Democracy,public debt transparency,and sovereign creditworthiness

Democratic Advantage (DA) arguments explicitly and implicitly assume that democracies have more transparent public debt, enhancing sovereign creditworthiness. This study questions the assumed link between transparent public debt practices and democracy in developing countries. It finds that such practices, which are crucial for investors, (a) do not depend on democratic governance and (b) largely erase the effect that DA variables regime type, rule of law, and property rights have on creditworthiness. In other words, transparent public debt and democracy should not be assumed to go together, and transparent debt practices affect creditworthiness more than DA variables. The findings identify public debt transparency as a statistical and theoretical confounder for current iterations of the DA thesis, which must be addressed to better understand the relationship between democratic governance and sovereign creditworthiness. The policy implication is to not assume that transparent public debt practices are only available to democracies.     

Controlling Nonconventional Expenditure: Tax Expenditures and Loans

Tax expenditures, credits and guarantees, and other nonconventional expenditures are prominent features of the public finances of the United States and other industrialized democracies. While reliable data on these practices have generally been available only for a decade or less, there is reason to believe that these types of transactions now constitute a larger share of total public expenditure than they did in the past. This article discusses the concepts arid implications of two types of nonconventional expenditures—tax expendituures and loans—as well as recent efforts to bring them within the scope of the budget process. The article deals mostly with American practices, but it also draws on the experiences of other democratic countries.     

Ethics in Government: No Matter How Long and Dark the Night

This work examines attitudes about ethics in American government during the turbulent time from the end of the past century to the beginning of the new. Using data from a national survey, the authors explore views toward ethics in society and integrity in public agencies, with an emphasis on the code of ethics of the American Society for Public Administration. The results not only reveal considerable continuity over the years but also suggest that individual managers are increasingly empowered, that agencies are affecting positive change, and that the ASPA code may be influencing management practices. The implications of the findings for ASPA ethics initiatives are considered.     

Livelihood strategies and performance of Ghana's health and education sectors: exploring the connections

The public sector in Africa is riddled with widespread ineffectiveness. Although some countries have implemented various reform programmes with the support of international development agencies, the results so far have been disappointing. One reason for the failure is that the policies have focussed more on achieving macroeconomic stability than making the organisations effective. This article explores a fundamental problem of the policies—the need to focus on the human component of organisational performance. Using education and health organisations in Ghana as examples, the article advances a hypothesis that the livelihood strategies of public sector employees and the performance of their organisations are interconnected. Specifically, it is argued that as public sector employees have become more dependent on multiple sources of income, they have developed multiple social identities, which influence the culture of their organisations. The organisational culture may have encouraged employee effectiveness in some cases, but for most organisations, it has resulted in practices that perpetuate inefficiency and poor performance. To be successful, public sector reform policies must therefore involve deliberate efforts to change organisational cultures. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public affairs in Australia: Evolving and enhancing corporate performance

This article is an attempt to provide a helicopter view of the influences and responses that have shaped the corporate public affairs function over four decades from non‐existence to an important and settled profession in Australia's major companies. It reflects the perceptions and experiences of an observer with a background in public administration, politics, academia, industry association leadership, and consulting to companies and industry organisations over that period. They are further informed by surveys and other studies conducted by the organisation supporting public affairs departments, the Australian Centre for Corporate Public Affairs (the Centre) since its inception in 1990. The article charts the emergence from two distinct, low level management silos—one supporting communications and the other, government affairs—to create an integrated strategic management function. The central story is of waves of innovation in concepts and practices, developed mainly overseas, being embraced with enthusiasm and becoming a dominant focus, before settling into the broad toolbox of public affairs. This occurred particularly in the period 1990–2005 during which the function took its shape. With such a broad and ambitious sweep, it is inevitable that bold generalisations begging exceptions must be made.     

The New Public Service Revisited

The New Public Service describes a set of norms and practices that emphasize democracy and citizenship as the basis for public administration theory and practice. This article revisits some of the core arguments of the New Public Service and examines how they have been practiced and studied over the past 15 years. The authors conclude that neither the principles of the New Public Service nor those of the New Public Management have become a dominant paradigm, but the New Public Service, and ideas and practices consistent with its ideals, have become increasingly evident in public administration scholarship and practice.     

Trends in the Higher Civil Services of Anglo-American Systems

The managerial reforms that have been implemented in the public sectors of many countries over the past decade are part of an international trend (Aucoin 1990, 134). Managerial reform in public administration can be seen as a Zeitgeist , a pervasive idea whose time has come. As Caiden (1988, 354) points out, effective administrative reform can be sustained only by a "crusading spirit" or the burning flame of idealism, and such a flame has blazed up in the past ten years. History may well show that the managerial reforms of the late 20th century had as dramatic an impact on public administration as the merit reforms of the late 19th century.
These managerial reforms have invariably involved an emphasis on giving the public better value for money, and have usually included the introduction of efficiency measures and corporate planning techniques, the improvement of financial management procedures, the assessment of performance in terms of results against goals, the adoption of private sector human resource management practices, and the use of management information systems and other management tools. The implementation of such managerial reforms has typically been heralded by the establishment of a unified elite group of senior executives in the higher civil service. This paper reviews the recent trends in the higher civil services of America, Canada, Britain and Australia, and considers how they exemplify the managerial approach to administrative reform.¹     

The Interface management frontier: Modernizing local government. Part three

At the beginning of the 21st Century, local government faces the major challenge of restructuring and managing a new interface with its social, economic, and political environment. The devolution of public tasks to society requires a redefinition of the role of local government. The shift from producing to guaranteeing the remaining services requires at least the adoption of best practices from private-sector strategic marketing, production, and purchasing management. The restructuring of local government for customer satisfaction and decentralized decision-making requires careful attention to the demands of democratic political control, as well as to legitimate public interests that may not be included in the customer-satisfaction model. Thus, public management of local government cannot be content with internal modernization, but must redefine its relationships with its environment.     

Globalization, Governance, and the Political-Economy of Public Policy Reform in East Asia

In the wake of the crisis that developed in East Asia during 1997, perceptions of the region have been transformed. Critics claim that East Asian political practices and economic structures must be reformed if the region is to prosper in an era of globalization. In short, the region must adopt a different sort of public policy, one associated with an influential agenda of "good governance." This paper critically assesses this discourse and the predominately "Western" assumptions that underpin it. It is argued that, not only is this reformist agenda likely to be resisted by powerful vested interests, but the institutional infrastructure to support such a style of governance is inadequately developed in East Asia.     

The effectiveness of institutional borrowing restrictions: Empirical evidence from Spanish municipalities

The need for restrictions on borrowing by subnational governments is a generally accepted notion that is justified both by public choice theory and by the fact that such restrictions are in force in the majority of decentralized countries. Furthermore, recent breaches of the Stability and Growth Pact of the European Union have led to the introduction of legislative tools aimed at balancing the budget at all levels of government have come to the forefront of interest in European public finance research. This paper is concerned with the financial situation and debt level of Spanish municipalities from 1988 to 2000. We have two main objectives: the first is to assess the value of mandatory limitations on municipal borrowing and past trends in the borrowing policies adopted by Spanish local authorities. The second is to develop an econometric model using panel data stratified by population size to measure indebtedness in Spanish municipalities. These measures enable us to formulate a series of hypotheses to explain municipal borrowing practices, which are then tested empirically. The evidence thus obtained appears to support the effectiveness of institutional borrowing restrictions to introduce some financial discipline in the borrowing policies adopted by local governments in Spain.     

“We've Cared for the Dead since We Started Caring”: COVID-19 and Our Relationship to Public and Private Deathcare

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted public organizations’ challenges related to deathcare. Within the emergency management literature, and specifically within public administration, there is a gap when it comes to planning past death. Using data from interviews with 35 municipal cemetery managers throughout the United States, I show how our unwillingness to talk about or plan for death, coupled with cemetery managers who are underfunded and often left out of emergency management planning processes, needs increased attention. While many deathcare best practices were deployed to respond to the virus, cemetery managers often are not part of the planning process.     

Taking Chances: Evaluating Risk as a Guide to Better Use of Best Practices

Recent attention to best practices has resulted in a complex array of terminology and a number of compendia of effective practices that may be daunting to public policy makers and administrators seeking solutions to important public problems. This study clarifies these distinctions and builds on them to create a decision tool that will help policy makers as they use best practice information in program adoption or development. Decision makers must know their goals in seeking out best practices. As they evaluate potential practices, they should consider not only the quality of available evidence of effectiveness but also the risk of harm to constituents and the cost per unit of benefit generated. The study applies the rubric to an emerging practice in support services for individuals with disabilities known as Cash and Counseling, demonstrating that the practice is low risk, cost neutral, and improves effectiveness and consumer satisfaction. The tool highlights the judgmental elements of concern in the decision process while providing a means to assess multiple decision dimensions in a coherent fashion.     

American Public Administration and Impacts of International Governance

Increasingly, public administration in the United States operates in a densely interconnected international system in which local decisions and actions may trigger global repercussions—and vice versa—and the fate of communities in one region is bound to the choices of decision makers elsewhere. Administrative actors have become enmeshed in a complicated, interwoven pattern of governance in ways that shape actions, issues, and opportunities for influencing administrative agencies at national, state, and local levels. These developments call for a critical reappraisal of our inherited notions of governance, management, and accountability. Terrorist tragedy and responses to it call attention to these themes, but they apply broadly across the spectrum of governance challenges. To demonstrate this point, we analyze some implications of transnational governance for the institutions and practices of U.S. public management, with particular attention to another subject: environmental policy and management. A conclusion is that the public administration community must adjust traditional practices to facilitate the effective management of the global processes that, in turn, reshape the world.     

Crowdsourcing Government: Lessons from Multiple Disciplines

Crowdsourcing has proliferated across disciplines and professional fields. Implementers in the public sector face practical challenges, however, in the execution of crowdsourcing. This review synthesizes prior crowdsourcing research and practices from a variety of disciplines and focuses to identify lessons for meeting the practical challenges of crowdsourcing in the public sector. It identifies three distinct categories of crowdsourcing: organizations, products and services, and holistic systems. Lessons about the fundamental logic of process design—alignment, motivation, and evaluation—identified across the three categories are discussed. Conclusions drawn from past studies and the resulting evidence can help public managers better design and implement crowdsourcing in the public sector.     

The Measurement of Democracy and the Means of History

The issue of measurement has seized the public eye more than ever before. The computer, communication, and information revolutions have produced a veritable flood of facts and observations on every imaginable topic and subject from every nook and cranny on earth, and beyond. Information overload challenges both our sensibilities and our abilities to process and organize knowledge; everything must be measured, compared, rated, and ranked. The demand for informational order has grown far faster than the ability to deliver. The public obsession with order and ordering to the minutest detail can be both consuming and obscuring. On the surface, inaccurate and inappropriate measures command the same allusion to mathematical precision as the more accurate and reliable measures. The focus of measurement in the social sciences is on identifying common metrics that accurately capture the essential quality of key factors and attributes that define complex, social phenomena. Objective and subjective assessments must be separated to the degree possible. Similarly, in social processes, means and ends must be distinguished in order to gauge performance. Governance and social order are, to a greater degree than any other social phenomena, based in commonalities of collective action and response. These constitute the means of history and should be distinguished from the ends so we can better understand how the past got us to the present and what we might make of the future. From a secular perspective, the purpose of democracy is to define and refine democratic purpose, the success of which can be measured as a conflict management function. Factionalism and the polarization of dissent present major impediments to the consolidation of democracy.     

The Balancing Act: Using Private Money for Public Projects

As public resources become scarcer, private donations for capital projects and public services may become increasingly important. Modern donors, using the new philanthropy philosophy common now in the nonprofit sector, may desire more control over the use of their funding than in the past. This research examines the effects of private donations on capital decision making, and explores the balancing act required by public officials between best practices and private norms in this process. The study uses the city of Omaha, Nebraska case, where corporate and individual donors have made significant financial contributions for the construction of a convention center/arena and a baseball stadium. Findings include both costs and benefits of this approach, and may be beneficial for theory‐building related to this relatively unexplored topic, as well as for practitioners faced with similar needs and demands.     

Competition, Marketisation, Public Services and Public Ethics

The topic I address provides an embarrassment of scope. At the same time, it allows the development of a theme that is worthwhile discussing. When in the public sector is it worthwhile to import private sector concepts, principles and practices and when would the adoption of a private sector model be injurious to the state's constituents? The theme is worthwhile discussing, in part because some of Australia's jurisdictions appear to be adopting what they consider to be private sector practices, without an adequate framework to guide them. Because there is no proper framework, mistakes are made which could have been avoided. There is also some evidence that the public is uneasy about the loss of ‘public’ from the term public services. It would not be in the public’s own interests to resist, for no good reason, the adoption of private sector principles where that would allow more cost-effective services. The topic also allows a discussion on the influence on public sector ethics of the trend to place senior public servants on contracts that can be disposed of without a reason or prospect of appeal.     

Gender targets and trickle-down effects: Avoiding the ‘decoupling dynamics’ that limit female representation in senior roles

Women constitute the majority of the Australian public sector workforce, but their representation in senior roles is not proportional. Australian public services have gender targets to improve the representation of women in senior roles. Based on previous research, targets are expected to first increase female representation at the target's focal level, such as executive level. Then they should initiate a trickle-down effect (TDE), increasing female representation at the level immediately below the target's focal level, such as the executive feeder level. However, the TDE observed in a state public service decelerated after a gender target was imposed. We identified whether individual departments had a consistent or inconsistent TDE and conducted 13 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. Too many service-wide targets with low prioritisation of a gender target, as well as missing and ineffective practices, generated decoupling dynamics. Only departments with gender champions who had visible backing from the Chief Executive were able to keep the gender target coupled with practice to achieve its intended outcomes.

Points for practitioners

• Gender targets in Australian public services may not be achieving intended outcomes due to decoupling—a response to policies in which the policies are ignored and/or ineffective practices are implemented.
• Too many competing targets and limited accountability for achieving a gender target create a potential for decoupling by allowing individuals and groups to ignore or weakly adopt the policy.
• Integrated bundles of top-down (e.g. requiring at least two women on shortlists) and bottom-up practices (e.g. mentoring) can help avoid decoupling by ensuring women are appointed to senior roles and supported to progress through an organisation.
• Chief Executives are key to ensuring a gender target remains coupled with its implementation; Chief Executives must provide visible support to internal champions to make gender targets effective.