Marching to Different Drummers? The Performance Effects of Alignment between Political and Managerial Perceptions of Performance Management

The relationship between politicians and bureaucrats is central to the administration of modern democratic societies, yet it often is neglected in studies of the performance of public organizations. In this article, the authors examine the performance effects of alignment between politicians’ and senior managers’ perceptions of one of the more pervasive public management reforms over recent decades: performance management. Evidence from a panel of English local governments supports the hypothesis that alignment of views between politicians and senior managers on performance management is associated with better organizational performance. Furthermore, this relationship is strengthened in organizations that display higher levels of role flexibility by managers and greater trust between politicians and managers.     

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.     

Agency Termination in the UK: What Explains the ‘Bonfire of the Quangos’?

In October 2010, the UK’s Coalition Government announced a radical reduction in the number of public bodies in the UK. This research tests the impact of three factors identified in the termination literature as affecting agency survival: political turnover, age and agency type. The research found that advisory Non-Departmental Public Bodies were five times more likely to have been identified for abolition or merger than other agency types. The research also found that agency age was a factor, but that political turnover was not significant.     

Human Interest or Hard Numbers? Experiments on Citizens’ Selection,Exposure, and Recall of Performance Information

The abundance of quantitative performance information has motivated multiple studies about how citizens make sense of “hard” performance data. However, research in psychology emphasizes that episodic information (e.g., case stories) often leaves a greater mark on citizens. This contradiction is tested using multiple experiments embedded in a large, nationally representative sample of Danish citizens. The results stress three differences between statistical and episodic data. Citizens have strong preferences for statistical data when asked to evaluate an organization. However, episodic information has in some instances a stronger impact on citizens’ evaluations of an organization and often is more emotionally engaging than statistics. Finally, when asked to immediately recall recent performance information about public services, citizens report more elaborate information about personalized stories and experiences than about statistics. Overall, the results raise questions about the ability of hard performance data to dominate and crowd out episodic performance information.     

Does Family‐Friendly Policy Matter? Testing Its Impact on Turnover and Performance

This study investigates the relative effects of four types of family‐friendly policies—child care subsidies, paid leave for family care, telework, and alternative work schedules—on turnover rates and effectiveness in federal agencies. Contemporary social exchange theory predicts that an agency’s average level of satisfaction with a specific family‐friendly policy is negatively associated with turnover in the agency but positively associated with overall performance. This analysis differs from common expectations. Only child care subsidies show a positive, significant influence on reducing turnover. Child care subsidies and alternative work schedules reflect positive and significant influences on agency effectiveness. Ironically, an agency’s average satisfaction with telework arrangements proves to be a significant but negative effect on performance.     

Does Disclosure of Performance Information Influence Street‐level Bureaucrats’ Enforcement Style?

Governments use different regulatory instruments to ensure that businesses owners or “inspectees” comply with rules and regulations. One tool that is increasingly applied is disclosing inspectees’ performance information to other stakeholders. Disclosing performance information has consequences for street‐level bureaucrats because it increases the visibility of their day‐to‐day work. Using a survey (n = 507) among Dutch inspectors of the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, this article shows that the disclosure of performance information has an impact on enforcement style at the street level. Findings show that perceived disclosed performance information positively enhances all three dimensions of street‐level bureaucrats’ enforcement style (legal, facilitation, and accommodation). This effect is strongest for facilitation and accommodation and weakest for the legal style. Perceived resistance by inspectees partly explains this effect. Contrary to expectations, more perceived disclosure does not result in more but in less perceived resistance of inspectees by street‐level bureaucrats.     

What Have We Learned about the Performance of Council‐Manager Government? A Review and Synthesis of the Research

The 100th anniversary of the International City/County Management Association provides an excellent point to review and assess research on the performance of the council‐manager form of government. The development of the council‐manager form arguably has been the most important innovation in American local government over the last century, yet its impact on the performance of municipal governments is not well understood. This article reviews and assesses the empirical evidence for 10 propositions that council‐manager governments perform better than mayor‐council governments. This evidence indicates that although progress has been made on demonstrating differences in representation and functionality, the proposition that council‐manager governments are better managed than mayor‐council governments has yet to be seriously engaged in this literature. Filling this critical gap requires progress in two areas: the development of theory to explain why council‐manager governments are better‐managed organizations and the production of evidence assessing the major propositions of this theory.     

Ending in Failure? The Performance of ‘Takeover’ Prime Ministers 1916–2016

When Theresa May became Prime Minister in July 2016, she joined a list of eleven previous UK takeover leaders in the past 100 years. While the popular image is of Prime Ministers arriving in power after a general election victory, more than half of the Prime Ministers who governed since 1916 have acceded as ‘takeover leaders’ through an internal party process. This article analyses how such takeover leaders perform, concluding that May is likely to face greater obstacles and enjoy fewer advantages than if she had been popularly elected. Takeover leaders have less time in power and less chance of winning subsequent elections, and are generally rated as worse‐performing.     

The What,Where, and When of Place-Based Housing Policy’s Neighborhood Effects

Ever-scarce affordable housing production resources, in addition to their primary function of providing housing for those in need, are increasingly enlisted for the dual goals of strengthening distressed communities and increasing access to higher opportunity neighborhoods. Information on spillovers can inform investment decisions over time and across communities. We leverage recent, high-quality research on neighborhood effects of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) production, synthesizing evidence according to neighborhood context. We also summarize the evidence on project features moderating impacts of publicly subsidized, place-based rental housing, in general. We conclude that context matters. Producing LIHTC housing in distressed neighborhoods positively impacts the surrounding neighborhood—in terms of modest property value gains and increased safety. By contrast, higher opportunity neighborhoods experience small property value reductions, and no impacts on crime. Big questions remain, however, about impact heterogeneity—via tenant mix, property design, and ongoing property management, as examples—with the scarcity of systematic data representing one of the field’s largest constraints.     

‘Genre Blurring’ and Public Administration: What Can We Learn from Ethnography?

This article seeks to broaden the craft of public administration by ‘blurring genres’. First, I explain the phrase ‘blurring genres’. Second, I provide some examples of early work in administrative ethnography. Third, I compare this early, modernist‐empiricist ethnography with interpretive ethnography, suggesting researchers confront three choices: naturalism vs. anti‐naturalism; intensive vs. hit‐and‐run fieldwork; and generalisation vs. local knowledge. After this general discussion, and fourth, I discuss the more prosaic issues that confront anyone seeking to use ethnography to study public administration and look at fieldwork roles, relevance, time, evidence and fieldwork relationships. Fifth, I describe and illustrate the several tools students of public administration can use as well as observation and interviews; namely, focus groups, para‐ethnography, visual ethnography, and storytelling. Finally, I conclude that ethnographic fieldwork provides texture, depth and nuance, and lets interviewees explain the meaning of their actions. It is an indispensable tool and a graphic example of how to enrich public administration by drawing on the theories and methods of the humanities.     

Values,trust and democracy in Germany: Still in search of ‘inner unity’?

Twenty years after German reunification, surveys have persistently uncovered differences in political trust between the eastern and western parts of the country. Studies have offered disintegrated and inconclusive assessments of the cross‐regional variation. This variation is traced to a tenacious, retrospective sympathy for socialism steeped in political socialisation and experiential learning. Empirical analyses confirm the presence of two key effects. First, retrospective evaluations of socialism not only fuel popular distrust of political institutions, but are more strongly correlated with trust in the east. Second, East–West evaluations of socialism are sufficiently different to contribute towards explaining the contrasting levels of trust between the two regions. That socialist values constitute a core axis upon which East German attitudes pivot presents a challenge for nurturing trust in democratic institutions and renews attention to processes through which supportive attitudes to democracy are acquired in transitional countries.     

Who ‘marries’ whom? The influence of societal connectedness,economic and political homogeneity,and population size on jurisdictional consolidations

For decades, political scientists have been asking how political jurisdictions are formed and reshaped. Nevertheless, studies of local government jurisdictional formation are few and often plagued with endogeneity since the formation of jurisdictions cannot be separated from sorting effects. In this article, the unique case of the Danish structural reform is utilised to overcome endogeneity due to migration‐related sorting by studying patterns of municipal amalgamations. In the recent Danish reform, 239 of 271 municipal entities were forced to amalgamate simultaneously, while who actually amalgamated with whom was left entirely to negotiations between the respective municipalities. Applying logistical regression to a dataset where the unit of analysis is dyads of municipalities allows the construction of a relational model for estimating the effect of different political and societal variables on the likelihood of amalgamation. Societal connectedness, population size and geography are important predictors of amalgamation patterns, while political and economic homogeneity between municipalities does not appear to matter much.     

What Does ‘Collaboration’ Without Government Look Like? The Network Qualities of an Emerging Partnership

Cross‐sectoral partnerships are increasingly common in Australian human service delivery. Yet research has not often focused on partnerships where private actors broker an arrangement to address complex community needs. Using a combination of interviews, focus groups, and social network analysis (SNA), this paper investigates the network qualities of a nascent partnership between a not for profit (NFP) service provider and a major retail water company that seeks to address financial hardship. Ultimately, we assess whether this represents genuine collaboration or another form of joint action. We find that the privately steered partnership generates instrumental benefits characteristic of cross‐sectoral arrangements, as well as challenges. SNA reveals a very high degree of connection between the partner organisations, but the results suggest that the partnership is coordinative rather than collaborative. We also find that this is leading to tacit organisational and institutional modifications as the NFP assumes a ‘market facing’ posture and adjusts to the demands of working with private sector partners. However, at this early stage of development, the level of systemic adjustment between both organisations remains incomplete.     

‘And What Good Came of it at Last?’ Press–Politician Relations Post‐Leveson

James Margach famously argued that Prime Ministers from Lloyd George to Callaghan had been intent on exploiting the media in their determination to centralise power. From Margaret Thatcher onwards, however, there is a strong argument that the power relationship has been reversed, and that the Leveson Inquiry—set up in the wake of the phone hacking scandal—exposed a political class which had become deeply fearful of the power and influence of the national press. Citing evidence to Leveson and subsequent recommendations by the inquiry, this article presents two case studies—on data protection and on media ownership—where the public interest clearly demanded political intervention, which would be inconvenient for the major publishers. And yet, despite recommendations by Lord Justice Leveson and despite clear support from leading politicians of all parties, there has been virtually no policy progress in either case. While the Leveson Inquiry was billed as a watershed in press–politician relations and an opportunity to counteract decades of unhealthy press power, political inertia in these two areas suggests that very little has changed.     

Same Bed,Different Dreams? Structural Factors and Leadership Characteristics of Central Government Agency Reform in China

ABSTRACT

The reorganization of government agencies can be studied as a pre-reform process in terms of the structural changes made, or as a post-reform process in terms of the effects of the reorganization. In this study of two mergers of agencies in China’s central administration, we focus on structural features and the post-merger process, paying special attention to structural and cultural integration. Our qualitative analyses reveal that the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) is considered to have been more successful in merging agencies and integrating functions than the State Administration for Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT). We found that using physical arrangements and leadership features as explanatory variables generated helpful theoretical and policy implications for organizational architecture and public sector reforms.     

What should government do? Problems of social cost, externalities and all that

Public Choice as a field introduced the framework for a methodical economic analysis of political markets. The output of these markets, of course, is reflected by the role that government plays. That is specifically true with respect to the organization of economic activity. Gordon Tullock has studied a myriad of aspects of this topic for more than half a century. We examine his answers to the question of “What should government do?” and how they have influenced and are still impacting the discussion on the proper role of government in the economy.     

The Contemporary Relationship of ‘New Left’ and ‘New Right’ Parties with Interest Groups: Exceptional or Mainstream? The Case of Norway's Socialist Left and Progress Party

Allegedly, the new green and left parties that were established in Western Europe during or after the 1960s tend to be characterized by informal but significant links with social movement organizations. In contrast, weak links or virtual lack of such connections is often seen as one of the enduring characteristics of the new populist (radical) right parties. However, there are both empirical and theoretical reasons for examining these conventional wisdom(s) more closely. To date, only limited evidence is available on this aspect of new European parties in general. Examining Norway's successful new left and populist right party, and based on rich original data, this case study adds to our knowledge in several ways. The analysis reveals that the socialist left has even closer and more wide‐ranging relationships with interest groups than traditionally suggested and that the Progress Party enjoys organized contact with various interest groups. Since these parties are only two, and not necessarily quintessential examples of the party families in question, the results cannot overturn the conventional wisdom, but they nonetheless question and supplement it by throwing light on the conditions favouring the development of stronger, and more varied, links to interest groups. Together with other presumably ‘atypical’ party examples mentioned in scholarly literature, the case of Norway calls for further empirical investigation. Finally, with an eye to future comparative research, the possible explanations for these findings are briefly discussed.     

‘How Do You Think I Feel? It's My Country’: Belonging,Entitlement and the Politics of Immigration

Current debates around immigration are informed by hierarchies of belonging, with some groups seen to belong more, and therefore deserve more, than others. This link between belonging and entitlement has been predominantly analysed in relation to struggles over access to key material benefits, such as jobs, housing, healthcare and so on. This paper will argue that these struggles also point to the continuing relevance of nationhood to many people's sense of self, community and place and the value that comes from being positioned, and recognised, as part of a group that lies at the heart of national life and culture. In other words, the ‘politics of immigration’ is about the anxieties and concerns of those who no longer feel ‘at home’ in what they consider to be ‘their’ country.