Why Do Municipalities Cooperate to Provide Local Public Services? An Empirical Analysis

Intermunicipal cooperation is being increasingly adopted in various countries as a part of local service delivery reforms. This article draws on survey data from Spain's municipalities to examine the reasons underpinning the decisions of local governments to engage in intermunicipal cooperation and privatisation. Our empirical analysis indicates that small municipalities prefer to rely on cooperation for reducing costs, while their larger counterparts prefer to privatise the delivery of services. By cooperating, scale economies can be achieved with lower transaction costs and fewer concerns for competition than is the case via private production.     

Innovation in Public Management: Is Public E-Procurement a Wave of the Future? A Theoretical and Exploratory Analysis

Project management has become an answer to many traditional organizational structuration and performance shortcomings, while gaining currency in business and public sector organizations. Public procurement systems have evolved into public electronic procurement systems with variations and distinctions in the age of globalization and digitalized complexities. This article examines the development of public e-procurement as an innovation in public management in the contexts of project management, public procurement management, and e-governance. It also links practice to theory—through a fourfold theoretical perspective—with contributions to the knowledge in public procurement, governance, and public administration.     

An American Perestroika in Dutch Cities? Urban Policy in the Netherlands at the End of a Millennium

This paper discusses the implications of the recent adoption of interactive forms of governance in Dutch urban policy. Advocates of this new approach claim that interactive governance will have positive effects for (1) the quality of urban democracy and urban governability and (2) for the solution of the information problems inherent in coping with (wicked) urban problems. On the basis of an extensive evaluation of the implementation of the new policies in four of the 25 Dutch municipalities involved, these claims are critically assessed.     

An End to the Fourth Wave of Terrorism?

It is widely believed that the current wave of religiously inspired terrorism will persist for the foreseeable future. Is this necessarily the case? This article asserts that this present wave may be cresting, much like previous waves in the modern history of terrorist violence. Further, the article goes on to forecast not an end to terrorism in general, but the likely emergence of still new manifestations of terrorist violence.     

Does Public Spending Improve Citizens’ Quality of Life? An Analysis of Municipalities’ Leisure Supply

This paper offers new evidence regarding the impact of public spending on the supply of leisure services on citizens’ spare-time quality of life. Using data from 103 Italian capital municipalities covering the period 2007–2010, the analysis revealed that public spending on leisure impacted spare-time quality of life in various ways, depending on the category of spending. Spending for tourism essentially followed an upward path, linearly enhancing citizens’ spare-time quality of life. Surprisingly, municipalities’ spending on sport- and culture-related services had a non-linear impact. Hence, spending on sports within a maximum threshold reveals a positive impact on spare-time quality of life, whereas passing over a minimum level of public spending for culture-related projects had a positive effect. This paper provides helpful suggestions for policymakers who approach decisions that address whether it is worth spending on leisure, which is typically a non-basic need but one that must be properly satisfied by municipalities in today’s service-based society.     

Public Administration Dilemmas: An Analysis of Teachers’ Perceptions of the Effects of Performance Evaluation in Post-Colonial South Africa

The adoption of the principles of New Public Management by many governments across the world was invariably accompanied by the implementation of performance evaluation. It is generally accepted that performance evaluation optimizes the performance of workers. As part of a broader investigation which employed a mixed methods approach, the study used data from six interviews with high school principals and 100 survey questionnaires with purposively selected high school teachers in uMgungundlovu District of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In the analysis of this data, the paper demonstrates that beyond the obvious benefits of performance evaluation such as improvement in performance, there are also unintended consequences such as a narrow focus on measured output, teacher burnout, and falsification of information in order to maximize credit or to avoid punishment. This study illustrates the understandings of high school educators in uMgungundlovu District of the effects of performance evaluation. The findings have important implications for public administration and scholars alike.     

Representative Bureaucracy in the Public Service? A Critical Analysis of the Challenges Confronting Women in the Civil Service of Ghana

In the public administration literature, the debate concerning the representation of minorities in the public bureaucracy continues to attract attention. The idea is that passive representation may lead to active representation with the later helping to develop policies and programs that will benefit minorities. Consequently, a number of governments have been implementing policies to enhance the involvement of minorities in public services. The Ghana government has not been left out in this endeavor. Since 1957, it has continued to institute measures to ensure a fair gender representation in the bureaucracy. This notwithstanding, the upper echelons of the bureaucracy continue to be dominated by males despite the over representation of women at the lower levels. What are the challenges confronting women in the public sector that make it difficult to achieve active representation? In this article, we examine the challenges confronting women to achieve active representation from a representative bureaucracy perspective.     

Does Size Still Matter? An Empirical Analysis of the Effectiveness of Victorian Local Authorities

Efficiency approaches to the question of whether population size matters to optimal local government have proved largely inconclusive. However, recent exploratory empirical work employing an effectiveness approach – as proxied by citizen satisfaction survey data – offers a promising way forward. The present paper seeks to build upon an earlier cross-sectional analysis of Victorian local government by employing longitudinal data over a three-year period – 2008 to 2010 – for Victorian local authorities. The greater depth of data confirmed the positive associations with population density but suggests that negative linear relationships dominate over parabolic associations for population size. This result underlines the need for the collection of more local government citizen satisfaction data by Australian local government systems, given its potentially fruitful application in tackling contentious questions in contemporary local government policy debates.     

Models of Public Service Provision—When Will Knights and Knaves Be Responsive to Pawns and Queens?

This article extends the framework of Le Grand (2003 Le Grand, J. 2003. Motivation, agency and public policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2010 Le Grand, J. 2010. Knights and knaves return: Public service motivation and the delivery of public services. International Public Management Journal, 13(1): 56–71. [Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to encompass responsiveness, and the main argument is that the combination of employee motivation, user capacity, and models of public service provision potentially has serious implications for responsiveness across service areas. Although research on employee motivation thrives, especially in the public service motivation (PSM) literature, few studies have investigated user capacity empirically, and we know little about the combination of PSM, user capacity and models of service provision. Analyzing four central service areas (day care, schools, hospitals, and universities), we find variations in both user capacity and PSM. Taking this variation as a point of departure we discuss what implications different combinations of employee motivation, user capacity, and models of public service provision may have for responsiveness.     

What's the Problem in Public Sector Workforce Recruitment? A Multi-Sector Comparative Analysis of Managerial Perceptions

Public sector workforce recruitment is problematic, but the nature of that problem is not clearly defined. Workforce recruitment is essentially a matching problem that requires managers to recruit desired employees in available labor pools. This research asks whether sectoral differences and competition for labor affect whether public managers frame the major problem of workforce recruitment as the size, qualifications, or work ethic of the labor pool. Using survey data from about 2,300 managers from two US states, problem attributions are modeled using multinomial logit. The findings suggest that the public and nonprofit sectors find it more problematic to recruit qualified employees than the private sector, but public and nonprofit agencies hold a comparative advantage over the private sector in recruiting employees with sufficient work ethic. Therefore, public and nonprofit managers should emphasize retention and training to leverage their comparative advantage in recruiting employees with work ethic while addressing a comparative disadvantage in recruiting qualified employees.     

Do Accrual Numbers Really Affect the Financial Market? An Empirical Analysis of ESA Accounts Across the EU

The adoption of a full accrual framework in the public sector is differentiated country by country both for budgeting and for reporting phases. The purpose of this article is to address the following broader research question: How do accrual numbers affect the financial markets? The 10-year average interest rate on sovereign bonds across the European Union is used as a dependent variable. The results of the research show an unclear relation among the variables investigated. Given this evidence, an alignment between micro- and macroaccounting rules could be pursued. We argue the suitability of the Australian experience in this sense.     

Is Catalonia Immune to Racism? An Analysis of Intolerant Political Discourses of Mainstream Party Representatives (2010–2011)

Despite the reduced presence of the far-right in Catalonia, anti-immigrant stances and discourses have occupied a central position during political campaigns for local, autonomous, and national elections in 2010–2011. The Catalan case is based on the analysis of three case studies: the local exclusion from the census of undocumented immigrants by the city of Vic, the campaign of the People's Party candidate in Badalona containing hate speech against Roma, and the burqa bans issued by the city of Lleida. Representatives of mainstream political parties, mainly right wing, became the main exponents of intolerance in Catalonia by putting forward that cultural pluralism and diversity challenge the possibility of living together in society.     

From Crisis to Opportunity:the Rise of a Global Middle Class?

<正>In a live webcast before this month’s National People’s Congress, Premier Wen predicted that while last year was the most difficult year for China’s economic development…this year will be the most complicated.     

Are You Being Served? The Responsiveness of Public Administration to Citizens’ Demands: An Empirical Examination in Israel

Research in public administration (PA) is preoccupied with questions of efficiency and effectiveness which are aimed at improving public sector performance. According to the new public management approach, addressing this prominent challenge must rely upon a comprehensive understanding of citizens'/clients' perceptions of public sector operation and the extent to which public organizations are aware of public needs. This paper suggests a theoretical grounding and empirical examin-ation of the relationship between citizens' demands and PA's responsiveness. Parti-cipants in the study were 281 residents of a large Israeli city who reported their feelings, attitudes, and perceptions of local government activities in a variety of fields. Results indicate that perceptions of PA's responsiveness are affected by both policy and cultural factors (for example business or social orientation of the public authority, entrepreneurship and initiation of changes, ethics, organizational politics) and by the quality of the human resource system and of public servants (for example quality of leadership and management, quality of employees, general stress when contacting public officials). Implications of the study are discussed in light of the ongoing debate regarding the need for a more responsive and efficient new public management and the difficulties it faces in western societies.     

Is it Better to be a Boy? A Disaggregated Outlay Equivalent Analysis of Gender Bias in Papua New Guinea

The demographic evidence of gender bias in many countries has provided an impetus for finding ways to study the status of women in developing countries. Because of the lack of accurate intra-household data, Deaton [1989 Deaton, A. 1989. Looking for Boy–Girl Discrimination in Household Expenditure Data. World Bank Economic Review, Vol.3, No.1: pp.1–15 [Google Scholar]] introduced a method for using household expenditure data to infer discrimination in the allocation of goods between boys and girls. Few studies of discrimination using the method, however, have detected bias even though alternative indicators suggest it is a serious problem. In this paper, we study the case of Papua New Guinea, a country in which there are many indicators of severe gender bias. Discrimination in the allocation of goods between boys and girls within households in Papua New Guinea is examined using Deaton's outlay-equivalent ratio method. Adding a boy to the household reduces expenditure on adult goods by as much as would a nine-tenths reduction in total outlay per member, but girls have no effect on adult goods expenditure. The hypothesis of Haddad and Reardon [1993 Haddad, L and Reardon, T. 1993. Gender Bias in the Allocation of Resource within Households in Burkina Faso: a Disaggregated Outlay Equivalent Analysis. Journal of Development Studies, Vol.29, No.2: pp.260–76 [Google Scholar]] that gender bias is inversely related to the importance of female labour in agricultural production is not supported. Sensitivity analysis shows that bias in rural areas occurs equally regardless of the age of the household head, while bias against girls may be less in regions of the country that have ethnic groups which practice matrilineal descent.     

Failing to Yield? Ploughs,Conservation Agriculture and the Problem of Agricultural Intensification: An Example from the Zambezi Valley,Zimbabwe

Agricultural intensification, or increasing yield, has been a persistent theme in policy interventions in African smallholder agriculture. This article focuses on two hegemonic policy models of such intensification: (1) the ‘Alvord model’ of plough-based, integrated crop-livestock farming promoted in colonial Zimbabwe; and (2) minimum-tillage mulch-based, Conservation Agriculture, as currently preached by a wide range of international agricultural research and development agencies. An analysis of smallholder farming practices in Zimbabwe's Zambezi Valley, reveals the limited inherent understanding of farmer practices in these models. It shows why many smallholder farmers in southern Africa are predisposed towards extensification rather than intensification, and suggests that widespread Conservation Agriculture adoption is unlikely.     

To What Extent Can the January 25 Revolution Be Seen as a “Bifurcation” in the Life Stories of Egyptian Migrants in France?

ABSTRACT

The revolutionary process initiated in Egypt in 2011 triggered a surge in Egyptian-led organizations in the public arena in Paris. This article examines the issue of the “biographical impacts of commitment” and applies the “life history approach” to these Egyptian activists. Our basic hypothesis is that the opening up of political perspectives in Egypt may be understood as a bifurcation process in such individual trajectories. It may have entailed a series of disruptions in everyday life to the extent of causing these Egyptian migrants to reconsider their positions within the French context.     

From nuclear imperialism to petro-democracy? Resource assemblages and the emergence of a new political configuration in Niger

The rentier state and resource curse concepts understand oil and uranium as fixed resources generating economic rents. In doing so, these theories largely ignore the social, economic, political and technological arrangements essential for a material substance like oil or uranium to become a resource. By comparing the diachronic and synchronic entanglements of the different socio-technical arrangements of oil and uranium in Niger, the assumption of the resource curse and rentier state theories, that resource revenues foster authoritarian tendencies, is revisited. Exploring the concept of resource assemblages, this article analyzes how political configurations are related to the process of resource exploitation. This perspective reveals that a new resource-political configuration in Niger has emerged since the beginning of oil production. Whereas Niger’s uranium-political configuration has long been characterized by a neocolonial discursive formation, the emerging petro-political configuration has produced a new resource nationalism in public opinion and governance which is transforming politics in Niger.     

‘My Neighbour Drinks Clean Water,While I Continue To Suffer’: An Analysis of the Intra-Community Impacts of a Rural Water Supply Project in Mozambique

Rural water planners assume the positive impacts of community water projects are spread evenly across the population. We test this assumption by looking at the distribution of benefits within communities that received handpumps in rural Mozambique. Using survey and qualitative data we analyse the characteristics of those groups who benefited from the handpumps and also explore household decision-making processes. Handpump use was determined by distance, availability of other sources, perceptions of water quality, political affiliation, and wealth. We argue that the handpumps reinforced existing social divisions related to income and political affiliation and created new geographic divisions within communities.