Impact of compulsory competitive tendering on the structure and performance of local government systems in the State of Victoria*

Around the world, the public sector is introducing private sector management practices. Abandoning the binary model of public and private sectors the State Government of Victoria introduced the compulsory competitive tendering system under which local government bodies are required to tender out their services to private sector service providers. The aim was to encourage local government bodies to operate in contestable situations so that they can increase efficiency, decrease operating costs, develop clear programme goals and objectives, become responsive to client goals, and improve the quality of goods and services. The article describes how the practice of the compulsory competitive tendering system has introduced major changes to organizational cultures, attitudes of employees, power and authority structures, sytems of decision making, delegation of financial and managerial authority, and the nature of control and accountability. In addition, the article explains the degree of competitiveness and efficiency that local government bodies have achieved and describes how the corporatized structure has helped to achieve the financial objectives. The article also discusses how the role of the elected councils is diminishing under this new management structure and argues that in the absence of a genuine monitoring system and accountability mechanism the local government bodies find it difficult to assert their role as quality service deliverers. This has forced the councils to comply with the requirements of the competition laws which have reduced direct accountability of government to the public. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVMENT IN GOVERNMENT AGENCIES: AN ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE

The general nature of the productivity ethic is discussed, with i t s limitations i n the public sector being stressed. The economic institutional model upon which the private sector business productivity construct is built is compared with the political institutional model operating in governmental agencies. Value paradoxes and dilemmas of government policymakers and administrators supporting agency productivity improvement efforts are analyzed. The study concludes that a better understanding of the limited nature of the productivity vision as well as i t s unique ethical characteristics would do much to improve governmental performance and the morale of public employees.     

Learning to Love Democracy: Electoral Accountability and the Success of Democracy

This article explains why dissatisfaction with the performance of individual politicians in new democracies often turns into disillusionment with democracy as a political system. The demands on elections as an instrument of political accountability are much greater in new than established democracies: politicians have yet to form reputations, a condition that facilitates the entry into politics of undesirable candidates who view this period as their “one‐time opportunity to get rich.” After a repeatedly disappointing government performance, voters may rationally conclude that “all politicians are crooks” and stop discriminating among them, to which all politicians rationally respond by “acting like crooks,” even if most may be willing to perform well in office if given appropriate incentives. Such an expectation‐driven failure of accountability, which I call the “trap of pessimistic expectations,” may precipitate the breakdown of democracy. Once politicians establish reputations for good performance, however, these act as barriers to the entry into politics of low‐quality politicians. The resulting improvement in government performance reinforces voters’ belief that democracy can deliver accountability, a process that I associate with democratic consolidation. These arguments provide theoretical microfoundations for several prominent empirical associations between the economic performance of new democracies, public attitudes toward democracy, and democratic stability.     

Putting the Cart before the Horse: Accountability or Performance?

Conventional wisdom argues that a good set of performance measures builds accountability and that improved accountability generates better productivity in the organisation. By way of an analysis of a case study in one inland Chinese county, this article shows that the assumed relationship between performance and accountability is more rhetoric than real. In practice, the implementation of performance measurement in local China leads to an accountability paradox, in which enhanced accountability tends to hinder the improvement of government productivity. The implementation of the Chinese target-based responsibility system risks boosting the short term accountability of public employees while undermining the long term productivity of government agencies. With the deepening of China's market-oriented reform, this choice appears to put the cart before the horse.     

Parallel lines? Policy mood in a plurinational democracy

We usually think of democratic accountability in national terms – if the people do not approve of a government, they can replace it. However, in a plurinational democracy it is not obvious that such a single national public exists. We consider this problem in the case of Scotland, providing the first application of the macro-polity approach to a plurinational democracy. We provide a systematic study of how public opinion in Scotland changes over time compared to that in the rest of Great Britain, using recently developed Bayesian IRT scaling techniques, and ask whether Scottish and British public opinion move in parallel. To the extent that there is a separate Scottish public opinion with a separate party system, this forces us to rethink the way that democracy and accountability work in plurinational political systems.     

Public–Private Partnerships and the Public Accountability Question

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are growing in popularity as a governing model for delivery of public goods and services. PPPs have existed since the Roman Empire, but their expansion into traditional public projects today raises serious questions about public accountability. This article examines public accountability and its application to government and private firms involved in PPPs. An analytical framework is proposed for assessing the extent to which PPPs provide (or will provide) goods and services consistent with public sector goals of effectiveness, efficiency, and equity. Six dimensions—risk, costs and benefits, political and social impacts, expertise, collaboration, and performance measurement—are incorporated into a model that assists public managers in improving partnerships’ public accountability.     

Citizen Attributions of Blame in Third‐Party Governance

The authors use a survey experiment to examine how structural differences in governance arrangements affect citizens’ notions of who is culpable for poor service quality. More specifically, two questions are investigated: (1) When things go wrong, do citizens attribute more blame to political actors if the provider of government services is a public agency or a private contractor? (2) Does the length of the accountability chain linking political actors to service providers influence citizens’ attributions of blame? The authors hypothesize that provider sector and accountability chain length affect citizens’ perceptions of political actors’ control over service delivery, which, in turn, inform citizens’ attributions of blame. Mixed support is found for this theory.     

WHISTLEBLOWER PROTECTION IN THE USA: LESSONS LEARNT AND TO BE LEARNT

Abstract: In the 1970s, both Australia and the United States instituted legal reforms aimed at promoting greater accountability among public servants. Prompted by growing awareness of the need to encourage and protect federal government whistleblowers, Congress enacted whistleblower protection measures in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Although the notion of open government in Australia has never been extended to include whistleblowing by public servants, probing the issue of whether or not United States whistleblower protection can serve as a reform model in the search for more effective legal mechanisms for ensuring government accountability can provide lessons and insights of value to Australian public administrators. Analysis of the role and impact of the Office of the Special Counsel and the Merit Systems Protection Board as established under the Civil Service Reform Act reveals many difficulties associated with whistleblower protection. Research has substantiated the jurisdictional ambiguities, administrative and procedural deficiencies and lack of sanctioning power which plague this reform effort. Similar deficiencies also impede the protection of parliamentary witnesses in Australia. Evaluation of whistleblower protection leads to the conclusion that reform models in either country for ensuring government accountability must not be judged solely through examination of statutory provisions. There must also be in place strong stabilising factors such as political unity, economic comfort, social discipline, civic virtue and public service ideology in order to achieve the common public service goal of rendering governmental decision-making more accountable to persons affected by it and open to review by independent decision makers.     

Reinventing the Governance of Public Finances in Remote Indigenous Australia

The economies of remote Indigenous settlements are dominated by public finances. The current system of governing public finance is highly saturated, fragmented and centralised, and this has a corrosive effect on local governance capability. The political accountability of leaders to their constituents is weakened in favour of an administrative accountability ‘upwards’ to higher authorities. New Public Management reforms have promoted administrative deconcentration, over political devolution, and this has been accompanied by an influx of public servants, Non‐Government Organisations (NGOs) and private contractors, and a decline in Indigenous organisations and local government. The end result in many settlements is a marked disengagement of Indigenous people in their own governance. There is evidence of considerable political capabilities existing within local government electorates. Decentralised financing arrangements can be used to catalyse these capabilities and then address deficits in administrative and technical performance.     

Accountability issues of the resolution trust corporation

Abstract

No other governmental organization ever created can rival the complex patterns of accountability created to manage the bailout of the savings and loan industry. This complexity has, in turn, led to criticism that the bailout structure is too unwieldy to be managerially effective or politically accountable. While the structure does indeed immensely complicate these problems, it is an inevitable product of the political realities that shaped the bailout strategy. The real issues in maintaining accountability to the public for the bailout are: reporting clearly on how the money is being used; improving Congress's ability to track the complex management of the bailout; and using government officials, not contractors, to supervise the government's goals. Indeed, the biggest potential problem of accountability in the savings and loan rescue is not the convoluted political structure at the top but the heavy reliance on private contractors at the bottom.     

Do Managers Face a Performance Trade-Off? Correlations Between Production and Process Performance

The existence of multiple goals in public organizations inevitably raises the concern that managers face performance trade-offs. In particular, scholars have expressed the fear that public managers, in order to secure high production performance, are forced to sacrifice performance on goals like equity, accountability, and procedural justice. However, our knowledge of whether such trade-offs exist is scarce. Using an administrative 10-year panel data set of Danish public schools and principals, this article analyzes trade-offs between production performance (measured by student performance and student pass rate) and process performance (measured by equity, accountability, and procedural justice). Results show no evidence of trade-offs. In contrast, principals who succeed in raising student performance generally also succeed in securing high pass rates, high equity, high accountability, and high procedural justice. These results suggest that managers who are able to secure high performance on one dimension of performance will likely also be high-performing on other performance dimensions.     

Estimates and public policy: The politics of numbers

Abstract

Estimates of the number of homeless persons in the United States are frequently said to range from 250,000 to three million. In fact, the latter number is an invalid guesstimate that developed staying power for political reasons. National estimates of homeless persons based on explainable methodologies actually range from 230,000 to 736,000, with the most likely estimates around the half‐million mark. Despite the confrontational politics surrounding the numbers issue in the 1980s, a consensus is developing in the 1990s among private groups, including some major advocacy organizations, and all levels of government regarding policy direction in assistance programs for the homeless. There is widespread recognition that the goal should be to end homelessness, not simply to provide emergency assistance. Permanent housing solutions for special populations are needed in the context of renewed efforts to combat poverty.

In the public debate about the policy implications of divergent national estimates of the numbers of homeless persons, a common assumption is that the estimates vary widely and inexplicably—anywhere from a few hundred thousand to three million or more. Those who do try to explain the odd discrepancy between the extremes seem to assume that any count is politically motivated. They say that it depends on how one defines homelessness and who is counting. In other words, the implication is that numbers derive from policy and politics, rather than the other way around.

Given such perceptions, it is not surprising that some who have neither the time nor, perhaps, the resources to judge the accuracy of estimates begin to feel that the truth must be somewhere in between, as if a mathematical average were equivalent to a political compromise. Others will believe the message if they like the messenger. In a recent book on homelessness, for example, the author confesses that he trusts estimates “made by people who live where ‘the rubber meets the road’… rather more than the bright theorists tucked away in ivory towers.”¹ Although many statistics are politically controversial, it is probably safe to say that the debate on homelessness during the past decade represents the apogee of political numerology. It is worth reviewing just how this came to pass.     

Local Government and Governance in Norway: Stretched Accountability in Network Politics

This article is concerned with the democratic quality of network governance in a local context; in particular, the interplay between traditional local government and the emerging network structures. What forms of interplay can be observed between traditional local government and emerging network structures? Of particular interest in this respect is the role of local councillors. As elected representatives, councillors embody the special commitment of authorities towards the public. However, involvement in networks implies a danger of capture, and if network decisions are not open to public scrutiny, democratic control is difficult to achieve even if local councillors are represented. This article therefore discusses networks and accountability: In what ways and to what degree are networks held accountable? Empirically, it explores three local policy networks, all involving the city of Kristiansand. One group of networks – neighbourhood networks – is internally initiated and maintained by the municipality of Kristiansand. Another network is an intermunicipal collaboration involving Kristiansand and five surrounding municipalities. The third network is an example of a public‐private partnership that includes the municipality of Kristiansand, as well as several other actors. The case studies show that the actual presence of local government representatives in networks is not enough to ensure accountability. Lines of popular accountability are stretched, either because the networks are deemed irrelevant by the city councillors, or because networks develop decision‐making styles that shield them from external political control, or because local councillors deliberately deprive themselves of influence over important policy fields.     

Managing resources that are common property: From Kathmandu to Capitol Hill

Nepal's forests are common property; and because they are common property, they are abused. In this respect, they are like the many common resources around the world, including the public fisheries and grazing lands of the United States. All share similar problems that point to similar solutions. Increasing human populations are likely to increase the seriousness of the problems associated with the use of common property, especially for those types of common property that are geographically fixed. Underinvestment is probably a bigger problem than overconsumption for such stationary resources. Even when people do not overconsume a commonly owned resource, they often consume the wrong mix of products from such a resource. If political constraints prevent a government from shifting to a less destructive basis of ownership, mimicking the incentives that would exist if the common property were under the control of a single manager may help solve common-property problems.     

Audit for Accountability in China: An Incomplete Mission

This article argues against the conventional wisdom that accountability is the raison d'être of auditing activities. Audit, admittedly, is a part of the accountability architecture as it contributes to the financial health of a government and the effective management of public money. This does not mean, however, that audit necessarily generates accountability. China's experience with establishing a power audit regime shows that without enabling goals, impartial structural arrangements, and effective procedures, auditing for accountability only remains an incomplete mission.     

Public accountability: Effectiveness, equity, ethics

This article tests a wide range of government activities against requirements for public accountability. The article explores the incentives for ethical behaviour by public officials; the need for more outcome focused performance indicators, tensions between parliamentary and managerial accountability; the standards of accountability applied to public providers of services can be applied to private providers; the utility of spelling out service requirements in advance; the impacts on accountability of the convergence of the public and private sectors; the need, where responsibility for programs is collaborative, for a clear governance framework, tensions between representative and participative democracy, and trends towards more participative and collaborative leadership.     

Information Sharing for Infrastructure Risk Management: Barriers and Solutions

There is a public interest in ensuring that infrastructure systems are appropriately protected and prepared for disruptions. While infrastructure protection is usually viewed as a public responsibility, infrastructure risk management actually requires a high degree of cooperation between the public and private sectors, particularly in the sharing of information about risks to infrastructure. Discussions with Chief Security Officers across sectors of the US economy reveal the complexity of the task, as they describe at length the private sector's requirements of multiples types of information about a range of potential threats. While the US government has established many mechanisms for sharing information, barriers remain that inhibit both the private and public partners from obtaining the information needed to protect infrastructure. Overcoming these barriers requires new thinking about the intelligence generation process, the mechanisms and practices upon which the process relies, and the responsibilities of those in the private sector who participate in it.     

The new public management paradigm and the search for democratic accountability

Can we permit empowered, responsive civil servants to make decisions and be innovative and still have democratic accountability? This important question haunts those who would advocate a “new public management.” The proponents of a new public management paradigm emphasize performance the ability of their strategy to produce results. But they cannot ignore the troubling question of political accountability. They must develop a process that not only permits public managers to produce better results but also provides accountability to a democratic electorate.     

Public Meetings and the Democratic Process

Public meetings are frequently attacked as useless democratic rituals that lack deliberative qualities and fail to give citizens a voice in the policy process. Do public meetings have a role to play in fostering citizen participation in policy making? While many of the criticisms leveled against public meetings have merit, I argue that they do. In this article, I explore the functions that city council and school board meetings serve. While they may not be very good at accomplishing their primary goal of giving citizens the opportunity to directly influence decisions made by governing bodies, they can be used to achieve other ends, such as sending information to officials and setting the agenda. As a complement to deliberative political structures, public meetings have a role to play by offering a venue in which citizens can achieve their political goals, thereby enhancing governmental accountability and responsiveness.