CORPORATE CAPACITY AND PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE

Corporate capacity is arguably a key determinant of the success or failure of public sector organizations. However, while there is growing evidence on the extent of corporate capacity, few researchers have systematically examined whether it is linked to public service performance. Does a larger corporate centre lead to better or worse performance for the organization as a whole? To answer this question we apply seemingly unrelated regression to measures of effectiveness, cost‐effectiveness and equity in English local government. We find that the effect of corporate capacity on performance is nonlinear, following an inverted u‐shaped pattern, and that its positive effect turns negative around the mean for effectiveness and cost‐effectiveness, and above the mean for equity. The study therefore suggests that senior managers face important trade‐offs between organizational goals when deciding on the appropriate level of corporate capacity.     

China's Megacity Mandarinate

The world is rapidly evolving on many fronts. Brazil, Turkey and other emerging powers are taking their own initiatives and building their own global links outside the old frameworks of the G‐8, the United Nations Security Council and NATO. The “third way” politics of Tony Blair that embraced globalization from the left of center in Britain has given way to the Tory party once again. Just as recovery from the financial crash seemed on the horizon, Europe's sovereign debt crisis has erupted. The historically unprecedented pace and scale of urbanization in China is transforming the politics of the Communist Party. President Lula of Brazil, former US treasury secretary Henry Paulson, Singapore's foreign minister George Yeo and others take stock of these manifold developments.     

DOES POLITICAL CHANGE AFFECT SENIOR MANAGEMENT TURNOVER? AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF TOP‐TIER LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN ENGLAND

In many political systems the political neutrality of senior managers' tenure is often cherished as a key part of the politics-administration dichotomy and is subject to formal safeguards. We test hypotheses about the impact of political change on senior management turnover drawn from political science, public administration and private sector management theory. Using panel data to control for unobserved heterogeneity between authorities, we find that changes in political party control and low organizational performance have both separate and joint positive effects on the turnover rate of senior managers. By contrast, the most senior manager, the chief executive, is more sheltered: the likelihood of a chief executive succession is higher only when party change and low performance occur together. Thus the arrival of a new ruling party reduces the tenure of senior managers, but chief executives are vulnerable to political change only when performance is perceived as weak.     

Pluralism and Liberalism

Meta-ethical pluralism, as developed in the work of writers like Isaiah Berlin, is the idea that ethical values cannot be reduced to a single hierarchy or system but are irreducibly multiple. It has often been argued that simply to recognize this fact is to have a reason to favour liberal institutions. On the contrary, the plurality of values in itself gives us no reason to support liberalism, indeed no reason to prefer any particular political arrangement to any other. If pluralism is true, the liberal's best defence may lie in appealing, in the manner of writers like Walzer and Rorty, to the de facro limitations on moral commitments imposed by the existing political culture.     

LOCAL GOVERNMENT STRUCTURE AND PERFORMANCE: LESSONS FROM AMERICA?

The debate in the UK on the reform of local government structure is poorly informed by empirical evidence. This article bridges part of the empirical gap by drawing upon analyses of structural effects in the USA. Two main dimensions of structure are outlined: fragmentation and concentration, both of which can vary vertically and horizontally. Fourteen structural hypotheses are identified and categorized as technical, competitive and political effects. The empirical evidence from the USA suggests that fragmentation is associated with lower spending and concentration is associated with higher spending. The implications of the evidence for structural reform in the UK are analysed. It is concluded that the creation of a single-tier system may not lead to greater efficiency, and that the advantages of a two-tier system have been underestimated.