Public value creation and appropriation mechanisms in public–private partnerships: How does it play a role?

Scholars have extensively investigated public value creation and appropriation concerning public services delivered strictly by the government and public–private arrangements, such as public–private partnerships (PPPs). However, such studies often focus on value for money and economic performance criteria. This study examines how public value can be created and appropriated in PPP settings and how public value mechanisms can influence these phenomena. Considering that the literature lacks an integrated and structured analytical framework to assess such phenomena, this conceptual article addresses four mainstream PPP topics regarding public value mechanisms (information sharing, public and private capabilities, risk governance, and stakeholder orientation), which can be associated with PPPs' public value creation (destruction) and appropriation (misappropriation). Thus, this article highlights a need to evaluate PPPs in terms of public value creation beyond the economic performance criteria and fills the literature gap by proposing a public value creation and appropriation framework.     

Bill Gibson and the Art of Leading Across Boundaries

As director of a regional council for more than 30 years, Bill Gibson is instrumental in facilitating “boundary‐crossing” collaborations that increase public value. This Administrative Profile examines three cases of regional, cross‐sector collaboration catalyzed by Gibson’s leadership. Characteristics of entrepreneurship, attention to “relationship capital,” and the humility derived from ego strength combine with the context of working for a boundary organization to help explain his success.     

Recent trends in the European Union trade and investment policy towards China

The last decades＇ trend towards the creation of a world market of goods and services and the upsurge of China as a global competitor ought to be considered as an important challenge for the European Union. In contrast to this interpretation, the European Union policy towards China has suffered from an absence from a long run view. European institutional behaviour has been based on applying measures that were solely reactions to the policies launched by the United States. Finally, the difficulty of finding common interests among all member countries has been a constant in the relationship with China. The European Union has recently shown a clear concern about the unavoidable need of improving European firms＇ competitiveness, especially in order to overcome the Chinese access to the internationalised division of labour. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to observe a thorough treatment for the economic challenge of emergent economies as a whole in many European policy measures.     

Analysis of the testimonial evidence of Portugal’s first major forensic case: part II

The crime possibly perpetrated by a doctor named Vicente Urbino de Freitas in 1890 is one of the most famous cases of poisoning, and it had echoes in the Portuguese and foreign press for several decades. This prestigious doctor was convicted of the fatal poisoning of his nephew. He also attempted the homicide of two nieces and their mother-in-law, who only escaped because they obstinately refused to comply with the “therapeutics” prescribed by the family doctor. The motive of the crime should have been Vicente Urbino de Freitas’ ambition to receive the family inheritance of his wife, the daughter of the well-known merchant José António Sampaio of Flores Street in Porto. Vicente Urbino de Freitas was convicted but doubt about his guilt persists for more than a century. This second work aimed to collect and analyse all the relevant and contradictory testimonial evidence of the prosecution and defence witnesses. This case represents an odd historical record obtained through more than 12 years of research on the first major significant Portuguese forensic case. Rare and unprecedented testimonial evidence and photographs were obtained from different countries and then repaired, since these also provide an important historical record of the medical photography.     

Back to the Future: Changing Repertoire in Contemporary Protests

This article opposes theoretical attempts to explain the Brazilian 2013 cycle of protests by fragmentation. It argues that the plurality of social actors engaged in those protests faced a field of contention deeply framed by autonomist practices, which allowed the aggregation of very different political views in an all-embracing political phenomenon. In addition, it suggests a broader change in the repertoire of contention that involves elements from the two historical periods discussed by Charles Tilly. Contemporary political contention gathers together the parochial and direct elements of the pre-social movements era with the broader and cosmopolitan elements of the social movements era.     

Interacting Capacities: The Indirect National Contribution to Subnational Service Provision

Different levels of government often interact on the ground, providing closely related services. While multilevel governance arrangements have been studied broadly, scarce literature has explored the contribution of national governments to achieving subnational policy goals. By reconceptualizing administrative decentralization as coexisting devolution (to subnational governments) and deconcentration (through field units), this research explores the indirect national contribution to subnational performance by delivering associated services. This article tests the following hypotheses: (1) there is a positive effect of national deconcentrated capacity on subnational policy outputs, and (2) under policy overlap, this contribution diminishes with increasing levels of subnational capacity. While Colombian schooling is decentralized, the national government indirectly contributes to education through a national agency that administers child protection services. Analyzing data for Colombian subnational governments over a decade reveals that national capacity boosts education provision while the least endowed regions benefit the most, thus providing evidence supporting both hypotheses.     

Predicting executive vacancies: An organizational approach

When an executive departs, some organizations experience a vacancy while others do not. Recent research shows that the occurrence and length of vacancy instances within and across sectors varies widely. However, the causes of such variance in vacancies have yet to be carefully addressed by public management research. This study explores the determinants of executive vacancy, focusing specifically on organizational-level characteristics of size, performance, and sector as well as the role of anticipation of a departure. We use data from public and private US doctoral universities to identify 230 leadership transitions between 1993 and 2013. In this context, we find that anticipation of departure is an extremely strong predictor of vacancy. Moreover, private universities are significantly less likely than their public counterparts to experience executive vacancy while organizational performance and size do not appear to influence vacancy.     

Tuning In,Not Turning Out: Evaluating the Impact of Ethnic Television on Political Participation

Despite the importance of ethnic television within immigrant communities, its effects on political participation are unclear. On the one hand, ethnic media can mobilize and inform voters. On the other hand, it can serve as a source of diversion and reduce the desire to participate. To evaluate these competing possibilities, we implement a geographic regression discontinuity (GRD) approach involving Federal Communication Commission reception boundaries for Spanish‐language television stations in two states. Additionally, we replicate and unpack our GRD analyses using three nationally representative samples of Latinos. Across multiple studies, we find that access to Spanish‐language television is associated with decreases in turnout, ethnic civic participation, and political knowledge. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings on the ethnic politics, political communication, and social capital literatures.     

Economic transformations in Cuba: a review

After Raul Castro’s accession to the presidency of Cuba, the country has witnessed the most far-reaching process of economic reforms for more than five decades. The government has expanded the private and cooperative sectors, has passed a new foreign investment law, restructured most of its old debt and has sought to end the long-standing dispute with the USA. Yet economic performance has been poor and the country faces significant challenges and contradictions arising from the reforms. This paper analyses the macroeconomic environment and the changes introduced by the Cuban government over the period 2007–15. While successful at restoring macroeconomic equilibria, restrictive macroeconomic policies have hurt economic growth, whereas growth- and efficiency-enhancing measures are yet to produce results. Moreover, transformation of the economic model is slow because of its many internal contradictions. The paper also discusses some of the main impediments to future change.