The Limits to Public Value,or Rescuing Responsible Government from the Platonic Guardians

In various guises, public value has become extraordinarily popular in recent years. We challenge the relevance and usefulness of the approach in Westminster systems with their dominant hierarchies of control, strong roles for ministers, and tight authorising regimes underpinned by disciplined two‐party systems. We start by spelling out the core assumptions behind the public value approach. We identify two key confusions; about public value as theory, and in defining ‘public managers’. We identify five linked core assumptions in public value: the benign view of large‐scale organisations; the primacy of management; the relevance of private sector experience; the downgrading of party politics; and public servants as Platonic guardians. We then focus on the last two assumptions because they are the least applicable in Westminster systems. We defend the ‘primacy of party politics’ and we criticise the notion that public managers should play the role of Platonic guardians deciding the public interest. The final section of the article presents a ‘ladder of public value’ by which to gauge the utility of the approach for public managers in Westminster systems.     

我国公务员激励机制存在的问题及完善的思路

当前,我国政府活力不足和腐败问题比较突出,这与我国公务员激励机制弱化或失效密切相关。本文旨在通过比较分析我国公务员激励机制存在的问题,总结我国及西方发达国家公务员激励机制的研究成果和实践经验,深入探讨其形成的原因,并就如何完善我国公务员激励机制提出自己的思考。     

火耗归公与集权低能——关于清代官僚制度的一个实证分析

中国古代官僚政治具有高度集权与极端低能的双重特点。以往的研究多依据“国家%D%D社会”的宏观理论探寻二者的关系。这种方法虽有很大启发意义 ,但也容易失之宽泛、抽象 ,缺乏对具体历史现象的解释力。本文选择专制集权官僚政治最后和最典型的代表———清代官僚政治作为研究对象。以清代著名财政改革“火耗归公”为切入点 ,力图用经济分析的方法从微观角度揭示过度集权与低能混乱间微妙的正相关联系。并在此基础上探讨集权低能体制的成因与制度后果。     

官僚机构与公共政策

官僚制是一种被设计来有效执行公共政策的理性的组织结构,然而在一个高度复杂和技术导向的社会中,官僚机构不但是公共政策的执行者而且是主要决策者。     

Ethnic Citizenship in the Slovenian State

This article presents some crucial and typical experiences of people who were erased from the Registry of Permanent Residents of the Republic of Slovenia in 1992. In the process of forming the new Slovenian state in 1991 (after the collapse of former Yugoslavia), the body of citizens was newly defined according to the principle of ius sanguinis. This means that ethnic Slovenians who until then were Yugoslav citizens automatically became Slovenian citizens. Permanent residents of Slovenia who ethnically originated in other republics of former Yugoslavia had to file an application to acquire Slovenian citizenship based on Article 40 of the Citizenship of the Republic of Slovenia Act. Approximately 0.9% of Slovenia's population (18,305 people) did not succeed in obtaining Slovenian citizenship because either they did not file an application or their application was rejected. These people were erased from the Registry of Permanent Residents by the Ministry of Internal Affairs on 26 February 1992. The Ministry carried out this secret erasure without any legal basis. The Aliens Act entered into force for the erased which then annulled all their previously acquired rights; legally and formally they were made equivalent to migrants who cross borders illegally. Thus, the people erased from the Registry of Permanent Residents were suddenly left without any rights: the right to a residence in Slovenia (in their homes with their families), the right to cross the state borders, and all other economic, social and political rights. The implementation of the erasure concerns the suspension of basic human rights, the annulment of the principles of a legal state and the production of redundant people. The author argues that the erasure from the Registry of Permanent Residents is constitutive of Slovenian citizenship: the erasure established certain power relations in society and a certain type of democracy.     

Why Do Regulatory Agencies Punish? The Impact of Political Principals,Agency Culture,and Transaction Costs in Predicting Environmental Criminal Prosecution Outcomes in the United States

Studies of administrative behavior are keen to examine the internal dynamics of agency decision making, as well the impact of external political actors on agency actions. Yet few studies apply these findings to the question of why agencies use their most punitive enforcement powers. Contrasting principal–agent, transaction costs, and organizational culture models of agency behavior, this study examines why regulatory agencies punish. Through content analysis of nearly one thousand of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's criminal investigations and subsequent prosecutions, 2001–11, findings suggest that punishment severity in environmental criminal cases is based less on transaction costs and political pressure and more on professional norms that value strong enforcement. These findings have important implications for explaining regulatory outcomes and administrative behavior.     

Representative bureaucracy and seconded national government officials in the European Commission

The bureaucratic arms of modern international organizations increasingly consist of staff with ambiguous organizational affiliations. This article analyses the implications of this trend from the perspective of representative bureaucracy – using seconded national experts (SNEs) in the European Commission (Commission) as the empirical laboratory. Using a variety of datasets, we unveil Commission SNEs' profiles (to assess their passive representativeness) and link these profiles to their role perceptions (to evaluate their potential for active representation). This illustrates that Commission SNEs' background characteristics do not match those of their constituent population (i.e. the EU27 population) – suggesting a lack of passive representativeness. However, we also find that SNEs from countries favoring stronger national rather than European regulatory and policymaking powers are more likely to see themselves as a representative of their home country government. This suggests a potential for active representation in terms of SNEs' home country's policy preferences.     

Women in the Korean Civil Service

Abstract

Are organizational characteristics, such as agency type, size, and growth, linked to female representation in the Korean civil service? This study analyzes the aggregate data regarding the female workforce in the Korean civil service in 2001 through multiple regression analysis. Findings indicate that the Korean women are likely to be underrepresented in most national agencies and severely underrepresented at higher‐level grades. While the Korean women doubled in the civil service for the last two decades, employment of women at the highest grade levels did not improve significantly. Redistributive agencies are directly linked to female representation in the Korean civil service regardless of grade levels, whereas agency size and growth are not related to female employment representation. To achieve gender equality and to expand female senior executive feed levels, the Korean government has provided the quotas for successful female applicants in the civil service entrance examinations at the lowest through middle level grades since 1996. The use of quotas and policies for gender equality could lead to changes in the entire public workforce, particularly fair representation at higher‐level positions as well as the elimination of agency and occupational segregation.     

Unintended Consequences of NPM Drive the “Bureaucracy”

This article examines the unintended consequences following implementation of a new public management (NPM) reform—a performance-based salary system—in two Swedish public schools. Headmasters and central office personnel were interviewed. The expected reform results at last appeared a decade after implementation when salary-setting procedures adopted the bureaucratic framework. Despite the common view that NPM reforms, owing to unintended consequences, fail because they adapt poorly to the Weberian control regime at public organizations, this article argues that the unintended consequences of an NPM reform can drive the “bureaucratic” organization even when there is no evidence of debureaucratization.     

On The Receiving End: The Governance of the Police in Britain

Based on direct observation over a five‐year period, the article paints an intimate picture of how the police in Britain are governed. It analyses the complexity of the economic and political environment in which the police have to work: the insecure funding platform; the stream of initiatives, targets and official guidelines; the delicacy of handling community sensitivities; the inherent opaqueness of the national ‘tripartite’ system of governance; and the constant challenge of making balanced judgements under conflicting pressures. The central theme that runs through the article (which follows on logically from two previous articles published in Political Quarterly) is that of a ‘managerialist’ political class, with a distinctive ideology and mode of control, trying to get a policy grip on the real world of service delivery: in this instance, policing. Unlike the previous two articles, which had a top‐down focus, the emphasis here is primarily on how the thicket looks to those who have to navigate their way through it.