Contracting for management: Assessing management capacity under alternative service delivery arrangements

Contracting critics suggest that when governments outsource, they reduce their capacity to produce services and manage service delivery. In this paper, we decompose the service delivery decision into service production and service management components. When governments contract for service production, they may also choose to contract for a portion of service delivery management. Studies that only compare the management activities of contracting and direct service delivery governments, without examining the management activities contracted to vendors, are likely to be incomplete and biased. Drawing on a unique survey of governmental refuse collection service directors, matched with a survey of refuse collection vendors operating under municipal contracts, we show that the vendors' management activities offset the decline in management capacity that occurs when governments contract for service delivery for this particular service. Governments can “buy” management activities when contracting for service production. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Adjusting to New Ways of Working: Experiments with Service Delivery in the Public Sector

In response to the perceived failure of both the state and market models of service delivery, governments have embarked on a reform program that draws on the community sector to expand the suite of available policy and service delivery arrangements. This paper explores and identifies the nature of changed relationships between government and the community sector. It uses a case study that examines the operation of a new type of community organisation, and analyses the affectivity and outcomes from the experience of a community based networked arrangement. Although there is evidence of a shift to more relationship‐ oriented models of operation because of either mandate or preference both community and government sectors have found it difficult to make the necessary adjustments to these new ways of working. Community has begun the shift to this new relational approach but finds it difficult to sustain the momentum and tends to revert to more independent and competitive modes. Governments find it difficult to make the necessary adjustments to power‐sharing and resource allocation and continue to operate as ‘business as usual’ through the traditional bureaucratic authority of command and control. In this way, the rhetoric of collaboration and partnership between government and the community sector is not necessarily matched by policy and action supporting the practice of ‘new ways of working’ although these ‘experiments in service delivery’ have opened the way for adopting more innovative and effective approaches to service delivery.     

The Political Frame for Negotiated Capitalism: Electoral Reform and the Politics of Crisis in Japan and Sweden

This article examines the impact of political institutions on the strength of executive governments as well as the consequences of that strength for policymaking. It argues that both political changes and electoral reforms in Japan and Sweden have weakened the political frame for “negotiated” or “coordinated” decision making in these nations. In Sweden, however, the complete demolition of the old political frame has opened up opportunities and incentives for new modes of governance. In Japan, by contrast, reforms have buttressed rather than dismantled the old frame, impeding the transition to a new approach.     

Efficiency Measurement in Spanish Local Government: The Case of Municipal Water Services

In this work, we established a procedure for evaluation of the efficiency of the water supply. This procedure has allowed us to find that the proposed indicators have a discriminating capability in the analysis of the service, and to reject criticisms traditionally assigned to the sensitivity of the data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique in relation to degrees of freedom. The results obtained show that the population density, as a factor that defines one of the particular characteristics of the surroundings of each municipality, has a statistically significant impact on the indexes of efficiency, this affirmation not being extended to the public or private ownership of the service. The scale inefficiency is higher than the technical inefficiency. These typologies of efficiency are, principally, motivated by the supply side of the service, which is specially linked with the necessary infrastructure. The demand of the citizens is satisfied with a behavior close to optimal.     

Development of Local Government Debt Financing Markets: Application of a Market‐Based Framework

Needed is clear guidance on how to develop market‐based debt financing systems in transitional and developing countries. We propose an analytical framework useful for identifying constraints to financial development and providing recommendations to overcome constraints to develop municipal financing capacity. The proposed framework is applied to five country case studies: Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, and South Africa. The thesis of this paper is that municipal credit market development is related to improvements in the legal/regulatory framework governing local borrowing, the capacity of financial institutions to assess risk, and borrower capacity to support and manage debt.     

Car ownership and welfare‐to‐work

This study examines the role of car ownership in facilitating employment among recipients under the current welfare‐to‐work law. Because of a potential problem with simultaneity, the analysis uses predicted car ownership constructed from two instrumental variables, insurance premiums and population density for car ownership. The data come from a 1999–2000 survey of TANF recipients in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The empirical results show a significant independent contribution of car ownership on employment. The presence of an predicted ownership is associated with a 9 percentage point increase in the odds of being employed. Moreover, the results indicate that lowering insurance premiums by $100 can increase the odds of employment by 4 percentage points. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Interministerielle Netzwerke: Formale und informelle Koordinationsstrukturen bei der Vorbereitung der deutschen Verhandlungspositionen zur Regierungskonferenz 1996

How do German ministries manage the preparation of national negotiation positions for EU intergovernmental conference? After a survey of the debate on organizational deficits of the interministerial coordination in Germany, we are consulting decision- and organization-theoretic approaches in IR. Drawing on organizational economics we concretise and supplement these older frameworks. We conceive the management of a governmental organization as a specific aggregation of heterogeneous preferences and information. Applying social network analysis we take into account formal as well as informal aspects of coordination channels. The objective of this article is to make visible the complex structures and processes that constitute foreign policy making, and to provide a preliminary assessment of its efficiency.     

Über die Notwendigkeit und Bestimmung liberaler Bürgertugenden

Numerous sociological studies describe the status of contemporary liberal democracy as frightening. Taking up these investigations, this article asks for the pre-conditions of liberal democracy, particularly for their moral foundations. In contrast to the classic political theory of liberalism, these moral foundations are not assumed to be locked in the institutional order of the state, but in a certain morality of the citizens. The first target of the investigation is to proof that a moral quality of the citizens is a necessary prerequisite for the persistence of a liberal democracy. The second aim of the work is to show how these moral orientations (liberal virtues) should be shaped within each citizen. This is clarified by discussing three liberal thinkers (Charles Larmore, John Rawls, and Ralf Dahrendorf). The so distilled central liberal virtue is formulated as follows: The political convictions of the citizens must be justifiable for everybody, i.e. also to citizens with a different world view. Political convictions and values, which are expressed during the political process and which influence the voting-behaviour, should therefore not rely exclusively on one’s own set of moral values. The work closes with a discussion of the implications of this normative claim.     

Culture Wars,Secular Realignment,and the Gender Gap in Party Identification

Changes in the U.S. partisan balance over the past decade are often attributed to the enhanced political salience of cultural issues. Yet as white men have continued to become more Republican in recent years, white women increasingly identify with the Democrats. To the extent that cultural issues are influencing this partisan change, men and women must be responding differently to this cultural agenda. Using a pooled ANES data set from 1988 through 2000, I explore the extent to which cultural values are responsible for this gender realignment. Findings suggest that salient cultural issues influence the partisan choices of both men and women, however in somewhat different ways. For women, the issues themselves—reproductive rights, female equality, and legal protection for homosexuals—have become increasingly important determinants of party identification. For men, the influence of cultural conflict on partisanship is argued to be equally pervasive, albeit less direct.