Contracting out local government services: the B.C. experience

Abstract: This article discusses the findings of a detailed study of the practice of contracting out local government services in municipalities and regional districts in British Columbia. No similar study has been conducted in Canada to date, and comparable research in the United States has only examined the contracting of selected local government services. The findings are important for local government managers and elected officials because they indicate widespread reliance on contractors. Of all 124 local governments participating in the study, contractors were involved in the production of 32 per cent of all services. Of these, engineering services were the most likely to be produced by contractors (40.4 per cent). Specific comparisons of the B.C. findings with those in U.S. studies suggested that contracting for services was actually more widespread in B.C. than in the U.S. Further, reliance on contracting in B.C. had apparently increased over time. In 1980, 25 per cent of municipalities with a population over 10,000 contracted out the collection of residential solid waste. By 1989, that figure had increased to 54.8 per cent. Local government managers themselves saw no future reduction of the reliance on contracting; in fact, 22.8 per cent predicted an increase over the next five years. Sommaire: Cet article examine les constatations d'une étude détaillée sur la pratique des contrats de services parmi les municipalités et les districts régionaux de la Colombie-Britannique. Une telle étude n'a encore jamais été effectuée au Canada, et des recherches comparables aux États-Unis n'ont examiné que les contrats relatifs à certains services des gouvernements locaux. Les constatations sont importantes pour les gestionnaires et les élus des gouvernements locaux parce qu'elles révèlent le rôle très important des entreprises dans la prestation de services. Si l'on considère l'ensemble des 124 gouvernements locaux ayant participéà l'étude, les entrepreneurs sont impliqués dans la production de 32 pour cent de tous les services. Parmi les services fournis, ce sont les services d'ingénierie dont la plus forte proportion était assurée par des entrepreneurs (40,4 pour cent). Les coniparaisons spécifiques des ronstatations faitcs en Colornbie-Britannique à celles des études américaines suggerent que la Colornbie-Britannique fait davantage appel aux services sous-traités clue les États-Unis. Par ailleurs, la sous-traitance en Colombie-Britannique s'est apparernment accrue au fil des années. En 1980, 25 pour cent des municipaliteAs ayant une population de plus de 10 000 personnes avaient sous-traité le rarnassage des déchets solides résidentiels. En 1989, ce chiffre cyt passéà 51.8 pour cent. Les gestion-naires des gouvernements locaux eux-mêmes ne prévoient aucune réduction de la sous-traitance; en fait, 22,8 pour cent prévoient une augmentation au cours des cinq prochailies années.     

Adolescents’ Frequency of Alcohol Use and Problems from Alcohol Abuse: Integrating Dating Partners with Parent and Peer Influences

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Despite the centrality of dating relationships for teens, it is unclear whether the influence of romantic partners’ alcohol use on adolescents’...     

The (un)making of the Pax Turca in the Middle East: understanding the social-historical roots of foreign policy

Turkey’s foreign policy activism has received mixed reviews. Some feel threatened by the alleged increasing Islamization of the country’s foreign policy, sometimes called ‘neo-Ottomanism’, which is seen as a significant revision of Turkey’s traditional transatlanticism. Others see Turkey as a stable democratic role model in a troubled region. This debate on Turkish foreign policy (TFP) remains dominated by a sense of confusion about what appear to be stark contradictions that are difficult to make sense of. Intervening in this debate, this article will develop an alternative perspective to existing accounts of Turkey’s new foreign policy. Offering a historical sociological approach to foreign policy analysis, it locates recent transformations in Turkey’s broader strategies of social reproduction. It subsequently argues that, contrary to claims about Turkey’s ‘axis shift‘, its changing foreign policies have in fact never been pro-Western or pro-American. All foreign policy ‘shifts’ and ‘inconsistencies’, we argue, are explicable in terms of historically changing strategies of social reproduction of the Ottoman and Turkish states responding to changing domestic and international conditions.     

Innocent of the crime under investigation: suspects’ counter-interrogation strategies and statement-evidence inconsistency in strategic vs. non-strategic interviews

ABSTRACT

The study examines the counter-interrogation strategies applied by mock suspects (N?=?94), who are innocent of a mock crime under investigation but who were present at the scene, for different reasons, at around the time the crime occurred. Half were present at the crime scene to carry out a lawful act, the other half to carry out an unlawful act. Furthermore, this study examines the effect of the Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) technique as a strategic interviewing technique (vs. a non-strategic technique), on suspects’ statement-evidence inconsistencies. Participants were randomly assigned to the two interview conditions (strategic vs. non-strategic) and were interviewed as suspects of a crime, which none of them had committed. The results show that the most commonly used counter-interrogation strategy in both groups was to be honest. However, 26.1% of the innocent suspects, performing an unlawful act, reported the strategy to be deceptive. In addition, the statements of suspects executing an unlawful act were significantly more inconsistent with the evidence in the strategic than the non-strategic interview condition. The increased statement-evidence inconsistency rates potentially put these suspects at risk of being assessed as guilty of a crime they did not commit.     

Modernisation or Disorientation? Policy Change in Merkel's CDU

After decades of relative continuity, the Christian Democratic Union began making major modifications in its basic policy orientations after 1998. These waves of modernisation largely vindicate traditional explanations of party change, as they resulted from a combination of external shocks (electoral decline); leadership transition (Angela Merkel's consolidation of power); and internal factional change (weakening of the CDU's traditional conservative and social wings, along with the growing influence of its pro-market and culturally liberal elements). Yet the nature of Merkel's leadership and absence of a dominant internal coalition in the CDU often gave this policy change an ad hoc, inconsistent character.     

Skill Development and Regional Mobility: Lessons from the Australia-Pacific Technical College

Developing countries can lose part of their investment in training skilled workers who later emigrate. One innovative response is for migrants’ destination countries to help finance skilled emigrants’ training ex ante – linking skill creation and skill mobility. We describe one such project, the Australia-Pacific Technical College (APTC), which has financed vocational training in five Pacific island developing countries for employment both at home and abroad – including employment in Australia. The APTC has attained its goal of skill creation, but not its goal of skill mobility. We offer explanations for this result and lessons for future policy innovation.     

From Small Streams to Pipe Dreams – The Hydro-Engineering of the Cyprus Conflict

A 2008 water crisis triggered collective fears of droughts and long-term scarcities both north and south of the buffer zone dividing the Mediterranean island of Cyprus since 1974. Tectonic shifts in the island’s water management were the result. Central to export oriented agricultural production since British colonial days, water has always been a policy priority throughout independence, conflict and division for all administrations on the island. With discourses of scarcity and impending doom on the rise, policy makers north and south of the buffer zone started investing heavily in non-conventional high capacity water resources. Since October 2015 an underwater pipeline from the Turkish mainland supplies the north of the island with freshwater while the Republic of Cyprus has commissioned desalination plants through public private partnerships. This article argues that both the construction of the motherland’s “umbilical water cord” in the north as well as the “desalination rush” in the south are not just reactions to issues of environmental scarcity. It shows that Malthusian narratives of water scarcity leading to conflict are just as mistaken as liberal notions of scarcity leading to cooperation. Instead, relationships of power, rooted in post-colonial state formation, development, conflict and division have motivated financially costly but politically expedient investments in excess capacities, rather than improvement of water management. Both the northern and southern water infrastructure boom is understood within its geopolitical context of creating water as political capital in the peace process. This geo-politically conditioned over-engineering of water resources, finally, provides ample grounds for rethinking the relations between water, conflict and division more generally.     

A legacy reassessed: Helmut Kohl and the German party finance affair

Revelations about former chancellor Helmut Kohl's party finance practices spawned the biggest scandal in post‐war German political history. Though some details of this affair's scope remained unclear or in dispute, the author argues that large, unreported private contributions served Kohl's strategy for managing his Christian Democratic Union: such resources helped fund the modern party organisation that he had built and sustained his own quasi‐feudal network of personal relationships at all levels. His intense partisanship made it easier for him to justify circumventing party finance laws. Yet evidence for the contention that Kohl took such funds in exchange for granting policy favours remains more ambiguous.     

Two Steps Forward,One Step Back: Merkel's CDU/CSU and the Politics of Welfare State Reform

Given its traditional support for conservative welfare state policies, the Christian Democratic Union's embrace of major reform measures in late 2003 seemingly marked a significant shift in the party's direction. The extent of its commitment to this new course became a key question in German politics during the election of 2005 and the early phase of Angela Merkel's Grand Coalition. This article examines the factors that contributed to her CDU's embrace of welfare state retrenchment in light of the literature on the politics of social policy reform. It argues that this shift in party policy was driven mainly by calculations of perceived partisan opportunity and organisational latitude. When the latter appeared to change, the consensus on major reform within the CDU crumbled, which in turn affected the party's 2005 campaign and its role in the Grand Coalition government.