Privatization,bureaucracy, and risk aversion

The role of governmental risk aversion in the decision to privatize the production of goods and services has not been examined closely. Using a model of a risk-averse, single-service Niskanen bureaucrat, we determine the conditions under which a bureaucrat will prefer to privatize rather than produce in-house. If the private-sector firm is risk neutral, the result will be a fixed-fee contract with complete insurance. If the private-sector firm is risk averse, the result will be a cost-plus contract with the degree of cost sharing determined by the bureaucrat's share of total risk aversion. In both cases, the bureaucrat's sponsor may affect the likelihood of privatization by manipulating the rewards and penalties imposed on the bureaucrat.     

Federal antitrust enforcement: A principal-agent perspective

We study the choices of two types of maximizing Public Servants over how far to carry privatization of industries and in what order to privatize. Two stylizations of the Public Servant's objectives are considered, a Niskanen-style Bureaucrat who maximizes a surplus budget subject to the constraint of staying in office, and a Populist who maximizes popularity/consumer welfare subject to the constraint of a balanced budget. Other things being equal, the Bureaucrat will privatize the sector (firms) with the least market power and the largest subsidy first. The Populist will adopt the same policy, if the marginal costs of products in the private sectors are not too high with respect to the marginal utilities. If the marginal costs are too high, however, the Populist will privatize the sector with the largest market power first. We also show that privatization is easier and faster in less democratic societies.     

When Does Service Delivery Improve the Legitimacy of a Fragile or Conflict‐Affected State?

Received wisdom holds that the provision of vital public services necessarily improves the legitimacy of a fragile or conflict‐affected state. In practice, however, the relationship between a state's performance in delivering services and its degree of legitimacy is nonlinear. Specifically, this relationship is conditioned by expectations of what the state should provide, subjective assessments of impartiality and distributive justice, the relational aspects of provision, how easy it is to attribute (credit or blame) performance to the state, and the characteristics of the service. This questions the dominant institutional model, which reduces the role of services in (re)building state legitimacy to an instrumental one. A more rounded account of the significance of service delivery for state legitimacy would look beyond the material to the ideational and relational significance of services, and engage with the normative criteria by which citizens judge them.     

The politics of fund raising through grantsmanship in the human services

Funds for human service programs and services are declining, and selection criteria for funds are becoming more objective. These conditions are creating an imbalance in the system which will result in a significant change in human service funding and delivery. The climate is ripe for increased competition among those who obtain funds for human services. This article attempts to define how that competition will ultimately generate a spirit of cooperation among the survivors. To reach that point, however, grantsmen/providers, to be competitive, will need to sharpen their technical writing skills and their political skills, that is, they need to become more shrewd, prudent, and diplomatic. This article suggests some methods for improving technical grant-writing skills and developing political skills among grant writers.     

Public sector reform in the Latin American and Caribbean region—issues and contrasts

Public sector reform in both Latin American and Caribbean countries has become a high priority for governments in their search for a new role for the state. Common principles have included the objective to privatize, or contract out services or responsibilities where the private sector has a comparative advantage while at the same time improving government efficiency in areas that are considered core government functions at different levels of government. These include integrated government financial management, social security and social safety nets, tax administration, provision of basic services (education and health), legal/regulatory reform, and judicial enforcement. Guiding principles in all countries have been predictability, transparency and accountability. While the degree of reform has varied amongst countries, there are a number of distinguishing features of the Commonwealth Caribbean that set its public sector reform experience apart from that of Latin America. These include the legacy of a professional civil service, long-standing democratic institutions and an active civil society, the relatively small size of the countries, and the emphasis on rule of law that can help explain some of the differences in the reform paths taken. Nevertheless, government ownership and commitment to public sector reform has been shown to be the most important element in determining results within the Latin American and Caribbean region.     

Do Networks Really Work? A Framework for Evaluating Public‐Sector Organizational Networks

Although cooperative, interorganizational networks have become a common mechanism for delivery of public services, evaluating their effectiveness is extremely complex and has generally been neglected. To help resolve this problem, we discuss the evaluation of networks of community-based, mostly publicly funded health, human service, and public welfare organizations. Consistent with pressures to perform effectively from a broad range of key stakeholders, we argue that networks must be evaluated at three levels of analysis: community, network, and organization/participant levels. While the three levels are related, each has its own set of effectiveness criteria that must be considered. The article offers a general discussion of network effectiveness, followed by arguments explaining effectiveness criteria and stakeholders at each level of analysis. Finally, the article examines how effectiveness at one level of network analysis may or may not match effectiveness criteria at another level and the extent to which integration across levels may be possible.     

国外电子政务服务研究综述

服务一直是电子政务的主旨,国外自本世纪初就关注这一主题,我国在2006年的《国家电子政务总体框架》中明确提出"服务是宗旨"的电子政务建设目标。在大量文献调查的基础上对国外电子政务服务研究的基本情况及特征进行定量的统计分析,发现国外电子政务服务文献占整个电子政务研究文献的三分之一以上,文献内容主要集中在一般性介绍、服务传递、服务管理、技术实现、服务作用、影响因素、实证研究、综述与评论等方面;研究的特点是注重服务的作用和影响因素,注重服务管理,关注服务传递,强调实证研究等。认为我国电子政务服务的研究要结合我国国情在服务管理、服务传递和对社会发展推动等方面以实证的方法进行深化研究。     

Politics and privatization decisions in four American cities

Public choice theory has emphasized economic explanations of privatization decisions, while often neglecting the politics associated with the decision-making process. This research finds that the political context is important in understanding why American municipal governments decide whether or not to privatize a service. Four case studies reveal that the degree to which the decision-making process is politicized is a factor warranting our attention.     

The Capacities and Challenges of Faith-Based Human Service Organizations

This essay addresses four questions by comparing the management capacities and challenges of congregations, faith‐based organizations, and secular organizations that provide human services: (1) What role, if any, do congregations and faith‐based organizations currently play in the social service delivery system? (2) Are congregations interested in changing their role in the social service delivery system? (3) Compared to faith‐based and secular organizations, do congregations have the capacity to adapt to new roles in the social service delivery system? Finally, (4) compared to faith‐based and secular organizations, do congregations have similar service capacities and management challenges? The findings indicate that although more than half of congregations already provide some type of health or human services, they provide a narrower range of services, consider these services a lower priority, and seem to encounter more extensive management challenges than faith‐based and secular organizations.     

The Economics of Nigerian Federalism: Selected Issues in Economic Management

Nigeria's economic difficulties are due primarily to public-sectormismanagement exacerbated by the dynamics of federalism andstate creation and by the growth in centralized federal power.Monetary policy has been inadequate, fiscal policy has rewardedstate governments but not brought their spending policies inline with their own resources and with national economic objectives,and resources have been consistently misallocated, largely becauseof the principle of "federal character." Recent efforts to deregulateand privatize the economy show promise, but the success of economicdevelopment will depend greatly on the future civilian or militarygovernance of Nigeria.     

New Geographies of Disadvantage: Implications for Service Delivery

Shifts are apparent in the spatial distribution of disadvantage in Australia since the 1970s. Not only are new sites of disadvantage emerging (small rural towns, manufacturing centres, coastal welfare regions, some outer suburbs), but research suggests a possible spatial cleavage between best-accessed Melbourne and Sydney, and 'the rest' of the country. At the same time, examples of provision and delivery of services continue to occur locally andregionally that demonstrate lack of attention to the characteristics of the places in which those services are received. The paper calls for spatially conscious public policy in service delivery, and considers the possibilities of this occurring if governments form partnerships with other organisations to provide services for communities.     

Reassessing Privatization Strategies 25 Years Later: Revisiting Perry and Babitsky's Comparative Performance Study of Urban Bus Transit Services

Privatization appeals to citizen and politician desires for more cost-effective methods of service delivery. For this reason, it is important for public administrators to know when gains can be made by contracting out or privatizing services and when it is better to keep service provision in house. This article assesses the viability of contracting out and privatization of transit services. Following up on the 1986 work of James Perry and Timlynn Babitsky, which used data from the early 1980s, the authors revisit whether certain service delivery arrangements are more efficient and effective than others in the provision of transit services. Twenty-five years later, they find results similar to those of Perry and Babitsky's original study. Neither the type of government nor whether an agency contracts out has much impact on the efficiency and performance of urban bus services. The main difference between the two studies is that private transit agencies are no longer more efficient or effective than public providers.     

Social crisis and political decay: The contemporary American malaise

Abstract

By the 1990s American society had become more depoliticized than at any time in recent history, with the vast majority of the population increasingly alienated from the political system. This has occurred, ironically, at a time when deepening social problems—environmental degradation, homelessness, eroding public services, civic violence, threats to privacy—require extensive and creative political intervention. Further, it has taken place during a period of accelerated growth of higher education, informational resources, and communications. Most people seem to have lost hope for remedies to social problems within the existing public sphere. The political system has atrophied, with differences between the two major parties narrower than ever; citizenship is in drastic decline, as reflected in lower voter turnout, collapsing sense of political efficacy among ordinary citizens, and declining knowledge about the social and political world. This triumph of anti‐politics is not a matter of failed leaders, parties, or movements, nor of flawed structural arrangements, but mirrors a deeper historical process—one tied to increased corporate colonization and economic globalization—that shapes every facet of daily life and political culture. Depoliticization is the predictable mass response to a system that is designed to marginalize dissent, privatize social relations, and reduce the scope of democratic participation.     

Delayed privatization

This paper studies the timing of privatization in 21 major developed economies in the 1977–2002 period. Duration analysis shows that political fragmentation plays a significant role in explaining government’s decision to privatize: privatization is delayed longer in democracies characterized by a larger number of parties and operating under proportional electoral rules, as predicted by war of attrition models of economic reform. Results are robust to various assumptions on the underlying statistical model and to controlling for other economic and political factors.     

A Comparative Study of the Effects of Institutional Arrangements in Municipal Solid Waste Services in Korea

In Korea, local governments are primarily responsible for providing municipal solid waste services to citizens. This paper examines the effects of different institutional arrangements and characteristics on cost savings, efficiency gains and productivity in the delivery of municipal solid waste services to citizens. In order to carry out this research, a hybrid cost function approach was employed, and cross-sectional time-series data from local governments of Korea covering a ten-year period (2000–2009) were used for empirical analysis. Empirical findings indicated that there were no effects of contracting-out on cost savings, efficiency and productivity gains in Korea. Specifically, the solid waste service costs were not significantly lower under contracting-out than under direct public delivery. In addition, contrary to the arguments of the proponents of privatization or contracting-out, efficiency and productivity gains were actually higher under direct public delivery than when contracted out.     

An empirical study of the consolidation of local public health services in Connecticut

This study contributes to the literature by empirically examining the decision of Connecticut communities to consolidate the delivery of public health services. As theory suggests, the prospect of scale economies is found empirically to increase the likelihood that a community consolidates public health services. In addition, differences across communities are found to inhibit the consolidation of public health services. Overall, the results imply that financial incentives may be necessary to encourage more regional districts because localities may underestimate the true minimum efficient scale for public health services and because heterogeneity among jurisdictions impedes regional cooperation.     

Extending urban services in developing countries: Policy options and organizational choices

Governments in developing countries will face serious problems in extending basic social services, public facilities and infrastructure for their rapidly growing urban populations during the next decade. The steadily increasing concentration of the poor in cities will exacerbate already severe strains on urban services. Innovative solutions will be needed to meet the growing demands for urban services. In addition to expanding national and municipal efforts, governments in developing countries must also explore alternative policies and organizational arrangements for meeting the basic needs of their urban population. Among the potential alternatives are: using market surrogates to improve service delivery; lowering the costs of service provision through changes in regulations and controls on urban development; actively supporting self-help and service upgrading schemes by the poor; promoting public-private co-operation and private sector participation in service delivery; increasing effective demand for services by promoting employment and higher incomes; and enacting and implementing policies that attempt to redistribute migration to small and intermediate-sized cities. Each alternative has advantages and limitations that planners and policy-makers must take into consideration in forging effective urban development strategies.     

Unanswered questions in service provision for modernizing states

In ‘Innovations in the provision of public goods and services’ (Pinto, R. (1998). Public Administration and Development, 18 (4): 387–397), Pinto contributes to the ongoing policy debate on service provision in two important ways. First, he points out that service provision reform is a complex, evolutionary process that is at once political and economic. Second, he argues that public management and administration, rather than becoming obsolete, will have to become more naunced and refined as governments increasingly allow private sector and citizen participation in the delivery of services. Both these propositions could be further developed by acknowledging the ongoing redefinition of what makes services ‘public’. Governments in developing countries will successfully redefine the ‘public’ character of services only when they resolve the enduring trade-offs between efficient delivery and distributive justice, between the roles of citizen and consumer. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Output–Purchase Funding and Budgeting Systems in the Public Sector

Output–purchase funding systems are systems in which payments made to service delivery agencies by government are an explicit function of quantities of outputs delivered by those agencies. This article considers the feasibility of such systems for the funding of tax–financed public services. It focuses on the implications of key characteristics of public sector outputs and specifically upon the prevalence of heterogeneous outputs, the predominance of services (as opposed to physical goods), and the presence of many "contingent capacity services."