Perceptions of Public and Private Performance: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Media, politicians, and reform proponents frequently assert that public sector organizations are inefficient and burdened by administrative procedures. But are negative stereotypes of the public sector reflected in people's perceptions of public service provision? Given the methodological challenges of isolating the perception of publicness from other factors related to public organizations, little is known about whether public organizations have a negative image. The authors use a survey experimental design to isolate the effect of publicness on perceptions of the performance of hospitals. The results suggest that public sector organizations have a negative image on productivity‐related aspects of performance but not on normative aspects of performance. As this article is a randomized experiment, it provides strong evidence regarding the causal nature of the relationship between publicness and perceptions of performance. Implications for researchers aiming to understand these mechanisms and for public managers concerned about the image of their organization are discussed.     

Institutional Change and Professional Norms: A Study of Grading Behavior in Higher Education

This study investigates how an institutional exogenous change interacts with professional norms in relation to behavior in public organizations. We test how a new grading scale introduced in 2007 changed grade point averages and pass rates at two university departments. Data consist of register data on grading between 2004 and 2010. We find that the new grading scale both increased grade point averages and pass rates and halted the negative time trend in these variables. These effects are even greater for exams with an external examiner. The main conclusion is that grading systems affect grading both immediately and over time.     

Contesting Landscapes in Thailand: Tree Ordination as Counter-territorialization

Recently, authors Vandergeest and Peluso have discussed the process of territorialization in Siam/Thailand, where the state has gradually expanded its control over natural resources through its legal machinery and associated classifications of the natural environment. While Vandergeest and Peluso focus on the process of territorialization from the perspective of the Thai State, this article examines the same process from the perspective of nongovernmental organizations and forest--dwelling farmers. Of particular interest is a project launched by the Northern Farmer's Network to “ordain” 50 million trees in community forests throughout Northern Thailand in 1996 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the king's accession to the throne. This essentially Buddhist ceremony has since been conducted in numerous Buddhist as well as non-Buddhist rural communities. The authors argue that these communities apply the tree ordination ceremony as a tool to counter the territorialization of the Thai state by reasserting local identities and environmental responsibilities. By invoking Buddhist symbols and the honor of the king, the rural groups–many of which fear eviction from forested areas classified as national parks–identify themselves positively with modern Thai society in order to contest their public depiction as “enemies of the nation.” This article analyzes the process of territorialization and counter-territorialization in Thai society by discussing classifications and associated landscapes in the environmental debate in Thailand. Furthermore, the tree ordination project undertaken by the Northern Farmers' Network is analyzed based on cases from the Mae Chaem district in Chiang Mai Province.     

Democratization and Violent Conflict: Is There A Scandinavian Exception?

The notion that the paths to democracy in Scandinavia were exceptionally peaceful remains a popular argument, but an equally large number of studies opposes this view. This research note provides the first systematic attempt to compare records of violence during democratization in Scandinavia with other regions and countries. By using Varieties of Democracy data, I construct novel measures of democratization and violent conflict that align with extant propositions on Scandinavian exceptionalism and conflict‐democratization research while appreciating multiple dimensions of democratization for a global sample of countries from 1789 to 2018. The results show stable support for a substantial Scandinavian exception of peaceful democratization, but only evidently so for moves toward greater executive constraints and civil and political liberties. The exception is less clear for democratization considering competitive elections and suffrage. On this basis, I propose that we may improve the understanding of the causes of Scandinavian democratic exceptionalism and democratic sustainability more generally by studying the origins of peaceful democratization in Scandinavia compared with Western Europe in the ‘age of liberalization’ from approx. the mid‐eighteenth to the mid‐nineteenth century.     

Does Ownership Matter for the Delivery of Professionalized Public Services? Cost‐efficiency and Effectiveness in Private and Public Dental Care for Children in Denmark

Recent decades have witnessed considerable interest in the cost‐efficiency and effectiveness of public services. Private provision is often claimed to be more cost‐efficient than public provision, but these efficiency gains are accused of being at the expense of effectiveness. Most of the evidence comes from relatively simple, technical services, because effectiveness is often difficult to define and measure for services produced by professionals. In addition, type of ownership might very well affect services produced by professionals differently as a result of professional standards and other regulation. The case in question, child dental care in Denmark, is a professionalized service which is remarkable for its clear and quantifiable measure of effectiveness. The findings show that neither cost‐efficiency nor effectiveness of public and private producers differs. The data represent cost and outcome measures controlled for structural variables for the 275 Danish municipalities between 1996 and 2002.     

Denmark: Environmental Conflict and the 'Greening' of the Labour Movement

In Denmark, environmentalism has not generated significant political division between the working class and the new middle class; rather, it has reinforced the cleavage between the wage-earning classes and the self-employed, as well as the political cleavage between left and right. This is a warning against deterministic approaches, ignoring the importance of political articulation. The successfulness of the Danish Social Democrats in reinforcing the environmental consciousness of its adherents furthermore indicates that the conventional picture of the political weakness of the Danish Social Democrats, as compared to the Norwegian and Swedish sister parties, should perhaps be reconsidered when evaluating the parties' adaptability to the demands of post-industrial society.     

The liberal dilemmas of a people-centred approach to state-building

The article explores the dilemmas of providing security assistance to post-conflict states. It argues that when used as a strategy for intervention, SSR exposes the inherent contradictions of liberal peace-building. The article focuses on the Weberian state monopoly versus other—hybrid or non-state—forms of security and justice provision. It presents the background for the discussion and suggests that as a strategy for intervention, the choice is not simply between a top-down ‘imposition’ of a universal state model and a bottom-up ‘working with what is there’ approach. It is also a choice between direct and indirect forms of rule. This makes the dilemma real for liberal-minded practitioners and observers.