The UK Core Executive's Use of Public Service Agreements as a Tool of Governance

The contemporary literature on governance notes the difficulties that core executives, central points for steering and co-ordinating public activity, have in undertaking this strategic function. The UK core executive, particularly the Treasury, has developed a regime of Public Service Agreements (PSAs) as a novel and ambitious tool of governance, particularly for public services. The tool incorporates improved priority setting, information about performance, and incentive effects for ministers and officials through a system of performance targets. However, systems for setting priorities are fragmented and include those focused on the Prime Minister's Office and Cabinet Office. Monitoring has been improved, although measures often provide a limited, or sometimes even potentially misleading, impression of progress towards valued goals. The direct incentive effects of PSAs appear to be weak. While the link between the system and the allocation of expenditure has engaged the interest of departments in discussing priorities, ministerial and other officials' responsibility for performance has been limited. Targets have increasingly been seen as by ministers as minimum pledges of performance rather than tools for stretching and improving performance. Various forms of blame avoidance and blame shifting have occurred and the credibility of the PSA system is in danger of being undermined by frequent changes to targets and misrepresentation of performance in some areas.     

The marginalisation of participation “as an end” development: an Ecuadorean case study

The evolution of participatory practices clearly evidences movement away from local participatory projects implemented with the use of participatory methodologies such as participatory rural appraisal, and towards citizen participation in government activities. This trend reflects development discourse concerning participation, and in particular responds to the critique aimed at local participatory development. Using case study data from Ecuador, the article discusses the previously overlooked effects of this phenomenon, namely a uniformity of participatory development practice and a lack of opportunities for people to engage in development activities that provide participation “as an end” benefits such as empowerment and confidence-building.     

Resurgent Remain and a Rebooted Revolt on the Right: Exploring the 2019 European Parliament Elections in the United Kingdom

The 2019 European Parliament (EP) election took place against the backdrop of the vote for Brexit and the failure of Parliament to agree on a withdrawal agreement. Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party topped the poll and the pro‐Remain Liberal Democrats, which called for a second referendum on EU membership, returned from electoral obscurity to take second place, while other pro‐Remain parties similarly performed well. In sharp contrast, the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, recorded their lowest combined vote share since they became the main representatives of the two‐party system. In this article, we draw on aggregate‐level data to explore what happened at the 2019 EP election in Great Britain. Our evidence suggests Labour suffered from a ‘pincer movement’, losing support in its mainly white, working class ‘left behind’ heartlands but also in younger cosmopolitan areas where Labour had polled strongly at the 2017 general election. Support for the new Brexit Party increased more significantly in ‘left behind’ communities, which had given strong support to Leave at the 2016 referendum, suggesting that national populists capitalised on Labour’s woes. The Conservatives haemorrhaged support in affluent, older retirement areas but largely at the expense of the resurgent Liberal Democrats, with the latter surging in Remain areas and where the Conservatives are traditionally strong, though not in areas with younger electorates where the party made so much ground prior to the 2010–2015 coalition government. Lastly, turnout increased overall compared with 2014, but individuals living in Leave areas were less motivated to vote. Overall, our findings suggest that those living in Remain areas were more driven to express their discontent with the Brexit process and more inclined to support parties that offer a second referendum on Britain’s EU membership.     

Von 2005 nach 2020 – Strategien, Konzepte und Lösungen zur vollständigen Verwertung

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Hostile takeover and costly merger control

According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Merger Guidelines, mergers determined to be anticompetitive are more likely than not to be challenged. Within an adversarial system, the corresponding process of merger control exhibits two kinds of inefficiencies: First, both the antitrust authority and the buyer spend considerable amounts of resources during litigation. Second, the anticompetitive merger is only prevented with a probability less than one. We can show that these inefficiencies may be smaller under a hostile than under a friendly takeover although the top management of the target firm is introduced as third player, spending additional resources during litigation.