The Reform of the Local Administration in Spain in Terms of Population

Spanish Local Corporations are playing an increasingly important role in the provision of public services without reducing their function of consolidation and structuring of the current sociopolitical system. This reality implies an increase in their need of financial funds without new compensation resources. Also, there is a certain tendency to loose population in many counties along with a greater organic and territorial dispersion that accelerates their financial weakening. This makes necessary to find management alternatives ensuring the appropriate provision of local public services and thus the Local Corporation reform becomes an alternative. In this context, the present paper approaches the analysis and the results based upon a territorial balance criterion on the population and its distribution, aiming ultimately to design an indicator able to measure the need of the Spanish local government structure according to its population and the size of its municipalities. This indicator might measure the regional impact to any variation both in the distribution of its population and in the number of municipalities.     

The 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission: Lessons for the Conduct of Inquiries in Australia

Royal commissions with their wide powers, independence and uncertain outcomes are adopted sparingly by government. Hence, those charged with establishing such an inquiry are often left to begin anew. The 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission (VBRC) provides a means of exploring lessons for public administration in light of its inquiry approach and internal operation. Similarly, recent reports on the conduct of statutory inquiries provide the opportunity to examine good practice. This article explores the central issue of what mode of inquiry is suited for particular circumstances. It characterises three different types of inquiry and analyses their features. The author provides participant observer insights from the VBRC and reflects on lessons learned.     

公共管理的由来及其与公共行政的内在差异--由传统公共行政到公共管理研究之一

产生并服务于当代西方国家政府改革实践的公共管理,促进了行政科学理论研究的重大变化.这种转变,既丰富了行政科学研究的视野与研究方法,也带来了公共事务治理理念与治理模式的变革,从而为公共事务的有效治理、公共利益的有效实现,开辟了广阔的社会资源和发展前景.本文拟对公共管理的由来、特性及其与传统公共行政的内在差异,进行学理意义上的简要梳理和归纳.     

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.     

Public Involvement in NHS Inquiries

Opportunities for engaging the public have changed over the fifty years since the inquiry into the Ely Hospital, Cardiff. NHS inquiries, and inquiries more widely, tend to be called where events have led to public concern and loss of public confidence. Involvement of the public could therefore be assumed to form a part of restoring that public confidence. This paper explores the mechanisms for public involvement in NHS inquiries over the past fifty years, assessing the roles played by the public. It uses the framework outlined by Geoffrey Howe to examine how members of the public have been involved in four NHS inquiries. Findings suggest that the roles and mechanisms have varied, but that understanding the extent of public involvement is a dimension to assessing each of the potential functions of an NHS inquiry.     

The Effectiveness of Citizen Participation in Public Hearing of Current China

Public hearing system is regarded as the soul and core of modem administrative procedure; it plays a more and more important part in modem administrative affairs. Public hearing is an important way to listen to the voice of the public, and the main method to gauge public opinion before making public policies, laws, and regulations. In recent years, with the growing awareness of civic participation, public hearing system has played a big role in public policy-making process in contemporary China, but there is also a phenomenon that citizen participation is largely symbolic in most of the hearing, citizen participation cannot play its due role, and the effectiveness of citizen participation in public hearing is limited. Based on this background, the analyses about how to strengthen public hearing system construction, improve the representativeness of the representative and information disclosure system, are all very important to improve the validity of citizen participation in public hearings now to China.     

Engaging in Small Talk: Nanotechnology Policy and Dialogue Processes in the UK and Australia

This article discusses the phenomena of nanotechnology, and notes that despite high investment levels for global research and development, the public presently understands neither the implications of this emerging technology nor how it might be best governed. It considers the notion of the public interest and its place in the public policy cycle, and notes some of the specific challenges posed by this new technology. Adopting a comparative jurisdictional approach, this article maps a range of policy and dialogue activities currently underway within the United Kingdom and Australia and concludes that policy dialogue is an essential component of public policy development for all emerging technologies. While the Australian government is currently beginning this process, compared to countries such as the United Kingdom, such efforts here are still embryonic. A fuller engagement in wide‐ranging public debate is suggested as a part of protecting the public interest.     

Entrepreneurship-driven public management reforms in Southeast Asia: Critical implications for public accountability

In recent decades, public management has been restructured worldwide for greater efficiency and innovation based on entrepreneurship-driven models such as Reinventing Governance, New Public Management, and post-NPM frameworks. The primary intent of these business-like models is instilling entrepreneurship, which would encourage risk-taking innovation, managerial autonomy, performance orientation, and customer choice. Such entrepreneurial orientation is embedded in organizational-managerial reforms related to human resource management, budgeting framework, performance benchmarking, and so on. These entrepreneurship-driven reforms have significant impacts on administrative structure, procedures, and norms affecting the process of public sector accountability. In line with such global trends, most countries in Southeast Asia have embraced some of these pro-market business-type reforms in public management to enhance its entrepreneurship, innovation, and competition, which have implications for managerial control, neutrality, regulation, and integrity required for public accountability. This article explores these entrepreneurship-driven reforms in the region and evaluates their critical implications for the long-established institutions, structures, and procedures of public accountability.     

公共行政的发展与变迁:新公共管理的研究途径

新公共管理理论是公共行政领域最为引人注目的理论之一.它的兴起,既是对传统公共行政理论的矫正,也促进了政府变革的发展.本文就其主要理论基础进行介绍、分析与评述,并就其未来的发展进行预测和评论.     

The debates on public investments in Japan

Since the economic bubble burst, Japan has been in a long-term recession. To stimulate the economy, improve the infrastructure and increase employment, the Japanese Government injected a substantial amount of money into public works in the 1990s. However, these public investments had limited utility but incurred huge debts. These public investments have become a controversial issue. The Japanese Government could not but promote many reforms concerning public investments. This paper focuses on Japan＇s case and introduces the debates on public investments.     

从国家行政到公共管理——历史视角中的公共行政

20世纪 80年代初期以来 ,许多发达国家公共部门的管理在发生巨大的变化。这不仅仅是一种形式上的变革或管理风格的细微变化 ,而是在政府的社会角色下政府与公民关系方面所进行的改革。本文回顾了公共行政发展演变之路 ,希望能有益于社会转型之中的中国各级政府。     

New directions for public service reform in developing countries

This paper argues that recent developments in practice and theory provide a more promising basis for public service reform in developing countries than we have had since at least the turn of the century. There have been significant instances of large‐scale reform success, such as Nepal's Public Service Commission and Malaysia's delivery unit, Pemandu, and also “pockets of effectiveness” in individual agencies in many countries. They contribute to a more fruitful and diverse repertoire of reform approaches than generally realized. Policymakers can draw on all those instances and types of reform, together with relevant rich country experiences, as they improvise and tailor responses to their always unique reform problems. Proceeding in this way helps reformers to expand the “reform space” available within the political economy. Donors can help reformers if they facilitate reform in the spirit of the Busan Partnership rather than impose their preferred models. In short, the new direction which this paper identifies can be stated as creative problem solving by local actors facilitated by sympathetic donors, building on examples of reform success and drawing on a repertoire of poor and rich country reform approaches.     

试论民间防范组织在社会治安防控中的作用

民间组织是构建社会治安防控体系的主体之一。在构建"打、防、控"一体化的综合社会治安防控体系的过程中,除了发挥公安机关的主导地位外,还要充分依靠治安保卫委员会、治安联防队、单位内部保卫组织、保安服务公司等各种非政府(民间)组织,充分发挥其在构建治安防控体系中的基础性作用,以强化社会治安综合治理,实现社会的和谐稳定。     

公共行政伦理的历史演进与时代价值

本文考察了公共行政伦理学在美国兴起的学术背景,回顾了公共行政伦理研究的历程,强调了当代中国加强公共行政伦理建设的必要性和重要意义.     

Legitimacy and context: implications for public sector reform in developing countries

This article examines the interplay between legitimacy and context as key determinants of public sector reform outcomes. Despite the importance of variables such as legitimacy of public institutions, levels of civic morality and socio‐economic realities, reform strategies often fail to take such contextual factors into account. The article examines, first, relevant literature – both conceptual and empirical, including data from the World Values Survey project. It is argued that developing countries have distinctive characteristics which require particular reform strategies. The data analysed shows that in Latin American countries, there is no clear correlation between confidence in public institutions and civic morality. Other empirical studies show that unemployment has a negative impact on the level of civic morality, while inequality engenders corruption. This suggests that poorer and socio‐economically stratified countries face greater reform challenges owing to the lack of legitimacy of public institutions. The article concludes that reforms should focus on areas of governance that impact on poverty. This will in turn help produce more stable outcomes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

需求溢出理论与公共管理学基础理论的构建

需求溢出理论的提出,意在弥补公共管理学基础理论薄弱的问题,尤其是弥补当前公共管理的流行理论在政府职能定位方面的不足。需求溢出理论主张:个人需求超出其本人及家庭的满足能力即为需求溢出,个人的需求溢出生成社会的公共事务,解决个人的需求溢出问题是公共管理的终极使命;当合法的个人需求之间发生冲突,具有压倒性正义优势因而需要由公共权力来维护的一方的需求溢出,即为公共利益。由此,需求溢出理论以个人的需求溢出为标尺,对政府的职能定位提出了比其他理论更为明确的方向性指导,因而更宜作为公共管理学的基础理论。     

关于我国公共部门效能的几点认识

所谓公共部门是指属于国家及其中央、地区和地方机构所有或者控制下的实体,包括政府各部、公共机构和各种法定机构以及公共企业.本文对于我国公共部门的效能进行了界定,并探讨了提高公共部门效能的目的和途径.     

The Limits to Public Value,or Rescuing Responsible Government from the Platonic Guardians

In various guises, public value has become extraordinarily popular in recent years. We challenge the relevance and usefulness of the approach in Westminster systems with their dominant hierarchies of control, strong roles for ministers, and tight authorising regimes underpinned by disciplined two‐party systems. We start by spelling out the core assumptions behind the public value approach. We identify two key confusions; about public value as theory, and in defining ‘public managers’. We identify five linked core assumptions in public value: the benign view of large‐scale organisations; the primacy of management; the relevance of private sector experience; the downgrading of party politics; and public servants as Platonic guardians. We then focus on the last two assumptions because they are the least applicable in Westminster systems. We defend the ‘primacy of party politics’ and we criticise the notion that public managers should play the role of Platonic guardians deciding the public interest. The final section of the article presents a ‘ladder of public value’ by which to gauge the utility of the approach for public managers in Westminster systems.     

公共需求管理与公共服务标准化

公共服务标准化建设是服务型政府建设的一个重要发展阶段,它是与公共需求的变化相适应的。本文把人的需要分为生存型需要、安全型需要、享受型需要和发展型需要。中国目前公共需求正从生存型向安全型、享受型、发展型转变,政府公共服务精细化、标准化是这一需要变化的必然要求。政府应通过了解需求、整合需求和引导需求,推进公共服务标准化建设,提升公共服务水平。