Political culture, alternative politics and foreign policy: The case of Israel

This article analyzes how sociopolitical dynamics within a state can help explaining foreign policy. We show that under certain conditions, the public can be involved in ways that extend beyond expressing opinions that act as constraints on policy makers, and also takes active initiatives that eventually shape foreign policies. The article explains how sociopolitical processes in Israeli society, which transformed the nature of citizen–politician relations from a top-down to a bottom-up orientation, gradually led to shifts in foreign policy regarding the conflict with the Palestinians. The Israeli public has adopted an approach to solving social problems by unilateral initiatives, as part of its attempts to shape foreign policy from the bottom up, due to continuous government failure to provide public services, combined with blocked influence channels. As long as Israeli politicians ignored these changes, they failed to mobilize support for policies imposed from the top down and lost their positions of power.     

The political economy of dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is defined as the psychological discomfort or annoyance that may exist when an individual's choice is not consistent with his values and beliefs. Dissonance may cause an individual to reconsider his values and beliefs, enter new choices with different parameters, respond to the constraints imposed, or change his individual preference function. This paper extends Festinger's (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance to the work of public choice theorists and seeks to explain the incentives of the iron triangle to foment and quell dissonance. Examples are provided for specific environmental and health and safety risks. Akerlof and Dickens (1983) used cognitive dissonance to justify public sector intervention as necessary to correct what they perceived as a market failure in the choice of safety equipment by workers in hazardeus industries. Unlike Akerlof and Dickens (1983), we argue that the concept of cognitive dissonance is applicable to the analysis of public sector decisions giving rise to government failure as well as private decisions involving possible market failure. This paper views the public sector as a market-like arrangement in which dissonance may be produced and exchanged like any other commodity. Cognitive dissonance provides a useful framework for examining individual choice and also expands our understanding of the unseen elements of rent-seeking.     

Urban local government finance in Benin: The case of Cotonou Urban District I

The centralized system of government in the People's Republic of Benin was established when the country was a French colony. During the 1970s and 1980s, the government system was reorganized to conform to the principles of the ruling Marxist–Leninist regime. Deteriorating economic conditions have negatively affected the public sector in recent years. The capital city of Cotonou, however, has managed to perform better than other urban governments despite facing serious economic problems and many constraints imposed by a strict system of central control over local authorities. This paper examines the nature of and reasons for Cotonou's performance.     

Guerrilla Employees: Should Managers Nurture,Tolerate, or Terminate Them?

“Guerrilla government” is Rosemary O'Leary's term for the actions of career public servants who work against the wishes—either implicitly or explicitly communicated—of their superiors. This form of dissent is usually carried out by those who are dissatisfied with the actions of public organizations, programs, or people, but typically, for strategic reasons, choose not to go public with their concerns in whole or in part. Rather than acting openly, guerrillas often move clandestinely behind the scenes, salmon swimming against the current of power. Guerrillas run the spectrum from anti‐establishment liberals to fundamentalist conservatives, from constructive contributors to deviant destroyers. Three public managers with significant experience comment on O'Leary's thesis that guerrilla government is about the power of career bureaucrats; the tensions between career bureaucrats and political appointees; organization culture; and what it means to act responsibly, ethically, and with integrity as a public servant. Karl Sleight, former director of the New York State Ethics Commission; David Warm, executive director of the Mid‐America Regional Council of Greater Kansas City; and Ralph R, Bauer, former deputy regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Seattle and Chicago regions, present unique perspectives on the “guerrilla” influence on policy and management, as well as the challenges posed by this ever‐present public management phenomenon.

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The management and administration of parastatal organizations for the promotion of indigenous enterprise: A West African Experience

Among the various functional types of public corporation and statutory authority, those concerned with the regulation and provision of economic opportunities and social amenities constitute one of the most interesting developments in West Africa's parastatal sector today. Taking as a case study the recent initiatives of the Ghana Government ta promote indigenous enterprise (which have had an important demonstration effect on neighbouring Nigeria), the article analyses the performance of parastatal organizations that have been instrumental in fulfilling public policy objectives in this area. It examines first the management objectives established by the guiding legislation, secondly the corresponding choice of organizational structure, and finally the ways in which parastatal managers therein endeavour to implement the tasks of redistributing opportunities between foreign and indigenous private enterprise. Particular emphasis is placed on the innovative roles played by public officials and their organizations in mediating between government and the two segments of the private sector (foreign and indigenous). This includes especially the organization for disinvestment and the management of access to opportunities thereby created: identification of affected business and evaluation of their assets, provision of information for applicants, determination of rules of eligibility for the channelling of demand, supervision of purchase, transfer of management and labour relations during the period of negotiation and transfer. Finally, the article considers the effectiveness of resources use by recipients of enterprises, including patterns of distribution amongst the latter, in order to determine the impact of parastatal organization procedures on policy outcomes.     

Katrinanomics: The politics and economics of disaster relief

Hurricane Katrina revealed massive governmental failure at the local, state and federal levels. This commentary brings the modern theory of property rights and public choice reasoning to bear in explaining why officials failed to strengthen New Orleans's levee system despite forewarning of its weaknesses, failed to pre-deploy adequate emergency supplies as the storm approached landfall and failed to respond promptly afterwards. Its main lesson is that no one should have expected government to be any more effective when confronted with natural disaster than it is in more mundane circumstances.     

Sweden: The Fall of the Strong State

From the 1930s to the 1980s, Swedish politics was based on the assumption that social change could be accomplished through a specific political and administrative process. National politicians decided the aims of policy, government commissions of inquiry engaged experts who compiled available knowledge, Parliament turned the resulting proposal into law, a civil service agency implemented the policy and local authorities put it into effect. This rationalistic model of social steering can be called 'the strong state'. This article documents the fall of the strong state. It also argues that these changes to the output side of government have troubling im-plications for the operation of democracy. The reason is that the strong state model provided citizens with a reasonably clear idea of how public policies were – or should be – produced and implemented. As a result of the strong state's decline, the link from elections to policy is partly obscure, partly broken. The question for the future is whether the strong state will be replaced by some new model that provides the necessary focal points for debates on public policy, or whether stable norms will remain absent due to an inherently obscure division of labour within Sweden's policy-making and administrative structures.     

The Western Australian Regional Forest Agreement: Economic Rationalism and the Normalisation of Political Closure

This article explores the constraints imposed by economic rationalism on environmental policy‐making in light of Western Australia's (WA) Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) experience. Data derived from interviews with WA RFA stakeholders shed light on their perceptions of the RFA process and its outcomes. The extent to which involvement of science and the public RFA management enabled is analysed. The findings point to a pervasive constrainedness of WA's RFA owing to a closing of the process by the administrative decision‐making structures. A dominant economic rationality is seen to have normalised and legitimised political closure, effectively excluding rationalities dissenting from an implicit economic orthodoxy. This article argues for the explication of invisible, economic constraints affecting environmental policy and for the public‐cum‐political negotiation of the points of closure within political processes.     

Whither the New Zealand Experiment: Thermidorean Reaction or Rediscovering the Importance of Capacity - Some views from New Zealand

To trace the main trajectory of New Zealand's public management reforms, let us take some recent assessments from two Prime Ministers ‐ one who initiated the reforms, the other who inherited them.

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The impact of women above the political glass ceiling: Evidence from a Norwegian executive gender quota reform

Women have historically been underrepresented in democratic assemblies, particularly in top positions with executive powers. Most gender quota reforms address this by mandating a more equal gender representation on election lists. In contrast, a 1992 legislative reform in Norway required parties' candidate lists for the local executive board to comprise at least 40% politicians of each gender. This legal change was not only exogenously imposed by a higher-level government, but also generated distinct quota-induced constraints across Norwegian municipalities. We exploit the resulting variation in ‘quota shocks’ using a difference-in-differences design to identify the quota's effect on women's political representation as well as local public policies. We find that more women enter the executive board after the reform, though spill-overs on women's representation in the local council and on the probability of a female mayor or top administrator are weak. We also find no consistent evidence for shifts in public policies due to increased representation of women in positions with executive powers.     

PUBLIC AND CORPORATE DUTIES: THE LLOYD CASE IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Abstract: In its broadest sense, this paper is about public and corporate accountability in Australia. In its narrowest sense, it examines the implications for senior public officers of the trial of Tony Lloyd in Western Australia. Lloyd was convicted in 1991 of acting improperly in his capacity as a director of Western Colleries Ltd during one of the last attempted rescues of Rothwells Ltd by the state government and the Bond Corporation in 1988. He successfully appealed, not against the conviction, but against the two-year sentence of imprisonment. The comments of the three judges of the Supreme Court are directly relevant to contemporary interpretations of the roles and relationships between business and government, and between public servants, government advisers and company directors.
The first section of the paper examines obligations and constraints imposed on individuals who have public duties, and how these are currently being interpreted in Western Australia. It refers to the uncertainties and imprecision which have developed in understandings of private and political interests, company and public duties, in both convention and the law. This discussion is the background for the detailed analysis which follows of the Lloyd case and its implications for Australian public servants.     

Did they ‘Read Before Burning’? The Coalition and Quangos

Attitudes to quangos are paradoxical. On the one hand they are perceived to be undemocratic, unaccountable organisations, while on the other they are seen to improve effectiveness, limit political interference and increase public confidence in government. This paradox is reflected in the behaviour of political parties, which generally adopt a harsh line towards quangos in opposition, but come to rely on these bodies in office. Ahead of the 2010 general election it was, however, noticeable that the Conservative party rejected this dynamic by promising to pursue ‘a more sophisticated approach’. This article explores the Coalition government's subsequent ‘public bodies reform programme’, assessing its progress against recommendations contained within the Institute for Government's Read before Burning report of July 2010. It concludes that while the Coalition has addressed long‐standing concerns about the day‐to‐day governance of public bodies, it has failed to resolve a set of broader and strategic (metagovernance) issues.     

Government Reform,Political Ideology,and Administrative Burden: The Case of Performance Management in the Bush Administration

This article examines how ideological differences between political officials and agencies may have affected the implementation of an ostensibly nonpartisan, government‐wide administrative initiative: the George W. Bush administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) review of federal programs. The analysis reveals that managers in agencies associated with liberal programs and employees (“liberal agencies”) agreed to a greater extent than those in agencies associated with conservative programs and employees (“conservative agencies”) that PART required significant agency time and effort and that it imposed a burden on management resources. Further analysis reveals that differences in reported agency effort can be explained partly by objective differences in the demands that PART placed on agencies—liberal agencies were required to evaluate more programs and implement more improvement plans relative to their organizational capacity—and partly by the ideological beliefs of employees—on average, liberal managers reported more agency effort, even after accounting for objective measures of administrative burden.     

Public enterprise in Algeria: Law as a bridge between ideology and reality

In 1971, the Algerian government promulgated the Charte de l'Organisation Socialiste des Entreprises. By means of this Charte it ostensibly sought to reform Algerian public enterprise law and to correct increasingly disruptive problems in public enterprise management. It also sought to reduce the widening gap between workers and the technocratic elite managing the state-controlled economy. The Charte and its subsequent implementing legislation have been criticized as being, at best, ambiguous; at worst, insincere. Moreover, implementation of la gestion socialiste, as the reform came to be known, was uneven and slow. This article discusses Algerian public enterprise law before and after the 1971 reform. It does so within the context of comparing the utility of applying a symbolic rather than an instrumental view of the role of law in development. On the basis of analysis of the Algerian experience, the article suggests that the symbolic view of law allows a much deeper understanding of the role of law in development, primarily because it allows, if not requires, consideration of the influence of economic, political and social factors on the role of law in developing countries.     

Drinking from the Talent Pool: A Resource Endowment Theory of Human Capital and Agency Performance

This article advances a resource endowment theory of human capital and performance in government organizations. Building on research on human capital and firm location in business economics and task complexity in public management, the authors argue that an agency's ability to implement policy is determined both by its scale and by the human capital of the population from which it draws its employees. The authors cast labor as a factor of production in public agencies and argue that access to higher‐quality labor improves government effectiveness. The effect of human capital on performance is especially pronounced when agencies are charged with the implementation of technically complex tasks. The empirical subject is U.S. municipal water utilities’ compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act. Comparing records of compliance with more and less complex regulatory requirements provides evidence consistent with the general model. The findings carry important implications for public management and policy design.     

The Impact of Customer Orientation on Government Employee Performance

ABSTRACT

This article explores the impact of “customer service” orientation on government employee performance. Although public organizations have been encouraged to become customer-centered organizations, concerns exist about the application of such market orientations to the management of government organizations. This article joins in the customer orientation debate by exploring the impact of customer orientation on employee motivation and performance. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis of data from civilian employees at a Department of Defense installation, this study explores the impact of customer orientation on employee performance and motivation, across time and work roles.

Consistent with previous research that suggests that customer orientation is positively associated with public and private employee performance and work attitudes, the results of this study suggest that customer service orientation has a strong positive impact on employee performance and motivation. Employee customer orientation provides a connection to the organization's goals consistent with employees' affective and normative values of public service, and feedback necessarily to improve service delivery. The impact of formal management systems may be enhanced by their ability to strengthen an employee's customer orientation. Ultimately, however, efforts to create a more “market”-based orientation focused on institutional customers who purchase services may have limited impact, or even a deleterious effect on, employee performance and motivation, unless also accompanied by formal linkages to service beneficiaries.     

Complex Contracting: Management Challenges and Solutions

Governments at all levels buy mission‐critical goods and services whose attributes and performance requirements are hard to define and produce. Many governments—and the public managers who lead them—lack experience and knowledge about how to contract for complex products. The contract management counsel provided to public managers is thin. Missing is a conceptual managerial framework to guide purchasing the complex products that are often so critical to public organizations' core missions. Drawing on perspectives from across the social sciences, the framework presented in this article provides guidance on how managers can harness the upsides of complex contracting while avoiding its pitfalls. The framework helps identify conditions that increase the likelihood of positive outcomes for the purchasing government and the vendor—the win‐win. To illustrate the framework, the article provides examples of successful and failed acquisitions for complex products such as transportation projects, social service systems, and information technology systems.     

ACCOUNTABILITY AND PERFORMANCE IN PUBLIC ENTERPRISE: THE BRITISH DEBATE*

Abstract: This paper examines recent developments in the debate in Britain about the role of public enterprises which are wholly owned by the State, that is, the nationalized industries. The changing political and economic context surrounding public enterprise is briefly outlined and the successive attempts to give operational significance to concepts of accountability and performance are noted. In the light of this review recent developments in the framework of control are discussed. It is argued that the parliamentary system has failed to develop adequate criteria of accountability and performance for the nationalized industries, in part because of inherent difficulties common to systems of representative government, which in Britain have been exacerbated by a declining rate of economic growth and attendant attempts to reduce public expenditure.     

Federalism and regional interest intermediation in Brazilian public policies

Brazil became a highly decentralized country following democratization and the 1988 Constitution. The consequences of decentralization at the federal level are quite clear: the federal government is facing financial constraints and difficulties in building governing coalitions, allowing the Presidents to govern and to implement public policies, especially those concerning fiscal control. At the level of the states, however, the results of decentralization are quite heterogeneous given the country's high degree of regional inequality. The article identifies the cleavages and tensions surrounding federal–state relations, as well as the mutual dependency of the states and the federal government. It argues that the Brazilian experience of political and financial decentralization has contributed to the prospects of democratic consolidation and has forced the federal government to negotiate and compromise with subnational governments the implementation of national policies. On the other hand, the Brazilian experience highlights the constraints of decentralization in countries with deep‐rooted regional disparities. Furthermore, the financial weakness of the federal government which has been brought about by decentralization and by fiscal control brings new tensions to the federal arrangements and to public policies. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ideology in Policy Debates: Congress and the S&Ls in the 1980s

Is a national value such as free enterprise relevant to congressional debates of important economic policy bills? This question was examined using debates of three reform bills that dealt with savings and loan industry problems in the 1980s. To employ free enterprise concepts in justifying policy stands challenged legislators because industry problems contrasted sharply in the early 1980s (overregulation) and later (excesses under deregulation). Research demonstrated, however, that free enterprise concepts dominated the earlier discussions and, intriguingly, were at the center of the 1989 debate about bailing out the industry and reforming it. The conclusion elaborates free enterprise's role and speculates about the influence of another national value on the S & L discussions. Enactment of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery Enforcement Act of 1989¹ capped a decade of congressional struggle with the question of how to treat the problems of federal savings and loan institutions. Popularly known as “thrifts” or “S & Ls,” their status became a matter of increasing concern to Congress as the 1980s unfolded and public indignation over a prospective government bailout of unprecedented proportions mounted. This article focuses on an aspect of this struggle that has a larger significance, namely, the place of national values2 in the genesis of important economic policy statutes. Given the predilections of American society, the value that tends to loom largest in major economic policy debates is popularly know as “free enterprise” or “the market economy.” One may reasonably object that U.S. capitalism operates under a “mixed economy” whose features include enterprises owned or sponsored by the federal government as well as government subsidies and regulation of private businesses. The short answer to this objection is that the term free enterprise is used here in a mythic sense and “myths are an essential starting place for insights into how values shape policy…” (de Neufville and Barton, 1987). In essence, this article examines the following questions: (1) Did congressional debates on proposed statutes relate provisions of the 1980, 1982, and 1989 bills to free enterprise concepts? (2) If so, what adjustments were made in these concepts for the sharply contrasting circumstances encountered by S & Ls in the course of the decade? and (3) How was the peculiar relationship of government deposit insurance of S & L accounts to free enterprise treated in the bills? Two background sections introduce the discussion.