Organising for mutual advantage: municipal associations in Bulgaria

Networks of local government support organisations (LGSOs) are critical to successful intergovernmental relations and effective local governance in democratic societies. Bulgaria had no such network of municipal associations when it began the transition from communist rule in the early 1990s. Using US and other external technical assistance, Bulgaria over the next decade overcame the impediments to collective action and established what appears to be an effective and sustainable system to back up its cities and towns. Important factors in mobilising support included a long‐term focus on institutional development, non‐partisanship, flexibility in implementation and a pragmatic orientation that focused on learning by doing. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does agency competition improve the quality of policy analysis? Evidence from OMB and CBO fiscal projections

Public management scholars often claim that agency competition provides an effective institutional check on monopoly authority, and hence, leads to improvement of administrative performance in public sector agencies. This logic was central for creating the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 1975 to challenge the policy information provided by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). We challenge this conventional wisdom by demonstrating that CBO has failed to enhance the quality of U.S. fiscal policy analysis on its own terms; nor has it spurred improvements in OMB's performance. Our empirical results indicate that the quality of OMB's fiscal projections has often deteriorated since the establishment of CBO as a rival bureau. We also show that both public and private information is being shared by these agencies to produce a similar caliber of task outputs. The broader implications of our study indicate that although politicians face incentives to employ agency competition in governmental settings, this type of bureaucratic strategy does not necessarily enhance the quality of administrative performance. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Job sprawl,spatial mismatch,and black employment disadvantage

This paper examines the relationship between job sprawl and the spatial mismatch between blacks and jobs. Using data from a variety of sources, including the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Census and U.S. Department of Commerce's ZIP Code Business Patterns, I control extensively for metropolitan area characteristics and other factors. In addition, I use metropolitan area physical geography characteristics as instruments for job sprawl to address the problem of simultaneity bias. I find a significant and positive effect of job sprawl on mismatch conditions faced by blacks that remains evident in the twostage least squares models but not in first difference change regressions. The crosssectional effect is particularly important in the Midwest and West, and in metropolitan areas where blacks' share of the population is large and where blacks' population growth rate is relatively low. Among others, the results also reveal that the measures of mismatch and job sprawl used in this analysis are highly correlated with blacks' employment outcomes in the expected direction. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

A cure for crime: Can mental health treatment diversion reduce crime among youth?

Youth crime is a serious social problem, as is the high proportion of young offenders in the juvenile justice system who have mental disorders. A recent policy innovation applies the theory of therapeutic jurisprudence and diverts youth with mental disorders to treatment in lieu of further court processing. The expansion of mental health diversion programs reflects an increasingly popular view that there is a causal relationship between youth mental disorders and crime. Policymakers who share this view place greater emphasis on rehabilitation and treatment as a way to reduce crime, rather than on stricter punishment. This paper considers the policy issues around youth mental health diversion programs. In addition, it evaluates the effect of a mental health diversion program for youth that was implemented in Texas. The paper finds that mental health diversion can be used effectively to delay or prevent youth recidivism.     

The Equity Impacts of Municipal Tax Incentives: Leveling or Tilting the Playing Field?

The widespread use over the past two decades of Michigan's PA 198 Industrial Tax Abatement program provides an opportunity to assess the inter‐urban equity impacts of this economic development tool. Not only has PA 198 been used relatively more often by suburban municipalities, local governments at the metropolitan periphery are more likely to use abatements to attract new plants and new jobs. The older central cities primarily use the program to retain existing jobs, albeit at high cost of lost tax revenues. On balance, it appears that PA 198 has done little to alter the location decisions of participating firms.     

A Preliminary Assessment of Water Institutions in India: An Institutional Design Perspective

Water institutions in India play a crucial role in managing scarce water resources and are central to economic development and poverty alleviation. Designing appropriate institutional mechanisms to allocate scarce water and river flows has been an enormous challenge due to the complex legal, constitutional, and social issues involved. The Indian water sector has been grappling with poor performance and deterioration of public (canal and tank) irrigation systems, high extraction levels of groundwater, and related economic and environmental problems. The objective of this article is to carry out a preliminary assessment of institutional mechanisms available to manage water resources in India. The article surveys various formal and informal institutional arrangements that are used at present and their design features in order to identify those institutions related to superior performance. The analysis indicates that crafting “winning institutions” and the policy frameworks to strengthen them should take into account not only the proven criteria of institutional design but also the changing socioeconomic, political, and cultural factors.     

Regional Place and City Space: How Metropolitan Configurations Influence Central City Policy Responsiveness

The debate between proponents of metropolitan consolidation and polyarchic fragmentation poses many conflicting arguments, offers varied hypotheses, and reaches multiple conclusions about the effects of political structures and institutional arrangements on democratic governance. Despite varied and widespread attention to the topic, however, little resolution has been offered to appease either side. Additionally problematic is that implicit in both of these schools of research is the assumption that efficiency, whether achieved in fragmented or consolidated settings, is the prime preference of the citizenry. In this article, I specifically pursue the following research question: How do jurisdictional and metropolitan configurations influence the responsiveness of urban governments to public opinion? My findings illustrate that not only is considering the effect of metro place on city space a necessary and important pursuit, but a broader conceptualization of citizen preferences is of critical importance to scholars of urban politics, especially when assumptions about public opinion motivate choices about institutional sizes and structures.     

俄中关系和俄罗斯社会经济现状

近年来,俄中的战略合作伙伴关系有了进一步发展。2001年俄罗斯经济发展指标反映了其社会、经济发展状况,俄罗斯实施了一系列行政改革的措施。国家公务员学院的研究领域更加宽泛。     

“Beggar thy Neighbor:” Testing for Free Riding in State-Level Endangered Species Expenditures

An important public policy question that remains unresolved iswhether devolution will enhance sensible policy making byexploiting informational asymmetries or, instead, trigger a``beggar thy neighbor'' response and stimulate free ridingamongst localities. We analyze this question within theframework of U.S. environmental policymaking by scrutinizing aunique panel data set on state-level endangered speciesexpenditure patterns. Our empirical estimates are consistentwith the notion that states free ride, which may lead to anexpenditure equilibrium that is not Pareto efficient.