How State Capacity Varies within Frontier States: A Multicountry Subnational Analysis

While there is a growing literature on state formation and the rise of state capacity over time, this literature typically deals with differences between countries, neglecting the fact that state formation also occurs differentially within a country over time. This article examines legacies of state formation spatially, by looking at variation within “frontier” states—countries that in recent centuries have extended rule over new territories adjacent to their core regions. Frontier zones are found to have ongoing lower levels of public order and deficient public goods provision. Several theories are examined to explain this discrepancy, including internal resettlement, costs of monitoring and enforcement, and the relationship between settlers and the indigenous population. It is argued that the formation of strong social institutions among settlers leads to resistance to attempts to impose governance over frontier regions, and to “select for” lower fiscal capacity and lower provision of public goods.     

Public Debt,Economic Growth,and Public Sector Management in Developing Countries: Is There a Link?

The article investigates whether differences in public sector management quality affect the link between public debt and economic growth in developing countries. For this purpose, we primarily use the World Bank's institutional indices of public sector management (PSM). Using PSM thresholds, we split our panel into country clusters and make comparisons. Our linear baseline regressions reveal a significant negative relationship between public debt and growth. The various robustness exercises that we perform also confirm these results. When we dissect our data set into “weak” and “strong” county clusters using public sector management scores, however, we find different results. While public debt still displayed a negative relationship with growth in countries with “weak” public sector management quality, it generally displayed a positive relationship in the latter group. The tests for non‐linearity shows evidence of an “inverse‐U”‐shape relationship between public debt and economic growth. However, we fail to see a similar significant relationship on country clusters that account for PSM quality. Yet, countries with well‐managed public sectors demonstrate a higher public debt sustainability threshold. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is the Westminster System Broken Beyond Repair?

Is Westminster dying as a useful conceptual encapsulation of a particular system of public administration? Scholarly critiques over the last decade have suggested Westminster civil services are evolving in ways that erode crucial Westminster “traditions.” Core elements including security of tenure, merit‐based selection, non‐partisanship, anonymity, and ministerial responsibility are all perceived as in decline or under attack. Influential commentators have proposed concepts such as “new political governance,” changing “public sector bargains,” “court government/politics,” and “presidentialization” to document and interpret these allegedly paradigmatic shifts in public administration. This article places these in context by canvasing different accounts of what Westminster is, before assessing the critiques about what it has become. The article argues that Westminster is not broken beyond repair, but rather it has been remolded to suit the needs of contemporary governance.     

Implementing independent regulatory agencies in Brazil: The contrasting experiences in the electricity and telecommunications sectors

This paper explores hypotheses that could explain both the creation of independent regulatory agencies (IRAs) in Brazil, and the differences in the design of the Brazilian IRAs in the telecommunications and electricity sectors. To formulate specific hypotheses that make sense of the Brazilian case, the paper critically interrogates the “weak state” hypothesis and the “political bias” hypothesis. The first argues that countries with flawed governance structures, such as Latin American countries, are less likely to establish independent regulators than European countries. The second argues that “political bias” is a determinant factor in predicting the implementation of IRAs in Latin America. The first part of the paper uses these two general hypotheses as a basis to formulate specific hypotheses to explain the creation of IRAs in Brazil. The second part of the paper formulates specific hypotheses that could explain why institutional guarantees of IRA independence are stronger in the telecommunications sector, than in the electricity sector. In particular, the paper argues in support of a revised version of the “political bias” hypothesis to explain sectoral divergence, suggesting that bureaucratic resistance to reform may be the cause for the variations observed in Brazil between regulatory reform in electricity and in telecommunications.     

Consultocracy and its discontents: A critical typology and a call for a research agenda

In the past few decades, many sector‐specific case studies have been conducted on the use of consultants in the public sector. However, the overall picture of the qualitative changes facilitated by consultants remains fragmented, and a comprehensive framework on how “consultocracy” affects governance is lacking. This article shows how the increased use of consultants has impacted the operational logics of public administration and governance at large. Drawing from a large multisectoral case study from Finland as well as existing studies, a fourfold typology of how consultocracy shapes public administration is introduced. We argue that increased reliance on consultants contributes to the monopolization and privatization of public knowledge and ensuing dependencies, erosion of tacit knowledge, weakening of accountability, and strengthening of instrumental rationality. This research emphasizes the importance of understanding the links between these developments and the need to implement a comprehensive research agenda on consultocracy.     

Regulating public procurement in Brazil,India, and China: Toward the regulatory-developmental state

Since the 1990s, emerging economies such as Brazil, India, and China have adopted transparency-enhancing public procurement regulations in line with international norms. Yet they have hesitated to join the World Trade Organization's legally binding Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). Based on the Special Issue framework, this article scrutinizes the underlying domestic and international determinants, and how they influence emerging countries’ positions in two overlapping international procurement regimes. In particular, reform-oriented state actors, societal pressure, and lesson-drawing from international templates have induced a strengthening of domestic procurement institutions and turned emerging countries into “promoters” of the international transparency regime. Conversely, the rising powers have remained, to varying degrees, reluctant “spoilers” of the GPA-based market access regime in order to keep policy space and use procurement for domestic development objectives. The article suggests that this regulatory-developmental layering of rule-based governance and interventionist ambitions characterizes the variegated regulatory state in emerging countries.     

Regulation and voluntarism: A case study of governance in the making

In this article I analyze a multi‐stakeholder process of environmental regulation. By grounding the article in the literature on regulatory capitalism and governance, I follow the career of a specific legislative process: the enactment of Israel's Deposit Law on Beverage Containers, which aims to delegate the responsibility for recycling to industry. I show that one crucial result of this process was the creation of a non‐profit entity licensed to act as a compliance mechanism. This new entity enabled industry to distance itself from the responsibility of recycling, and thereby frustrated the original objective of the legislation, which was to implement the principle of “extended producer responsibility.” Furthermore, this entity, owned by commercial companies and yet acting as an environmentally friendly organization, allowed industry to promote an anti‐regulatory agenda via a “civic voice.” The study moves methodologically from considering governance as an institutional structure to analyzing the process of “governancing,” through which authoritative capacities and legal responsibilities are distributed among state and non‐state actors. Two key findings are that this process and its outcome (i) are premised on an ideology of civic voluntarism, which ultimately delegates environmental responsibilities to citizens; and (ii) facilitate an anti‐regulatory climate that serves commercial interests.     

The public sector growth and state autonomy in Western Europe: The changing role and scope of the state in Ireland since 1950

The expansion of the state in advanced industrial societies since 1945 has stimulated studies of the determinants of public sector growth, the nature of state intervention and the capacity for the state to act in a quasi‐autonomous way. The last also provides a means for distinguishing between alternative models of state action. In this article the issues of state expansion and state autonomy are used as the basis for examining the growth of the public sector and shifting activities of the state in Ireland since 1950. It is argued that a state‐centred model best accounts for the behaviour of the Irish state.     

Forest certification as a global environmental governance tool: What is the macro-effectiveness of the Forest Stewardship Council?

Sustainable forest management is a key challenge for local and global governance. The Forest Stewardship Council has emerged as one of the solutions to global forest deterioration and is generally regarded as the prime example of certification as a global governance tool. This article examines the macro-effectiveness of certification on halting deforestation and examines the relationship between certification and governance institutions. The article finds that the macro-effectiveness of certification on halting deforestation is still limited due to the “stuck at the bottom” problem of developing countries, which are kept out of the certification process, and the market-driven nature of certification initiatives. The article does not find a relationship between certification and governance institutions at the macro level. It does find, however, significant variation in certification uptake between countries, pointing to the potential of this policy tool. The implications of the results are discussed.     

Governance and Popular Involvement in Local Antipoverty Strategies in the U.K. and the Netherlands

This article deals centrally with the relationship between new interactive governance arrangements and democratization through a comparison of mechanisms for popular involvement in local antipoverty strategies in the U.K. and the Netherlands. Drawing on urban case studies in North Tyneside and Rotterdam, the article argues that, despite a diversity of governance models and novel attempts at popular involvement at the local level, new governance arrangements are not more democratic. Democratization of governance, rather, requires intervention along an explicit participatory ideology external to the internal logic of interactive governance, one where all social groups and organizations contribute on a mutually reinforcing and egalitarian basis. A more democratic governance system, moreover, needs to take a rational perspective on the nature of the relationship between state and civil society and to retain a normative and political conception of the “third-sector” under prevailing neoliberal conditions. While recognizing the normative and utopian tone of these suggestions, possible characteristics of such a project are outlined.     

Poor Nations, Rich Nations: A Theory of Governance

This article argues that the difference between poor countries and rich countries has to do with governance rather than resources. In emphasizing the importance of public administration in explaining economic success and failure, the author examines three general theories of governance (organizational, cultural, and structural‐functional) presented in Ferrel Heady's textbook in comparative administration. Political elasticity theory is introduced as a way to reconcile and overcome the weaknesses of these theories and to explain a number of unresolved questions in the literature having to do with decentralization, corruption, democracy, culture, and globalization, using comparative case studies (the Netherlands and Ghana, Singapore and Jamaica, and Japan and Nigeria). The implications of political elasticity theory for foreign aid are suggested at the conclusion, illustrated by a comparison of Spain and Mexico. What ties these case studies together is the heretofore unnoticed and/or unexplained fact that as countries prosper, political power takes on “rubber‐band” and “balloon” characteristics.     

Communicative Diplomacy for the 3rd Millennium

Abstract

In today's world of revolution in communications and information as well as of global interdependency, a medialised politics became a general reality. One can observe such a trend specifically in the field of international and foreign affairs where state and other actors use communication channels and public relations to a large extent to improve on the content and in particular, on the image of their policies. Here one can also argue that a major share of bilateral and multilateral relations among states is shaped by the international media, or vice versa, that all major “wars” are “fought” through the media.

This article explores the increasing inter-relation between state foreign affairs on one side, and media and public relations, on the other. The article starts off with basic concepts of a “new/democratic diplomacy” (Nicholson, 1988) and a “public diplomacy” (Signitzer in Combs, 1992), and compares them with definitions of “international public relations” (Kunczik, 1997). It attempts to build the general analytical framework on the basis of comparative case studies of developed countries with an established diplomatic tradition and of new democracies still proving themselves on the international fora. In this context, particular attention is given to communication in relation to international organisations like NATO and the EU.     

理解治理多样性：一种国家治理的新科学

现代社会及其公共事务的复杂性对治理构成了严峻的挑战。为了应对公共事务的复杂性、多规模性、嵌套性和动态性,很多研究者提出了不同的治理理论,并且都试图寻找“治理万能药”,以一种治理方式适用所有情景。然而人类要真正解决所面临的公共事务治理难题,就需要实现“认识论哲学”的转型,以“多样性”的思维范式取代“单一性”思维范式,按照“治理多样性”的新范式来重构治理体制“。治理多样性”分析范式是一种治理的新科学,其分析框架主要包括“行动者、机制、物品属性、结构和绩效”等要素,核心是公共事务与治理系统的有效匹配,实现基于“多行动者——多机制——多属性——多结构——多目标”的治理,多样性是其内在逻辑。治理本身是一个复杂演进和相互调适的过程“。治理多样性”要应用于治理实践,就需要发展出“诊断、设计和学习模型”。     

Liberalization as a Development Strategy: Network Governance in the Korean Mobile Telecom Market

This study analyzes Korea's often noted yet seldom studied spectacular rise to become one of the important global players in the mobile telecommunications industry. The Korean “leap frog” occurred in the context of liberalization under the worldwide liberal telecommunications regime. This article finds that network governance—the emphasis on the use of partnerships and network transactions with global firms as well as the local private sector—is the reason for Korea's success. It examines the origins of and driving forces acting upon the liberalization policy, and discusses how the state and telecom firms cooperated to develop the mobile market. It also assesses the new governance that is taking place in Korea's telecom market by focusing on the changing roles of the state in three major aspects: provision, regulation, and foreign entry barriers into the mobile market. While the Korean government promoted a market‐conforming telecom market and private ownership, this article argues, it formulated rather different governance principles from the U.S. model of liberal governance.     

Erosion and Variety in Pay for High Public Office

Two elements have characterized the rewards for public officials in the past two decades. One is the erosion of pay and perquisites in many democratic countries. The other is a continuing variety of rewards, especially when compared to those in the private sector. Using data from a variety of OECD countries and the European Union, this article investigates alternative explanations for these two elements. The data is adjusted for purchasing power of the different currencies and then related to the relative wealth of the countries. We find that ideas, interests and institutions all have some explanatory power, but that none is sufficient by itself to explain either variety or erosion in pay across the range of countries. The policy implications of these findings, in terms of both “how” and “how much” public officials should be paid, are also examined.     

Good governance and multidimensional poverty: A comparative analysis of 71 countries

In 2015, the international community committed to “reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions.” According to international development agencies, good governance is crucial to achieving this. We examine the relationship between good governance and multidimensional poverty using hierarchical models and survey data for 71 countries. Our results suggest there is a direct effect of good governance on multidimensional poverty and that good governance is associated with reduced horizontal inequalities. However, we find evidence of a beneficial effect of good governance for middle‐income countries but not for low‐income countries. Thus, while our results suggest that good governance can play a role in reducing multidimensional poverty, they also suggest that governance reforms alone might not yield the desired effect for all countries.     

Parallel Systems and Human Resource Management in India's Public Health Services: A View from the Front Lines

There is building evidence in India that the delivery of health services suffers both from an actual shortfall in trained health professionals and from unsatisfactory results of existing service providers working in the public and private sectors. This study focuses on the public sector and examines de facto institutional and governance arrangements that may give rise to well‐documented provider behaviors such as absenteeism that can adversely affect service delivery processes and outcomes. We analyze four human resource management (HRM) subsystems: postings, transfers, promotions and disciplinary practices from the perspective of front‐line workers—physicians working in rural healthcare facilities operated by two state governments. We sampled physicians in one “post‐reform” state that has instituted HRM reforms and one “pre‐reform” state that has not. The findings are based on both quantitative and qualitative measurements. The results show that formal rules are undermined by a parallel modus operandi in which desirable posts are often determined by political connections and side payments. The evidence suggests an institutional environment in which formal rules of accountability are trumped by a parallel set of accountabilities. These systems appear so entrenched that reforms have borne no significant effect. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Explaining the size of the public sector

This paper aims at providing an explanation for the size of the public sector based on the idea of “social insurance”. The main assumption made is that the public sector is less efficient but also less volatile than the private sector. The “demand-driven” level of the public sector that is derived as the one that maximizes the utility of the representative employed consumer depends positively on the variance of private output. An increase in the size of the public sector has a positive effect on expected employment and a negative effect on expected consumption. The size of the public sector set by the government which maximizes the probability of being re-elected will be higher than the “demand-driven” level if voters' preferences for employment is higher than the consumption loss associated with public employment.     

Public sector efficiency: An international comparison

We compute public sector performance (PSP) and public sector efficiency (PSE) indicators, comprising a composite and seven sub-indicators, for 23 industrialised countries. The first four sub-indicators are “opportunity” indicators that take into account administrative, education and health outcomes and the quality of public infrastructure and that support the rule of law and a level playing-field in a market economy. Three other indicators reflect the standard “Musgravian” tasks for government: allocation, distribution and stabilisation. The input and output efficiency of public sectors across countries is then measured via a non-parametric production frontier technique. The study finds significant differences in PSP and PSE, which suggests a large potential for expenditure savings in many countries.