How can network leaders promote public value through soft metagovernance?

The aim of this article is to explore the opportunities and challenges of employing ‘soft’ metagovernance to promote public value in governance networks. Soft metagovernance can be defined as a form of relational leadership that is exercised through face‐to‐face contact. This involves making an emotional connection with people to exert influence through a collaborative endeavour, rather than employing bureaucratic authority. Drawing on a case study of a local social enterprise—The Bristol Pound—in the UK, this article examines how soft metagovernance can be used by non‐state actors as a form of leadership to create public value. Evidence reveals that relational forms of leadership are a powerful asset in helping leaders of networks to create public value. Moreover, if network leaders understand how soft metagovernance functions they can use it more purposefully to maximize public value creation and mitigate the risks of public value destruction in governance networks.     

What can we do to help and understand survivors of suicide in Hong Kong?

Survivors of suicide or people bereaved by suicide are underresearched and underserviced. This report contains preliminary data, collected from a psychological autopsy study, which examines the characteristics of suicide survivors in Hong Kong. This paper considers the preliminary data currently available and attempts to suggest a way forward toward understanding and help for this underrecognized group of individuals in Hong Kong.     

Making government efficient: How much waste can be cut from public programs?

The public administrator should be concerned with waste due to implementing programs inefficiently, not with waste due to implementing the wrong programs. Based upon a synthesis of efficiency studies using frontier analysis, the mean inefficiency of public programs is estimated at five percent. Efficiency gains beyond this level ordinarily require advances in technology, or changes in what constitutes best practice. While greater efficiency is a desirable goal, efficiency gains achieved through forced spending reductions need to be weighed against possible concomitant reductions in a program's quality of service, benefit to society, and cost-effectiveness. An efficiency analysis of an emergency medical service program illustrates the sort of information required to identify improvements in efficiency within this broader context.     

How Much Does Having a Bank Account Help the Poor?

Having a bank account is widely regarded as the first step toward financial inclusion of the poor. Funds deposited in a bank account are also observed to lead to higher savings. Exploiting special features of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) of India, our estimates indicate that households that receive NREGS wages through a bank do not appear to spend more on education than other comparable households that receive cash payment. The district level intention to treat specification produces similar results. The findings suggest that the rural poor face constraints in accessing their bank accounts due to financial illiteracy and other problems.     

How can emerging powers speak? On theorists,native informants and quasi-officials in International Relations discourse

Emerging powers like China, India and Brazil are receiving growing attention as objects in International Relations (IR) discourse. Scholars from these emerging powers are rarely present as subjects in mainstream IR discourse, however. This paper interrogates the conditions for scholars in emerging powers to speak back to the mainstream discipline. It argues, first, that ‘theory speak’ is rare from scholars based in periphery countries perceived to be ‘emerging powers’. Despite increasing efforts to create a ‘home-grown’ theoretical discourse in China, India and Brazil, few articles in mainstream journals present novel theoretical frameworks or arguments framed as non-Western/Southern theory or even as a ‘Chinese school’ or ‘Brazilian concepts’. Second, scholars from emerging powers tend to speak as ‘native informants’ about their own country, not about general aspects of ‘the international’. Third, some scholars even speak as ‘quasi-officials’, that is, they speak for their country.