Does Ownership Matter for the Delivery of Professionalized Public Services? Cost‐efficiency and Effectiveness in Private and Public Dental Care for Children in Denmark

Recent decades have witnessed considerable interest in the cost‐efficiency and effectiveness of public services. Private provision is often claimed to be more cost‐efficient than public provision, but these efficiency gains are accused of being at the expense of effectiveness. Most of the evidence comes from relatively simple, technical services, because effectiveness is often difficult to define and measure for services produced by professionals. In addition, type of ownership might very well affect services produced by professionals differently as a result of professional standards and other regulation. The case in question, child dental care in Denmark, is a professionalized service which is remarkable for its clear and quantifiable measure of effectiveness. The findings show that neither cost‐efficiency nor effectiveness of public and private producers differs. The data represent cost and outcome measures controlled for structural variables for the 275 Danish municipalities between 1996 and 2002.     

Examining the effect of dl-3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and methamphetamine on the Standardized Field Sobriety Tests

dl-3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and methamphetamine are commonly used illicit drugs that are thought to impair driving ability. The Standardized Field Sobriety Tests (SFSTs) are utilized widely to detect impairment associated with drugs other than alcohol in drivers, although limited evidence concerning MDMA and methamphetamine consumption on SFST performance exists. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the SFSTs were a sensitive measure for identifying the presence of the specific isomer d-methamphetamine and MDMA. In a double-blind, within-subject, counter-balanced and placebo-controlled study, 58 healthy and abstinent recreational drugs users were administered three treatments: 100mg of MDMA, 0.42 mg/kg d-methamphetamine, and placebo. For each condition the SFSTs were administered at 4 and 25 h post treatment. d-methamphetamine was not found to significantly impair SFST performance unlike MDMA, which significantly impaired SFST performance in comparison to placebo with 22% of the sample failing the test at the 4h testing time-point. No differences were observed at the 25 h testing time-point for any of the conditions. It was concluded that the SFSTs are not efficient in identifying the presence of low level d-methamphetamine, and are significantly better at detecting the presence of MDMA at the levels assessed.     

Provincial agendas,local responses: the “common sense” restructuring of Ontario's municipal governments

Abstract: This article explores the application of the so-called “common sense” agenda of the Ontario government to the municipal sector in selected communities. By examining a range of restructuring proposals considered and/or adopted during 1995–97 in six municipalities in southern Ontario the study addresses two objectives. First, it delineates the manner in which the term “rationalize” has been understood by the province and the municipalities. Evidence suggests that the drive to “restructure” has evolved into a fairly simplistic strategy: amalgamate and eliminate units of municipal government and reduce the number of municipal councillors and staff. Second, it analyses the government's promise to “sit down with the municipalities” in this process. The Harris government, in fact, implemented a far-reaching conceptual agenda but forced municipalities to design the specific responses to it. Since 1995, municipalities large and small in all comers of the province have struggled -some in good faith, some with reluctance - to find ways to develop a local response to the province's restructuring agenda, all the while fearing that a failure to acquiesce would invite an imposed solution. Sommaire: Dans cet article, on explore I'application du «programme du bon sens» du gouvemement de l'Ontario au secteur municipal dans certaines communautés choisies. L'étude, qui examine toute une gamme de propositions de restructuration considérées ou adoptées en 1995–1997 dans six municipalités du Sud de l'Ontario, vise deux objectifs. On y définit tout d'abord la manière dont la province et les municipalités ont interprété le mot «rationaliser». I1 semblerait que l'effort de »restructuration° ait menéà une stratégie passablement simpliste: fusionner et éliminer des unités du gouvernement municipal et réduire le nombre de conseillers et de personnel municipaux. Deuxièmement, on analyse la promesse faite par le gouvemement s'asseoir autour de la table avec les municipalité« dans le cadre de ce processus. En réalité, le gouvernement Harris a mis en oeuvre un agenda conceptuel de très grande envergure mais il a forcé les municipalités à lui trouver des réponses spéci-fiques. Depuis 1995, les municipalités petites et grandes de tous les coins de la province s'efforcent, certaines de bonne foi mais d'autres avec récalcitrance, de formuler une réponse locale au programme restructurateur de la province, tout en craignant que, si elles manquent de s'y conformer, elles risquent de se faire imposer une solution.     

Power struggles in policy feedback processes: incremental steps towards a circular economy within Dutch wastewater policy

Policy Sciences - Environmental problems are usually not tackled with path-departing policies but rather with incrementally adjusted or unchanged policies. One way to address incremental change is...     

Cultural Theory and Democratizing Functional Domains, the Case of Danish Housing

In the last decade experiments with decentralized democratic governance and citizen involvement have been launched throughout Europe in functional domains as varied as housing, environmental planning, primary schools and care for the elderly. This article analyses such democratization processes through the lense of cultural theory as formulated by Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky (1990). It argues that cultural theory provides a framework for understanding why formal democratic rights and rules are not necessarily matched by democratic images among actors. It draws on empirical material from the Danish social housing sector, which is widely recognized for its decentralized governance system and extensive tenant involvement.     

Performance in Public Organizations: Clarifying the Conceptual Space

Performance in public organizations is a key concept that requires clarification. Based on a conceptual review of research published in 10 public administration journals, this article proposes six distinctions to describe the systematic differences in performance criteria: From which stakeholder's perspective is performance being assessed? Are the criteria formal or informal? Are the criteria subjective? Which process focus and product focus do they have, if any? What is the unit of analysis? Based on these distinctions, the performance criteria of existing studies used in an empirical review of management and performance are classified. The results illustrate how a systematization of the conceptual space of performance in public organizations can help researchers select what to study and what to leave out with greater accuracy while also bringing greater clarity to public debates about performance.     

Research integrity — it's about more than misconduct

The definition of integrity is "the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles that you refuse to change" (meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary). Yet research integrity is frequently discussed through the lens of misconduct or concerns around reproducibility. However, as we can see from this quote, integrity is about more than that. It is about who you are as a person and your behaviour. Your behaviour in terms of how you do your work, towards your immediate colleagues and towards those with whom you communicate; whether across the research and innovation (R&I) system or the general public.     

How Pro‐social Motivation Affects Job Satisfaction: An International Analysis of Countries with Different Welfare State Regimes

Employees' pro‐social motivation has been shown to be positively related to job satisfaction, especially when the perceived usefulness of the job to society and other people is high. There is, however, a lack of analyses which include both public and private employees, and it has not yet been studied whether the relationships are robust across welfare state regimes. This study therefore examines the moderated relationship between pro‐social motivation and job satisfaction. Using data from the cross‐national 2005 ISSP survey (14 countries, N = 10,630), it confirms that the relationship between pro‐social motivation and job satisfaction is moderated by perceived usefulness of the job for society and other people. Usefulness again depends on the individual's employment sector (public versus private), and this public–private difference in perceived usefulness also varies between different welfare state regimes. This indicates that sector differences in how pro‐social motivation affects job satisfaction depends on the broader institutional context, and the article therefore contributes with important knowledge for the recruitment and retention of motivated and satisfied employees in a period of changing public–private responsibilities in the provision of welfare services.     

Exposing Politicians’ Peccadilloes in Comparative Context: Explaining the Frequency of Political Sex Scandals in Eight Democracies Using Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Political sex scandals are largely absent in some democracies but proliferate in others. However, there have so far been few if any comprehensive attempts to document the actual number of sex scandals that have occurred and to explain their presence (and, indeed, absence), and the one study that has (Barker's 1994 study) ended in the early 1990s and had numerous problems in relation to defining and documenting such scandals. Based on extensive research, this article documents the number of sex scandals in eight advanced industrial democracies and tries to explain their occurrence using Charles Ragin's fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. The article has three goals: to determine the number of sex scandals in different democracies, explain why this might be, and demonstrate the utility of fuzzy set qualitative case analysis for small- and medium-N comparative research.