Freedom of information acts and public sector corruption

Various countries have recently implemented Freedom of Information acts believing that greater transparency can reduce public sector corruption. To test this, we analyze annual data on 128 countries between 1984 and 2003 using a variety of propensity score matching techniques and overall find no significant relationship with one exception: In the developing world, FOI acts are significantly associated with rising levels of corruption. Further investigation suggests this may be due to the fact that the effectiveness of FOI acts appears to be conditioned by a country’s institutional arrangements.     

Public sector corruption and major earthquakes: A potentially deadly interaction

Recent studies have identified various negative effects of public sector corruption. We add to these by considering the association between corruption and deaths due to major earthquakes. After developing a brief theoretical model of the relation between these two variables we test the proposition by analyzing 344 quakes occurring between 1975 and 2003. The empirical model takes into account the endogeneity of corruption and controls for factors, such as earthquake frequency, magnitude, distance from population centers, and a country’s level of development which influence quake destructiveness. The results indicate that public sector corruption is positively related to earthquake deaths.     

Controllership in the public sector.

Ineffective or incompetent controllership is, perhaps, the most common managerial failure found in the public sector. This failure affects outcomes and achievements in every area of public policy--often profoundly. Controllers design and operate management control systems. The effectiveness of alternative control system designs depends upon the cost and production behavior of the good or service in question. But control strategies are seldom consciously or effectively matched to circumstances. As a consequence, public programs are too often simultaneously overcontrolled and out of control.     

Public sector unions and public spending

This study examines the influence of public sector unions on the expansion of the public sector. Based on public goods theory, our paper models how unions influence the supply of and demand for public sector activities. On the demand side, public sector unions are special interests which advocate public sector expansion to policy makers; on the supply side, they exert pressure to maintain and expand monopoly powers. Empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that a positive relationship exists between public sector unionism and public spending.     

Explaining the size of the public sector

This paper aims at providing an explanation for the size of the public sector based on the idea of “social insurance”. The main assumption made is that the public sector is less efficient but also less volatile than the private sector. The “demand-driven” level of the public sector that is derived as the one that maximizes the utility of the representative employed consumer depends positively on the variance of private output. An increase in the size of the public sector has a positive effect on expected employment and a negative effect on expected consumption. The size of the public sector set by the government which maximizes the probability of being re-elected will be higher than the “demand-driven” level if voters' preferences for employment is higher than the consumption loss associated with public employment.     

The twin faces of public sector design

Design thinking has become a popular approach for governments around the world seeking to address complex governance challenges. It offers novel techniques and speaks to broader questions of who governs, how they govern, and the limits of rational instrumentalism in policy making. Juxtaposing design thinking with an older tradition of policy design, this article offers the first critical analysis of the application of design thinking to policy making. It argues that design thinking does not sufficiently account for the political and organizational contexts of policy work. Design thinking also errs in universally privileging one particular policy style over others, and fails to account for the reality of policy mixes. Despite these deficiencies, it is argued that design thinking can inform and enrich governance by helping policy designers produce more adaptable designs, better appreciate the behavioral dynamics of public sector design, and leverage networked approaches to social problem solving.     

Public employees and public sector reform implementation

Conventional wisdom says that reforms that aim at improving the productivity of the public sector face opposition from public sector employees, and for this reason, tend to be poorly implemented. These claims are not backed by much hard evidence. This paper seeks to fill some of that gap by investigating why an educational reform containing explicit accountability elements is poorly implemented across Norwegian municipalities about four years after the reform has passed the parliament. The empirical analyses provide evidence that municipalities with a large share of public employees are less likely to implement the reform. The relationship seems to be causal. A reduced-form approach is applied, which prevents conclusions about the mechanisms through which the public employees exercise their influence. However, some preliminary analyses indicate that school leaders hold more negative attitudes towards the reform in municipalities with a large share of public employees, potentially indicating that regulatory capture is an issue: school leaders tend to sympathize more strongly with teachers in such environments.     

Australia's Northern Territory perspectives of public sector reform

This article analyses the forces driving reform of the Northern Territory Public Sector over the past 20 years. It spans an era in which the NT, a ‘small State’ moved from colonial-style dependency on external governments to self-government, with corresponding shifts in the public service. Included is an analysis of the demise of old civil service traditions and their replacement with modern methods of policy development and implementation. It scrutinizes the impact of politicians and politics on the public sector. It examines new legislation currently governing the public sector and the role played by the Public Service Commissioner in leading the reform movement through all its stages—from the analysis of weaknesses in earlier legislation to the passage of new legislation which encapsulates the philosophy behind a modern and effective public sector. It looks at what subordinate legislation is needed by a public service to add substance to a primary Public Sector Employment & Management Act. It analyses the main functions of the Act and highlights the roles and relationships of politicians with the Public Service Commissioner and the Chief Executive Officers of various government departments. Finally, it attempts to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the Act after three years of operation. (© 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)     

Lights on the shadows of public procurement: Transparency as an antidote to corruption

The increased focus on marketizing mechanisms and contracting‐out operations following the New Public Management reform agenda has sparked a debate on whether the close interactions between public and private actors might drive corruption in the public sector. The main response to those worries has been increased transparency, but so far empirical evidence of its efficiency remains scant and mixed. This article argues that the beneficial effects of transparency on corruption are contingent on type of transparency, and in particular, who the intended receiver of the information is. Drawing on newly collected data of more than 3.5 million government contracts between 2006 and 2015, the analysis shows that overall tender transparency reduces corruption risks substantially, yet that the effect is largely driven by ex ante transparency, that is, transparency that allows for horizontal monitoring by insiders in the bidding process.     

The meaning of strategy in the public sector

Strategic management remains under-theorised in the public sector, because the issues it raises straddle three distinct but related fields of analysis—the political, the policy-related and the managerial. At the theoretical level, making progress requires teasing out all three potential dimensions of the term. In the practical sense, there is a need to define a roomier organisational 'space' (and time frame) within which strategy can be formulated.
The article argues for a more ambitious conceptualisation of the place of strategic thinking in the public sector, one that combines the agency's need to sustain its position in its bureaucratic and political environment, with the 'strategic conversation' that is needed to link the political and the bureaucratic executives.     

The effects of fiscal contraction on innovation in the public sector

Beginning in the mid-1970s, fiscal limitation laws, shrinking revenue bases in older cities, and reductions in state and federal grants all have reduced the resources available to carry out the functions of local government. What do these changes portend for the amount of innovation in local government, the types of innovations that are introduced, and the processes of introduction? This paper examines these questions by reviewing the literature on factors related to innovation in public service agencies and reorienting its implications in the new fiscal environment. We conclude that on the whole the innovative process in the public sector has fallen on hard times. Yet, we identify those factors that a creative, innovative administrator can use to advantage in a period of fiscal constraints to bring about innovation. We also identify types of innovations that are likely to succeed.     

The provocative public sector: Domestic political protest and public sector growth in the OECD, 1965–1982

The results shown in Tables 1 through 8 above are consistent in that %GG is repeatedly shown to be significant whether making cross-national comparisons of DPP or predicting intra-national variations over time. Therefore, Hypotheses 1a and 1b are confirmed. The confirmation of Hypotheses 2a and 2b shows that, taking into account public sector size, government growth is most provocative in countries where it represents a major socio-economic change (i.e., where the public sector is small). Government growth has a neutral impact where the role of the public sector is long-established (i.e., where the public sector is large).Hypotheses 3a and 3b posited that average and annual rates of economic growth would be inversely associated with domestic protest. These hypotheses, too, were confirmed. The belief that economic growth rates would clearly provide the margin of affordability for public sector growth was not confirmed, as the coefficient of the interaction term (%GG*%GDP) was not statistically significant.     

Fiscal consequences of public corruption: Empirical evidence from state bond ratings

Empirical analyses of public corruption focus predominantly on international differences; regional differences in public corruption within a single country receive little attention. We empirically investigate the effect of public corruption in the United States on state bond ratings, which previous research shows are inversely related to net interest costs on public debt. After controlling for various economic influences on bond ratings, we find that more corrupt states have lower bond ratings, which implies that taxpayers in more corrupt states face a negative pecuniary externality by paying a premium for debt.     

Pricing public sector services: The tuition gap

The large gap between the tuition charged by public colleges and universities and private ones is likely to cause severe disruptions to the private sector institutions of higher education. If it continues, private sector institutions may once again become bastions for students who can afford their services, rather than for those who merit them, and these institutions will diminish in size and diversity as well. Public sector institutions will become relatively stronger - not solely for reasons of effectiveness, efficiency, or equity - but because of the competitive advantage that the tuition gap affords them. This paper explores the feasibility and desirability of the three methods of correcting this problem, using real cost and demand data from the University of Massachusetts for illustrative purposes. It concludes the subsidization of students (rather than institutions) and raising public sector tuitions are two possible alternatives to the present tuition gap.     

Intergenerational transfers of public sector jobs: a shred of evidence on nepotism

The attractiveness of public sector jobs in Italy may induce parents working in this sector to use their positions and the network of relationships to favor their sons/daughters in gaining access to public sector jobs. We verify whether children of public employees effectively enjoy an advantage, estimating a model of the probability of working in the public sector controlling for individual characteristics and labor market conditions. We show that if the father is a public employee the probability of his child working in the same sector is increased by a huge 44%. This advantage is larger for low-ability individuals, “stayers” and Southern Italian residents. We interpret these findings as evidence of nepotism in public employment.