Using survey data to study capitalization of local public services

We use surveys in which respondents evaluate local amenities in Norway to compute proxy variables for the quality of local public services as well as other local amenities relevant to location decisions. Average satisfaction reported by the respondents is computed for each amenity and each municipality, adjusted for sample variation in personal characteristics and included as explanatory variables in a cross-section study of house prices. We find that house prices are increasing in satisfaction with cultural activities, health care, care for the elderly and public transportation.     

Trends in local government in Europe

Abstract

The article explores which reform trends are expected to play a significant role in the further development of local government in European countries. Analysis is based on an adopted Delphi survey of (mainly academic) local government experts from thirty-two countries. Results include a list of trends structured by the perceived importance for the coming ten years. Redistributing responsibilities and duties across levels of government constitute the highest ratings out of all trends. Furthermore, results do not provide clear evidence to support a shift from public management to governance as has recently been proclaimed in academic debate and literature. Management topics continue to be of great importance. Last but not least, clusters extracted point to different reform groups, which highlight more reluctant or enthusiastic attitudes to the relevance of the suggested trends of the study.     

以政府为主导提供节事活动旅游公共服务

旅游节事活动作为旅游业的重要组成部分日益显示出对举办地经济社会发展的促进作用.国内重大节事活动成功的旅游公共服务案例给我们提供了许多经验启示.为促进旅游节事活动的健康可持续发展,政府应切实做好节事活动的旅游公共服务工作.     

公共管理社会化与公共服务市场化--美国"政府再造"对珠海市城市管理制度创新的启示

文章认为公共管理社会化与公共服务市场化是美国“政府再造”的重要政策工具。在分析美国地方政府推行公共管理社会化和公共服务市场化经验教训以及珠海城市管理面临问题基础上 ,提出珠海城市管理体制创新的具体策略 ,包括 (1)推动非政府、非营利组织发展 ;(2 )大力推进社区建设 ;(3)完善“两级政府、三级管理”的城市管理体系 ;(4)全面开展公共服务市场化改革 ;(5 )吸引非国有资本参与基础设施建设 (6 )建立科学的政府绩效评估制度。     

Municipal corporatization in Germany and Italy

Abstract

During the last few years, the local government sector in European countries has undergone a number of important changes. Among the various reform initiatives has been the externalization of public services, such as corporatization, contracting-out, public–private partnerships and privatization. The key goal of this article is to describe and explain the evolution of local public services provision in the two selected countries, with a particular focus on ‘corporatization’. The article seeks to draw a picture of the actual municipal landscape with the administrative core and its various corporations. Furthermore, it will discuss the reasons for corporatization trends and their impact on the corporate governance structures of municipalities in Germany and Italy.     

Electronic monitoring in public organizations: evidence from US local governments

Technology use in the workplace expands the ability to monitor employees through activities such as website tracking, email scanning, and social media monitoring. Monitoring is a fundamental aspect of the relationship between organizations, employees, and stakeholders and can affect perceptions of privacy, autonomy, and trust in the workplace. However, electronic monitoring is little investigated in public management research and we have minimal knowledge about the factors that prompt public managers to adopt electronic monitoring. Focusing on small- and medium-sized US municipalities, we investigate types of electronic monitoring and how organizational, sociopolitical, and technological factors shape electronic monitoring intensity. We test our hypotheses with data from a 2014 national survey of 2,500 local managers, website coding data, and US Census data. We find that electronic monitoring, especially monitoring online activities, is a response to organizational centralization, participation of internal stakeholders, social media use, and technology concerns.     

城市公共服务的三个基本问题

采用规范分析的方法,借鉴传统经济学相关理论,得出三个结论:其一,城市公共服务领域应提倡为平民服务;其二,服务内容应根据城市具体条件和市民公共服务需求来确定;其三,城市政府应致力于为市民提供无缝隙的、市民满意的公共服务.     

地方政府公共服务全面质量管理探讨

随着全球化和信息化的变革,经济的发展和社会的进步,公众受教育水平、政治参与意识不断提高,对政府的期望值和服务要求也在提高,这种情况下,传统的政府管理已不能适应要求,而将全面质量管理引入到政府公共服务中来,就成为构建服务型政府的一种必要途径。     

Entrepreneurship in the public sector: a framework of analysis in European local governments

In this paper we explore the potential role of entrepreneurship in public sector organizations. At first, we present a review of the entrepreneurship theme in the political science and public management research streams, comparing these ideas with the mainstream business literature on entrepreneurship. Thereafter, we illustrate empirically how Stevenson's classical framework of entrepreneurship can be applied in a European local government context to explain the recent initiatives to compete for and utilize European Union structural funds. The empirical basis of the study is comprised of ten in-depth case studies of local government organizations, five in the UK and five in Italy. Finally, we propose five distinct types of entrepreneurial agents in the public sector: professional politician; spin-off creator; business entrepreneur in politics; career-driven public officer; and politically ambitious public officer.     

The impact of public service values on services of general interest reform debates

Abstract

Competing values complicate debates on the reform of public services. Attention for competition and efficiency is balanced by concerns for equity and universality in service delivery. These potential value conflicts are best visible in the reform of services of general interest. Despite debates at the European and the national level, current research on services of general interest has been limited to scholars in law and economics. Citizens' opinion on the guiding principles of service delivery is generally disregarded. In this article, we analyse a number of Eurobarometer surveys dealing with services of general interest, as well as a general survey of citizens' perceptions of the public sector in Belgium. We delineate clusters of citizens' public service delivery value orientations, and show that one-sided or ideology-based reform strategies probably negate many of the continuing dilemmas in public service delivery.     

The ideal source of local public revenue

Free or underpriced curb parking creates a classic commons problem. Studies have found that between 8% and 74% of cars in congested traffic were cruising in search of curb parking, and that the average time to find a curb space ranged between 3 and 14 min. Cities can eliminate the economic incentive to cruise by charging market-clearing prices for curb parking spaces. Market-priced curb parking can yield between 5% and 8% of the total land rent in a city, and in some neighborhoods can yield more revenue than the property tax.     

Understanding continuity in public sector HRM through neo‐institutional theory: why national collective bargaining has survived in English local government

Most HRM research over recent decades has concentrated on ‘change’, charting ever more fragmented, individualised and unitarist employment relationships. This is equally true of public sector HRM, where the emphasis has been on neo‐liberalism and marketisation. However, in many countries and sectors, collective, pluralist approaches to HRM and industrial relations have proved remarkably resilient. This article uses Neo‐Institutional theory to explain the ‘continuity’ of one such HRM system: national collective bargaining in English local government (1979–2007). We argue that this survives because it manages the political and managerial processes that link central government and central–local relations and acts as a conduit between institutional stakeholders to deliver services to the public. By understanding the ‘passive consensus’ that holds the collectivist HRM system together, we can anticipate the forces that might pull it apart.     

Women and risk-taking behaviour in local public finance

This study examines how female representation in local elected (mayor and legislature) and administrative (mid-level manager) positions influences municipal financial decision-making in 764 Japanese city-level governments. Findings show that female representation in local councils is positively correlated with risk-averse behaviour in financial decisions, as female representation on the legislature is negatively associated with issuing municipal bonds and with local investment in public corporations. Female representation in executive (mayor and vice-mayor) and mid-level administrative managerial positions has no apparent effects on local financial decisions. This study tests existing explanations of relationships between female managerial representation and fiscal behaviour in an Asian developed setting characterized by considerable underrepresentation of women in politics.     

Central government subsidies to local public goods

We examine the welfare effects of a central government's subsidy for a local public good in a Nash equilibrium model with two types of public goods. We first show that the welfare effect depends on the substitution and evaluation effects. We also investigate the optimal subsidy rate in a second-best framework and explore how the optimal subsidy scheme depends on the relative evaluation of the two types of public goods. Received: August 20, 1998/accepted: February 12, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" We are grateful to John Quigley, Minoru Kunisaki, Tom Panella, Andy Haughwout, Steven Craig, William Hoyt, Michael Ash, Konrad Stahl, Amihai Glazer, David Wildasin and two referees for helpful comments and suggestions, An early version of this paper was presented at a seminar at University of California, Berkeley and at conferences at JAEE Annual Meeting in Japan, North American Meetings of The RSAI in Washington, WSAI conference in Hawaii, Public Choice Meeting in San Francisco.     

Efficient inequality: differential allocation in the local public sector

This paper examines the consequences for social efficiency if the locally provided public input can be differentially allocated among residents. We derive the distributional efficiency condition, which is the distribution of public inputs that maximizes within-city gains from trade. Differential allocation also causes modifications to the standard (Samuelsonian) allocative efficiency condition. Additionally, we explore the consequences of differential allocation for the median voter model. Standard empirical voter models are seriously flawed because they fail to distinguish final public output production from either individual demand or the distribution of publicly provided inputs. Finally, we derive the club sharing efficiency condition.     

Social and environmental reporting in local authorities

There has recently been a resurgence of interest in social and environmental reporting (SER) in both the private and the public sector; however, its meaning and application in the public sector are relatively new, and it has been little investigated. Our article is aimed at gaining a better understanding of the reasons underlying the adoption of SER by Italian local authorities by applying the concept of management fashion (Abrahamson ). Empirical analysis shows that both socio-psychological and techno-economic forces combine to shape the SER phenomenon, and a managerial fashion is currently in place among Italian local authorities. Thus, even when SER is adopted in response to ‘technical’ gaps, its label largely depends on its being driven by the need to signal that LAs are adopting a tool which is gaining momentum in academic and professional discourse. However, both forces are influenced not so much by a concern for sustainability as by the context of public-sector reform processes.     

Ethical Climate and Accountability in Nonprofit Organizations

The Best Value regime, which is being introduced in the UK from April 2000, is rooted in the ‘new public management’ paradigm but also seeks to move beyond it. Like compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) which preceded it, the Best Value framework stresses the role of markets and performance management systems in the provision of public services. However, it appears to offer more scope for local flexibility, and has therefore enjoyed a much higher level of support among local policy makers.

There is though evidence that many in local government have not yet grasped the scale of the improvements in local services that ministers are expecting, and the extent to which this will require changes in existing structures and processes. The result is likely to be an increasingly differentiated pattern of service provision and, in an era of ‘evidence policy making’, researchers are likely to be called upon to develop methodologies which allow evaluation of the alternative models of service provision that begin to emerge.     

Distinctiveness in the study of public management in Europe

Abstract

This article presents three clear examples of distinctive approaches to the study of public management, that is, in France, Germany and Italy, three countries with peculiar legalistic state traditions. For each country a historical sketch of state and administration is first given, then both the administrative (public management) reforms are described, the state of the art of administrative sciences and finally the specificness of the study of public management. The historical-institutional context of a particular state and administration apparently does influence not only the form and content of the administrative ‘public management’ reforms but also the scientific study of public management in that country.     

The effect of spillovers on the provision of local public goods

This paper analyzes the provision of local public goods with positive spillovers across jurisdictions. If spillovers are symmetric, the non-cooperative game played by jurisdictions admits a unique equilibrium, and an increase in spillovers reduces the total provision of public goods. Smaller jurisdictions always reduce their contribution, but larger jurisdictions can increase their contribution. When spillovers are asymmetric, equilibrium is unique if spillovers are low, while multiple equilibria exist for high spillover values. In the case of two jurisdictions, an increase in the flow of spillovers to one jurisdiction benefits agents from that jurisdiction but harms agents in the other jurisdiction. Beyond the case of two jurisdictions, the effect of changes in spillovers cannot be signed. An increase in the spillovers flowing to a jurisdiction can actually result in an increase in the supply of public goods by that jurisdiction and harm agents residing in it, while benefiting agents in the other jurisdictions. The results of the paper reveal the complexity of interactions that will plague the design of institutions for multijurisdictional local public good economies with spillovers.      

The public administration paradox: an organisation with a low degree of institutionalisation

This paper identifies the distinctive characteristics of the internal labour market of the public administration. It gives some examples of innovation in human resource management (particularly in the field of performance-related pay), and discusses whether and how these processes provide a solution to the problems of identity, efficiency and conflict that have affected the public administration on a broad front over the last decade. The main results of the analysis have revealed the weak institutionalisation of the public administration. The selection criteria by which the organisation determines the professional mix of occupational structure and creates a basis for performance behaviour and attitudes are very weak. Limited mobility and poor wage dynamics are the factors most strongly affecting the internal labour market. This, along with other factors discussed in the paper, makes it extremely difficult to enact private sector principles suitable to the public administration (regardless of the specific traits of the organisations concerned). Without certain structural and social preconditions, managerialism cannot provide a solution; legislation alone is not sufficient to bridge the gap and does not create the conditions for improving the organisation of public administration.