Local E‐Government in the United States: Transformation or Incremental Change?

In this article, the authors address the recent trajectory of local e‐government in the United States and compare it with the predictions of early e‐government writings, using empirical data from two nationwide surveys of e‐government among American local governments. The authors find that local e‐government has not produced the results that those writings predicted. Instead, its development has largely been incremental, and local e‐government is mainly about delivering information and services online, followed by a few transactions and limited interactivity. Local e‐government is also mainly one way, from government to citizens, and there is little or no evidence that it is transformative in any way. This disparity between early predictions and actual results is partly attributable to the incremental nature of American public administration. Other reasons include a lack of attention by early writers to the history of information technology in government and the influence of technological determinism on those writings.     

What to Do Here? What to Do There? The Effect of Change in Organization Size on Public Management

For a long time, researchers have been interested in the consequences of creating larger public organizations. The outcomes of changes in the size of public organizations have been relatively widely studied; however, much less is known about the internal processes through which these outcomes are actually achieved. This article explores whether changes in organizational size affect public management. As endogeneity is an inherent problem when studying outcomes of organizational size, we apply a quasi-experimental design in order to establish the causal linkage between size and different elements of public management. We use unique survey data collected before and after a large reform that changed the size of most Danish municipalities. The results suggest that public management related to daily operations is generic and not affected by size, whereas public management related to overall tasks such as creating a vision, servicing the mayor, and maintaining external relations is positively affected by size changes.     

Varying Costs to Change? Institutional Change in the Public Sector

Many scholars have argued that social programs are marked by a logic of “increasing returns” that makes change difficult. Yet over the past decades, reformers across industrialized countries have introduced substantial administrative reforms in these services, even as entitlement reform remains politically difficult. This paper explains these shifts by breaking apart the logic of “increasing returns” into three distinct “costs to change”: technical, political, and expectations. Decreases in a particular type of costs produce different logics of institutional change—back end, informal, and front end—that privilege the state, professionals or private, or political actors in distinct ways. I support these claims by reexamining three cases that were considered exemplars of stability but that ultimately had major entitlement reform: health care in the United Kingdom and United States and welfare programs in the United States. I show that even before radical reforms occurred, reformers introduced distinct logics of administrative change that underpinned later changes.     

Are We Being Served? Emotional Labour in Local Government in Victoria,Australia

This paper explores how front‐line street‐level bureaucrats (SLBs) cope with the expectations of citizens, clients, or ‘customers’ in daily work and how SLBs may be impacted by emotional labour. The study analyses data from 41 interviews with SLBs in local councils in Victoria, Australia. Although exploratory, it builds awareness and understanding of the emotional labour associated with public service. The situations that SLBs engage with on a daily basis are many and varied and take the form of increased expectations and intense encounters. Respondents experienced abuse, threats, violence, but also ‘sparkle moments’. Resources that helped SLBs cope are diverse and located both within and outside organisations. Implications are discussed and issues that merit additional investigation are raised concerning how SLBs can be supported to better meet the demands of the public. The research is of value to public managers and SLBs operating in a changing society with increased ‘customer’ expectations.     

When Do Municipal Consolidations Reduce Government Expenditures? Evidence on the Role of Local Involvement

Higher levels of government motivate municipal consolidations as a tool to increase efficiency in the local government sector, yet research shows that consolidations typically fail to deliver the promised spending reductions. Since mergers often require significant changes to institutional structures, one explanation is that local decision makers can substantially influence the outcomes of the consolidation process. To explore this possibility, this article contrasts “encouraged but voluntary” mergers with those that were “forced” on local governments in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Results show that voluntary mergers resulted in a 10 percent decline in total per capita expenditures, but forced consolidations failed to reduce spending across the board. The policy conclusion is that decision makers considering structural reform should invest in obtaining the support and participation of local government decision makers.     

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 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.     

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.     

Whatever Happened to Overloaded Government?

Anthony King was, among other things, an outstandingly acute public intellectual. His work on overload and policy fiasco exemplifies this. His original diagnosis in his famous paper of 1975 was deeply pessimistic in character, but subsequent adaptations by government solved many of the original problems arising from dependency relations. These adaptations amounted to the creation of a Madisonian system of regulation that insulated policy makers from democratic pressures. But these adaptations in turn created new difficulties that lie at the root of the analysis in King and Crewe's The Blunders of our Governments, published nearly four decades after King's original classic paper.     

Haven't We Been This Way Before? Evaluation and the Impediments to Policy Learning

In this paper, we focus on a policy trial that was undertaken in a complex and controversial policy field (Indigenous community development), with the avowed objective of learning from experience in the field . We observe that despite significant implementation effort and quality evaluation, little systematic policy learning occurred. Four impediments are identified: (i) the policy environment was highly politicized and contested, (ii) the results challenged accepted ways of working, (iii) there were no systematic processes for policy learning to occur, and (iv) the learnings were distorted by inter‐agency competition and associated ‘labelling’. We suggest that, in controversial policy fields, the most useful first step in enhancing evaluation‐use is for bureaucracies to institute systematic processes for evaluation findings to be considered, with the aim of elaborating ‘what works’ into a consensual approach to change. Without change of this kind, evaluation‐use will remain a failed area of policy.     

Do Deferred Retirement Benefits Retain Government Employees?

This study explores how deferred retirement benefits affect employee retention in the U.S. public sector. State government employees in Michigan transitioned from a defined-benefit pension with 10-year vesting to a defined-contribution plan with immediate vesting and less generous retiree health insurance benefits. Participation in either plan depends on date of hire, permitting a regression discontinuity research design. The shift away from generous deferred benefits caused a 5 percentage point decrease in the probability of remaining in state employment for at least a decade. The probability of leaving with four to nine years of tenure increased commensurately. Older professional workers were quite responsive to the design of their retirement benefits, whereas younger workers did not adjust their labor supply.     

Learning in Denmark? The Case of Danish Parliamentary Control over European Union Policy

The Danish parliament is renowned for its influence over Danish European Union (EU) policy. Contrary to popular belief, this strength is now in question. The most central feature of the Danish EU decision‐making model is parliamentary control over the executive expressed in political mandates before Council meetings. In 1973, this was a perfectly reasonable way for the Danish parliament to influence EU policy. Today, the status of the Council has changed, severely challenging the ability of the Danish parliament to secure influence over EU policy. This article demonstrates that the Danish European Affairs Committee is aware of the changes in European decision‐making, and that the lack of adaptation, despite this knowledge, is due to structural and cultural barriers to learning in the Danish Folketing. This study reveals that our understanding of particular responses to the pressure of Europeanization is enhanced when the conditions for learning and ‘non‐learning’ are spelled out.     

Ties That Bind? Effects of Inter‐level Mobility on MP Attitude to Local Government in Two Scandinavian Countries

The aim of this article is to examine to what degree the movement of elected representatives from local to central level affects the outlook of the ones who move ‘upwards’. Two Scandinavian countries – Sweden and Norway – serve as comparative cases. In both countries a high share of members of parliament (MPs) has served as local councillors before being elected to parliament. According to conventional wisdom, this high share of inter‐level mobility would strengthen ties between government tiers. Hence, parliamentarians with local political background are assumed to have greater confidence in the capacities of local government. It turns out that Sweden corresponds to this assumption, while the Norwegian results to some extent contradict the same hypothesis. In the Norwegian case, MPs who previously held office as local councillors are actually more sceptical towards local government than MPs with no experience from local politics. In the last section of the article a number of explanations for the disparate findings are being discussed. For one, it appears to be a higher level of controversy related to local government in Norway than in Sweden. In turn, this accounts for some of the scepticism being expressed by the very MPs who themselves have held local office. Second, greater financial dependency in the Norwegian case creates incentives for strategic action which, in turn, might undermine confidence between levels of government. These are strategies that are harder to conceal vis‐à‐vis MPs who have themselves gained experience from local politics.     

The Future of Social Policy in Scotland: Will Further Devolved Powers Lead to Better Social Policies for Disabled People?

Scotland has laid claim to being ‘different’ from the rest of the UK with regards to disability policy. This article examines the evidence for that with regard to long‐term and social care, and discusses the possibilities opened up by the devolution of disability benefits. It asks whether Scotland will demonstrate policy divergence from the rest of the UK, and whether that is likely to be beneficial for disabled people. It argues that Scotland has the potential to create better social policies for disabled people, but faces significant challenges in doing so.     

Do Voters’ Coalition Preferences Affect Government Formation?

Studies on coalition formation assume that political parties have two major goals: they aim to maximise office and policy payoffs. This paper shows that decision-making in the government formation game is also determined by the voters’ coalition preferences. Since the coalition formation process is not a one-shot game, parties have to take the coalition preferences of the electorate into account when they evaluate the utility of potential coalitions. If parties fail to comply with the coalition preferences of voters, they are likely to be penalised in future elections. The argument is tested by an analysis of government formation in the 16 German states between 1990 and 2009. The results support the argument: the formation of coalitions – at least in the German states – is not only determined by office- and policy-seeking behaviour of political parties, but also by the preferences of voters regarding their preferred outcome of the coalition game.     

Do Policies of Multiculturalism Change National Identities?

‘Policies of multiculturalism are often criticised for undermining national identities in one of three ways and in this article I suggest why this is questionable and then point to a more plausible relationship between the two. More specifically, I offer a hypothesis which is that policies of multiculturalism change national identities and I argue that this hypothesis is both theoretically plausible and empirically plausible in at least one instance. This argument is made in three stages and in the first of them I explain what I think policies of multiculturalism and national identities are. In the second stage I present my hypothesis and explain why it is theoretically plausible. In the third stage I use new evidence to suggest why my hypothesis is also empirically plausible in at least one instance. In the final stage I show why a sceptic who might doubt whether my hypothesis is plausible in other instances need not do so.’     

Learning from the States? Federalism and National Health Policy

In its 1993 report, the Winter Commission gave direction to the federal government in the area of health policy and Medicaid: lead, follow, or get out of the way. This article examines how the federal government responded to that advice, specifically asking what has happened in the allocation of responsibility in health policies between 1993 and 2006. In short, unlike the suggestion that there be a better‐defined direction in federal–state policy assignments in health, the ensuing years have resulted in more of the same. The authors examine what has happened, particularly focusing on vertical diffusion—where the states have acted first—and on the role of policy learning in federal decision making. They find little recognition of policy learning in recent federal health laws—even in areas in which state experience was extensive. The federal government is leading in some health policies—but it is leading without learning.