Today's leaders: Career trends of Canada's private- and public-sector executives

Abstract: Today, a great deal of attention is focused on the need to change the management of the public service in order to improve customer service and increase efficiency. In many cases, unfavourable comparisons are made to the private sector. But little comparative analysis has actually been undertaken with reference to the career profiles of senior managers in Canada's public and private sectors. The Public Management Research Centre undertook a study comparing the backgrounds and management experiences of Canada's most senior executives in the public and private sectors. Information was gathered from seventy current heads of federal departments and agencies (deputy ministers - dms ) and from sixty-three chief executive officers (ceos ) of private companies of comparable size and importance. The results of this study, published in a document entitled Today's Leaders, indicate that it is likely that the top job in public-sector organizations will never be identical to that in the private sector. However, if improving the management of the public sector means adopting some elements of private-sector management techniques (e.g., alternative service delivery, increased customer service, greater attention to cost recovery and bottom-line), the thrust for these changes must come from senior management. In addition, current criteria for recruitment, development and promotion of future public-sector leaders must be re-evaluated. Sommaire: Le Centre de recherche en gestion dans le secteur public a effectué une étude comparant l'historique personnel et l'expérience de gestion des plus hauts cadres des secteurs public et privé au Canada. Les renseignements ont été recueillis auprès de 70 chefs titulaires de ministères et d'organismes fédéraux (sous-ministres) et de 63 présidents-directeurs généraux (pdg ) de compagnies privées d'envergure comparable. Publiés dans un document intituléLeaders d'aujourd'hui, les résultats de l'étude révèlent que le poste suprême des organismes publics ne sera probablement jamais identique à celui des organismes privés. D'autre part, s'il s'agit d'améliorer la gestion du secteur public en adoptant certains éléments de gestion du secteur privé (modes-alternatif de prestation de servies, meilleur service à la clientèle, recouvre-ment des coûts et rentabilité), ce sont les cadres supérieurs qui doivent en prendre l'initiative. Par ailleurs, il faut réévaluer les critères actuels de recrutement, de développement et de promotion des futurs du chefs de file secteur public.     

Multiparty electoral competition in the Netherlands and Germany: A model based on multinomial probit

A typical assumption of electoral models of party competition is that parties adopt policy positions so as to maximize expected vote share. Here we use Euro-barometer survey data and European elite-study data from 1979 for the Netherlands and Germany to construct a stochastic model of voter response, based on multinomial probit estimation. For each of these countries, we estimate a pure spatial electoral voting model and a joint spatial model. The latter model also includes individual voter and demographic characteristics. The pure spatial models for the two countries quite accurately described the electoral response as a stochastic function of party positions. We use these models to perform a thought experiment so as to estimate the expected vote maximizing party positions. We go on to propose a model of internal party decision-making based both on pre-election electoral estimation and post-election coalition bargaining. This model suggests why the various parties in the period in question did not adopt vote maximizing positions. We argue that maximizing expected vote will not, in general, be a rational party strategy in multiparty political systems which are based on proportional representation.     

Bureaucratic choice and nonoptimal provision of public goods: Theory and evidence

Local governments' allocation decisions are modeled in the context of a slack maximizing bureaucrat who produces public goods according to a production function that includes both provision and the constituents' socio-economic characteristics. To gain a better understanding of the determinants of slack, comparative statics and an empirical study of Illinois municipalities are conducted. The indirect output distance function provides efficiency scores upon which we regress several variables, representing socio-economic characteristics, costs and competition measures. We find that slack or inefficient behavior is associated with richer communities, lower education levels and a lack of competition for residents among municipalities.     

Changes in Trade Union–Government Relations 1974–2002

Even if the role of unions is less than it was, they are still an important aspect of civil society in a democracy like the UK, so that changes in the relationship between the TUC and the government are an important aspect of changing patterns of governance in the UK. Here, we analyse this relationship during the period between 1974 and 2002 based upon the reports of the General Council of the TUC to each TUC Annual Conference. The analysis shows that the contacts between the TUC and government have fluctuated significantly over this period. They did decline in the Thatcher years although, interestingly, contacts were greater under Thatcher than under Major. The election of a New Labour government in 1997 was accompanied by an initial increase in contacts, but contacts declined subsequently. These fluctuations clearly reflect policy changes so, for example, contacts decreased when incomes policies became a thing of the past. However, they also reflected changes of personnel in government; so the replacement of Pym by Tebbit in 1982 was quickly followed by a fall in contacts. As far as New Labour is concerned, their historical links with the trade unions still mean that contacts are greater now than they were under the Conservatives. However, the initial surge in contacts probably reflected a broader pattern, with New Labour delivering on a promise of greater consultation made in opposition.     

Taking the Keys from Grandpa

Recent highly publicized traffic accidents involving older drivers have led to renewed interest in state policies and administrative practices that award and renew drivers’ licenses in the American states. Because the probability of traffic accidents is linked to the medical conditions that are more prevalent among the elderly, and because the number of older drivers is expected to rise over the next several decades, one might expect that this will be an increasingly important policy issue. This article discusses variations that are observed across states in law and administrative practice. A longitudinal analysis of data on crashes involving elderly drivers in fifteen states indicates that crash rates are directly related to the length of the renewal cycle for older drivers and inversely related to the stringency of testing at renewal. It is also likely that states requiring physicians to report conditions that would impair driving will experience lower crash rates. A secondary analysis of policy impacts on the licensing rates is not conclusive, a finding that is attributable to inaccuracies in the reported numbers of licensed drivers.     

A Question of Morality: Artists' Values and Public Funding for the Arts

In 1989, the combination of art, religion, homosexuality, ana¹ public dollars set off an explosive two-year battle and a decade of skirmishes over funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. To promote artistic freedom and to avoid political controversy, federal arts policy delegates specific funding decisions to private donors and arts professionals. In an era of morality politics—hot-button issues driven by deeply held beliefs rather than by expertise—that strategy no longer works. Artists, donors, and arts audiences diverge widely from the rest of the American public in their attitudes toward religion, sexual morality, and civil liberties, as General Social Survey data show. Delegating funding decisions to them has naturally led to some subsidies of art offensive to important segments of the population.     

Indians 78, Washington State 0: Stories about Indians and the Law

In the 1970s Washington State lost a series of legal cases related to Native Americans. These cases exemplify the need for knowledge of federal Indian law-but such knowledge, out of context, is insufficient. Key aspects of federal Indian law are hard to accept because of conflicting stories that Americans already believe. The authors discuss the importance of stories and review commonly believed stories that block acceptance of federal Indian law. They then discuss basic principles of Indian law and distill four questions to help determine tribal jurisdiction. The authors review the Marshal trilogy—three Supreme Court cases that set the foundations of modern Native American law—and show how the legal principles play out in an analysis of three contemporary court cases.     

Democracy and Education Spending in Africa

While it is widely believed that electoral competition influences public spending decisions, there has been relatively little effort to examine how recent democratization in the developing world has resulted in changes in basic service provision. There have been even fewer attempts to investigate whether democracy matters for public spending in the poorest developing countries, where "weak institutions" may mean that the formal adoption of electoral competition has little effect on policy. In this article I confront these questions directly, asking whether the shift to multiparty competition in African countries has resulted in increased spending on primary education. I develop an argument, illustrated with a game-theoretic model, which suggests that the need to obtain an electoral majority may have prompted African governments to spend more on education and to prioritize primary schools over universities within the education budget. I test three propositions from the model using panel data on electoral competition and education spending in African countries. I find clear evidence that democratically elected African governments have spent more on primary education, while spending on universities appears unaffected by democratization .     

The Effects of Capital Mobility, Trade Openness, and Democracy on Social Spending in Latin America, 1980–1999

Empirical studies measuring the impact of globalization on social spending have appeared recently in leading journals. This study seeks to improve upon previous work by (1) employing a more sophisticated and comprehensive measure of financial openness; (2) using a more accurate measure of trade openness based on purchasing power parities; and (3) relying on social spending data that are more complete than those used by previous studies on Latin America. Our estimates suggest that several empirical patterns reported in previous work deserve a second look. We find that trade openness has a positive association with education and social security expenditures, that financial openness does not constrain government outlays for social programs, and that democracy has a strong positive association with social spending, particularly on items that bolster human capital formation.