Assessing Local Government Capacity for Implementing Sustainable Transportation: The Role of Political Culture

Transportation development increasingly relies on local governments to implement sustainable strategies, yet implementation success varies widely. This begs an important question, why are some cities successful and others not? In response, this study focuses on the political culture characteristics of city leadership and staff pertaining to sustainable transportation. Employing semi-structured interviews with officials in two case study cities—Pomona and Pasadena, California—the study identifies and traces the impact of cultural characteristics on network interactions and the resulting transportation innovation. Finally, this research suggests key political and department characteristics that contribute to political cultures that facilitate sustainable transportation development.     

Social Media Use in Local Government: An Australian Perspective

Social media offers governments extensive opportunities to engage with citizens, particularly at the local level. This study investigates the issues that local governments face in implementing social media initiatives. It builds on existing literature by using an interpretive approach to examine the perceptions of public employees and elected officials of local councils in an Australian context. The article reports on the issues that inhibit a move to a more interactive use of social media and examines how these may be addressed. Implications for research and practice are given.     

Audit Committees and Accountability in Local Government: A National Survey

Abstract

Financial scandals in city governments have received increased publicity in recent years. Audit committees have been suggested as a way review and improve standards and procedures for financial accountability. Audit committees assist local government managers in overseeing and monitoring the financial accounting and auditing process. They provide a communication link between elected officials, municipal managers, and independent auditors. This study relies on national survey data to examine the prevalence, role, and composition of audit committees in cities with populations over 65,000 and the conditions affecting their use and effectiveness. Interviews and a brief case study supplement survey data to provide richer detail regarding the performance of audit committees in ensuring improved accountability.     

To monitor or intervene? City managers and the implementation of strategic initiatives

Strategic initiatives represent a government's response to constituent and organizational needs, but are only effective if properly implemented. In local governments with a council‐manager form of government, city managers face a unique dilemma as compounding challenges of implementation often require them to step into leadership roles typically reserved for elected officials. For this qualitative study, 16 city managers and project leaders from US local governments were interviewed regarding the implementation of nine varied strategic initiatives. The responses indicate that city managers play an important dual role in implementation—first, monitoring the progress of the implementation team and the satisfaction of the stakeholder coalition; and second, choosing to intervene directly in implementation decision‐making when they observe missteps by the implementers or discontent from the stakeholders. These conclusions contribute to the practice perspective of strategic management theory and a better understanding of the institutional leadership role of city managers.     

Decentralisation,Governance and the Structure of Local Political Institutions: Lessons for Reform?

Many governments are devolving power to elected local councils, hoping to improve service delivery and citizen representation by bringing officials closer to the people. While these decentralisation reforms hold the promise of improved governance, they also present national and sub-national leaders with a complex array of options about how to structure newly empowered local political institutions. This article draws on cross-national experience and the latest research to identify the trade-offs inherent in structuring local political institutions. The study's specific interest is in the impact of strong, locally elected councils on governance and representation. Proceeding from an empirical basis that competitive elections are vital for the legitimacy and efficiency of local political institutions, the analysis first questions the impact of four institutional features – central versus local control, local executive versus local council authority, local council structure, and the role of parties – on service provision and fiscal solvency. The article's second section analyses the impact of decentralisation on political representation, with a particular focus on the role of institutional design in combating the threat of extremist parties. A final section summarises empirical findings and advances some policy-relevant conclusions.     

COUNCILLORS’ RECEIPT AND USE OF CITIZEN INPUT: EXPERIENCE FROM NORWEGIAN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

The article expands citizen participation research by tackling participation from the viewpoint of elected officials – the recipients of citizen input. The article studies the role citizen input plays in elected officials’ decision making. Citizen input is defined as information elected officials obtain through direct contact with citizens and representatives of local associations. Using survey data from Norwegian local government, the article assesses how much citizen input councillors receive, and to what extent they use it to set local agendas. It is demonstrated that Norwegian councillors have a high degree of exposure to citizen input and that citizen input constitutes most councillors’ primary source of agenda‐setting inspiration. The article also examines differences in the extent to which councillors use citizen input, and draws on existing theoretical and empirical research to discuss how these differences can be explained. For example, findings that local government frontbenchers and highly educated councillors consider citizen input less useful than others do are explained by an analytical perspective emphasizing councillors’ varied needs for such information.     

Political incentives and transaction costs of collaboration among US cities for economic development

This study extends research on Institutional Collective Action by testing a transaction cost explanation for self-organising economic development agreements between US cities. We offer a unique contribution to this literature by identifying how these agreements between cities with similar political institutions mitigate the transaction costs of collaboration, and how characteristics of these agreements combine with political institutions to shape collective action. The results of an empirical analysis of data collected through a survey of local officials suggest the alignment of high-powered political incentives between cities mitigates the coordination and division problems of forming a joint venture. Agreements that enable elected officials to distribute the benefits of an agreement are also found to moderate this effect.     

Managing Local Intergovernmental Revenues: The Imperative of Diversification

Abstract

Municipal governments have employed a variety of strategies to address their ongoing revenue crises throughout the past several decades. One such strategy that has been employed with great consistency is the use of intergovernmental revenues (IGR). Given this trend, coupled with the fact that we know little about the dynamics of IGR, this paper presents one of the first multi‐year examinations of its use at the local level. Using data from 76 villages and cities in Cook County, IL (greater Chicago) for 1996–2000, we examine IGR use from the perspective of revenue diversification. The analysis indicates that during this period, local governments in Cook County (1) diversified their own‐source revenues and decreased dependence on the property tax; (2) maintained a consistent dependence on IGR; and (3) diversified and significantly altered their IGR structures. We also examine the demographic and organizational correlates of IGR diversification, and find it to be unrelated to characteristics such as population, property tax base, professional administration, and organizational capacity. As a result, we conclude that IGR diversification is a strategy that ought to be considered by all municipalities regardless of size or structure.     

The county perspective on intergovernmental relations and government capacity

This analysis examines the issues of state and federal responsiveness and state and local government capacity from the perspective of county officials. Using data from a national survey of county administrators, elected executives, and commission chairpersons, the study finds that county officials are: (1) very confident of their own capacities to respond to local problems, but not as confident of local fiscal capacities; (2) very concerned about the responsiveness of state governments, particularly state legislatures, to local needs; and (3) not confident of the responsiveness of federal government to local needs either, but desirous of federal fiscal support. The assessments of state responsiveness appear related to state efforts to expand the policy making, taxing, and borrowing authority of their county governments.     

Interlocal collaboration and local climate protection

ABSTRACT

The influences of state government have been curiously absent from most studies of collaboration among cities. Extant research on city collaboration which promotes on climate and environmental sustainability issues focuses primarily on local-level institutions, politics, and processes. Thus, the role of states to constrain or facilitate collaboration among local governments needs to be more fully accounted for. Building on transaction cost and institutional collective action theory and drawing on data from a national survey of US cities, we investigate the influences of city-level factors together with the hierarchical effects of state rules and policies on the extent to which mechanisms for interlocal collaboration are employed in pursuing climate protection and renewable energy development goals. The results confirm predictions that multilevel intergovernmental forces influence the extent to which cities collaborate. These results have both theoretical and practical implications for understanding interlocal collaborations.     

Why Some Cities Provide More Public Goods than Others: A Subnational Comparison of the Provision of Public Goods in German Cities in 1912

What determines a government’s level of public goods provision? Most scholarship tends to focus on the “demand side” of public goods provision, highlighting how varying patterns of social preferences shape the provision of public goods. In an analysis of municipal hospitals and infant health clinics in Germany’s 84 largest cities in 1912, this article uses an original dataset to test a variety of hypotheses to introduce an alternative logic centered around the institutional capability of local governments. The findings suggest a supply-side theory of public goods provision in which the fiscal resources of cities and the professionalism of local government officials are important determinants of the level of public goods. The implications of these findings are two-fold: first, in federal political systems, highly capable local governments—with resources, expertise and professionalism—might represent a “decentralized” or “bottom-up” path for achieving higher overall levels of state infrastructural power in a political system. Second, public health threats might serve as a crucial trigger for the development of local capacity and hence state infrastructural power more broadly.     

Private Financing of the Military: A Local Political Economy Approach

In developing countries that are democratizing after military rule, and undergoing liberalizing economic reforms that encourage a shrinking of the state, what missions are the armed forces performing, who funds those missions, who benefits from military services, and why? This article analyzes security provision by the armed forces for paying clients—especially private companies in extractive industries—in accordance with negotiations between clients and commanders of the local military units that directly provide the security. The analysis identifies two paths toward local military–client relations. First, weak state capacity may mean that government control of military finances brought by democratization and economic reform remains limited to the national level, promoting local military–client exchanges. Second, amid minimal government control of military finances, even in the capital city, demand from companies in the powerful extractive industries and from recently endowed subnational governments can encourage local military–client contracting.     

Do consistent government policies lead to greater meaningfulness and legitimacy on the front line?

We investigate the impact of policy consistency on frontline workers’ perceptions of policy meaningfulness and legitimacy. The results from an experiment involving 779 teachers indicate that policy consistency does have a positive effect on legitimacy and to a lesser extent on meaningfulness. However, the extent depends on policy content and the degree of autonomy. Overall, our findings emphasize the potential positive impact of policy consistency. Although this, to some extent, conflicts with the nature of political decision‐ and policy‐making (i.e., democratically elected governments have been mandated to change policy), our study suggests that policy consistency could be a valuable strategy for governments to strengthen successful policy implementation. This adds a new perspective to the continuing debate within policy implementation and street‐level bureaucracy research on how to account for the complex, messy and sometimes contradictory implementation of public policies.     

A decade of decline: a longitudinal look at big city and big county strategies to cope with declining revenues

Many local governments have now endured a decade of fiscal decline due to periodic reductions in external funding (federal and state and slowdowns in the rate of growth of the state and local government sector. This research examines the extent to which six large jurisdictions (three cities, three counties) under fiscal duress avoided political conflict and prevented further fragmentation of their authority between 1978 and 1987. The results showed that local officials generally chose retrenchment strategies (revenue, expenditure, and borrowing) with the least anticipated political opposition; but where hard choices had to be made (personnel reductions), they were made without hesitation. The timing of politically unpopular choices to coincide with downward trends in the private sector reduced the level of political fallout, even in heavily unionized, socioeconomically diverse communities. The results also showed that local officials strongly endorsed, rather than opposed, strategies that further fragmented their authority (privatization, intergovernmental cooperative agreements), because these approaches produce significant personnel and capital savings in the short term. Finally, the results indicated that the long-term cumulative effects of short-term decremental decisionmaking on the quality of life (as measured by drops in bond ratings) were negative in only one-third of the jurisdictions.     

HRM Reform in Decentralised Local Government: Empirical Perspectives on Recruitment and Selection in the Philippines and Thailand

Over the recent decades decentralisation has been an influential process for public sector reform. Like many countries in Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Thailand have experienced a transitional period of decentralisation since the 1990s, but its corresponding results are considered to be poor, allowing for an increase in corruption associated with local elites and other interested parties. This article addresses the problem by focusing on Human Resource Management (HRM), with an emphasis on recruitment and selection in decentralised local governments, as there exists limited research in this area. Despite similar outlook of decentralisation reforms in these countries, the comparative analysis will illustrate differences in HRM policy arrangements between the central and local government, which reflect on the roots and backgrounds of the reform initiatives in each country. Moreover, empirical case observations at the local level from four case cities will present positive HRM practices, as well as the negative ones. Such evidence cannot be explained by contemporary theories on decentralisation, most of which doubt feasibility of the reform in developing countries.     

Performance Management and Deficit Adjustment in U.S. Cities: An Exploratory Study

Performance management or PM has been promoted as a tool to transform government. Claims that PM will enable governments to “do more with less,” “increase efficiency,” provide “value for money,” and make “rational budget decisions” abound. Has PM helped city governments in the United States cope with the effects of the 2007–2009 Great Recession? Theory suggests that PM can provide the informational and analytical foundation necessary for city officials to implement comprehensive but conflictive budget-cutting and revenue-raising strategies. By facilitating deep expenditure cuts and tax increases, PM can indirectly influence budget deficits. Using data from a national survey of city governments and multiyear audited financial reports, the empirical analysis shows that PM cities favored what are essentially decremental responses to fiscal crises that lead to marginal changes in revenues and expenditures. Not surprisingly, there is no evidence that PM influences the size and change in budget shortfalls.     

Local Government Policy Diffusion in a Decentralised System: Childbirth Support Policy in South Korea

South Korean local governments have recently adopted pronatalist policies to cope with the pressing problem of low and declining fertility, despite this central coordination by the national government has been limited in this policy domain. This study attempts to explain the process by which childbirth support policies have spread among localities over time by addressing two questions: whether interjurisdictional and internal factors of policy diffusion have been at work; and how vertical and horizontal diffusion mechanisms have interactively affected local policy adoptions in the developing country. Empirical findings show that horizontal and vertical mechanisms of diffusion considerably outperform intrajurisdictional factors in spreading childbirth support policies among localities. Furthermore, the vertical influence from the central government has a positive conditional effect that stimulates horizontal interactions among local governments for policy formulation. These findings thus suggest that horizontal interactions among localities can provide an important route for the nationalisation of a domestic social policy in the nascent decentralised system.     

Local Councillors: Between Local 'Government' and Local 'Governance'

With a two-dimensional concept of 'New Public Management' as its point of departure, the article points to the development of a specific Danish model of NPM at the local level of government. In the municipalities the market-oriented NPM dimension has been almost absent and the managerial dimension has been interpreted and translated into a 'governance'-oriented model that combines decentralized self- and user-governance from below with centralized goal-steering from above. This combined model institutes new governing roles including a new leadership role for elected councillors as central goal-steering decision and policy makers. Rather than strengthening the local councillors, the new leadership role has turned out to be problematic for the elected councillors. The problems inherent in the new institutional role as goal-steering decision makers are discussed and arguments are put forward in favour of a more 'governance' and less NPM and government-oriented role for elected councillors. What seems to be needed is another new role that stresses local councillors as co-governors and guardians of an inclusive and democratic form of local governance.     

Subnational Economic Nationalism? The contradictory effects of decentralization in Peru

Across the third world, transnational corporations (TNCs) and subnational governments (SNGs) are coming into new forms of contact as a result of liberalization and decentralization. Despite scholarly expectations that subnational governments will respond by seeking out foreign direct investment, in much of Latin America these governments are confronting rather than courting transnational corporations. Conceptualizing this phenomenon as ‘subnational economic nationalism’, the article explores both how subnational governments are challenging neoliberalism and why these challenges often fail to subvert neoliberal outcomes. By examining two struggles against transnational capital that had different outcomes but that took place within a single subnational jurisdiction (Arequipa, Peru), the article argues that decentralization can work at cross purposes. While voters are increasingly demanding that elected subnational officials adopt nationalist positions vis-à-vis TNCs, these same officials often seek financial support from TNCs so that they can compete successfully in the subnational elections that have been introduced by political decentralization.     

Withering governmental power in China?: A view from below

Based on findings from a field research conducted in Pengzhe County in the People's Republic of China, the following study shows that county and sub-county governments in Pengzhe perform enormously important tasks in political, economic, and other areas. The reform period has seen the strengthening of local government power in Pengzhe. Party organizations at various levels are still the power center. Moreover, subordinate government officials (either at the county level or the township level) are still quite compliant with the policies of higher authorities due to the latter's power in personnel promotion/demotion and resource allocation. Relations between central government and local government is by no means a zero-sum game. As shown in the study, local officials at the county and township levels in places like Pengzhe are effective foot soldiers and functionaries of the central government in actually governing the vast population in China.