Is Activity-Based Costing Up to the Challenge When It Comes to Privatization of Local Government Services?

After its initial success in the private sector, activity-based costing (ABC) has been embraced by the public sector as an analytical tool that can be used to improve the efficiency of government operations, especially in the area of the privatization of operations. Despite claims that ABC can greatly enhance the evaluation of how to most efficiently deliver services, there are significant obstacles that must be overcome before ABC can be effectively implemented. In order to underscore the challenges facing successful ABC execution in the public sector, the use of activity-based cost accounting by the City of Indianapolis for its privatization initiatives is discussed. Generally ABC is not up to challenge of providing local governments with the tool necessary to comprehensively evaluate direct services and determine which are candidates for contracting out or privatization.     

Imitating the West? Evidence on Administrative Reform from the Upper Echelons of Chinese Provincial Government

This article explores the attitudes of officials in the upper echelons in Chinese provincial and local government toward the origins of administrative reform. The authors examine the somewhat dichotomous argument that reform imitates the West or is indigenous and contend that both influences are present. Data drawn from a survey of party cadres and government officials show that cultural factors (time in government, overall knowledge of administrative reforms, together with familiarity with the move from a planned system of government to a market economy) and structural variables (upper echelon and familiarity with business management techniques) are correlated with learning from the West. Cadres and officials who spend more time managing outward and those who are familiar with performance assessment do not learn from the West. The theoretical and research implications of these findings—that learning from the West is an important influence on the adoption of administrative reforms in China—are discussed.     

Does the Network Centrality of Government Actors Matter? Examining the Role of Government Organizations in Aquaculture Partnerships

The growth in the use of collaborative governance arrangements has been accompanied by burgeoning scholarship in the field of public affairs that seeks to understand the benefits of engaging diverse stakeholders in common venues. However, few scholars have formally assessed the role of government actors in facilitating outcomes for individual participants in such efforts. Moreover, little work on collaborative governance examines how individual incentives and barriers to collective action are formed within the nested nature of these contexts. We contribute to the study of collaborative governance by formally investigating how the relative centrality of government actors in collaborative policy‐making venues affects individual relationship building and learning for participants therein. We find that government actor centrality is positively associated with relationship building and learning. However, in testing two different conceptualizations of “centrality,” we find that the definition of this construct clearly matters.     

When Do Voters Support the European Union’s Involvement in Gay Rights?

Commitment to the European Union’s gay rights standards remains weak in new EU members and countries applying for EU membership. If the EU’s standards have minimal consequences, then when do voters support the EU’s involvement in gay rights? The existing research misses a comparison of opinions between those who identify with gay people, and those who do not. Sexuality-based marginalization carried out by state institutions (political homophobia) motivates those who identify with gay people to support alternatives to their state’s authority. Using an original survey of Bosnia and Herzegovina, I find that those who identify more closely with gay people are more likely to support transferring control of gay rights to the EU. Using twenty-one surveys of EU member states, I find that in countries with high levels of political homophobia, those who report discrimination on the basis of sexuality exhibit higher levels of support for the EU.     

Do Municipal Mergers Improve Technical Efficiency? An Empirical Analysis of the 2008 Queensland Municipal Merger Program

Municipal mergers remain an important instrument of local government policy in numerous countries, including Australia, despite some concerns surrounding its efficacy. We consider the claim that amalgamations enhance the technical efficiency of the merged entities by examining the 2008 Queensland compulsory consolidation program that reduced the number of local authorities from 157 to 73 councils. To test the claim, we conduct locally inter‐temporal data envelopment analysis over the period 2003–2013 inclusive. Our evidence suggests that (1) in the financial year preceding the mergers, there was no statistically significant difference in the typical efficiency scores of amalgamated and non‐amalgamated councils and (2) 2 years following the mergers, the typical technical efficiency score of the amalgamated councils was well below the non‐amalgamated cohort. We argue this may be attributed to increased spending on staffing expenses, although comparatively larger operational expenditure also served to diminish efficiency.     

Would Bigger Councils Yield Scale Economies in the Greater Perth Metropolitan Region? A Critique of the Metropolitan Local Government Review for Perth Local Government

Forced amalgamation is a ubiquitous feature of Australian local government reform – compulsory council consolidation programs have occurred in all states and territories, with the sole exception of Western Australia. However, the Final Report of the Metropolitan Local Government – released in October 2012 – called for a reduction of about 60 per cent of the local authorities in the Greater Perth metropolitan area. The Western Australian Government responded by announcing that the number of Perth councils will fall from 30 to 14 from 1 July 2015. The Final Report recommended amalgamation on seven main counts, including scale economies. However, apart from citing work on Tasmania by commercial consultants Deloitte Access Economics (DAE) (2011), no econometric evidence was produced in support of claims on scale economies. This paper seeks to remedy this deficiency by estimating a number of econometric models on the impact of amalgamation on Perth local government. The results of our empirical modelling suggest that scale economies, cost savings and other pecuniary gains are largely illusory. Indeed, only two of the ten main local government functions provide evidence to suggest potential economies of scale.     

On the Determinants of Local Government Debt: Does One Size Fit All?

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the factors that directly influence levels of debt in Spanish local governments. Specifically, the main objective is to find out the extent to which indebtedness is originated by controllable factors that public managers can influence, or whether it hinges on other variables beyond managers’ control. The importance of this issue has intensified since the start of the crisis in 2008, due to the abrupt decline of revenues and, simultaneously, to the fact that the levels of costs these institutions face has remained the same or, in some cases, increased. Results can be explored from multiple perspectives, given that the set of explanatory factors is also multiple. However, the most interesting finding is the varying effect of each covariate depending on a municipality's specific debt level, which suggests that economic policy recommendations should not be homogeneous across local governments.     

Do Traffic Tickets Reduce Motor Vehicle Accidents? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

This paper analyzes the effect of traffic tickets on motor vehicle accidents. Ordinary least squares (OLS) estimate may be upward biased because police officers tend to focus on areas where and periods when there is heavy traffic and thus higher rates of accidents. This paper exploits the dramatic increase in tickets during the Click‐it‐or‐Ticket campaign to identify the causal impact of tickets on accidents using data from Massachusetts. I find that tickets significantly reduce accidents and nonfatal injuries. I provide suggestive evidence that tickets have a larger impact at night and on female drivers.     

Which Party Gets the Mayoralty? A Multivariate Statistical Investigation of Danish Local Government Formation

In non‐presidential multiparty systems, it is not only the voters but also coalition formation after the election that decides the government of the community. Some national‐level studies investigate which parties are most likely to win the Prime Minister's office. The aim of this article is to investigate the same question at the local level: What makes a party more likely to win the post of mayor? The article finds that party size and change in size are important along with experience and ideological centrality. The results are similar to those obtained at the national level, and this study thus expands the scope of these explanatory variables. However, the study also shows that being a large party is not sufficient for a party to have a good chance of winning the mayoralty. Furthermore, norms guiding appropriate behaviour seem important in addition to instrumental behaviour. It appears that parties that are popular in the electorate benefit from being perceived as more deserving of the mayoralty than others.     

Identity,Social Exclusion and Perceived Performance of Local Government — Evidence from Urban China

As a product of China’s planned economy, the state-run hukou system has dramatically influenced national and social management. However, hukou identity often results in social exclusion and alienation of outsiders. This study explores how hukou identity affects urban residents’ perception of local government performance. The least-square method (OLS), ordered-logit regression, and propensity score matching method (PSM) are applied to test our hypothesis. We found that hukou identity has a significant impact on perceived performance of local government. Specifically, non-locals’ perceived performance is lower than that of native locals, but there is no apparent distinction between new locals’ perceived performance and native locals through hukou conversion. Furthermore, hukou identity’s influence on perception of local government performance has individual heterogeneity. Here, the opinions of highly educated residents coincide due to hukou identity. Beginning with the unique heterogeneous social structure in urban China attributable to hukou system, this study provides a new way to understand residents’ complicated political psychology in urban China.

     

When Do the Ends Justify the Means? Evaluating Procedural Fairness

How do people decide whether a political process is fair or unfair? Concerned about principles of justice, people might carefully evaluate procedural fairness based on the facts of the case. Alternately, people could be guided by their prior preferences, endorsing the procedures that produce favored policy outcomes as fair and rating those that generate disliked outcomes as unfair. Using an experimental design, we consider the conditions under which people use accuracy goals versus directional goals in evaluating political processes. We find that when procedures are clearly fair or unfair, people make unbiased assessments of procedural justice. When the fairness of a process is ambiguous, people are more likely to use their prior attitudes as a guide.     

Community Consultation in Victorian Local Government: A Case of Mixing Metaphors?

This article draws on a three-year collaborative research project investigating how community consultation is practised by Victorian councils, especially in relation to multiple publics and groups that councils can find 'hard to reach'. Based on an analysis of consultation documents, this article looks at councils' understanding of community consultation and underlying assumptions, the expected outcomes and how this is translated into guidance for practice. The research demonstrates that councils aim to consult to provide a range of outcomes, but there is a lack of clarity about how to choose and use the appropriate combination of consultation tool(s) and public(s) to facilitate these. Councils are also unclear about how the outcomes of consultation feed into existing decision-making processes and the implications of this for democratic legitimacy. This is in part due to the fact that the conceptual tensions around consultation and the democratic process are apparent not so much by virtue of what is said about them, but of what is not said. The article begins by outlining the conceptual and definitional problems associated with consultation using typologies of public participation. We investigate how typologies inform the consultation documents developed by councils and in how far they support practice. We then address the need to involve multiple publics and the vexed issue of who is hard to reach and why they should be consulted.     

Is Small Beautiful? Testing the Direct and Nonlinear Effects of Size on Municipal Performance

Although the relationship between managerial capacity and local government performance is well established, research into the direct effect of population size on performance has yielded mixed findings. Using data for 787 municipalities in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, this article examines the direct and nonlinear effects (moderating and curvilinear) of population size on municipal performance. Performance is measured in terms of property tax collection and averaged for the 2005–07 mayoral administration. Mayor's age (a proxy for experience) and educational attainment serve as measures of managerial capacity. After controlling for political and economic factors, both municipal size and mayoral capacity are positively correlated with property tax collection. However, population size neither moderates managerial capacity nor relates curvilinearly to municipal performance. These findings challenge the promoters of fragmentation, which has been the trend in transitional and developing economies.     

Do Nighttime Driving Restrictions Reduce Criminal Participation Among Teenagers? Evidence From Graduated Driver Licensing

To date, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have a three‐stage Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL) system that phases in driving privileges for teenagers. GDL laws effectively impose a statutory driving curfew and a limitation on the number of passengers in motor vehicles. Both the timing of motor vehicle access and a limitation on the peer influences available in a motor vehicle could significantly affect the production of criminal behavior. Using the Uniform Crime Reports 1995 to 2011 and a triple‐differences approach, we find that the implementation of GDL decreased criminal participation by 6 percent among teenagers ages 16 and 17, as measured by arrests. These effects are larger in magnitude in states where the nighttime driving curfew is required for a longer period of time. We also show that GDL plays an important role in reducing crime in periods of low gasoline prices, a time when teen driver prevalence would otherwise have been high. These results suggest that there is another benefit to states for adopting GDL laws and provide insight into the production of teenage crime.     

Is the Future of Electoral Reform Local?

The Electoral Reform Society has recently published two reports putting the case for electoral reform in local government. These suggest acceptance, in the wake of defeat in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum, that the group's ultimate goal of change to the Westminster electoral system is unlikely to be fulfilled soon and that a more gradual strategy is therefore needed. This paper examines this shift by asking three questions. First, is Westminster electoral reform really a dead letter? Second, is local electoral reform more likely—and, if so, just how much more likely? Third, would local electoral reform matter in itself?     

Why Do Foundations Follow the Law? Evidence from Adoption of the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act

Employing a large panel of over one million firm‐years, I find evidence consistent with widespread compliance with law among U.S. private foundations despite the absence of many formal deterrence mechanisms. The research design exploits rolling state adoption of the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, which lifted some existing limits on firm spending for a fraction of firms within each state. This allows the use of triple‐difference estimates that control for changes in local norms and economic conditions. UPMIFA increases firm spending, on average, implying that firms were complying with the pre‐UPMIFA regime. Interacting the triple‐difference factors with other predictors of compliance reveals no correlation between compliance and enforcement intensity, but some evidence that compliance is correlated with firm culture and reliance on accountants. These findings have potentially important implications for the governance of charitable organizations, and may speak more generally to drivers of compliance among other organizational forms.