Are minorities free riders? Applying the social resistance framework to public goods production in Central-Eastern Europe

One of the key reasons for the scholarly and policy concern about the rising levels of ethnic diversity is its apparently detrimental effect on the production of public goods. Although numerous studies have tackled that issue, there is still much ambiguity as to the precise micro-level mechanisms underpinning this relationship. In this article, a novel theoretical explanation for this relationship is proposed, building on the social resistance framework. This proposition is tested using a new cross-sectional public opinion survey covering 14,536 respondents in 817 neighbourhoods across 11 Central Eastern European countries. Analysing national minorities defined by postwar border changes means one can overcome the endogeneity problem faced by research based on immigrant groups. The findings show that it is the combination of a minority group's discrimination and its spatial clustering that makes minorities reluctant to contribute to public goods. The article constitutes a novel theoretical and methodological contribution to the research on the effects of diversity on public goods provision.     

Why do crises go to waste? Fiscal austerity and public service reform

In the tight budgetary conditions following the 2008 financial crisis, governments have proposed saving money by reforming public services. This paper argues that tight budget constraints make reform harder by introducing an information problem. Governments are uncertain about bureaucratic departments’ effectiveness. Normally, effective departments can be identified by increasing their budget, since they can use the increase to produce more than ineffective departments can. When budgets must be cut, however, ineffective departments can mimic effective ones by reducing their output. Budget cuts thus harm both short-run productive efficiency, and long-run allocative efficiency. I confirm these predictions in a US dataset. Low marginal productivity bureaucracies reduce output by more than expected in response to a budget cut, and budget setters respond less to observed short-run marginal productivity after cutback years.     

Competition and switching in public service markets: Can they reduce inequalities?

Regulatory reforms to public infrastructure services across European Union (EU) countries were aimed at increasing consumer welfare by introducing competition and choice into service markets. However, empirical evaluations have questioned whether these reforms have benefitted all consumers, suggesting that vulnerable groups of service users (especially those with lower levels of formal education), might be locked into poorly performing services. We assess the relationship between the level of competition in electricity and fixed telephony markets in EU countries and evaluate the affordability of these services for different socio‐educational layers. Our findings show that – although in countries where there is a relatively high frequency of switching, inequalities between socio‐educational groups are smaller and eventually disappear – competition as such does not play a part. These results suggest that demand‐side regulation that successfully enables consumer switching has the potential to equalize social welfare, thereby reflecting a possible convergence of regulatory instruments and the central aims of the welfare state in this context.     

The promises and pitfalls of polysemic ideas: ‘One Health’ and antimicrobial resistance policy in Australia and the UK

Policy Sciences - Recent scholarship posits that ambiguous (‘polysemic’) ideas are effective for coalition building between diverse stakeholders: their capacity to be interpreted...     

The city and its ‘other’ in Islamic political ideas and movements

Historically, the city has been the natural habitat for innovations in political and religious ideas and the locus of politico-religious organization and associations. But the proximity to the centers of military power and of religious orthodoxy have rendered the social movements based on these ideas ineffective. The movements which led to political transformations come from marginal settlements and tribal organizations. Ideas and actions relating to location and habitat are examined briefly. Moving on to the modern period it isnoted that almost without exception Islamic political ideas related implicitly to an urban setting. In particular, we examine some of the political ideas of Sayyid Qutb which have been influential among more recent radical Islamic groups in Egypt. These relate to theformation of an Islamic vanguard, separating itself from the prevalent jahiliyya (state of error and ignorance) and, following the example of the early Muslims, fortified with faith, wage a jihad (holy war) to conquer this jahiliyya. Some implications of these ideas for urban social relations and for location and space are examined.     

Integrating Public Service Motivation in the Job-Demands-Resources Model: An Empirical Analysis to Explain Employees’ Performance,Absenteeism, and Presenteeism

Public service motivation (PSM) is a focal construct in public management research, and while sound evidence exists that PSM is positively associated with several desired outcomes, knowledge on the underlying mechanisms which explain these associations and on potential negative consequences of PSM remains limited. Addressing these research gaps, this study investigates how PSM relates to relational job resources, work engagement, and outcomes. We thereby account for both direct and moderating effects of PSM and consider positive (employee performance) and negative outcomes (sickness absenteeism and presenteeism). We empirically test our model in the German public sector and find that the PSM dimensions relate differently to the assessed outcomes, providing varying support for our hypotheses. In particular, commitment to public value and compassion seem to drive the positive effect of PSM on employee performance, whereas self-sacrifice and client orientation are linked to reduced absenteeism, and only compassion is associated with increased presenteeism.     

From encountering confederate flags to finding refuge in spaces of solidarity: Filipino temporary foreign workers’ experiences of the public in Alberta

ABSTRACT

By critically assessing Filipino migrants’ fraught and uneven experiences of the public, I illustrate how race and class hierarchies operate to mark Filipino temporary foreign workers as foreign ‘others’. Because public spaces are structured in gendered and racialized ways, Filipino migrants strategically navigate public spaces to ensure their safety and create their own spaces of belonging that give them refuge against xenophobia. I argue further that the paradoxical discourses of multicultural inclusion and economic protectionism invoke the figure of the ‘good’ migrant and the ‘bad’ migrant. These, in turn, promote contradictory actions towards migrants, whose public acceptance hinge on wildly variable and changing notions of inclusion/exclusion and economic acceptability. These lead to the passage of inconsistent policies where migrants are read as being ‘good’ one day, and as being ‘bad’ the next.     

Designed to travel? Transition management encounters environmental and innovation policy histories in Finland

Transition management is a new concept for long-term policy design for the reflexive governance of socio-technical systems. It has recently attracted attention beyond its original context, the Netherlands. Yet, considering the local origins of transition management, it is also valid to question whether its assumptions concerning the governance of long-term transitions ‘travel well’. This article aims to explore early experiences of transferring the transition management model into the Finnish context on the basis of two case studies in different sectors. We suggest that the policy design changes when it is moved to another country and identify factors that influence the outcome of the transfer process.     

The Peronists’ return to power in Argentina

The victory of Alberto Fernández in October’s presidential election represents a triumph for the Peronist tradition that has dominated Argentinian politics since the 1940s. It is likely, however, that his new government will struggle to rejuvenate Argentina’s struggling economy. Moreover, Fernández’s presidency may test Argentina’s relations with the United Kingdom, the United States and – potentially most dangerously – with Brazil.     

A ‘Road to Work’? The reworking of deservedness,social citizenship and public work programmes in rural Hungary

The paper discusses the effects of the ‘public work programme’ on social citizenship in remote rural localities in Hungary, where it has developed into an extreme form of workfare in lack of other employment options. Drawing on extensive empirical material from two rural localities, the paper shows that, due to decentralisation, large variations exist in the ways the programme is implemented locally. The practices and approach of local officials, who as key welfare workers in a highly decentralised state primarily determine its local implementation, are strongly linked to local social relations, as well as dominant notions of deservingness/undeservingness on which local claims and negotiations of belonging are based. The study concludes that, whilst the programme fails to address, and even upholds, structural inequalities, the ways in which the programme is organised can, nevertheless, fundamentally affect both the material welfare and the locally constituted social citizenship of its participants.     

Intelligence expertise in the age of information sharing: public–private ‘collection’ and its challenges to democratic control and accountability

The emergence of a more elusive and uncertain threat environment has transformed the nature of intelligence, increasing its reliance on civil society partners. Once the work of an insular and carefully select few, intelligence production is now a networked, partially open and extensively public–private enterprise. Most poignantly, new practices of public–private ‘collection’ face Western intelligence services with novel questions about control and accountability – questions to which the services have responded with hopes that by standardizing ‘methodologies’, central command may be retained. Suggesting a more complex picture, this article argues that ‘managing uncertainty’ imply forms of interpretation and choices which cannot be pre-empted by rule-regulation: more than Weber’s ideal of the procedural and rule-bound, it may be his (once central, yet largely marginalized) emphasis on institutional and individual capacities for critical ‘judgment’ that is of relevance today.     

Will working from home become the ‘new normal’ in the public sector?

The COVID-19 pandemic compelled large sections of the workforce out of their workplaces and into their homes to work. Many commentators suggest this has forever changed how and where we work. This article analyses how Australia's biggest employers – state and federal governments – approached the transitions to working from home, and back into regular workplaces. It considers the timing of policy responses to the pandemic as one indicator of resistance to, or acceptance of, widespread working from home. The article also demonstrates previous resistance to working from home for public servants, and questions widespread conjecture that it will become the ‘new normal’.     

Stability and change in the public’s policy agenda: a punctuated equilibrium approach

Much research within the punctuated equilibrium framework demonstrated that policy agendas are invariably punctuated, due in part to cognitive and institutional frictions that constitute barriers to change in attention. While the bulk of past scholarship explored the extent to which institutional friction varies by organizational design, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the empirical examination of the cognitive aspect of disproportionate information processing. In an attempt to close this gap, I utilize a newly available dataset that codes nearly a million Americans’ responses to the ‘most important problem’ question from 1939 to 2015 to analyze the distribution of annual changes in the policy priorities of the American public. Drawing on the punctuated equilibrium theory literature, I argue and show that punctuations in the public’s policy priorities are more severe and frequent than those in institutional agendas. These results emphasize the need for a more subtle treatment of disproportionate information processing within the public, calling for relaxing the implicit assumption that cognitive friction is constant within organizations and across issues.

     

‘My object is to be of service to you’: Carl Ackerman and the Wilson administration during World War I

The press was outraged in the 1970s when investigations exposed the CIA’s use of American journalists as undercover informants during the Cold War. This was treated as a shocking break in the traditional line between journalism and government. A study of journalist Carl W. Ackerman’s activities in the Great War, however, reveals such cooperation had precedents. While reporting oversees, Ackerman, later dean of Columbia Journalism School, worked behind the scenes with officials to shape and promote the Wilson administration’s foreign policy. This paper is a first step to understanding that pervasive, close relationships between journalists and government were well established at the beginning of the twentieth century.     

Leaders’ perspectives in the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative

The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) was created in 1993 to advance conservation in a 1.2 million km² portion of the North American Rocky Mountains. We assembled 21 people with influence over Y2Y in a workshop to elucidate perspectives on challenges and solutions for this organization at a key point in its evolution, and used Q method to define four perspectives on challenges and three on solutions. Participants were differentiated by four models for effecting change—vision-based advocacy, practice-based learning, political engagement, and scientific management—with emphasis on the first three. Those with authority in Y2Y aligned with vision-based advocacy and expressed ambivalence about practice-based adaptive learning and rigorous appraisals of existing strategies. Workshop results were consistent with an apparent trend toward organizational maturation focused on stabilizing revenues, developing formal organizational arrangements, and focusing strategies. Consolidation of power in Y2Y around a long-standing formula does not bode well for the effectiveness of Y2Y. We recommend that leaders in Y2Y and similar organizations focused on large-scale conservation to create and maintain an open system—philosophically and operationally—that capitalizes on the diverse perspectives and skills of individuals who are attracted to such efforts. We also recommend that the Y2Y initiative be followed closely to harvest additional lessons for potential application to large-scale conservation efforts elsewhere.