny about perceived poor performance. Concerns are expressed about the capacity of services to cope with demand, the quality of practice, out‐of‐home care standards, and poor outcomes for children. Enter performance measurement. Using quantitative data to monitor effectiveness and efficiency, performance measurement promises improved resource management and accountability. This article discusses national, Victorian and Queensland child protection performance measurement regimes. It examines the extent to which performance measurement is used to promote accountability, as well as the indirect role of performance measurement in communicating policy intent. It suggests performance measurement is under‐utilised in child protection, but could be enhanced to contribute to better outcomes for children and families.     

Coalitions and Conservation: Conditional Impacts of Coalitions on Ballot Measures for Open Space

Social scientists have long debated the impact of interest group coalitions on public policies. While views on coalition impacts range from dominance to impotence, an emerging perspective suggests that coalitions have impacts under certain conditions. In this paper, we join and expand that perspective by arguing that coalitions have a conditional impact on public policies through ballot measures. Specifically, we argue that coalitions will have greater impact on ballot measure outcomes in non‐presidential election years, when the stakes involved are high, and when the goals of the measure are diverse. We test these hypotheses with analyses of a dataset of over 2,400 ballot measures on spending for open space at the state and local level between 1988 and 2014. We find strong support for our hypotheses. The findings have implications for scholarly debates on interest groups and coalitions, for the role of ballot measures in American public policy, and for assessments of open space and conservation in American society.     

Child Support and the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid Expansions

A quickly developing literature has shown that the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) Medicaid expansions have improved health insurance coverage, health, and financial well‐being among low‐income adults without dependent children. This population includes noncustodial parents. With substantial overlap in the population that is typically obligated to pay child support and the population that has strongly benefited from the expansions, there may be potential implications for child support enforcement. In this paper, I examine the effect of public health insurance eligibility to low‐income adults on child support outcomes. I find that the ACA Medicaid expansions increased child support distributed to custodial families as arrears by 8.5 percent. Evidence also suggests current support distributions increased by about 2 percent. There were no significant effects on paying toward a child support order. Among unmarried mothers, the likelihood of child support receipt increased by 8 percent. These results imply that access to public health insurance can increase the ability of noncustodial parents to pay child support.     

Welfare and child support: Complements,not substitutes

In most states, child support paid on behalf of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) participants is used to offset TANF and child support administrative expenditures; this policy primarily benefits taxpayers. In contrast, Wisconsin allowed most custodial parents to keep all support paid on their behalf. This policy, which treats welfare and child support as complements, was evaluated through an experimental design. This paper reports the key results of the experimental evaluation, using state administrative data to examine the effects on child support outcomes and governmental cost. We find that when custodial mothers keep all child support paid on their behalf, paternity establishment occurs more quickly, noncustodial fathers are more likely to pay support, and custodial families receive more support. These outcomes are achieved at no significant governmental cost. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Cream‐Skimming,Parking and Other Intended and Unintended Effects of High‐Powered,Performance‐Based Contracts

As performance‐based contracting in social welfare services continues to expand, concerns about potential unintended effects are also growing. We analyze the incentive effects of high‐powered, performance‐based contracts and their implications for program outcomes using panel data on Dutch cohorts of unemployed and disabled workers that were assigned to private social welfare providers in 2002 to 2005. We employ a difference‐in‐differences design that takes advantage of the fact that contracts gradually moved from partial performance‐contingent pay to full (100 percent) performance‐contingent contracting schemes. We develop explicit measures of selection into the programs and find evidence of cream skimming and other gaming activities on the part of providers, but little impact of these activities on program outcomes. Moving to a system with contract payments fully contingent on performance appears to increase job placements, but not job duration, for more readily employable workers.     

Administrative (de)centralization,performance equity,and outcome achievement in rural contexts: An empirical study of U.S. child welfare systems

Whether public services are better delivered through centralized or decentralized administrative systems is one of the most enduring debates in public administration. This article contributes to the debate with a study of program outcome achievement in U.S. child welfare services. We examine whether centralized state‐administered or decentralized county‐administered systems are more successful at realizing desired outcomes, which exhibit greater performance equity, and which are more successful at securing program outcomes in rural settings. Using a coarsened exact matching approach to quasi‐experimental research, we find that centralized child welfare systems exhibit greater success at achieving desired outcomes—in both rural contexts and overall. No discernible difference is found in centralized and decentralized systems' performance equity; outcome disparities exist under both structures. The study thus lends credence to centralization arguments, but at the same time cautions that centralized administration is not a structural panacea.     

Do child care regulations affect the child care and labor markets?

The effect of child care regulations on outcomes in the child care market and the labor market for mothers of young children is examined. The analysis uses a time series of cross sections and examines the robustness of previous cross‐section findings to controls for state‐level heterogeneity. Child care regulations as a group have statistically significant effects on most outcomes, with or without state fixed effects. However, regulations do not vary enough within state over time to allow precise identification of most individual regulation effects. The great majority of estimated regulation effects in all specifications are small and insignificantly different from 0. Some of the estimated effects seem reasonable in sign and magnitude, but others are clearly implausible. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Board Diversity,Stakeholder Representation,and Collaborative Performance in Community Mediation Centers

Does board diversity or representativeness influence organizational performance? Though it is understudied in both the public and the nonprofit sectors, learning more about this critical subject can enhance organizational performance within highly collaborative settings. Community mediation centers, which rely on multiple public and private resources to meet their programmatic objectives, provide excellent case studies for analyzing the impact of different kinds of interorganizational linkages on organizational performance. A multitheoretic view incorporating agency, resource dependence, and stakeholder perspectives is employed through a national sample and a two‐stage analysis using a logic model to test the cumulative impact of board characteristics and interorganizational relationships on organizational outcomes. Organizations’ collaborative capacity depends on several kinds of boundary‐spanning activities, including network ties, revenue sources, and the number of stakeholder groups represented on the board.     

Subnational Government Performance: Testing Multiple Dimensions of Governors' Experience

This article tests whether governors' work experience explains their state performance. Although the experience‐performance relationship has been researched, empirical studies report inconsistent results. This inconsistency might be due to the dissimilar conceptualization and operationalization of the work experience construct, for it can be conceptualized in qualitative or quantitative components. To address this disparity, the authors follow Tesluk and Jacob's conceptualization by operationalizing gubernatorial experience across three dimensions: type (qualitative component), number of jobs, and years of work experience (quantitative component). The study tests the moderating effects of state context (level of violence) on the experience‐performance relationship, relying on data derived from 32 Mexican states over 16 years. Education outputs (high school enrollment) and health outcomes (infant mortality rate) are used to assess state performance. Results indicate that only the qualitative dimension of governors' work experience boosts state performance by reducing infant mortality and increasing high school enrollment. However, this positive effect is undermined by state violence. The number of jobs decreases gubernatorial performance, magnified by the degree of state violence.     

The Impact of Home‐Based Child Care Provider Unionization on the Cost,Type, and Availability of Subsidized Child Care in Illinois

In February 2005, Illinois became the first U.S. state to grant home‐based child care providers (HBCPs) the right to form a labor union in order to bargain collectively with the state government. This policy inspired similar efforts across the country and represents a potentially important direction for child care policy. To date, the implications of labor unions for the cost, type, and availability of subsidized child care have not been evaluated empirically. In this study, we examine the impact of granting Illinois HBCPs the right to form a labor union on (a) the type of child care (licensed vs. license‐exempt/home‐based vs. center‐based) used by subsidy‐receiving Illinois infants and toddlers; (b) the per‐child cost of subsidized child care for infants and toddlers; and (c) the percentage of Illinois infants and toddlers who use child care subsidies. To conduct these analyses, we combine data from the Current Population Survey with Child Care and Development Fund administrative records on U.S. infants and toddlers whose families received child care subsidies during the period from 2002 to 2008. We use both a traditional difference‐in‐differences as well as a comparative case study with a “synthetic” control group approach. The synthetic control group approach improves on traditional comparative case studies by providing a transparent, empirical approach for constructing the counterfactual, documenting comparison units’ contribution to the synthetically created control group and detailing the degree to which the synthetic control group is, or is not, similar to the treated unit on preintervention measures of the outcome as well as on other selected characteristics. We find that subsidy‐receiving Illinois infants and toddlers spent an average of between 6.4 and 7 percentage points more hours in licensed care settings, as compared to license‐exempt settings, in the three years following child care unionization. We also find that between 0.7 and 1.1 percentage points fewer Illinois infants and toddlers used child care subsidies following unionization.     

Performance Budgeting: The Perspective of State Agencies

Although performance‐based budgeting requirements are pervasive, what remains a challenge is how to gain the support from all stakeholders in the budget process that are essential to the integration of performance information with budgeting. This study examines the perspective and role of state agencies on performance budgeting. The finding indicates that for agencies to conduct performance‐informed budgeting, the focus needs to be on elevating managerial capacity to use performance information, and improving measurement quality. Moreover, it is crucial to recognize that performance budgeting is a collaborative process in which each participant plays a valuable role.     

Accounting for Gender: the Role of the COAG Reform Council in Tracking Outcomes for Women and Girls Across Australia

The COAG Reform Council has played a critical role in tracking progress, nationally and on a state‐by‐state basis, against the COAG reform agenda. The council has analysed and publicly reported on governments’ performance against outcomes, performance indicators and targets agreed by COAG. However, until 2013 gender analysis was not directly incorporated in the assessment of governments’ performance. The council's first report on gender, Tracking equity: Comparing outcomes for women and girls across Australia, redressed this omission. This article explores how taking account of gender greatly enriches our understanding of governments’ performance in critical areas, and enhances public accountability as a result. An understanding of gender differences also provides a better basis for government decision‐making on ways to improve outcomes.     

The Impact of Performance Management on Performance in Public Organizations: A Meta‐Analysis

Performance‐based management is pervasive in public organizations; countless governments have implemented performance management systems with the hope that they will improve organizational effectiveness. However, there has been little comprehensive review of their impact. This article conducts a meta‐analysis on the impact of performance management on performance in public organizations. It contributes to the current literature in three ways. First, it examines the effect of the “average” performance management system. Second, it examines the influence of management: whether beneficial performance management practices moderate the average effect. Third, it examines the effect of “time” on performance management. Using 2,188 effects from 49 studies, the analysis finds that performance management has a small average effect. However, the effect is substantially larger when indicators of best practices in high‐quality studies are included, indicating that management practices have an important impact on the effectiveness of performance management systems. Evidence for the effect of time is mixed.     

Performance measures in tax administration: Chile as a case study

The article proposes a set of tax administration performance measures and contrasts them with measures actually used by the Chilean tax administration agency. The goals assumed for the tax administration agency (TA) are to maximize tax revenue collection and provide quality services to taxpayers. Ideal performance measures (PMs) would measure the deviation of actual outcome from a best‐practice standard, given the value of all variables affecting organisation performance that are outside management control. The key challenge is to build and calculate these best‐practice outcomes. In Chile the PM in use, for the first goal, is the ratio of actual to potential tax revenue collection. This PM does adjust revenue collection for variations in the tax structure and rate, but it fails to control other variables that affect performance such as the TA budget and per capita income. The PM in use, for the second goal, is taxpayer satisfaction measured through sample surveys. This seems the appropriate PM, as quality of taxpayer services depends directly on the TA efforts to improve them. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.