Do Competitive Examinations Promote Diversity in Civil Service?

The representative bureaucracy literature provides a growing body of empirical evidence that a representative public workforce enhances the efficacy and legitimacy of public services. However, little attention has been paid to the capacity of civil service competitive examinations to give equal opportunity of access to public jobs to equally competent citizens. To fill this gap, the authors use French databases to analyze whether competitive examinations comprising both written and oral tests ensure equality of treatment for all candidates regardless of gender, place of residence, or place of birth. The results challenge the capacity of these examinations to treat candidates equally, identifying inequalities in the written tests as well as evaluation biases in the oral tests. However, oral evaluation biases tend to offset inequalities in the written tests. Therefore, selection boards take a sort of affirmative action toward the sole successful members of groups suffering such inequalities.     

Is a problem shared a problem halved? Shared services and municipal efficiency

It has long been argued that shared services represent an efficacious means of securing efficiencies for municipalities. Indeed, pressures from fiscal austerity, taxation limitations, and the specter of forced amalgamations have resulted in an increasing uptake of shared service arrangements. However, the extant evidence is rather inconclusive and is largely restricted to analyzing the nett efficiency outcomes for the specific service shared. We broaden this evidential base by examining the association between shared service production and the efficiency of entire municipalities. Our analysis, employing a 5‐year panel of data, suggests that shared services are associated with a statistically significant reduction in overall municipal efficiency. We conclude by explicating on the public policy implications arising from our prima facie surprising results.     

Preventing Financial Risks

The global economy faces an uncertain future.China also faces challenges to ensure steady economic development. shared his views with Financial News on how China will prevent financial risks and reform its financial system in 2012.Edited excerpts follow:     

Putin’s Dream of a Eurasian Union: Background, Objectives and Possibilities

Russia is trying to establish a Eurasian Economic Union with a Free Trade Area under the CIS, a Customs Union and a Unified Economic Space under the framework of the Eurasian Economic Community. Its ultimate goal is to achieve integration of former USSR satellites and make it into one of the world’s top powers.     

Developmental Antecedents of Interpartner Violence in a New Zealand Birth Cohort

This paper examines the developmental antecedents of interpartner violence (IPV) victimization and perpetration in a New Zealand birth cohort (n = 828). The study found: (a) IPV occurred in 70% of relationships, with conflict ranging from minor psychological abuse to severe assault; (b) men and women reported similar experiences of victimization and perpetration of IPV; (c) exposure to abuse in childhood, family dysfunction and adversity, childhood and adolescent conduct problems, and alcohol abuse/dependence were significant predictors of IPV victimization and perpetration at age 25; and (d) the antecedents of IPV were largely the same for males and females, although the specific effects of these risk factors differed according to gender. Conduct disorder was more strongly predictive of IPV for females, whereas family adversity was more strongly predictive of IPV victimisation for males.     

Book Review

Book reviewed in this article: Italy Since 1989: Events and Interpretations by Vittorio Bufacchi and Simon Burg The Italian Guillotine: Operation Clean Hands and the Overthrow of Italy's First Republic by Stanton H. Burnett and Luca Mantovani.     

全球化进程与当代政府管理创新

政府管理创新是世界各国政府发展的总趋势。全球化进程作为一个大的时代背景,在加强国与国联系的同时,必然推动着各国政府外部管理体制和内部运作机制的相互学习和自我创新。全球化进程对当代政府管理更是提出了许多全新的要求:一、全球化进程必然要求当代政府管理对于新的国际情势有一个制度上的回应;二、全球化进程使得一个主权国家政府管理的内部事务衍生出外部意义;三、全球化进程要求政府管理从传统的"自上而下"的统治走向"上下互动"的治理;四、全球化进程要求当代政府管理在全球范围内关注生态治理、环境保护和和平共处的问题。