Public accountability: Effectiveness, equity, ethics

This article tests a wide range of government activities against requirements for public accountability. The article explores the incentives for ethical behaviour by public officials; the need for more outcome focused performance indicators, tensions between parliamentary and managerial accountability; the standards of accountability applied to public providers of services can be applied to private providers; the utility of spelling out service requirements in advance; the impacts on accountability of the convergence of the public and private sectors; the need, where responsibility for programs is collaborative, for a clear governance framework, tensions between representative and participative democracy, and trends towards more participative and collaborative leadership.     

Federalism and democratization in Russia

The scholarly literature on democratic transitions has largely ignored developments at the local level and the relationship between federalism and democracy. In this work I examine the development of federalism in Russia and I assess the impact of Russia's highly asymmetrical form of federalism on democratisation. The study shows that federalism far from promoting democracy has allowed authoritarianism to flourish in many of Russia's eighty nine regions and republics. Federalism and democratization in Russia exist in contradiction rather than harmony. In a vicious circle, authoritarianism at the centre has been nourished by authoritarianism in the region and vice versa. “Elective dictatorships” and “delegative democracies” are now well entrenched in many republics, and mini-presidential systems are firmly established in a majority of the regions.     

Shared Services: Lessons from the Public and Private Sectors for the Nonprofit Sector

Shared services arrangements in the Australian third sector are becoming more common. Notably, however, there is a lack of information to guide nonprofit organisations through the development and engagement of shared structures. This article reviews the lessons that have been recorded from the public and private sectors with respect to the engagement of shared services arrangements. Additionally this article explores the different types of shared services structures that can be adopted. Overall, this article highlights the need for further research and analysis of issues relating to shared services arrangements in order to assist the increasing number of Australian nonprofit organisations engaging these collective arrangements and structures.     

Experimental tests for the validation of active numerical human models

The development of numerical human models is a topic of current interdisciplinary research. In the field of automotive safety these models can be applied for the optimization of protection systems. In forensic research human models can be used for the investigation of injury mechanisms and for the prediction and reproduction of injury patterns. However, up to now human models have been validated on the basis of PMHS tests without considering the effects of muscle activity. This paper shows two experimental volunteer test set-ups for the generation of experimental validation data. In a pendulum set-up the influence of muscle activity on the human kinematics was investigated. A drop test set-up was developed for the analysis of the effects of muscle activity on impact response characteristics of muscle tissue. Experimental results, presented in this paper, can be used for the validation and optimization of active numerical human models.     

Individuals, Institutions, and Inflation: Conceptual Complexity, Central Bank Independence, and the Asian Crisis

Previous research has demonstrated that greater levels of legal central bank independence produce favorable macroeconomic outcomes in the developed countries. This article expands the literature's focus on institutions to include a measure of conceptual complexity designed to capture individual-level variations in the cognitive style of central bankers themselves. I argue that the interaction of the cognitive style of central bankers with their respective institutional environments provides a more comprehensive account of the variation in achieving price stability across countries than the institutional measure alone. This hypothesis is tested in the context of the Asian Crisis as its effects diffused to the developed world between 1997 and 1999. The analysis demonstrates that different types of individuals working within different types of institutions achieved different levels of success in attaining price stability during the Asian Crisis. The most successful outcomes were achieved by conceptually complex central bankers working within legally independent central banks. The findings suggest that more research is needed concerning the individual level of analysis in the study of international political economy.     

The Fables and Foibles of Federal Capital Budgeting

This article critically evaluates the notions behind proposals to institute capital budgeting at the federal level. Four critical assumptions are found to be behind the contention that capital budgeting will improve federal investment policies: (1) an agreed-upon and accepted definition of a capital budget exists; (2) a capital budget "adds value" by improving the quality of information; (3) better information leads to better decisions; (4) better decisions lead to better actions. Each of these assumptions is evaluated using examples drawn from various levels of government and from the private sector. The general finding is that if these assumptions hold, then it is reasonable to expect that capital budgeting will lead to better programmatic decisions. Unfortunately, one or more of these assumptions usually does not hold and for this reason the case for federal capital budgeting is not very strong