Friends or Foes? Nonstate Public Goods Providers and Local State Authorities in Nondemocratic and Transitional Systems

Ordinary citizens often welcome nonstate provision of public goods and social welfare, but government officials, particularly in nondemocratic and transitional systems, may view nonstate actors as political competitors. Drawing on a combination of qualitative and quantitative data from rural China, this paper finds that some kinds of nonstate participation in public goods and social welfare provision can actually make local officials more optimistic about their ability to implement state policies and elicit citizen compliance. Local officials often believe that coproduction of public goods and services with community groups in particular, often with community actors taking the lead, can build trust and social capital that can spill over into increased citizen compliance with state demands, a central element of state capacity. Simply increasing levels of public goods provision, however, is not associated positively with optimistic perceptions of local state authority and capacity. Moreover, other forms of nonstate participation such as coproduction between private businesses and local officials or substitutive provision by nonstate actors have less potential for building trust between officials and citizens and are not seen by officials as beneficial for increasing citizen compliance.     

Citizen’s Charter for Improved Public Service Delivery and Accountability: The Experience of Land Administration at the Local Government in Bangladesh

Improved public service delivery and accountability have increasingly turned out to be important issues in public sector management. In Bangladesh, there has been noteworthy progress, including the introduction of citizen’s charter since 2008. This article explores the contribution of citizen’s charter in improving public service delivery and accountability at the local government land administration, adopting a qualitative longitudinal study. Analysis of the findings reveals that most of the service recipients are ignorant about the charter even after 8 years of its introduction. The charters are mainly producer dominated and their grand rhetorics are far away to achieve in reality.     

Something old,something new,something borrowed: Explaining varieties of professionalism in citizen collaboration through identity theory

Public professionals are increasingly involved in collaborative relationships with citizens to design, implement and evaluate public services. We investigate how actors derive a specific social identity from the institutional logic of cross‐sectoral collaboration and how this social identity translates into the self‐identities of professionals. Based on an analysis of 44 semi‐structured interviews in Germany, we examine how public professionals combine the different social identities in collaborative projects and extract three varieties of professionalism: the protective professional, the tripartite professional and the collaboration professional. Our study contributes to recent discussions on hybrid identities and identity conflicts in public management. The findings raise questions on the compatibility of different social identities in collaborative settings and thus shed light on the difficulties public professionals face in citizen collaboration.     

Reforms to enhance accountability and citizen involvement: a case study of the hong kong hospital authority

The article begins by examining current issues in thinking about accountability, citizen involvement and empowerment. The discussion then moves to the particular context of Hong Kong. Recent reforms to public hospital services are reviewed in the light of the territory's traditional values of paternalistic bureaucracy and minimal citizen involvement. It is shown that despite good intentions to enhance public accountability and cgitizen involvement, in practice there has been little substantive change in the distribution of power between the ruling elite, health care professionals, and the actual service users. Whilst more information about service performance may now be available, opportunities for citizen involvement and representation continue to be carefully managed by the administration. The net result is that only a very few members of the lay public have been appointed to the new bodies that are now responsible for the governance of the public hospitals. Nearly all of those appointed to such bodies are unrepresentative of the normal service users being drawn, instead, from members of the mostly non-public hospital users - namely Hong Kong's very wealthy professional and business elites. For most of the general public, therefore, the reforms have been less about empowerment and involvement and more about informing them of the changes that have been introduced or of educating them so that abuses of the system can be reduced, or their help enlisted in locally organized fund-raising functions. The article concludes that however well-meaning the reformers might have been in terms of endeavouring to enhance accountability and citizen involvement, the impact of such efforts are likely to be seriously limited whenever underlying administrative or social values conflict with those that ostensibly guide the reforms.     

Accountability by Professionalism or Managerialism? Exploring Attitudes Among Swedish and Norwegian Local Government Leaders

Most developed countries continue to experience problems with malfeasance and corruption, making accountability a fundamental concern of the public government. Still, the mechanisms which ensure accountability are not given. This article explores two different and apparently conflicting principles of accountability in public organizations: “Professionalism” based on values and internalized incentive structures and “Managerialism” based on externalized incentives and hierarchy. The empirical analysis is based on a comparative survey among local government leaders in Sweden and Norway. The analysis shows that both professionalism and managerialism are regarded as important means for accountability and tend to be understood as complementary more than competing principles.     

Local Government Public Servants Performance and Citizens Participation in Governance in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper examines the performance of public administrators at the local government level in Nigeria. It traces the development of local governments in Nigeria from 1945 to present times. It argues that the shift in the critical decision‐making powers and functions of local government requires its public administrators to be better‐trained professionals. However, without citizens' participation in governance, public servants' accountability will be low. The study addresses the following questions: How do public sector performance and development of actions by citizens affect accountability in the local governments? How much training do public administrators in Nigeria's local governments have in public management? What is the relationship between performance and citizenship participation in local governments' development process? The question of interests in this study is how public administration at the local government level can better serve Nigeria's communities and in so doing develop authentic relationship with citizen groups, and equitably enhance public trust, legitimacy, and performance of the public sector in the nation.     

Localism and Accountability in a Post-Collaborative Era: Where Does It Leave the Community Right to Challenge?

Since the establishment of subsidiarity in the early 1990s, the European-wide move to devolve governance has been interpreted by previous and present UK governments adopting differing ideological positions within a ‘localism agenda’. Interpretations have changed the dynamics of the community right to challenge, as well as the structure and mechanisms for community accountability. This article adopts the typology of forms of local governance developed by Lowndes and Sullivan (2008, How low can you go? Rationales and challenges for neighbourhood governance. Public Administration, 86 (1), 1–22) to explore the hypothesis that the localism agenda realigns the synergy between neighbourhood rationales; citizen engagement in service delivery and the opportunity for public scrutiny and accountability. It concludes that opportunities for communities to challenge service delivery and ensure increased accountability to the local level will be tempered by increased complexity and demands on local authorities to develop new relationships with both service users and providers.     

Civil Service Reform in Ethiopia: Issues,Lessons, and Future Directions

This article provides an in-depth review of the successes and challenges of public sector reform efforts in Ethiopia with a view to help other developing countries, particularly African countries, learn from Ethiopia's experiences in this regard so that they can improve the content of and approach to their public sector reforms. It also identifies the gaps in the existing literature and puts forward implications for further research in the area. The public sector reform program of Ethiopia has shown successes particularly in the areas of service delivery to citizens. However, the reform program is entangled with challenges such as lack of accountability and transparency on the part of implementing institutions, inadequate material and moral incentive to employees thus crippling the capacity to manage the implementation process, and participation from the side of different stakeholders.     

The Management of Citizen Participation in Taiwan: A Case Study of Taipei City Government's Citizen Complaints System

Abstract

Citizen participation is one of the core values of democracy. Democratization means an increase in citizen participation in public affairs. However, the issue of democratization is rarely studied in the field of public administration. In this article, we use the Taipei City Government (TCG) Citizen Complaints System to illustrate some tensions relating to citizen participation in a newly democratizing country. We interviewed the TCG officials to piece together the puzzle of how the citizen complaints system works. Furthermore, we conducted a survey on how each channel and media is used by citizens to file their complaints. Then, we focused on the development of the Taipei City Mayor's e‐mail box to see how the tension between participation and cost is handled by utilizing newly emerging information technology. We then evaluate these developments in terms of publicity, accessibility, and accountability suggested by Senevirante and Cracknell (Seneviratne, M.; Cracknell, S. Consumer complaints in public sector services. Public Admin. 1988, 66, 181–193). Accordingly, we propose suggestions for improvement from these three aspects for TCG and other governments as well to establish a citizen complaints system that substantiates democracy.     

Marketization reforms and co-production: Does ownership of service delivery structures and customer language matter?

In public services that are tax funded, public goods are sometimes marketized by being delivered using private companies instead of public organizations. In addition, marketization reforms can entail service users being described as customers for the service rather than as citizens. We assess the effects of these aspects of marketization reforms on users' willingness to co-produce public services. First, service delivery using private companies risks reducing users' willingness to co-produce because firms cannot commit ex ante to not appropriate donated labour for private gain. Second, using customer-oriented language risks reductions by priming individualistic market norms that lower prosocial motivation compared to citizen-oriented language priming citizenship duty. Using three survey experiments in the United States, we find that delivery structures are not neutral. Private firms delivering local public services reduce users' willingness to co-produce, although similar effects are not evident from primimg customer rather than citizenship thinking.     

Dynamic transparency: An audit of Mexico's Freedom of Information Act

Freedom of Information Acts (FOIAs) aim to provide a channelled exchange between citizens and public officials that, irrespective of the citizen's identity, results in the provision of timely, relevant, and often new information about policy. We evaluated Mexico's FOIA by submitting 307 information requests on behalf of an average male citizen to government entities in the years 2007, 2013, and 2015. In 2007, we also submitted the same requests to 87 comparable entities on behalf of a male citizen who signalled economic and political clout. Encouragingly, entities do not discriminate between regular and seemingly influential citizens. Entities also answer more frequently and provide more information in 2015 compared to earlier years, but they are taking longer to answer, frequently charging fees, and often failing to provide quality information to questions they are legally bound to answer. Mexico's FOIA is a functional system demanding significant improvements.     

Performance Regimes—The Institutional Context of Performance Policies

Performance measurement, targeting, reporting and managing of public services has spread across jurisdictions in recent years. The most usual stance adopted by governments in developing performance policies has been shaped by principal-agent theory and a hierarchy of principal-agent relationships from core executive to service delivery. Such notions have been challenged from several directions, both in theory and empirically. Writers on accountability and those analyzing the “audit explosion” and the growth of “regulation inside government” have pointed to the way in which multiple actors and accountabilities have grown. Drawing on these and other sources this article develops a “performance regimes” perspective that offers a heuristic analytical framework of the main groups of institutional actors who can (but do not always) attempt to shape or steer the performance of service delivery agencies. The aim is to create a framework that can be applied comparatively to study changes in total performance regimes over time and between jurisdictions and sectors.     

Focusing on quality care rather than ‘checking boxes’: How to exit the labyrinth of multiple accountabilities in hybrid healthcare arrangements

Accountability relations in modern-day welfare states have multiplied due to the complex interaction of institutional and sectoral logics. Against this backdrop, this article seeks to unravel complexities which surround accountability relations in hybrid healthcare arrangements. For this purpose, a framework of multi-faceted identity is suggested in order to theoretically grasp multiple accountabilities of healthcare professionals. Accordingly, healthcare professionals have a cross-cutting identity (being a professional) that is fortified with nested identities such as the one of partner, citizen and manager. Each identity facet is attached to a specific accountability form such as professional and civic society accountability. By focusing on three settings of healthcare provision—hospital, outpatient and integrated care—the usefulness of a multi-faceted identity framework will be illustrated. It is concluded that developing a more nuanced understanding of healthcare professionals’ multiple identities and attached accountabilities might be a good starting point for planning healthcare redesign.     

The communicative policy maker revisited: public administration in a twenty-first century cultural-choice framework

In recent years, public administration thinking shifts the focus from the internal public organisation behaviour towards cross-boundary operation that is, operation across governments and sectors. Public bureaucrats become agents in a multiple-interest political environment within which not only technical management issues are discussed, but also dynamic public values are shaped through a dialogical process. In a cultural choice framework, governments operate different service portfolios and the source of allocation problems occurs due to interdependencies between these functions and variation in public preferences. Beyond service production costs, there exist variable characteristics, such as citizen interest, market competition, and managerial structure and operating behaviour in the aggregate responsibilities governments take. Progressive public administrators need to respond to a threefold challenge: The global versus local challenge to define cultural variability; the leadership challenge to interact with citizens; and the cross-boundary challenge to develop a collaborative rather than a competitive future.     

Citizen participation matters. Bureaucratic discretion matters more

New Public Governance theory increases citizen participation and expands bureaucrats' roles in the work of government. Citizen participation creates new mechanisms for citizens to influence the policy process. Bureaucrats' expanded roles allow for broader bureaucratic discretion over policy implementation. When citizens' and bureaucrats' views on public management decisions collide, whose views prevail? Do citizen volunteers or bureaucrats have greater influence over public decisions? We answer this question by studying the U.S. Department of Energy's initiative to engage citizens in environmental clean-up decisions. We assess 10 years of meeting records and administrative decisions using a three-step, mixed-method analysis to identify, weigh, and test the influence of citizen participation and bureaucratic discretion. The results indicate that while citizen participation matters, bureaucratic discretion has a more significant influence over administrative decision-making. The findings expose holes in New Public Governance theory, which has implications for democracy and demands deeper thought into structuring citizen participation.     

Types of coproduction and differential effects on organizational performance: Evidence from the New York City school system

A growing body of literature explores the process of coproduction by citizens and government employees in providing goods and services, yet research that attempts to link coproduction to organizational performance offers contradictory findings. It is possible that these conflicting results are a consequence of trying to compare distinct categories of coproduction. This study identifies types of coproduction, classified by which organizational tasks citizens can influence during stages of policy design and implementation, and tests whether these types have different effects on student proficiency in Mathematics and English Language Arts using data from New York City schools between 2007 and 2009. This study then tests the degree to which different types of coproduction moderate the negative effect of environmental turbulence on performance. Results confirm that types of coproduction have varying effects on organizational performance and can reduce, and even eliminate, the negative effect of a turbulent environment on student outcomes.     

Policy Alienation of Public Professionals: A Comparative Case Study of Insurance Physicians and Secondary School Teachers

Currently, there is an intense debate on the pressures facing public professionals in service delivery. Several studies show increasing discontent among professionals toward policies they have to implement. In this article, we aim to contribute to this topic by analyzing this discontent of public professionals in terms of “policy alienation.” The policy alienation concept is used to frame the experiences of professionals in a coherent theoretical framework. We have used a qualitative comparative case study of Dutch insurance physicians and secondary school teachers to study the factors that influence the degree of policy alienation across different domains. Our article shows that facets of New Public Management are important in explaining the pressures on public professionals implementing public policies. However, others factors are also prominent, and the degree of the implementers' professionalism seems especially important. These insights help in understanding why public professionals embrace or resist the implementation of public policies.     

MANAGING CITIZENS' EXPECTATIONS OF PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE FROM OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENTATION IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Citizens' expectations of public service performance influence their attitudes and behaviour towards services, including satisfaction, choice of service and political voice about them. However, there has been little research on what sets expectations. This paper assesses the effects of prior service performance and information about prior performance on two forms of citizen expectations, positive expectations of what performance will be and normative expectations of what performance should be. In an observational study, prior performance is positively related to expectations of what performance will be. Prior performance is positively related to high normative expectations but is unrelated to low normative expectations. The resilience of normative expectations suggests that poor performance will trigger dissatisfaction and citizen response rather than lowering expectations creating passive acceptance. In a field experiment, performance information effects are found for positive but not normative expectations. Providing information about excellent performance raises positive expectations and providing information about poor performance lowers positive expectations; negativity bias is evident with information about poor performance having a larger effect. Performance information that is credible to citizens can be used to manage citizens' positive expectations but their normative expectations are less amenable to influence by this route.     

How social capital shapes citizen willingness to co-invest in public service: The case of flood control

Why are citizens in some communities more willing to co-invest in public services than citizens in other communities? Citizen co-investment has become an important policy tool for governments to finance public services, yet little research has theorized and empirically examined the impacts of community contexts on citizens' willingness to invest their personal resources in public services. As social capital is often viewed as an important determinant of citizen behaviours, we propose two competing hypotheses explaining the relationship between social capital and citizen co-investment: the facilitation effect hypothesis and the inhibition effect hypothesis. Based on three data sources, our statistical analyses consistently show that citizens living in counties with more social capital are less willing to co-invest in local flood control. This finding provides empirical evidence to support the inhibition effect hypothesis. Key implications of our research and suggestions for future research are discussed in the conclusion.     

Examining Citizen Participation: Local Participatory Policy Making and Democracy

Citizen participation is usually seen as a vital aspect of democracy. Many theorists claim that citizen participation has positive effects on the quality of democracy. This article examines the probability of these claims for local participatory policymaking projects in two municipalities in the Netherlands. The article focuses on the relations between citizens and government from a citizens' perspective. The findings show that the role of citizens in these projects is limited, serving mainly to provide information on the basis of which the government then makes decisions. Nevertheless, the article argues that citizen involvement has a number of positive effects on democracy: not only do people consequently feel more responsibility for public matters, it increases public engagement, encourages people to listen to a diversity of opinions, and contributes to a higher degree of legitimacy of decisions. One negative effect is that not all relevant groups and interests are represented. The article concludes that for a healthy democracy at the local level, aspects of democratic citizenship are more important than having a direct say in decision-making.