The Impact of Political Debate on Government Trust: Reminding the Public What the Federal Government Does

Americans' confidence in government is low by historical standards. We fielded a national telephone survey to examine influences on government confidence and whether public discontent was affected by altering the salience of specific government operations. We used a question order experiment where we alternated between first asking a general question about confidence in government and first asking about confidence in specific government operations. We found that posing the specific policy questions first elevated general confidence more than the reverse. The largest and most noticeable effects were observed for Republicans and those most knowledgeable and attentive to politics. Findings of context effects and the partisan subgroup differences are consistent with existing theories on public opinion change as well as with previous question order experiments. But, evidence that the cognitive elite was especially influenced by question order challenges previous theories that presumed that its sophistication made it immune to influence. We suggest that education and political knowledge expand rather than contract the opportunities for priming.     

Substantive Symbols: The Attitudinal Dimension of Black Political Incorporation in Local Government

Traditional studies of minority incorporation focus on the redistribution of public resources that purportedly follows black gains in representation. The present study departs from this approach by focusing on the attitudinal effects of black leadership. Two research questions guide this study: To what extent do blacks' assessments of neighborhood services and conditions stem from black representation in local executive and legislative offices? Are these attitudinal effects rooted in policy and service delivery outcomes? Employing survey data from 3,000 blacks embedded in 52 cities and 53 school districts, this study reveals that blacks report higher levels of satisfaction with their neighborhood conditions, police services, and public schools when represented by blacks in city hall and on school boards and that these evaluations are most positive when improvements in local services are conspicuous. Overall, these findings extend conventional conceptualizations of substantive benefits and challenge more pessimistic accounts regarding the effects of black representation in local politics.     

Local Government Reserve Funds: Policy Alternatives and Political Strategies

Local government officials are operating in a policy void when it comes to the establishment and use of reserve funds. In part, this is due to confusion about the distinction between reserve and contingency funds. The limited research that has been conducted shows that relatively large sums of money are maintained in reserve by many local governments. Some governments refer to these sums as reserve funds and their intended use is clearly indicated in one or more local documents, such as a budget or audit/financial report. Others simply maintain an unreserved fund balance. This article identifies rationales for using reserve funds, discusses the alternative ways reserves are accumulated, and outlines key issues a local government financial plan should address when reserve funds are utilized.     

The Impact of Divided Government on Legislative Production

It seems obvious that divided governments should produce less legislation than unified governments. Yet studies have consistently failed to find such an effect. Because almost all existing studies focus on the experience of the U.S. national government, the data have limited analysis to a consideration of executive–legislative division and ignore the impact of division between bicameral chambers. The state-level data set employed in this study is not so limited. The results show that divided legislatures decrease the production of laws by almost 30%. Nonetheless, consistent with previous studies using national-level data, executive–legislative divisions have no impact of legislative production. The reason for this asymmetry is theoretically motivated. Additional hypotheses of interest are also tested, including whether Republican-controlled legislative chambers are more “conservative” than Democratic chambers in the sense of producing fewer laws than their Democratic counterparts.     

The Effects of Political and Fiscal Incentives on Local Government Behavior: An Analysis of Fiscal Slack in China

This study examines the determinants of fiscal slack from the perspective of Chinese local government officials. Given China's rapid economic growth over the past 30-plus years, Chinese local governments reportedly hold huge slack resources that attract public scrutiny. In an effort to improve their fiscal performance, some localities recently established budget stabilization funds, following a top-down initiative. However, it remains unclear to what extent fiscal slack has accumulated and which factors affect slack resource levels of Chinese local governments. By employing a panel dataset (249 prefecture-level cities, 1999–2009), this study finds that political and fiscal factors exert significant influence over local officials’ decisions about slack resource levels. The findings of the study bear implications for establishing fiscal rules and improving the performance of sub-national governments in China and other countries.     

政治沟通视角下的地方治理——地方政府沟通指数的测算与分析

政治沟通是政治生活的重要内容,但在治理评估研究中却长期被忽视。地方政府沟通指数将政治沟通纳入地方治理评估过程,以"平台—政府—民众"为框架构建指标体系,以全国338个地级及以上城市为研究对象,实现对各级地方政府沟通水平的测算和排名。从测算结果看,当前我国各级地方政府与民众在不同层面上开展沟通,但呈现较为明显的不均衡、不充分特点。作为衡量地方政府与民众沟通的重要指标,地方政府沟通指数不同程度地受到地理条件、人口规模、经济发展水平、政治资源配置等因素影响。通过构建和测算地方政府沟通指数,既可为我国的地方治理评估引入一个新的分析视角,也对提升地方政府沟通能力具有启示意义。     

地方政府人力资源管理系统对政府绩效的影响研究

完善地方政府人力资源管理系统有助于优化政府官员的行为模式,促进政府绩效提升。通过文献研究、深度访谈和问卷调查发现:地方政府人力资源管理系统与经济发展和政府投入、地方政府人力资源管理系统与内部绩效管理、地方政府人力资源管理系统与公务员满意度均呈显著正相关关系。因此,提出改善政府人力资源管理制度、重视职位管理、加强公务员队伍建设、建立公务员参与机制、优化公务员考核制度等对策建议。     

The Impact of Customer Orientation on Government Employee Performance

ABSTRACT

This article explores the impact of “customer service” orientation on government employee performance. Although public organizations have been encouraged to become customer-centered organizations, concerns exist about the application of such market orientations to the management of government organizations. This article joins in the customer orientation debate by exploring the impact of customer orientation on employee motivation and performance. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis of data from civilian employees at a Department of Defense installation, this study explores the impact of customer orientation on employee performance and motivation, across time and work roles.

Consistent with previous research that suggests that customer orientation is positively associated with public and private employee performance and work attitudes, the results of this study suggest that customer service orientation has a strong positive impact on employee performance and motivation. Employee customer orientation provides a connection to the organization's goals consistent with employees' affective and normative values of public service, and feedback necessarily to improve service delivery. The impact of formal management systems may be enhanced by their ability to strengthen an employee's customer orientation. Ultimately, however, efforts to create a more “market”-based orientation focused on institutional customers who purchase services may have limited impact, or even a deleterious effect on, employee performance and motivation, unless also accompanied by formal linkages to service beneficiaries.     

Deficits in Local Government Budgets in Israel: A Reflection of Political Cycles and an Expression of Local Autonomy

This article addresses local government budgeting in the context of two Israeli political cycles: the parliamentary election period and the municipal election period. Deficits are not unusual in any of the three types of Israeli localities: municipalities, local councils, and regional councils. And these deficits exhibit a definite pattern; they are largest in election periods. Specific examples are cited to show this hypothesis holds true for all types of localities (including Israel's three largest cities), and for both Jewish and Arab localities as well.     

The Impact of Local Economic Structure on Community Philanthropy

This article explores how local economic structure directly and indirectly affects community philanthropy. Drawing on campaign data for local United Way (UW) affiliates at three points in time (1990, 2000, and 2010), the article tests the degree to which the relationship between economic structure and community philanthropy is mediated through local stocks of human resources and social capital. The results suggest that retail employment and industrial concentration negatively affect local UW campaigns, while nonlocal ownership positively affects UW campaign size. These measures of economic structure also indirectly influence local UW fund‐raising activities by affecting the levels of human resources and social capital. In the midst of global efforts to increase community‐based philanthropy, these findings have important policy implications for efforts to promote community solutions to social issues in changing economies.     

Managing Disasters: The Role of Local Government

In major disasters, local communities are often on their own for several hours or days. Local governments can play a key role in taking the initiative to protect their citizens. This essay compares the experience of New Orleans before, during, and after the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina with the performance of Qinglong County, China, during the Tangshan earthquake of 1976. Qinglong County exemplifies local government taking initiative in risk assessment, decision making, operations, information sharing, and communications.     

The Role of Slack in Local Government Finances

The research presented here adopts an organizational approach to develop three regression models that examine why local governments accumulate slack in the form of unreserved fund balances, and what is the impact of slack resources on local governments' short‐term fiscal conditions and decisions about spending and revenues. Using data on Chicago suburban municipalities and their governments, the first model estimates the effects of long‐term and short‐term conditions (fiscal and governing) on unreserved fund balances. The second and third models examine the impact of slack resources and other factors on year‐end deficits or surpluses and changes in spending and own‐source revenues. The results show that ending balances, expenditures (size), and long‐term fiscal conditions have the greatest effect on fund balances, and that slack and current fiscal conditions have the greatest effect on ending balances and changes in revenues and spending.     

The Impact of Political Connections on Donations to Chinese NGOs

ABSTRACT

In this study, we explore the returns to political connections in non-corporate contexts within China, a country transitioning from a planned to market economy. Using China as an empirical case study, we investigate two separate, but related, hypotheses on the financial benefits of political connections for a sample of 1,435 Chinese foundations from 2005–2011. This extends Western donation determinants literature to a Chinese context and political guanxi (social relationships where individuals or organizations exchange future favors or gifts) research to non-corporate contexts. Our empirical results show that there is no relationship between the presence of state employees on an NGO's staff (a measure of political guanxi) and private donations. However, there is a small but positive relationship between the amount of government funding an NGO receives (a signal of legitimacy) and private donations. These findings suggest that, in post-communist countries such as China, donors may not be seeking future favors from their contributions and instead are interested in developing a robust civil society with legitimate, high-quality NGOs. Additionally, the similarity between Western donation determinants research findings and Chinese donation determinants, in this article, requires future comparative studies of both how and why donors make decisions.     

The Impact of Social Media Political Activists on Voting Patterns

This paper investigates how social media affects general voting patterns. Unlike previous studies investigating whether citizens’ use of social media affects political participation, this paper considers the connections that social media users have with political activists on social media, and how this connectedness influences general voting patterns, using data from Ghana. With contemporary theoretical perspectives and exploratory techniques, trends from past literature are presented, from a social media-based propagated survey with 420 valid responses. Structural equation modeling was used to test the conceptual model, which demonstrates that the connectedness with political and social media activists is significant and positively influences modifications in voting patterns. Online political participation and political affect also present an effect on voting patterns. The relationship between connections with social media political activists and online political participation is significant, as indicated by a strong covariance observed in the model. The results of the multigroup analysis also indicate some cultural and social issues to shape the phenomena for further investigation.