The permanence of temporary services: The reliance of Canadian federal departments on policy and management consultants

The use of external consultants in government management and policy realms has drawn increasing attention in many countries including Canada. Studies were undertaken internationally in the 1990s and 2000s as legislatures and their accounting arms became concerned with the hidden costs of “corporatization” of the public service and tried to expand benchmarking measures for government efficiency to include external consultants. Accounting for these increases in expenditures on consultancy, however, remains a challenge given the state of governmental financial and personnel reporting. The data on which existing reports have been drawn are very weak. This article examines results using a new dataset compiled from Proactive Disclosure reports in order to help clarify the situation of policy and management consulting in Canada at the departmental level.     

The Role of Land Certification in Reducing Gaps in Productivity between Male- and Female-Owned Farms in Rural Ethiopia

This paper analyses the impact of a low-cost land certification programme on the productivity of female-headed households. The hypotheses tested in the paper emphasise on the interaction between the constraints that female-headed households face in terms of insecure land tenure, lack of productive resources and suboptimal land market participation, on the one hand, and the tenure security benefits of certification on the other. Our findings show that land certification has a positive effect on land market participation and productivity. Our analysis also suggests higher marginal effects of certification on female-headed households’ productivity, compared to the male ones.     

Campus officers’ sanctioning of alcohol-involved crime: influences on discretionary decision-making

Universities are a hotbed of alcohol consumption, which is a major contributor to campus crime. In the US, campus police are responsible for handling crimes on campus. Like municipal police, campus officers are afforded the power to make discretionary sanctioning decisions. The question for this paper is what affects those decisions? To explore that topic, data collected during ride-alongs with campus officers are analyzed. Campus officers explained their sanctions as being affected by nine factors. The findings suggest that influences on campus and municipal officers’ sanctioning decisions are largely similar. The paper concludes by discussing implications for future research.     

Pathways to democratization in personalist dictatorships

Personalist dictatorships make up an increasingly large proportion of the world's dictatorships. Moreover, they tend to be particularly resistant to democratization. Understanding the conditions that increase the likelihood of democratic transitions in personalist contexts, therefore, is critical for the study and practice of democratization in the contemporary era. This study argues that political party creation is a key factor. Though personalist dictators typically create parties to offset immediate threats to their power posed by the elite – and particularly the military – doing so encourages peaceful mass mobilization and a realignment of elite networks. These dynamics, in turn, enhance prospects of democratization. Using cross-national empirical tests that address the potential endogeneity of this relationship, we find support for the argument that personalist dictators who create their own political party are more likely to democratize than those who ally with a pre-existing party or rule without one.