Enterprise Growth and Survival in Vietnam: Does Government Support Matter?

This paper analyses whether direct government assistance during start-up and other forms of interaction with the state sector have influenced the long-run performance of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam. Using three partly overlapping surveys during the period 1990–2000, we find strong effects on firm dynamics from interaction with state institutions. Enterprises which have the state sector as their main customer perform better. This is so for both survival and growth. Moreover, temporary tax exemptions during firm start-up had a separate and positive influence on long-run growth for non-household enterprises and initial credit support seems to benefit rural firms.     

Making Plans for Liberia—a Trusteeship Approach to Good Governance?

Abstract

Since the end of the Liberian civil war in August 2003 the international community has been ‘making plans’ for Liberia. However, it rarely questioned whether these plans were in accordance with the political and economic logic of the peace agreement and the subsequent transitional government. The consequence was that corruption continued and a much more intrusive economic management plan was established. The Governance and Economic Management Assistance Programme (gemap) is supposed to combat corruption and facilitate good governance, but it also limits the range of policy options for the new democratically elected government of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. The irony is that the best and most legitimate government that Liberia has ever had is subject to stronger external control than any of its predecessors. The probability that this scheme will remain sustainable when donor interest shifts elsewhere is low, and what is needed is a more pragmatic approach that draws a wider segment of Liberian society into anti-corruption management and creates checks and balances between them.     

A democratic dictator's success: how Chad's President Deby defeated the military opposition in three years (2008–2011)

This article focuses on how President Deby re-gained power after a nearly successful coup d'état against him in February 2008. The analysis points towards one major external reason for success and a divided internal strategy. The international community's little interest in Chad and the desire for political stability among the few interested states are the main external reasons for Deby's success. Internally, Deby's use of violence and co-optation explain his success. Deby defeated the Chadian military opposition by combining co-optation of adversaries in Chad's patrimonial marketplace.     

Normative power and organized hypocrisy: European Union member states' arms export to Libya

The 2011 Libyan civil war prompted a reassessment of the normative foundation of the EU's conventional arms export control regime as armaments manufactured in Europe were used by Gaddafi's forces during the war. The EU's foreign policy identity is based, partly, upon a common approach to arms export involving respect for common criteria for export licences. Yet, prior to the civil war, considerable amounts of military equipment had been exported by member states to Libya, notwithstanding grounds for restraint on the basis of several of the criteria. This article traces member states' arms export to Libya during 2005–2010 to explore whether member states favoured restraint or export promotion. It concludes that although aware of the risks of exporting, in a competitive market for military goods, member states sought commercial advantage over restraint, and comprehensively violated export control principles. This casts doubts on assertions of the EU acting as a “normative power”.     

Framing yourself into a corner: Russia,Crimea, and the minimal action space

A long-held axiom, political leaders are said to favour an action space sufficiently wide to allow them, as a minimum, a face-saving exit. This makes it particularly interesting for us to study those rare cases where political leaders seem to be deliberately reducing their policy options to the point of having merely one line to pursue. The handling by Russian President Vladimir Putin of the early 2014 crisis over Crimea, eventually leading to the annexation by Russia of the Ukrainian Peninsula on 21 March 2014, seems to represent such a rare case. Through the use of state-controlled media, a highly dichotomized framing of the crisis was presented to the Russian audience, essentially leaving Putin with just the one option of acting to “save” the Crimeans from the Ukrainian Government by bringing them into Russia.     

Intensifying Social Exchange Relationships in Public Organizations: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

In accordance with social exchange theory, prominent streams of management research emphasize the importance of reciprocal exchange relationships between organizations and their employees. When employees perceive themselves as supported by the organization, they reciprocate with increased work motivation. However, we do not know how this knowledge can be developed into management initiatives that increase public employees’ perceived support, because severe endogeneity problems make it difficult to estimate the effect of organizational support on employee commitment outside the laboratory. We use a randomized field experiment involving more than 800 public employees to estimate the effect. We find no average effect of the organizational support treatment on the employees’ perceived organizational support. Yet, a subgroup analysis shows a positive treatment effect when the employees’ local front‐line managers felt less supported prior to the intervention. We discuss the implications for theory and management practice. ©2012 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Coproduction and Equity in Public Service Delivery

Public managers and researchers devote much attention to the benefits of coproduction, or the mixing of the productive efforts of public employees and citizens in public service design and delivery. One concern, however, is the distributional consequences of coproduction. This article proposes that disadvantaged citizens may be constrained by a lack of knowledge or other resources necessary to contribute to and benefit from the coproduction process. From this assumption, the authors develop the theoretical argument that if coproduction programs were designed to lift constraints on disadvantaged citizens, they might increase both efficiency and equity. This claim is tested using a field experiment on educational services. A coproduction program providing immigrant parents with knowledge and materials useful to their children's early educational development had a substantial positive impact on the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children, thereby diminishing inequity. Economically, the program was more efficient than later compensation of low‐performing children.     

European Government(s): Executive Politics in Transition?

This article starts by discussing ‘agencification’ and fragmentation in national governments. When dealing with the problems that these developments might cause for democratic control and agency accountability, one only tends to look at the relationships between agencies and various national stakeholders, in particular ministerial departments. Has a ‘methodological nationalism’ hindered us from seeing the emerging executive centre at the level above, i.e. the European Commission, and the re-coupling of nationally decoupled agencies into a multilevel Union administration? The development of the EU, due to its peculiar institutional architecture, takes quite another direction than intergovernmental cooperation and comes to challenge governments in an unprecedented way. National agencies become parts of two administrations – a national as well as a Union administration.