Global uncertainty,economic governance institutions and foreign direct investment inflow in Africa

Economic Change and Restructuring - Based on the fact that Africa has not fared well in attracting foreign direct investments in the last decade compared to other regions of the world, especially...     

Marketization reforms and co-production: Does ownership of service delivery structures and customer language matter?

In public services that are tax funded, public goods are sometimes marketized by being delivered using private companies instead of public organizations. In addition, marketization reforms can entail service users being described as customers for the service rather than as citizens. We assess the effects of these aspects of marketization reforms on users' willingness to co-produce public services. First, service delivery using private companies risks reducing users' willingness to co-produce because firms cannot commit ex ante to not appropriate donated labour for private gain. Second, using customer-oriented language risks reductions by priming individualistic market norms that lower prosocial motivation compared to citizen-oriented language priming citizenship duty. Using three survey experiments in the United States, we find that delivery structures are not neutral. Private firms delivering local public services reduce users' willingness to co-produce, although similar effects are not evident from primimg customer rather than citizenship thinking.     

Public Service Motivation: A Systematic Literature Review and Outlook

Over the past two decades, research on public service motivation has seen rapid growth. Despite the relatively large number of publications to date, no systematic research overview has been created, leaving the body of literature somewhat unstructured and possibly hampering future research. This article fills this void by providing a systematic literature review of 323 publications that examines six key aspects of the literature on public service motivation: the growth of research on the concept, the most prominent studies based on a referencing network analysis, the most frequent publication outlets, research designs and methods, lines of inquiry and patterns of empirical findings, and implications for practice drawn from the publications in the study sample. Strengths and weaknesses of the existing literature are identified, and future research directions are proposed.     

Book Reviews

Mauricio Font, The State and the Private Sector in Latin America: The Shift to Partnership. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Figure, bibliography, appendixes, index, 318 pp.; hardcover $100, ebook $79.99. Tracy Beck Fenwick, Avoiding Governors: Federalism, Democracy, and Poverty Alleviation in Brazil and Argentina. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016. Tables, figures, acronyms, bibliography, index, 277 pp.; hardcover $75, paperback $29. Michael Reid, Brazil: The Troubled Rise of a Global Power. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016 [2014]. Illustrations, 352 pp.; paperback $22. Ben Ross Schneider, ed., New Order and Progress: Development and Democracy in Brazil. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Tables, figures, bibliography, index, 328 pp.; hardcover $99, paperback $31.95, ebook. Anthony P. Maingot, Race, Ideology, and the Decline of Caribbean Marxism. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015. Index, 368 pp.; hardcover $79.95. Sebastián Ureta, Assembling Policy: Transantiago, Human Devices, and the Dream of a World‐Class Society. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015. Photographs, figures, abbreviations, bibliography, index, 224 pp.; hardcover $39, ebook $27. Carlos de la Torre, De Velasco a Correa: insurreciones, populismos y elecciones en Ecuador, 1944–2013. Quito: Corporación Editora Nacional, 2015. Tables, bibliography, 243 pp.; paperback. Sebastian E. Bitar, US Military Bases, Quasi‐Bases, and Domestic Politics in Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Map, figures, tables, notes, bibliography, index, 220 pp.; hardcover $110, ebook $79.99.     

Sorting Out Sortition: A Perspective on the Random Selection of Political Officers

The central argument of this article is that it is possible to identify one major or primary potential that sortition brings to the political community when it is used to select office holders. This is to be found when sortition is used in such a way as to maximise its most essential feature – its arationality – and where such an application has the most significant and positive impact on the political process and the political community. In such applications the advantages of using an arational process can be seen as outweighing its disadvantages. In political practice – especially in a republican context – this primary political potential is the ability of sortition to protect the public process of selection from subversion by those who might wish to use it for their own private or partisan ends. This helps to defend the polity from those seeking to exercise unconstitutional or arbitrary power – either in the form of a single tyrant or of factions vying for partisan control. In addition, sortition can produce a series of secondary benefits to the republican polity: the polity can be understood as impartial, the threshold to citizen participation can be lowered and the model of the independent citizen encouraged. These benefits, however, can be seen as deriving from initial protection of the process of selection from manipulation – a quality of lot which is present whatever the motivation of those instigating a particular lottery scheme. Although the political use of lot cannot be confined to the protection of open government, its potential to limit the power of individuals or covert groupings makes it naturally commensurate with this role.     

Expanding the Constitution Beyond the Court: The Case of Euro-Constitutionalism

The paper addresses the role of the Court of Justice in the European integration process, as well as, more broadly, tensions between constitutionalism and new governance. I propose an account, according to which the judiciary should not be seen as standing in an aloof place in the political order, and as opposed to a—pluralistic, irrational, and anarchical—society, but rather as part of a continuum on which other governance arrangements are also placed according to their share in 'tribunality'—the deliberativeness of their decision-making processes and their openness to new facts.     

Sex offender (re)integration into the community: realities and challenges

Abstract

This paper explores the benefits of engaging with self-defined communities in Northern Ireland on the issue of sexual offending and argues the case for building on existing community structures, by identifying people with leadership skills and by empowering them with the knowledge, and with connections to statutory services, that will support public protection. We address the historical context in terms of the impact of the conflict on these communities and describe the role and experience of NIACRO working in Northern Ireland, in particular its Base2 project supporting people under threat. We reference the development of current statutory arrangements for Public Protection Arrangements for Northern Ireland (PPANI) and argue the case for preparing people in the community to receive and understand the messages promoted through PPANI on the basis of our belief that public education is most effective when the people receiving it are receptive.     

Nudging the Neoliberal Agenda: Administrative Opportunities in the Deregulated State

The current climate of neoliberalism in the executive branch is attended by active deregulation and distrust of the administrative state. As protections are rolled back, there is concern that individuals may be susceptible to information asymmetries that will influence their decision making, leading to detrimental outcomes for both their own and the general welfare. Behavioral public administration—the bureaucratic conception of “nudge” theory—offers ways to counter the pitfalls that come with greater freedom of choice, as promoted by the neoliberal agenda. Public administrators may employ alternative mechanisms, such as choice architecture, to help people make better decisions in the absence of explicitly protective regulations. After laying out the argument for a behavioral approach, this article analyzes several neoliberal agenda issues with potential nudge responses for practical implementation, as well as a justifiable call for action to protect the public welfare in the absence of policy guidance.