Evaluating Collaboration: The Solution to One Problem Often Causes Another

Collaboration has become the predominant approach to solving complex public problems. This choice, however, often is not driven by demonstrated effectiveness. Collaboration is instead chosen in the hope that a networked arrangement will be more effective than individual organizations working on the issue alone. Questions regarding collaborative effectiveness persist and constitute a significant challenge facing both public management practitioners and public administration scholars. In light of the case study in this issue of Public Administration Review by Maurits Waardenburg and colleagues, this article reviews the current thinking on the measurement of collaborative performance and discusses steps that professionals can take to evaluate the effectiveness of their collaborative endeavors.     

The Effect of Problem Severity,Managerial and Organizational Capacity,and Agency Structure on Intergovernmental Collaboration: Evidence from Local Emergency Management

Like most public managers nowadays, local emergency managers operate within complex, uncertain environments. Rapid changes in the scope and severity of the issues increase the extent of intergovernmental collaboration necessary to address such challenges. Using a large data set of county emergency management agency directors, variations in intergovernmental collaboration reflect influences from problem severity, managerial capacity, and structural factors. The results demonstrate that public managers who perceive problems as severe, possess specific managerial skills, lead high‐capacity organizations, and operate in less complex agency structures collaborate more often and more effectively across governmental boundaries.     

Can you hear me Major Tom? News,narratives and contemporary military operations: the case of the Italian mission in Afghanistan

This research explores the relationship between public narratives and the Italian military contribution to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan (2001–2014). Despite attracting little attention in the literature, Italy has been one of the most crucial contributors of multilateral military missions around the world in the post-bipolar era. Italy has remained consistently engaged militarily in Afghanistan over the entire period of the ISAF mission. However, the country’s involvement has been characterised by differing and controversial views and perspectives among Italian political actors and the media. This study aims to reconstruct the core features of the strategic narratives and the media frames around the military intervention and it does so through a Qualitative Content Analysis on a collection of almost 200 articles published by four main Italian national newspapers. The goal of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, we systematically retrace the main discursive patterns and frames employed by the newspapers on the ISAF. On the other, we evaluate whether in the case of military interventions, the Italian media unveil critical inconsistencies and competitive arguments or whether they function as a repeater of the dominant political discourse. Thanks to the case study, we find that the Italian media supported the mainstream narratives.     

Global Economic Governance between China and the EU: the case of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

The recent establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the initiative launched by the People’s Republic of China in 2013 underpins Beijing’s intensions to promote its own narrative about global economic governance (GEG) as well as China’s readiness to play a far more proactive role at the international level. In the age of global power shifting and with 14 EU member-states part of the AIIB, the European Union (EU) necessitates to engage further with China, in particular, within the context of multilateral institutions. This article analyses the impact of China’s evolving global governance policies on the EU. China’s and EU’s approaches to the reform of global governance present both differences and similarities, yet, the article highlights EU’s needs to make sense to what extent China’s growing ascent in the realm of global governance is reshaping world’s regional and global architectures vis-à-vis financial multilateral cooperation.     

The (im)plausibility of racism in Europe: policy frameworks on discrimination and integration

ABSTRACT

Rodríguez Maeso and Araújo analyse the reproduction of a dominant understanding of racism in policy discourses of integration and discrimination used by monitoring agencies in Portuguese and European Union (EU) institutional contexts. More specifically, they question the political concern over racism and discrimination vis-à-vis the idea of Europe ‘becoming increasingly diverse’ and the need to gather ‘evidence’ of discrimination. To that end, they examine periodic reports issued by EU monitoring agencies since the 1990s—paying specific attention to reporting on school segregation of Roma pupils in Portugal—and national integration policies and initiatives that, since the 2000s, have targeted mainly Roma and black families and youth. They argue that the dominant discourse of integration and cultural diversity conceives of racism as external to European political culture, and as a ‘factor’ of the ‘conflictive nature’ of social interactions in ethnoracially heterogeneous settings. This paves the way for calls for the ‘strengthening of social cohesion’—on the assumption that policy initiatives need to act on the ‘characteristics’ of so-called ‘vulnerable’ populations—whereas institutional arrangements and everyday practices remain unchallenged.     

Performance Management and Deficit Adjustment in U.S. Cities: An Exploratory Study

Performance management or PM has been promoted as a tool to transform government. Claims that PM will enable governments to “do more with less,” “increase efficiency,” provide “value for money,” and make “rational budget decisions” abound. Has PM helped city governments in the United States cope with the effects of the 2007–2009 Great Recession? Theory suggests that PM can provide the informational and analytical foundation necessary for city officials to implement comprehensive but conflictive budget-cutting and revenue-raising strategies. By facilitating deep expenditure cuts and tax increases, PM can indirectly influence budget deficits. Using data from a national survey of city governments and multiyear audited financial reports, the empirical analysis shows that PM cities favored what are essentially decremental responses to fiscal crises that lead to marginal changes in revenues and expenditures. Not surprisingly, there is no evidence that PM influences the size and change in budget shortfalls.