Contracting Out and Accountability

Governments are increasingly moving to contract out the provision of public services which have previously been delivered by public service departments. Contracting out typically implies provision by private sector contractors. However, it may also include in-house provision by public service departments or other public agencies where the right to provide is won through competitive tendering and is governed by contract. At the Commonwealth level, the trend has been given added impetus by the Coalition government elected in 1996 (Reith J 996; National Commission of Audit 1996).
The main rationale for contracting out is to improve efficiency in service provision by harnessing the virtues of competition, in particular the superior productivity engendered among competitive providers (Industry Commission (IC) 1996, B3.4; Appendix E). At the same time, there is a legitimate expectation that providers of public services paid for by public funds will be publicly accountable (IC 1996, BI). However, contracting out has the potential to reduce the extent of public accountability by transferring the provision of public services to members of the private sector who are generally not subject to the same accountability requirements as public officials. Indeed, reduction in such accountability requirements may be one of the reasons for the greater efficiency of the private sector.     

Purchasing Policy Advice: The Limits to Contracting Out

Throughout the OECD, governments have been contracting out an increasing range of goods and services. Against this background, this article outlines the case for, and assesses the merits of, placing the purchase of governmental policy advice on a more competitive basis. Two options are given particular attention: first, the creation of an internal market for policy advice within the public sector under which departments and other government agencies would tender to supply specific policy outputs; and second, a more radical option under which public and private sector organizations would compete for the contracts to supply governmental policy advice. Drawing on the insights of the new institutional economics, it is argued that neither option is likely to enhance the efficiency or effectiveness with which policy advice is produced, whether under conditions of short-term or long-term contracting. This is due to the likelihood of: only partial contestability (due, among other things, to asset specificity in the form of transaction-specific expertise and trust); a greater risk of opportunistic behavior by the suppliers of advice (and also, under some conditions, by the purchasers); higher agency costs and transaction costs; and greater problems with respect to horizontal and vertical policy coordination. Such considerations suggest that the widespread reliance of governments on relatively permanent advisory institutions and in-house expertise can be explained and justified on the same theoretical grounds that have prompted the contracting out of other publicly-funded goods and services.     

Contracting Revisited: Determinants and Consequences of Contracting Out for Public Education Services

The determinants and consequences of contracting are examined in more than 1,000 Texas school districts for 1997–2008. The results largely replicate prior research by O'Toole and Meier, showing that contracting is negatively related to spending on school districts’ core instructional functions and that the relationship between contracting and bureaucracy is reciprocal. The present findings, based on data from a longer period, indicate that contracting is positively related to school district performance. This article also finds support for an extended model of contracting determinants involving two environmental shocks: negative budget shocks and enrollment shocks.     

Quality Control and Contracting Out of Legal Aid

This article reports on an evaluation of a pilot project in the tendering out of legal aid defence services for criminal matters in the Queensland District Court. Comparisons were made on quality and cost between the assignment of matters through competitive contracting and conventional assignment to private practitioners through a panel and scale fee system. Results show no significant differences in case outcomes and client perceptions of quality. In the interests of further cost reductions, any extension of tendering would need to focus on relatively simple, high-volume areas of prescribed crime, where there is less risk that competitive pricing will reduce the quality of service delivery. In addition, the evaluation indicated that greater savings might in future be obtained by enhanced utilisation of in-house (salaried) legal aid practitioners.     

Cheap and Dirty: The Effect of Contracting Out Cleaning on Efficiency and Effectiveness

Contracting out of public services, especially ancillary services, has been a key feature of New Public Management since the 1980s. By 2014, more than £100 billion of U.K. public services were being contracted out annually to the private sector. A number of high‐profile cases have prompted a debate about the value for money that these contracts provide. Value for money comprises both the cost and the quality of the services. This article empirically tests the contestability and quality shading hypotheses of contracting out in the context of cleaning services in the English National Health Service. Additionally, a new hypothesis of coupling is presented and tested: the effect of contracting of ancillary services on patient health outcomes, using the hospital‐acquired infection rate as our measure. Using data from 2010–11 to 2013–14 for 130 National Health Service trusts, the study finds that private providers are cheaper but dirtier than their in‐house counterparts.     

Contracting Out and Public Values: A Symposium

The three papers that constitute this symposium were first commissioned for a workshop entitled Citizenship and Contractualism held in October 2000. The theme of that workshop centred on the contractualisation of the relationship between service deliverers and their clients. 1 They have been published elsewhere in a special issue of Law in Context, March 2001, co‐edited by Terry Carney, Gaby Ramia and Anna Yeatman.
These three papers did not fit that theme. They are concerned more with the general use of contracting out as a tool of contemporary governance. I have used the title contracting out and public values because all three of these papers raise fundamental questions about the implications of contracting out for public values.     

A Political Perspective on Contracting Out: The Politics of Good Times. Experiences from Danish Local Governments

Privatization has been on the political agenda for the last two decades. The literature points to two major explanations of privatization. One explanation is political-ideological, considering privatization to be a Liberal-Conservative strategy. Economic crisis or fiscal stress is the other main explanation of privatization. The two theses are investigated by evaluating the determinants of contracting out in Danish local governments. The analysis shows that fiscal stress is strongly, but inversely related to contracting out, while Liberal-Conservative political leadership is not associated with higher levels of contracting out than Social Democratic governance. Thus, the richer a local government becomes, the more it contracts out. Although party politics is not decisive for contracting out, the motivation seems to be political rather than economical. Specifically, it is argued that in a strongly decentralized public sector with influential public employees, contracting out is possible in good times when revenue and public expenditure are easier to increase, which reduces public employee resistance to contracting out.     

Contracting Out Local Services: A Tale of Technical and Social Services

Governments face a fundamental choice between in‐house production and contracting out for the delivery of services to citizens. This article examines the importance of ideology, fiscal pressure, and size for contracting out in technical and social services. The analysis builds on a panel data set covering municipal spending on services in all 98 Danish municipalities. The authors find that contracting out is shaped by ideology in social services but not in technical services, which indicates that social services are the contemporary ideological battlefield of privatization. The analysis further reveals that economically prosperous municipalities are more likely to contract out social services, whereas contracting out of technical services is not influenced by economic affluence. Finally, larger municipalities contract out more in technical services but less in social services, demonstrating that the size effect is contingent on the transaction cost characteristics of the service.     

行政合同的行政性

行政合同是行政行为,其行政性表现在:建立的基础和目的是行政法律关系;行政主体享有统治者特权;行政合同以契约不自由为原则.     

The Use of Contracting in the Public Sector

Around the world and especially in English-speaking countries there has been a wave of contract-based public sector management following on the heels of a wave of corporatisation and privatisation.     

刍议行政效能监察

加强行政效能监察,对进一步转变政府职能,改善行政管理,提高行政效能,促进政府机关勤政廉政建设,全面提升政府能力和塑造良好的政府形象,具有重要的现实意义和战略意义。但我国行政效能监察工作尚存在着许多问题,因此,迫切需要建立科学有效的行政效能监察新机制,其具体措施在于:加快政府职能的转变;加强组织领导,健全办事机构;建立完备的监督约束机制和法规体系;设立效能投诉中心;拓宽监督渠道,强化民主监督和积极推进电子政务等。     

行政问责制与行政自责文化建设

我国行政问责正由“权力问责”走向“制度问责”。而问责制要真正产生实效,必须有相应的行政问责文化来支持。在行政问责制的建立健全过程中,加强行政自责文化的培育十分重要和紧迫。为此,必须积极推进我国政治文明及行政文化的现代化进程,塑造公务员的现代品格,加快行政自责的制度化、法制化建设,营造良好的社会及政治环境,推进责任型政府建设。     

行政法学的新使命 ——2016年行政法学研究述评

2016年,行政法学界围绕行政法基础理论、行政程序立法等问题,产生了一批优秀的研究成果,对促进行政法学理论发展、推动法治政府建设、实现国家治理能力和治理体系现代化,具有理论意义和实践意义.2016年行政法学研究呈现出三个特征:第一,选题紧密结合法治实践,为推进依法治国进程、法治政府建设提供了理论支持.第二,案例研究方法的运用明显增多,反映出大数据时代行政法学研究方法的变化.第三,理论研究不断深化,促进了理论创新与繁荣发展.     

The Georgia Lottery: Assessing Its Administrative, Economic, and Political Effects

This article examines the Georgia lottery as a “policy laboratory” and its potential effect on state‐level policy diffusion. The authors summarize an extensive research project they directed that included a survey of every state that offers a lottery, a general population survey of Georgia citizen attitudes toward the lottery, and results from an economic model summarizing the economic effects of the lottery. The analysis reveals that the Georgia lottery has been a significant source of revenue for the state's budget and operates in an administratively cost‐effective manner. The analysis also confirms the conventional wisdom that lower‐income households spend a greater proportionate share of their income on the lottery and that African Americans are more frequent players than whites. Furthermore, the Georgia lottery enjoys broad public support, the key to which appears to be the earmarking of lottery funds to specific, new, popular education programs. However, the data reveal that those educational programs promulgated by the Georgia lottery benefit citizens from both high and low socioeconomic status. Finally, the article suggests that lottery‐generated funds may reach a plateau or peak during the first decade of implementation and that state policymakers should design lottery‐funded programs accordingly.     

论行政法的本位

现代法治的精神是对人权的保障和促进,行政法作为实施宪法的技术法,是权利本位的法.行政的公共性或公益性要从服务于国民的人权保障中寻找其中心意义.权利以其正当性和道德价值为基础,决不受制于政治的交易或社会利益的权衡,当公共利益和公民权利发生冲突时,不能简单地以公共利益优先为原则,以社会功利牺牲个人的尊严.     

"大中东民主化"与中东未来局势探析

从长期控制中东的目的出发,美国在伊拉克战争后抛出了民主改造中东的方案和措施.但是,由于美国自身不同时期战略任务的矛盾,美国中东民主化改造方案与中东民主化客观进程的矛盾以及中东有别于其它地区的民众文化心理结构,不仅使得这一战略的前景暗淡渺茫,而且还将使未来中东地区的局势面临更大的动荡与冲突.     

我国行政问责制度及其对问责程序机制影响的研究

行政问责并非只是单一的制度,而是一种机制,它涉及行政决策、行政过程、行政结果的问责控制,需要多个方面的行为主体以相应的法定方式予以完成.完善的行政问责机制需要清晰具体的行政问责制度和可以将行政问责制度有效执行的行政问责程序机制.在国内行政问责理论研究明显不足的情况下,行政问责的制度设计呈现出实践先于理论的特点.实践先于理论的特点决定了行政问责制度还处于不成熟状态,存在明显的局限性:问责发起程序的缺失导致问责发起存在障碍,问责启动主体的制度缺陷加大了行政问责程序的随意性和不确定性,责任标准的缺乏影响制度严谨性、公正性,等等.