Costing governmental services in a reformed environment: Unreachable goal or unfinished business?

This article assesses the impact of New Public Management (NPM) reforms in the public sector from a cost consciousness perspective. Using an action‐research methodology, we analyze the intensity of the external pressures that influence the institutional logic under which public sector organizations manage their costs. The field work shows that even after decentralization, public sector organizations appear unable to move their costing function from expense control to cost management unless external pressures motivate managers to complete the reform. We propose that the probability of success of reforms is increased when organizations are subject to strong pressures that could take the form of individual incentives or external threats.     

Industry Self-regulation Under Government Intervention

Industry actors (organizations, associations) can influence the way in which firms comply with regulations. This study examines how this influence process is affected by government intervention. Using official, anonymized data from the entire industry of financial intermediation in the Netherlands (N = 8655 firms), we examine how firms’ affiliations with industry actors relate to (1) voluntary actions aligned with improving regulatory compliance (e.g., requesting audits, attending workshops), and (2) law violations. Industry actors are distinguished between trade associations and the industry’s self-regulatory organization (SRO), which is subject to more government intervention. The analysis employs Poisson regressions to explain count variables, and bootstrapping to assess indirect associations. A series of robustness tests focus on relevant sub-samples, employ exact matching to address possible self-selection, and incorporate lagged dependent variables. The association between affiliations with industry actors and law violations is negative and significant. This association is more indirect for trade associations than for the SRO (i.e., it is more strongly mediated by the voluntary actions firms take and which help to improve compliance). These findings go in line with the theory that government intervention makes industry-self regulation more mandated and less voluntary. Under less government intervention, industry actors may promote more voluntary efforts to comply.     

When politics matter: Economic stabilization in Argentina and Israel

This is an attempt at a systematic comparison of the heterodox stabilization plans instituted by Argentina and Israel in 1985. Despite the remarkably similar stabilization plans instituted, Israel managed to dramatically reduce its inflation rate, while Argentina’s experience was exactly the opposite. This article suggests that the explanation for the different outcomes can be found in the variations in state power, autonomy, and capacity. In israel, state power was more effectively mobilized to pursue the goal of stabilization than in Argentina, where the state was riddled by special interests and lacked any semblance of cohesion.