Local E‐Government in the United States: Transformation or Incremental Change?

In this article, the authors address the recent trajectory of local e‐government in the United States and compare it with the predictions of early e‐government writings, using empirical data from two nationwide surveys of e‐government among American local governments. The authors find that local e‐government has not produced the results that those writings predicted. Instead, its development has largely been incremental, and local e‐government is mainly about delivering information and services online, followed by a few transactions and limited interactivity. Local e‐government is also mainly one way, from government to citizens, and there is little or no evidence that it is transformative in any way. This disparity between early predictions and actual results is partly attributable to the incremental nature of American public administration. Other reasons include a lack of attention by early writers to the history of information technology in government and the influence of technological determinism on those writings.     

E‐Participation and Environmental Protection: Are Local Governments Really Committed?

There is widespread acceptance that current institutions are inadequate to address the challenges of sustainable development. At the same time, there is an urgent need to build awareness and increase capacity for promoting action with respect to environmental protection at the local level. This article analyzes the Web sites of the environment departments of European local governments that signed the Aalborg Commitments to determine the extent to which they are using the Internet to promote e‐participation in environmental topics and to identify the drivers of these developments. Potential drivers are public administration style, urban vulnerability, external pressures, and local government environmental culture. Findings confirm that e‐participation is a multifaceted concept. External pressures influence the transparency of environmental Web sites, while public administration style and local government environmental culture influence their interactivity.     

E‐communication: Strengthening the Ties between Councillors and Citizens in Norwegian Local Government?

This article examines the extent to which local politicians use digital channels in their contact with citizens and stakeholders, in comparison with traditional forms of communication (i.e. face-to-face and telephone contact) and which politicians are using digital channels the most. By analyzing a national survey of municipal politicians and mayors in Norway, findings show that e-mail has become an important channel of communication between local politicians and citizens, while e-debates have not. More surprisingly, the digital divides related to age and levels of education, which are reported in other studies, are less obvious in this study. Variations, however, in e-mail usage do exist in municipal hierarchies; Mayors, more than other politicians, use e-mail in work-related communication. The article also discusses whether digital channels are able to transfer the all important 'local' tacit knowledge from citizens to local politicians, and concludes that most politicians do not consider e-mail to be as capable at doing so as the traditional channels. The article indicates that the informality of e-mail lowers the threshold for contact, increasing the politicians' knowledge about the experiences, problems and preferences of the citizens, thus broadening their pattern of communication and reaching new interest groups. E-mail, therefore, seems to increase contact and strengthen the ties between politicians and citizens. Politicians are aware, though, of the relationship between the electorate's lack of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) competence and usage of e-communication channels, and they stress that their use of digital channels is a supplement to traditional channels – not a replacement.     

Commercial‐in‐Confidence: An Obituary to Transparency?

This article addresses the issue of accountability and transparency in relation to the use of commercial-in-confidence clauses to withhold information. The issue is contentious. On the one hand some like the Senate Finance and Public Administration Reference Committee (SFPARC) argue that: 'Put simply there can be no accountability if there is no information' (SFPARC 2000).
On the other hand, an alternative view is: 'I think that the sanctity of contract ... [is] a fundamental pillar of our legal system, and if private businesses enter into contracts with governments that specify confidentiality, then that ought to be respected' (Paterson 1999).
This paper is an abridged version of a keynote address to CPA Australia (Queensland Division) Audit Intensive Day 2000, Brisbane Hilton, 10 November 2000.     

The National Renewable Energy Target: An Example of Post‐Machiavellian Policy‐Making?

Since the election of the Rudd Government in 2007 intergovernmental relations have been a major feature of the political agenda. A ‘new federalism’ approach introduced a re‐invigorated Council of Australian Governments (COAG) focused on developing national policies that reflect coordinated and cooperative policy‐making processes. The establishment of COAG working groups provided the means for developing policies that reflect new levels of agreement between jurisdictions and a common approach to reform. The development of the 20% Renewable Energy Target has been one of the first initiatives of this new approach to policy‐making. This research analyses the process behind the development of the target and places it within the context of the post‐Machiavellian approach, and looks at the implications for future intergovernmental relations.     

The Participation Divide? Political Participation,Trust in Government,and E‐government in Australia and New Zealand

Drawing on 438 telephone interview surveys in Australia and 500 in New Zealand, we find evidence of a 'participation divide' where those participating in politics do so using a range of means, including electronic ones. Those less likely to participate in politics, are less likely to participate across all means measured. Those with higher levels of education and income and of European ethnicity are more likely to participate. We confirm the existence of the so-called 'digital divide' with those that use e-government means and those that do not, being stratified by education, ethnicity, income, gender and age. Contrary to our expectations we find that lower levels of trust in government are associated with higher levels of some types of participation, including e-government ones.     

How High Should They Jump? An Empirical Method for Setting Municipal Financial Ratio Performance Benchmarks

Heightened concerns regarding the financial sustainability of local councils have resulted in an increasing reliance by municipal regulators on financial ratio performance benchmarking. However, these benchmarks are often assigned without explicit justification and despite a paucity of empirical evidence. Furthermore, regulators typically allocate a single performance benchmark across an entire local government system despite the fact that individual councils may face entirely different operating environments. Failure to take account of the environmental challenges facing councils can result in inappropriate or unattainable performance benchmarks that may give rise to unintended consequences, such as the well‐documented threshold effects. To address this problem, we develop an empirical method for allocating performance benchmarks with respect to the current level of performance and environmental constraints facing individual local authorities. We demonstrate this technique in a case study using data drawn from New South Wales local authority operating ratios.     

Direct Government Investment: Perverse Privatization or New Tool of Government?

In recent years, public administration scholars have called attention to a blurring of the boundaries between the public and private sectors. However, little attention has been focused on the administration of public programs that seek to impact private markets through direct government investment in private firms. The direct government investment approach is a new tool of government that has been applied in several countries and at multiple levels of government. Through an analytic mix of theory and attention to practice, this article leverages a deep case analysis of the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program to propose and utilize criteria for examining justifiable rationales for direct government investment, areas of administrative capacity necessary to manage such investments, and potential pitfalls of this new tool of government.     

Which Bonds Are More Expensive? The Cost Differentials by Debt Issue Purpose and the Method of Sale: An Empirical Analysis

In this paper, we survey the cost differentials by debt issue purpose and the method of underwriting. We find that cost differentials are a function of the purpose for which the debt was issued, with bond purposes traditionally considered riskier facing higher borrowing costs. However, this effect is not uniform and varies by credit quality portfolios. Moreover, the method of bond sale is an important factor for true interest costs. Overall, the competitive method of sale consistently performs better than the negotiated method of sale in all regression models, even after correcting for self‐selection.     

Performance Measurement and Cost Accounting: Are They Complementary or Competing Systems of Control?

In the public administration literature, research on performance measurement has recognized the important place of cost accounting in relation to performance. Extant research, such as the North Carolina Benchmarking Program, supports the proposition that performance and cost accounting naturally complement each other to increase trust in performance information and increase organizational learning. Other statements about cost accounting suggest that performance measurement and cost accounting compete as systems of control. This research uses general cost accounting plan information and performance measurements in the budgets of large U.S. cities to test the competing and complementary control relationship at the organizational and service levels. It finds that performance measurements and cost accounting are negatively related at the service level, which supports the competing control system hypothesis. At the organizational level, performance and cost accounting are positively related but not at traditional levels of significance.     

A Historical Assessment of Home Buyout Policy: Are We Learning or Just Failing?

Households face many difficult decisions after a disaster, including decisions about whether to rebuild their homes or relocate to a new area. These decisions are bounded by federal housing recovery policy and the ways it is interpreted and applied. In this article, we examine the use of home buyout programs as housing recovery policy tools and assess buyout policy using policy learning theory. According to policy learning theory, policies should evolve and improve over time. Instead, a historical review of buyouts implemented in the United States suggests that policy learning related to buyouts has been, at best, limited. Rather than showing evidence of learning from one iteration to the next, individual buyout programs continue to reflect unique objectives and features, lacking evidence of an iterative process. We propose a novel typology for organizing buyout programs and conclude by exploring implications of this finding and offering recommendations for moving forward.     

Trusting and Joining? An Empirical Test of the Reciprocal Nature of Social Capital

This article tests a key hypothesis of the social capital literature: voluntary memberships and generalized trust reproduce one another. Panel data from the Michigan Socialization Studies from 1965 to 1982 are used to test the contemporaneous and lagged effects of interpersonal trust on joining groups and the contemporaneous and lagged effects of joining groups on interpersonal trust. We find no evidence supporting the hypothesis that interpersonal trust encourages group memberships and only limited evidence suggesting that belonging to groups makes individuals more trusting.     

Policy Positions of Bureaucrats at the Front Lines: Are They Susceptible to Strategic Communication?

It is well established that bureaucrats’ implementation of policies is influenced by their own policy positions, that is, their attitudes toward the given policies. However, what affects the policy positions of bureaucrats? This article focuses on whether the policy positions of bureaucrats at the front lines of government are susceptible to frames and cues embedded in communication. Based on the notion that bureaucrats often adhere to certain professional norms when developing their attitudes toward policies, the authors hypothesize that communication frames and cues that align policies with such norms move bureaucrats’ policy positions in favor of the policy. Results of four studies in European and American settings among mid‐ and street‐level bureaucrats show support for the hypothesized effect. They also show that aligning policies with dimensions outside professional norms is ineffective, possibly even producing opposite effects.     

Examining Small Town Revenues: To What Extent Are They Diversified?

How diversified are small town revenues? Revenue diversification is analyzed among towns governed by town meetings. Using previously developed diversification measures, the findings confirm that these localities draw from less diverse revenue streams than other state and local governments. The reasons for these variations include differences in home rule status as well as tax and expenditure limitations imposed by states. The authors suggest that revenue allocation in these jurisdictions is substantively different from other forms of local government because these communities rely much less on sales taxation than states and municipalities. Their essay proposes possible options for improvement, along with other criteria by which small towns can assess their revenue diversification.     

Has the Clean Air Interstate Rule Fulfilled Its Mission? An Assessment of Federal Rule‐Making in Preventing Regional Spillover Pollution

The Environmental Protection Agency developed the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) to minimize sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants and prevent pollution spillover into downwind states. While observers of CAIR claim success in the reduction of air pollution, our innovative multivariate statistical analysis based on spatial and facility‐level panel data finds mixed results concerning the rule's effectiveness. On the one hand, we find that CAIR facilities are associated with increases in the reduction rate of pollution compared to non‐CAIR facilities. However, the evidence suggests that sulfur dioxide levels decreased in CAIR‐mandated facilities before the actual implementation of the program. Additionally, on the one hand, CAIR facilities in the interior of states are associated with slower pollution reduction rates than those on the border. However, this difference in reduction rate does not change dramatically before or after the adoption or implementation of this rule. This suggests that the CAIR program was ineffective in targeting specific facilities most likely to contribute to interstate pollution. We conclude that while CAIR spurred the electrical utility industry to reduce air pollution, some of these reductions occurred before the actual implementation of the program. More substantially, gains in interstate spillover pollution did not occur by targeting specific facilities most likely to spillover but rather through the overall reduction of air pollution in the eastern states.