Demonstrating Access to Public Services Diagrammatically

The Nomogramma di Gandy is a practical analytical tool and presentational method that can be applied to the subject of access to public services, such as universities, prisons, and hospitals. Illustrative examples are provided. It is flexible, requires minimal data, and can compare access across many geographical areas in one presentation. It addresses the need to appreciate the dynamics that can exist behind summary statistical analyses that focus on net changes, and can show trends over time. Such visual scanning of multiple data points and their relative juxtapositions, enables many common thinking errors to be minimized, if not completely avoided.     

Delivering Community Services in a New World of Volunteering: A Case Study From Sydney,Australia

In a challenging contemporary environment of a mixed economy of welfare, volunteers are a resource much-needed for the delivery of critical community-based services. Yet the context is changing as a result of new state/non-profit sector relationships and increased government intervention. Little is known about how these changes impact on the capacity and commitment of volunteers. This article responds to this gap in understanding through a case study of existing volunteers across community services in Sydney, Australia. Findings highlight the critical importance of supportive management, and particularly coordinators who understand volunteers' escalating needs in the new volunteer world.     

Predictors of Electronic Government Services Adoption: The African Students’ Perspective in China

This study investigated the willingness of African students in China to adopt and use e-government services. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) was used as the theoretical framework for this study while the data were analyzed with SPSS. The results indicate that performance expectancy, social influence, culture, and facilitating conditions were significant in determining the willingness to use e-government services. Contrarily to our expectations, effort expectancy, trust in the internet and perceived service quality were not significant in influencing the willingness to use e-government services. Also, while social influence had a significant influence on the trust in the internet, it was, however, demonstrated that social influence does not have a significant impact on both the effort expectancy and performance expectancy of e-government services. The implications of these and other result findings of this study are thoroughly discussed.     

Privatizing Urban Services Through Homeowners Associations: The Potential and Practice in Phoenix

Homeowners associations (HOAs) are private nonprofit corporations that regulate, “tax,” and provide urban services to growing numbers of U.S. residents. As such, HOAs may affect cities' public service delivery. Interviews with department heads in Phoenix, Arizona reveal how enclaves of private services influence the city's planning and provision of public services. The findings suggest that HOAs do not substitute private for public services in Phoenix. Instead, qualitative differences in the services themselves (particularly concerning their purpose and scale) and in the legal powers of their providers create a more nuanced pattern of public-private service delivery.     

Tortoises and Hares: The Race to Shared Services Across Australian State and Territory Jurisdictions

All tiers of government in Australia have recently aimed at enhancing service provision, with shared service platforms a recent innovation. To date there has been no scholarly inquiry into comparative shared service performance at the Australian state level. This article evaluates the experience of different state jurisdictions in adopting shared service platforms within “Whole of Government” approaches to public sector reform. It demonstrates that those jurisdictions most eager to embrace shared services have created organizations susceptible to particular adverse outcomes and that, far from implementing shared services programs, they may have installed monopoly-provider conditions for a range of back-office functions.     

Discount Rates for the Evaluation of Public Private Partnerships,by David F. Burgess and Glenn P. Jenkins (Eds.)

This article provides a critical overview of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Russia and Kazakhstan and examines the rationale underpinning such partnerships. The analysis discusses the reasons why governments in Russia and Kazakhstan focus principally on concessions as a form of PPP and goes on to provide a critical assessment of the key approaches and situational factors relating to concessions in these two countries.

The article finds that external globalization impulses pressed Russia and Kazakhstan to align their policies and institutions with western orthodoxy and perceived international best practice. An ever-increasing emphasis on use of PPPs has been a key feature of this alignment. However, the governments of Russia and Kazakhstan have increasingly resorted to concessions as progress with the development and implementation of Western style PPP models has stalled. This article concludes that the governments of Russia and Kazakhstan have demonstrated an overly optimistic approach to PPP and as a result may have substantially understated their overall concessional risks and costs. Features of Russian and Kazakhstani PPP arrangements such as ambiguity in output specification and extensive reliance on government subsidies, combined with lack of expertise of private partners, may significantly decrease concession benefits.     

Neo‐nationalism and Neo‐Atlanticism in Italian foreign policy

The European Union has low expectations for the international climate regime after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol effectively expires. The United States is not thought likely to sign up to new binding international commitments, whereas EU countries have experienced unexpected difficulties in implementing existing commitments. As a consequence, the European Union may be prepared to settle for a surprisingly weak follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol. At the same time, the European Union will pursue bilateral and regional climate agreements with like-minded countries, parallel to the UN framework and possibly independently of it. Collectively, such agreements could produce an international climate regime that is more robust than what could be agreed at the consensus-based UN level. Nevertheless, the European Union will continue to support the UN process as the only legitimate forum for international negotiations on climate change.     

推进首都经济圈公共服务领域合作发展的重点

首都经济圈建设已经上升为国家战略,当前,首都经济圈内经济发展差距还较大,特别是基本医疗、社会保障等基本公共服务水平方面差距明显.首都经济圈建设是区域经济社会全面一体化发展的过程,推进公共服务领域的合作,是首都经济圈一体化发展的重要内容.该文在详细分析首都经济圈内公共服务差距的基础上,提出推动首都经济圈公共服务合作的基本思路和重点任务.     

Democratising the military: Lessons from Mediterranean Europe

This article analyses the factors and processes involved in democratizing the armed forces of Spain, Greece and Portugal in the 1970s and 1980s. After a brief comparative review of the history of civil‐military relations in the three countries, the article examines the role of societal, institutional (military professional) and international factors in the democratisation process. The article concludes that military professionalism can be a stimulant to intervention and de‐intervention, depending on societal considerations and the perceptions of the military at a given time. Explanations accounting for military democratisation can be found at the level of value‐congruency between society (including the international arena) and the armed forces.     

Managing the MedUSA: comparing the political economy of US–Japan,US–German,and US–UK relations

Abstract

International experience tells that public services often fail to work for those in need. To make things work requires complex institutional changes that are difficult to come by, let alone sustain. This paper examines the situation of rural public service provision in China and a local attempt to revamp the service provision institution through adjusting the mix of state and the market. It reveals the dialectical process of policy evolution whereby innovation, and resistance to it, has emerged.