Managerial autonomy: does it matter for the performance of water utilities?

The public administration literature asserts that autonomy is central to performance. In this article we develop a managerial autonomy index, which we apply to 22 water utilities in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The 16 items that underlie our composite autonomy index display a high degree of internal consistency. This speaks for the validity of the autonomy concept. We find that the autonomy scores of the 22 utilities vary widely. We also find strong and positive associations between autonomy scores and six out of eight key performance indicators. Our results support the idea that autonomy is central to the performance of water service providers. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

L'impact du mode de scrutin sur l'élection des femmes à l'Assemblée fédérale Suisse (1995‐2003)

Cet article analyse l'impact du système électoral sur l'élection des femmes à l'Assemblée fédérale (1995‐2003). La littérature a souvent mis l'accent sur l'importance du système proportionnel en vue de l'amélioration de la représentation des femmes au Parlement en se concentrant souvent uniquement sur le taux de femmes élues. Dans cet article, nous argumentons qu'il est nécessaire d'étudier les trajectoires des candidats et de prendre en compte à la fois les candidats hommes et femmes. Nous montrons que l'effet women‐friendly du système proportionnel au Conseil national semble davantage jouer au niveau de la stratégie de désignation des candidats et des candidates que lors de leur élection, et ce particulièrement pour les partis politiques du centre et de droite.     

Disposable income,unemployment, inflation and state spending in a dynamic political-economic model

This paper formulates a medium-term macroeconomic model of disposable income, unemployment, inflation and state spending, proposes a theory of qualitative choice to explain electoral popularity in terms of these variables and develops three approaches to the formulation of political-economic policy. The first approach is static, sets the tax rate to reconcile the interests of various pressure groups and yields a political trade-off between the private and public sector. The second approach relies on maximizing the probability of winning the next election and gives rise to a political business cycle unless the electorate votes strategically. The implications of crowding out of private investment under alternative monetary rules, autonomous behaviour of the state bureaucracy and tax-indexation for the political business cycle are also examined. The third approach analyzes the objective of maximizing the uninterrupted length in office. It yields a short-run political cycle superimposed on a longer cycle.