Rating the Rankings: Assessing International Rankings of Public Service Performance

ABSTRACT

This paper documents the growth of international rankings of governance and public services and seeks to contribute to a second-generation approach to the analysis of this phenomenon. It does so primarily by setting out a method for ranking international ratings, building on and extending earlier work by other scholars, and applies that method to 14 international rankings of governance and public services, to explore the scope and limits of the approach. The final section argues that the development of such a method could form the basis for benchmarking international rankings as they develop in the future.     

Government revenue and expenditure in an agrarian economy: North Arcot District in South India

This paper uses disaggregated data to assess the recent history and geography of revenue mobilization and expenditure allocation in a district where rice production increased by 50 per cent during the decade 1973–83 and where gross urban output (to judge from research in one market town) increased in real terms by a factor of 8. At the district level, land revenue is a small and unstable component of revenue despite the dynamism of the rice economy. Furthermore rice is exempt from commercial taxes, which are eight times more important than land revenue, just under half of which derives from traded agricultural goods. Despite the region's commercial dynamism, real revenue has increased by only 76 per cent over the decade, suggesting substantial evasion. The district appears to be a net donor to the state fisc. Direct expenditure shows urban bias (being 60 per cent more per caput than rural expenditure), though the gap has been narrowing. Despite this trend the rice-producing sector appears to be a net beneficiary from direct revenue and expenditure. A rural micro-level case study shows that the village panchayat is a net donor and the urban panchayat union a net recipient of an unstable quantum of revenue. A case study of an urban municipality shows real revenue declining over the decade, forcing an increasing dependence upon discretionary grants from the state government, which cannot prevent a deterioration in urban infrastructure. Indirect revenue and expenditure shows a recent trend towards the rural population. Public sector employment is numerically significant, urban, and has average incomes equal to the top decile of rural cultivators.     

CHILD-CENTERED, VERTICALLY STRUCTURED, AND INTERDISCIPLINARY

This paper will describe the genesis and philosophy of the Center for Children's Policy. Practice and Research at the University of Pennsylvania (CCPPR), a joint project of the Schools of Law, Medicine and Social Work. The mission of CCPPR was to mobilize the resources of all disciplines engaged in childhood issues across the campus to seek innovative solutions for the crises facing America's children. CCPPR seeks to combine clinical practice, research, and policy in a vertical structure that would maintain linkages at all stages of scholarship, practice, and reform. Five essential structural factors were that the project must be: (a) vertically integrated; (b) interdisciplinary; (c) team-based; (d) child-centered and (e) developmentally informed. This paper can serve as a template for developing similar centers or projects, and will describe our methods, the projects we have undertaken, as well as the pitfalls and challenges of this highly demanding integrative approach.     

The Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea

The Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environmentof the Caspian Sea, which concluded recently between Azerbaijan,Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, is a great step onthe long path of rescuing the fragile Caspian Sea environmentdevastated by the economies of the coastal States, unsustainableexploitation of the non-living resources of the seabed and negativeimpact of illegal fishing. The Convention complies with allcurrent standards of modern international environmental lawand should be seen as a part of the progressive developmentof international legislation on environmental protection.