Performance and Equality in Public Sector Wages

Abstract

The present paper describes how democratic values—reflected by work equality values—paired with the organizational performance characteristics—defined by the height of organizational inputs and outputs—affect gender differences in wages. It is suggested here that despite the democratic conception of the public sector's equal employment opportunities, variations in the organizational performance of 83 local authorities account for gender differences in wages. The study assumes that organizational inputs (type and level of resources) and outputs (type and level of provided services) generate gender differences in individual earnings, when controlling for human capital factors. The results show that variations in organizational performance affect women's but not men's wages. However, the effect of individual level (demographic, human capital and employment) characteristics, reflecting the meritocracy‐based and democratic nature of public sector employment rather than the level of organizational performance explains most of the variance in gender differences in wages. These results point to the slow shift from the principle of administrative values of democracy and equality to the adoption of performance‐related mechanisms in the determination of public sector wages.     

Critical Social Theory and the Contemporary World

The far-reaching historical transformations of recent decades, including the decline of the Keynesian/Fordist organization of polity and economy in the West, the collapse of party-state command economies in the East, and the emergence of a neo-liberal capitalist global order, suggest that contemporary critical theory must be centrally concerned with historical dynamics and large-scale structural changes. The paper argues that these broad developments can best be apprehended by a theory premised on the Marxian theory of capital, but only if that category is fundamentally reconceptualized in ways that distinguish it from its usage in traditional Marxist interpretations.     

A comparative analysis of the impact of the 1997 Asian crisis and the contemporary global economic crisis on the Korean political economy

The 1997 Asian crisis created a political space for neo-liberal reformers within the Korean state to advance a set of policies that had previously been frustrated. This agenda is widely seen to have stalled following an initial burst of neo-liberal reform in the post-crisis period. Several scholars have argued that a partial reconstruction of an economy dominated by a closed nexus between the state and leading domestic firms is taking place in contemporary Korea. Compared to the 1997 crisis the macroeconomic impact of the contemporary crisis on Korea has been limited. However, Korea initiated the largest fiscal stimulus (in relation to GDP) in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. In terms of the policy environment the impact of the contemporary crisis has been considerable. This paper argues that key aspects of the Korean state's response to the crisis represent a selective limited retreat from neo-liberalism, the significance of which should not be overstated.     

Gender Equality as Smart Economics? A critique of the 2012 World Development Report

Business now plays an increasingly prominent role in development. While the implicit links between private actors and international development institutions have been widely debated, the explicit role of financial corporations in shaping official development policy has been less well documented. We employ a feminist Marxian analysis to examine the material and discursive landscape of the 2012 World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development. Its exclusive focus on gender equality as ‘smart economics’, and the central role accorded to leading financial corporations like Goldman Sachs in the formulation of the key World Bank recommendations enable us to explore the changing landscape of the neoliberal corporatisation of development. We argue, first, that the apolitical and ahistorical representation of gender and gender equality in the wdr serves to normalise spaces of informality and insecurity, thereby expunging neoliberal-led capitalist relations of exploitation and domination, which characterise the social context in which many women in the global South live. Second, the wdr represents the interest of corporations in transforming the formerly excluded segments of the South (women) into consumers and entrepreneurs. The wdr thus represents an attempt by the World Bank and its ‘partners’ to deepen and consolidate the fundamental values and tenets of capitalist interests.     

RECENT TRANSITION IN GOVERNANCE IN SOUTH ASIA: CONTEXTS,DIMENSIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS

There has been a paradigmatic shift in the mode of governance in capitalist nations, developing countries, and postcommunist states. Under the newly emerging neoliberal state, which has largely replaced other state formations, public governance has undergone significant transformation. In comparison with the earlier mode, the new mode of governance has the objective of narrow economic growth rather than overall development, the role to support rather than lead service delivery, the structure of managerial autonomy rather than accountability, and the standards based on business norms rather than public ethics. This mode of governance, which emerged in advanced industrial nations, has been extended to most developing countries, including those in South Asia. This paper explores the origins and trends of recent changes in governance in South Asian countries, and evaluates the critical implications of such changes for various dimensions of society in these countries.     

Revising the Democratic Revolution--into the Americas

This article examines the claims of the democratic peace thesis by tracing the embedding of democracy in three countries: Nicaragua, Brazil and Colombia. In so doing it highlights the way in which the democratic peace that has spread in the post-cold war period has to be understood as part of a continued imperialist strategy by the core capitalist states and their dominant social forces in the modern world system. The meaning of democracy in this revolution is to promote and instill a form of corporate government that reinforces private power against human needs and rights. Nonetheless, this is an unstable strategy and the three examples considered here illustrate that this creates space for anti-capitalist opposition to organise and challenge this restricted conception of democracy.     

Capitalist Philanthropy and Hegemonic Partnerships

Over the past 10 years individual capitalists have become increasingly involved in philanthropy, setting up charitable foundations targeted at helping to reduce social problems such as poverty, disease and food security. This form of neoliberal capitalist philanthropy is both politically and ideologically committed to market-based social investment through partnerships, to make the market work or work better for capital. The new structures of philanthropy have received much praise in the media for imbuing capitalist business principles into the non-profit sector and for their potential for social transformation. While philanthropic activities may be considered worthy in themselves, this article examines the relationship between giving and business interest and the agency associated with neoliberal capitalist philanthropy. It questions partnerships between philanthropists and private corporations and their motivations for engaging in poverty-related philanthropy. The discussion focuses on capitalist philanthropic foundations' involvement in the process of agricultural commodification in sub-Saharan Africa through the New Green Revolution and genetically modified (gm) technologies.     

STRATEGIES FOR SAFEGUARDING PUBLIC VALUES IN LIBERALIZED UTILITY SECTORS

In the utility sectors, public values such as affordability, safety, and protection of the environment, require safeguarding. In the last 15 years, most utilities have been either liberalized or privatized. In an attempt to protect public values under these new conditions, this shift has been accompanied by an emphasis on tight regulations and strict norms. These are examples of hierarchical safeguarding mechanisms. This mechanism can cause adverse effects, such as an increase in transaction costs, which diminish or even outweigh the supposed advantages of liberalization and privatization. In addition to hierarchical safeguarding, this article describes two mechanisms used to safeguard public values: network mechanisms and market mechanisms. We suggest that smart combinations of network and hierarchy on the one hand, and market and hierarchy on the other, will lead to more effective and efficient safeguarding of public values than relying on hierarchy alone.     

Old welfare state theories and new welfare regimes in Eastern Europe: Challenges and implications

This paper reviews some theoretical and empirical literature written on welfare state development in post-communist Eastern Europe in the light of the theories and approaches that have been developed to study affluent capitalist democracies. The aim of this discussion is to critically reassess the old welfare state theories, definitions and approaches and their implications regarding the study of post-communist Eastern Europe.The paper ends with the conclusion that the exclusion of ‘communist’ countries for more than twenty years from welfare state theorising has created an empirical and theoretical gap. This creates fresh challenges for welfare state research and calls for a new paradigm. It is evident that the not so well explored Eastern European region with regards to social policy research suggests that it is necessary not only to test already existing welfare state theories, definitions, typologies and approaches on these countries, but also to advance them.     

Nationalist Versus Dependent Capitalist Development: Alternate Pathways of Asia and Latin America in a Globalized World

When compared to Latin America, Asian economies since 1980 have grown faster and have done so with relatively modest inequalities. Why? A comparison of Asia and Latin America underlines the superiority of the nationalist capitalist model of development, which has often been pursued more explicitly in Asia, over that of a dependent capitalist model, which has often been pursued in Latin America. In comparison to Latin America, the Asian model has facilitated higher and less volatile rates of economic growth and a greater political room to pursue social democratic policies. The “tap root” of these alternate pathways is relative autonomy from global constraints: states and economies in Asia have been more nationalist and autonomous than in Latin America.     

Custom and capitalism: Changes in the basis of land tenure in Ismani,Tanzania

Customary land tenure rules in Tanzania are incompatible with conditions of land shortage arising from agricultural development within an individual and incipiently capitalist framework. They are not equipped to deal with market land values, nor with individual demands which do not rest on a wider set of social obligations. Gross inequalities in land ownership are growing without controls because government policy has caused customary law to be retained for most rural land. In Ismani where agriculture is relatively developed, commercial land transactions are carried out secretly, and are consequently subject to cheating and insecurity. The only (still inadequate) means of securing title is by taking a dispute to court.     

“A partnership in virtue among all citizens”:(1) the public service and the civic humanist tradition

It is argued that the Founders’ intentions are most correctly interpreted through the virtue-centered paradigm of civic humanism, with its attendant “ethics of character.” Such an interpretation has major implications for the civic obligations of public servants. Among them are obligations to encourage civic autonomy; to govern by persuasion; to transcend the corruptions of power; and to become civic exemplars. Because these vital civic responsibilities have been neglected in recent years, it is argued that public administration should take the lead in promoting them as standards of good government.

The future of fin de siecle America is not bright, as each day brings us closer to some geopolitical, economic, or environmental disaster that will pitch us into the garrison state.

Because of the legacy of Ronald Reagan, a banal self-seeking and “moral thoughtlessness, “⁽²⁾ we trail dispiritedly after leaders who have neither vision nor courage and who care only for the pomp, circumstance, and financial possibilities of their offices. Lost in the scramble for preferment and self-aggrandizement are the Founding values and the society they were to create.

A few call for a return to the ideals of the Founding, but who are to be the reformers? One area with real possibilities is public administration, for two reasons. First, it still respects the vestiges of the political philosophy of its tradition and, hence, does not automatically reject suggestions from moral philosophy as impractical. Second, many who joined the public service did so because of some sense, perhaps inchoate, of wanting to serve the “public interest.” We can build from this foundation.

In this spirit, then, what are the moral obligations of the public service? While public servants owe their organizations both efficient performance and compliance with the law, they also owe a great deal more because they are “public” employees. Publicness carries higher obligations than those entailed by private employment. To be of the public service is to accept moral obligations, bespoken in the oath of office, the basis of public accountability. At the base, the primary obligation is to know and to believe in the Founding values.

Second, public servants are obligated to embody those values intentionally in all their actions, whether with superiors, colleagues, subordinates, or the general public. Third is the obligation to secure the Founding values for the citizens of the Republic. The fourth obligation is that all are able to speak and write well in defense of the Founding values. These obligations are nonnegotiable.

The source of the problems of contemporary America is our collective loss of belief in and application of the Founding values. By loss, I do not mean to imply that we disbelieve, but rather that we are—following Hannah Arendt— “thoughtless” concerning them. They have become cliches, rather than the guiding principles for all individual and organizational actions. Even those who defend the Founding values are reluctant to deal with the difficult problems of belief, but knowledge of the Founding values must precede belief in them, and knowledge must be interpreted within a paradigm, of which there are at least two to which we may turn.     

Innovating Public Service Delivery in Transitional Countries: The Case of One Stop Shops in Kazakhstan

This article analyses the implementation of managerial ideas in Kazakhstan using the case of a combined public service delivery called “One Stop Shops”. Several public services are provided in a single building rather than different government offices in a business-like style of service delivery and in a modern physical environment. The service integration policy is an attempt of Kazakhstani government to improve the quality of public services and reduce corruption. Some positive progress in improving the accessibility of public services has been noted. However, as this article argues, the country-specific model of “alternative-access” service delivery was not able to implement in-depth changes in the work of the public sector and improve service quality. Implementation of the managerial ideas has been limited and constrained by the institutional framework and culture prevailing in the Kazakhstani bureaucracy. The main conclusion is that the governments of transitional countries need to critically analyze the pros and cons of the new policies and reflect on their cultures before making further steps to adopt Western managerial initiatives.     

The abstraction from politics: A critique of economic theory and design with reference to West Africa∗

In this paper an attempt has been made to analyze some of the major features of the interest‐rates in the Indian rural money market. Such a market is distinguished by its duality, with the unorganised sector largely dominating the supply of funds even today. Rural interest‐rates are largely explained by risk and uncertainty rather than by the monopoly power of the moneylenders, though monopoly profit may have existed in some cases. A theoretical model is then constructed and statistical tests show positive correlation between farmers’ income and repayments and negative correlation between the interest‐rate, on the one hand, and income, repayments and monetization on the other. Thus, a rise in farm incomes may reduce the risk premium and, therefore, rural interest‐rates. Further econometric study revealed that the bank rate is more likely to be the leader than the follower of the bazaar rate.     

Neo-extractivism and the new Latin American developmentalism: the missing piece of rural transformation

What, if anything, is actually new about political and economic transformation in twenty-first century Latin America? Here we explore how ostensibly ‘new’ policies are being built on two ‘old’ foundations that may be mutually exclusive. These are ‘extractivism’ and ‘developmentalism’, concepts that have been used rather loosely to describe current economic policies. The new developmentalism, however, may not only be contradicted by extractivism; it may be more constrained than its predecessor by fortified capitalist class interests and new global conditions. Moreover, it pays little attention to the employment-generating potential of rural areas or to the agricultural sector.     

A Soviet West: nationhood,regionalism, and empire in the annexed western borderlands

This article considers the role the Soviet Union's western borderlands annexed during World War II played in the evolution of Soviet politics of empire. Using the Baltic Republics and Western Ukraine as case studies, it argues that Sovietization had a profound impact on these borderlands, integrating them into a larger Soviet polity. However, guerrilla warfare and Soviet policy-making indirectly led to these regions becoming perceived as more Western and nationalist than other parts of the Soviet Union. The Baltic Republics and Western Ukraine differed in their engagement with the Western capitalist world. Different experiences of World War II and late Stalinism and contacts with the West ultimately led to this region becoming Soviet, yet different from the rest of the Soviet Union. While the Soviet West was far from uniform, perceived differences between it and the rest of the Soviet Union justified claims at the end of the 1980s that the Soviet Union was an empire rather than a family of nations.     

The Political Economy of Familial Relations: The Japanese State and Families in a Changing Political Economy

This article explores the ongoing negotiation over the boundaries between the world of political economy and families by analysing the reactions and responses of the Japanese government and feminists to changes in the political economy as well as popular patterns of family forming since the 1990s. This negotiation has occurred through the transition in the political economy brought about by globalisation and neo-liberal political reforms, and the re-calibration of family and gender roles has emerged as its primary ground. As a result, Japanese women are being required to make a hasty leap from the Fordist model of family life to a more self-steering idea of the individual. This ineluctably re-calibrates the bio-political arrangement into a more advanced mechanism, while discussion of the ‘ethics of care’ has been left relatively absent. Taking up these issues, this article discusses the implications of a changing political economy on Japanese families.     

The Political Economy of Crisis Management in East–Central European Countries

The financial and economic crisis in the Central and East European countries raised the profile of economic policy themes that relate to the role of taxation and state spending. The key policy differences related to public budgets and support for a demand stimulus. Responses fall broadly into two categories that we link to a social-democratic and a neo-liberal response. The distinction indicates that the policy responses were linked to the party affiliation of the government on the left–right spectrum. There were some remarkable common trends that cannot be explained by the logical requirements of the economic situation alone. There are differences in timing and in severity, but every country has at some point moved towards a policy of balancing the budget by making cuts. In all cases there were cuts in benefits for marginal groups in society and a switch towards indirect rather than direct taxes. These carry clear distributional implications.     

The Performance of Nursery Schools in Italian Municipalities

In a neo-liberal approach, the need to increase levels of cost saving, effectiveness, and quality in producing local public services is correlated to awareness of the limited resources available and is an economic issue that has been much debated in recent decades. Ways of measuring and evaluating public services have stimulated academic interest for several years now. In this context, evaluating the levels of performance of public services provided by non-profit organizations (NPOs) as a consequence of contracting-out by public administration is an essential variable in rationalizing—both in terms of quantity and quality—public expenditure.

The aim of this article is to measure multi-dimensional aspects of nursery school services offered by Italian municipalities and to verify whether using different management models makes a difference in the results obtained. We examine data contained in final accounts of main Italian municipalities in order to evaluate effectiveness, cost saving, and quality aspects of the nursery school service supplied.

Regarding overall performance, the distinction between direct management and contracting-out has not brought out significant differences in terms of effectiveness and cost saving, even if the direct management solution is better than the externalized one. By contrast, as previous research showed, quality levels for externalized services are on average lower than for directly managed services.     

Women/Gender and Development: the Growing Gap Between Theory and Practice

Briefly reviewing the evolution of the field of women development, the author argues that the field has lost the dynamism characteristic of earlier periods of constructive tension between theory and practice that led to the adoption of the gender and development framework and the incorporation of issues of multiculturalism, human rights, and political participation into a field that had largely been defined in economic terms. Today, however, critical theory is caught in an “anti-neoliberal” position that is increasingly outdated and that has interpreted women’s work, individual agency, and the role of the state in ways that hinder rather than facilitate new thinking and better outcomes for women participants in WID/GAD projects and programs.