Dysfunctional state institutions,trust, and governance in areas of limited statehood

Areas of limited statehood where the state is absent or dysfunctional are rarely ungoverned or ungovernable spaces. The provision of rules and regulations, as well as of public goods and services – governance – does not necessarily depend on the existence of functioning state institutions. How can this be explained? To begin with, we identify functional equivalents to state institutions that fail to govern hierarchically. Moreover, we focus on informal institutions based on trust that are endogenous to areas of limited statehood. Personalized trust among community members enables actors to overcome collective action problems and enhances the legitimacy of governance actors. The main challenge in areas of limited statehood, which are often characterized by social heterogeneity and deep social and cultural cleavages (particularly in post‐conflict societies) is to move to generalized trust beyond the local level and to “imagined communities among strangers,” despite dysfunctional state institutions. We propose two mechanisms: First, the more group‐based identities are constructed in inclusive ways and the more group identities are cross‐cutting and overlapping, the more they lead to and maintain generalized trust. Second, experiences with fair and impartial institutions and governance practices – irrespective of whether state or non‐state – also lead to generalized trust beyond the local level and allow for the upscaling of governance.     

HOPE VI: A Promising Vintage?

Public housing policies in distressed communities if they are to succeed, must be based on much more realistic assumptions than they are now. We look at HOPE VI, a public housing policy that not only changes the physical environment, but also social services, job training, work opportunities, transportation, child care and other support services. HOPE VI goes a long way to improving public housing policies for distressed communities.     

Community Building,Civil Society and Societal Service Production in China

This article examines the Chinese scholarly discourse about promoting civil society, constructing urban and rural communities, and transferring social service provision to society. It finds that this discourse treats two separate models as if they were one. The civil society model stresses freedom to organize for advancing the aims that participants share. The community building model emphasizes community governance and empowerment. Together, these two models expect both the state and society to strengthen their presence in the same communal space. These two models have theoretical inconsistencies, but these inconsistencies disappear if civil society is understood in the very narrow terms of the ‘small government, big society' model in which the state wants to reduce its own economic burdens in social service production. It is thus likely that in China civil society either remains secondary to the state-initiated channels of social and political participation in communities, or takes place mainly on the regional or national scope in which civil society organizations no longer compete with communal ones.     

The Big Society: Power to the People?

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, recently set out his vision of a ‘big society’. Its core themes are empowering communities, redistributing power from the state to citizens and promoting a culture of volunteering. The idea is badly flawed. It overlooks the crucial role that needs to be played by the state in promoting social justice, which is vital to the development of active citizenship and vibrant communities. Moreover, Cameron views the active citizen as simply a philanthropist and volunteer rather than as a politically literate individual, knowledgeable about the major political issues of the day and actively involved in debates about how public or private services ought to be run. The initiative is particularly perverse in the context of the credit crunch, a vitally important cause of which was precisely not the development of an over‐mighty state but rather the inadequate state regulation of free market trading activities by banks.     

Public Support for Corporate Social Responsibility in the Welfare State: Evidence from Sweden

Several scholars have claimed that we are currently witnessing a growing saliency of so‐called ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR). Yet, while there is a lot of work suggesting that public opinion might prompt firms to behave in socially responsible ways, there is a lack of empirical studies exploring the extent ordinary to which citizens actually support CSR. Moreover, the state is conventionally theorised as the main institutional device for governing markets and their social consequences, and there is a growing literature exploring the relationship between CSR and the state. On the basis of these observations, this article juxtaposes public attitudes towards CSR and state intervention in the market. Considering that attitudes might vary across groups with different structural relationships to the firm, this study also looks at the social bases of support for different attitude profiles. Using Swedish survey data collected in 2011 and latent class analysis, the empirical results demonstrate that most Swedes in favour of CSR are highly supportive of state intervention in the market. The study of social cleavages restates this pattern: social groups with fewer marketable resources are strongly over‐represented in supporting a combination of CSR and state intervention in the market. No clear social profile is found for the relatively small group of people who support CSR but not state intervention. It is concluded that voluntary CSR is unlikely to offer a serious full‐scale alternative to the welfare state: Swedes continue to think of public authorities as the ultimate institutional guarantor of social welfare.     

Inequality,Diversity and Social Trust in Norwegian Communities

This article examines community effects on social trust in Norwegian communities. The large research literature on social trust agrees that community effects are important, but disagree about which aspects of communities influence social trust. The main current disagreement concerns the relative importance of ethnic diversity and socio-economic factors, such as income inequality within communities and differences in socio-economic standing between communities. We test the competing propositions on a Norwegian dataset consisting of 99 communities and 6,166 survey respondents within those communities arguing that it is particularly interesting to look at the relationship between diversity and social trust in the setting of a wealthy universalist welfare state. It is to our knowledge the first dataset that allows a hierarchical analysis of the determinants of social trust in the Norwegian context. The results of our models show that economic inequality, within and between communities, has a direct negative effect on social trust, but that it is not possible to separate the effects of ethnic diversity and level of unemployment. This study thus lends support to the body of research that first and foremost emphasizes the role of economic inequality in accounts of community differences and social trust.     

Social funds and local government: the case of Malawi

Two instruments—social funds and decentralization—are currently quite popular policy instruments being adopted in many developing countries throughout the world. Each of these instruments is currently being used or is being implemented in Malawi, Africa. While each instrument is intended to improve the flow of public services in a locality, the article discusses how each has certain potential theoretical advantages over the other. The article then goes on to describe and analyze the flow of resources to Malawian communities under the two largest social action programs, neither of which currently relies on substantial inputs, financial or human, from local governments. The data illustrates a wide disparity in the per capita amounts allocated to these demand‐driven initiatives across districts but also shows the relatively diverse set of local public services supported by the funds. The article close with a discussion of how these two initiatives might be merged within the context of the new Local Government Act 1998, under which local services are to be devolved in the near future. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Mythology of Privatization in Contracting for Social Services

States and municipalities have privatized services in an effort to improve their cost‐effectiveness and quality. Competition provides the logical foundation for an expectation of cost savings and quality improvements, but competition does not exist in many local marketplaces—especially in the social services, where governments contract primarily with nonprofit organizations. As government increases its use of contracting, it simultaneously reduces its own public‐management capacity, imperiling its ability to be a smart buyer of contracted goods and services. This article examines two questions about the privatization of social services based on interviews conducted with public and nonprofit managers in New York state: Does social services contracting exist in a competitive environment? And do county governments have enough public‐management capacity to contract effectively for social services? The findings suggest an absence of competition and public‐management capacity, raising the question of why governments contract when these conditions are not met.     

Utopian Thinking Under the Sign of Neoliberalism: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Educated Hope

As the vast majority of people become detached from public forums that nourish social critique, agency not only becomes a mockery of itself, it is replaced by market-based choices in which private satisfactions replace social responsibilities and private solutions become a substitute for systemic change. As the worldly space of criticism is undercut by the absence of public pedagogies and spaces that encourage the exchange of information, opinion and criticism, the horizons of an inclusive and substantive democracy disappear against the growing militarization of public space, the attack on the welfare state, the ongoing commercialization of everyday life, and the growing isolation and depoliticization that marks the loss of a politically guaranteed public realm in which autonomy, political participation and engaged citizenship make their appearance. Drawing upon the work of Cornelius Castoriadis, Zygmunt Bauman and others the author addresses the current crisis of meaning, political agency and pedagogy, and the implications it has for developing a cultural politics that links utopian thinking not only to the complex nature of social agency and the importance of democratic public spheres, but also to the fact that active and critical political agents have to be formed, educated and socialized into the world of politics.     

Differentiated Citizenship and Ethnocultural Groups: A Japanese Case

It is a widely shared view that Japan is a culturally homogeneous country. This view is often deployed as justification for certain policy orientations to preserve cultural homogeneity. The goal of this article is to show that this line of thought is not acceptable on empirical and normative grounds. By considering two representative ethnocultural minorities—Ainu and Koreans—in terms of cultural, social, and political rights, I illustrate that there exists not only a plurality of ethnocultural groups in Japan with distinct claims to differentiated citizenship but also institutions and practices accommodating them. Moreover, a set of principles of differentiated citizenship underlying those institutions and practices are outlined. Finally, on the basis of the foregoing analysis, I argue that public policies attempt to preserve a cultural homogeneity that does not exist and such political aims as “enhancing social unity” are morally and prudentially undesirable.     

Social structure and voting in the Austrian party system

An analysis of electoral behaviour in the Austrian party system shows that the cleavages, social class and religion, are still playing a major role—their total impact seems higher than in most Western democracies. In the seventies a declining influence of both dimensions can be registered; but after closer inspection, most of it seems to be due to structural changes.Particularly the expansion of intermediate and higher education can be hypothesized to dissolve the traditional Lager-structure, which made for a very stable vote throughout the electoral history of the Second Austrian Republic. But the question remains, whether the increase in floating vote really supersedes the class and religious cleavages, or only produces more oscillating election outcomes.The analysis also makes clear why regional cleavages are of minor general impact in Austria: on the one hand, historical West-East differentiations prevail over urban-rural cleavages, on the other hand, Austria seems to be too small to give way to major cultural drifting between regions. None the less, the impact of social structure upon voting behaviour seems to be significantly higher than in most Western nations.     

US state government privatization: Implications for social equity and inequality?

Privatization of state government services is commonplace, but our understanding of its effects is limited by data availability. We study the relationship between American state government contracting and public sector wages. Governments have used public sector employment to support a variety of goals, including social equity and economic development, but privatization, as a new public management (NPM) reform, may shift the focus. Our empirical analysis shows that state privatization of service delivery is associated with decreases in the public sector wage premium, but that these effects are not driven by gender, race, or low-levels of educational attainment. The fidelity of the implementation to NPM values conditions these effects. We also find that contracting service delivery is associated with a lower public sector wage premium for middle-class workers.     

In Search of Culture: Lessons From the Past to Find a Role for the Study of Administrative Culture

H. Eckstein could say a few years ago that “political culture theory may plausibly be considered one of two still viable general approaches to political theory and explanation proposed since the early fifties to replace the long-dominant formalism-legalism of the field — the other being political rational choice theory” (1988, 789). For the last two decades, the rational choice approach has been dominant and thriving in many fields of political science, whether in international relations, political sociology, public administration or public policy; it has greatly reinforced the theoretical and empirical basis of the explanation of human freedom of action. But it has recently shown some signs of intellectual fatigue. Critics now underscore that, assuming that individuals compare expected benefits and costs of actions prior to adopting strategies for action, is valid and useful only in relatively simple choice situations where information is easily available and interpretable (Elster 1989; Dunleawy 1991). Some neo-institutionalists have claimed that rationality comes not as means-end calculus prior to action but rather as an ex-post justification after choice (March, Olsen 1989; Hall 1986, 15–20). Others have come to say that the rational choice approach, which explains how people ought to act in order to achieve aims and not what these aims ought to be, totally misses the central question of why it is that people have “preferences” and pursue some aims rather than others (Wildavsky 1987; Cook, Levi 1990; Wildavsky 1994). It does not mean that the rational choice approach should be discarded: there should rather be a “contextualization” of rationality which explains both why the same man in different situations or contexts adopts different rationalities, and why in the same context two men can adopt different rationalities (Wildavsky 1994). But the rational choice approach is also showing its limits in the very field where it was born and has blossomed: economics. In a recent issue of a French national newspaper, two articles dealing with economics and development were pointing at the same problem: cultural explanations of economic behavior are needed. In the first article, the former General Secretary of the United Nations, now President of the UNESCO-UNO World Commission on Culture and Development, J. Perez de Cuellar, advocated a cultural approach of the economic development of the Third World countries in order to find, at last, an enduring and practical solution to their endemic problems (1994). In the second article, a journalist reflecting on why the same hard economic therapies have worked in Poland but not in Russia could only refer to the “specific economic culture of Russia” described by economists (Vernholes 1994). These clear limits imposed upon the rational choice approach have brought culturalist theory back into favor among social scientists. Does this mean that a well-built culturalist theory might be a new “explanatory panacea, a universal nostrum” (Thompson, Ellis, Wildavsky 1992, 516)? The aim of this article is to try to unravel the cultural approach and assess its potential in the specific field of public administration. To do this, we shall draw on two close but relatively separate disciplines — political science and organizational theory — which we believe (should) meet to give a richer account of administrative reality. Our purpose is to question the recent interest in and utilization of the cultural metaphor(s) by bureaucrats, politicians, “special advisers” and authors in the analysis and implementation of administrative reform. The reason for this inquiry is that, contrary to analysts of private sector organizations, specialists of public sector organizations have not yet seriously addressed a culturalist theory of public administration while acknowledging that there is or there are public administration culture(s). We therefore hope to evaluate the usefulness of a culturalist theory for public administration. In this rather complex theoretical field, we prefer to take the simple solution to try to explain first the classical culturalist theory, and second, the new culturalist theory. Third, we should see whether there is or should be anything specific about administrative culture and a culturalist theory of public administration.     

Community welfare services in Urban China: A public-private experiment

The social welfare system in China has been undergoing transition since the economic reform in 1978 when the Chinese government began introducing a series of welfare changes aimed at shifting responsibility from the government to a combination of government, communities, enterprises and individuals. Consequently, many cities in China have been experimenting with community-based welfare services — a state-sanctioned practice based on socialist ideology, but at the same time market driven and incorporating the private sector. This new welfare approach started an ongoing dialogue in China regarding the role of the public and private sectors in social welfare, the balance between socialist and capitalist values, and the input of the free market and political democracy. This paper presents a case study of an urban community in Beijing. It examines the policy of community-based services and discusses its implementation in urban communities. The research suggests that the public-private coordination is, within limits, effective in meeting people’s needs in the community. However, further attention should be given to the sharing of responsibility for welfare between the public and private sectors so as to protect vulnerable populations. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Denver. Her major interests of research focus on social development and community service, law and social work, and comparative welfare policies. He was also chair professor of Social Work Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and founding Dean of the School of Social Development at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. He has written extensively on international social development and human security.     

The effects of national cultures on two technologically advanced countries: The case of e-leadership in South Korea and the United States

The increased use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has triggered enormous innovation in the public sector and created positive public value at the managerial, delivery of services, and policy levels. However, these positive outcomes do not automatically accrue simply by adoption of ICTs as public leaders can fail to adopt relevant new ICTs, use them poorly, or use them in ways that actually diminish public value, which raises the question of the importance of e-leadership. This article examines e-leadership and innovation capacity at the individual public manager level and fills in some gaps about the practice and implementation of ICTs in the public sector. We explore eight research questions useful in theorizing about e-leadership, develop constructs of e-leadership, and describe the current development of e-leadership. By comparing e-leadership in two country settings (South Korea and the United States), we also overcome the limitations of the existing Western-oriented studies about innovations in the public sector. In addition to the growth of e-leadership use and requirements for a variety of competencies equivalent to, but separate from, traditional communication competences, we find that national cultures exert significant influence on the major constructs of e-leadership, which implies that an effective e-leadership strategy should consider cultural contexts seriously.     

Focusing on public value: Something new and something old

This article develops two propositions. First, that the public sector needs new stories that make sense of recent storms of change. Second, that focusing on ‘public value’ helps tell a useful new story. Much contemporary commentary comes from analysts working within a particular field of thought. However, problems of public policy and management are hard to discipline. Public value is not the property of particular political parties, public service institutions, academic disciplines or professions. Public value is defined and redefined through social and political interaction. Such interaction involves politicians, officials and communities. Focusing on public value enables one to aggregate issues for scholarly analysis in terms that should also make sense to citizens and communities, political activists and people responsible for delivering public services. The article argues that: recent agendas for public sector change overlap and that implementation is incomplete; the skills of analysts and activists in the public sector, and in associated sectors delivering public services, need large components of expertise in interpreting ambiguous patterns and the management of complex relationships; and that the cumulative impact of succeeding agendas is to widen the scope of issues in play. Large components in both reform and agendas have involved bringing the public sector firmly under political control. However, the later emphasis on consultation and participation places political executives under great pressure. The more deliberation is promised the more is demanded. There is increasing pressure for the task of exploring for public value to be shared more widely. The article develops its key propositions by exploring three main themes: first, the notion of public value and the emphasis in it on search and interaction as a basis for political and managerial leadership; second, the contested impacts of recent agendas of change in the public and other affected sectors which have widened the scope of issues in play but have left key institutional and policy issues unresolved; and, third, a sample of current and emerging issues in which asking questions about public value may help activists, politicians and managers more creatively focus their attention. Focusing on public value can help communities, service providers and political leaders ask and answer a new and wider range of questions while continuing to learn from recent experience, however complex and contested.     

Distinguishing Different Types of Coproduction: A Conceptual Analysis Based on the Classical Definitions

Coproduction of public services means that services are not only delivered by professional and managerial staff in public agencies but also coproduced by citizens and communities. Although recent research on this topic has advanced the debate considerably, there is still no consensus on precisely what coproduction means. This article argues that rather than trying to determine one encompassing definition of the concept, several different types of coproduction can be distinguished. Starting from the classical definitions of Elinor Ostrom and Roger Parks, the article draws on the literature on professionalism, volunteering, and public management to identify the distinctive nature of coproduction and identify basic dimensions on which a typology of coproduction can be constructed. Recognizing different types of coproduction more systematically is a critical step in making research on this phenomenon more comparable and more cumulative.     

The counter-hegemonic role of civil society: Palestinian–Arab NGOs in Israel

This paper deals with the causes and impact of the rise in the number of Palestinian–Arab Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Israel in the last two decades. It provides a multi-level model that combines economic, political and cultural factors to explain the shifts in Palestinian-Arab political mobilization in Israel and as a result to the rise of a complex network of Arab NGOs. The paper demonstrates the way in which the civil institutions and their intensive involvement in public social affairs generate social capital that has internal as well as external political impact. Arab civil society institutions, which operate mainly separately from civil institutions of the Jewish majority, assist in the empowerment and the development of Arab society. They provide services in different fields, such as education, health, and planning. They also advocate and lobby for the rights of the Arab citizens inside Israel and internationally. Arab civil society institutions also provide information necessary for political mobilization, identity formation, and cultural preservation. In this framework the paper claims that they play a counter-hegemonic role vis-à-vis the Israeli state. However, the paper also claims that the broad advocacy and lobbying activity of Arab civil institutions did not manage to fully democratize Israeli policies towards Arab society, demonstrating the centrality of state identity and power structure when it comes to democratization processes. On a different level, the paper reveals that, although the Palestinian–Arab NGOs network has managed to lead to a liberalization process within Arab society, this process is partial and selective.     

The Politics of Social Welfare Reform in Urban China: Social Welfare Preferences and Reform Policies

China’s social welfare reform since the mid-1980s has been characterized as incremental and fragmented in three dimensions—social insurance, privatization, and targeting. This paper attempts to explore the micro-foundation of China’s urban social welfare reform by examining the diverse social welfare preferences and the cleavages among societal groups. It argues that the diversity of the societal groups’ preferences for social welfare has given rise to two lines of cleavage in urban China with respect to social welfare—between state sector and non-state sector employees and between labor market insiders and outsiders. The Chinese authoritarian regime’s political priority—economic growth with social stability—has induced the government to accommodate public social welfare preferences in social welfare policies. Therefore, the three dimensions of Chinese social welfare reform policies since the mid-1980s reflect and respond to the social cleavages derived from societal groups’ different preferences for social welfare.     

公共服务均等化“善治”取向下的理性选择

公共服务均等化问题是公共管理改革和实践的重要命题。诞生于西方社会的治理理论及其“善治”理念，已成为当今国际社会公认的公共管理研究语境和改革实践的普遍诉求。目前，中国城乡之间、地区之间公共服务的不均等化状态引发了众多社会矛盾，严重偏离了公共管理的善治取向。本文基于不同于公共财政范畴善治框架，以公平和效率为尺度，研究公共服务均等化策略的合理性，认为公共服务均等化有利于实现善治理念的公平取向和效率取向，达到公平和效率的高度统一，中国政府应该从理念和制度两个层面加强公共服务均等化建设。