Quality of government in the Asia Pacific region Lapuente, Victor; Suzuki, Kohei
Asia Pacific journal of public administration = Ya tai gong gong xing zheng xue,
04/2022, Letnik:
44, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Bureaucracy is forgotten and needs to be rediscovered, and it is in this line of reasoning where this special issue emerges: to focus on what Rothstein (2009) refers to as the “output” side of ...government (ie the quality of public administration involved in policy implementation, state capacity or the quality of governance) instead of the more studied, in political science at least, “input” side (ie, how voters and/or constituencies affect policy decision-making). Which are the foundations, and consequences, of high-quality public administrations, and how do they vary in the Asia Pacific region.
For some scholars, bureaucratic contracts (i.e. low-powered and highly regulated) mitigate problems of time inconsistency between public employees who have undertaken costly asset-specific ...investments, and potentially opportunistic governments. For others, bureaucratic contracts exacerbate information asymmetries between bureaucratic experts and political dilettantes. This paper aims to reconcile these views by proposing two testable propositions: while bureaucratic impartiality has a positive effect because it reduces time inconsistency problems in the relationship between principals (governments) and agents (public employees), a bureaucratic career has, on the contrary, a negative effect because it reduces incentives. We test these hypotheses with three samples of countries (worldwide, OECD and EU) using scientific productivity as a proxy for public employees’ performance that can be compared across countries. The results show how, controlling for levels of development and investment, proxies for bureaucratic impartiality show a significant positive effect on scientific productivity while the existence of bureaucratic careers significantly diminishes scientists’ performance.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
A wave of recent cross‐national research has pointed to the positive consequences for countries with high levels of “quality of government” (QoG), broadly defined, such as corruption, impartiality, ...and quality of public services. Yet the question of how QoG varies at the sub‐national level is still widely overlooked, in particular with measures that are available over time. To address it, we present the third round of data from the regional European Quality of Government Index (EQI) survey corruption (D73), Europe (N44) governance (H11); sub‐national (R50), time series (C22), collected in 2017 and built upon the opinions of 78,000 respondents in 193 regions from 21 European countries. The data provides several contributions to the literature. First, while the majority of QoG‐type indices rely on expert assessments, the EQI relies on the assessments of citizens, who are the on‐the‐ground consumers of public services. Second, the data begins to show trends on QoG variation over time, as well as across European regions. Consequently, this data is the most comprehensive sub‐national data to date; mapping of QoG within and across EU countries over the past decade. Building on previous rounds of data collected in 2010 and 2013, the 2017 EQI, which is published free for scholarly use, builds on both perceptions and experiences of citizens in public service areas such as health care, education, and law enforcement. This paper presents the results of the latest survey, improved with respect to the previous ones, discussion of trends across space and over time, as well as interesting avenues for future research that we detect across European regions.
Resumen
Una serie de investigaciones internacionales recientes ha señalado las consecuencias positivas para los países con altos niveles de “calidad de gobierno” (CdG), definida en términos generales como corrupción, imparcialidad y calidad de los servicios públicos. Sin embargo, la cuestión de cómo varía la CdG a nivel subnacional aún se suele seguir pasando por alto, en particular respecto a las medidas disponibles a lo largo del tiempo. Para abordarlo, se presenta aquí la tercera ronda de datos de la encuesta regional del Índice Europeo de Calidad de Gobierno (EQI, por sus siglas en inglés) sobre corrupción (D73), gobernanza (H11) en Europa (N44); subnacional (R50), series temporales (C22), recopilada en 2017 y basada en las opiniones de 78 000 encuestados de 193 regiones de 21 países europeos. Los datos proporcionan varias contribuciones a la literatura. En primer lugar, mientras que la mayoría de los índices de tipo CdG se basan en evaluaciones expertas, la EQI se basa en las evaluaciones de los ciudadanos, que son los consumidores sobre el terreno de los servicios públicos. En segundo lugar, los datos empiezan a mostrar las tendencias de la variación de la CdG a lo largo del tiempo, así como en todas las regiones europeas. Por consiguiente, esta encuesta ofrece los datos subnacionales más completos hasta la fecha y el cartografiado de la CdG en los países de la UE y entre países ,durante la última década. A partir de las rondas anteriores de datos recopilados en 2010 y 2013, la EQI 2017, que se publica gratuitamente para uso académico, se basa tanto en las percepciones como en las experiencias de los ciudadanos en diferentes áreas de servicio público como la atención de la salud, la educación y la aplicación de la ley. Este documento presenta los resultados de la última encuesta, mejorada con respecto a las anteriores, un debate sobre las tendencias espaciales y temporales, así como vías interesantes para la investigación futura que detectamos en las regiones europeas.
抄録
政府の質(quality of government:QoG)は、腐敗、公正性、公共サービスの質など定義は広いが、多数の国際研究が、QoGのレベルの高い国のプラスの結果を相次いで指摘している。地方レベルではQoGがどのように異なるかという疑問は、予てからその解決方法は利用可能であるにもかかわらず、未だに広く見過されている。そこで、2017年に収集された、欧州21カ国における193地域の78,000人の回答者の意見に基づいて構築された、地域のEuropean Quality of Government Index(EQI:欧州における政府の質指数)による調査腐敗(D73)、欧州(N44)統治(H11)、地方レベル(C22)、時系列(R50)からの第三のデータを提示した。データから以下の知見が得られた。1)QoGの分類指標の多くが専門家の評価に依存するものであるが、EQIは、公共サービスの実質的利用者である一般市民の評価に依存している。2)データは、QoGの変化のトレンドを経時的に、かつ欧州全域的にも示すようになってきている。すなわち、このデータは現時点で最も包括的な地方データであり、過去10年におけるEU圏内全域のQoGの分布を示すものである。2017年のEQIは、2010年と2013年に収集されたEQIの既存データに基づいて構築され、これは研究用に無料で公開されているが、医療、教育、法執行機関などの公共サービス領域に従事する市民の理解と経験の両方に基づいて構築されている。本稿では、過去の調査と比較して改善された、最新の調査の結果を提示し、空間と時間を超えたトレンドの考察と、欧州全域で認められた将来の研究に向かう興味深い道を提示する。
While most of the quantitative literature on quality of government has focused on national differences, subnational variation has been neglected, mainly due to the lack of data. This study explores ...subnational divergences in quality of government (understood as control of corruption, impartial treatment of citizens, and government effectiveness) using newly created subnational data including over 70 European regions. It addresses the institutional puzzle of why regions which share so many formal institutions (e.g., Northern and Southern Italy) do diverge so much in quality of government. Similar to recent political economy scholarship, our theory points to historical path dependencies. The study argues that a major factor explaining regional path dependencies is the consolidation of clientelistic networks in those regions where rulers have historically (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries) less constraints to their decisions.
This article analyses the effects of political regimes over state capacity or the quality of government (QoG): Do democratic states perform better than authoritarian ones? Previous studies point to a ...nonlinear relationship between democracy and government quality. It is argued here that QoG is a function of both forces of supply (leaders who have the power to make reforms) and demand (citizens' desire for mid‐ to long‐term investments over short‐term needs), the latter of which is a function of economic development. In democratic states, leaders have stronger incentives to improve QoG after a certain degree of wealth is reached, while in poorer countries they have little incentive for long‐term bureaucratic investments. Thus it is predicted that the relationship between democracy and QoG is conditional, based on economic development. With over 125 countries in the sample, this hypothesis is tested using time‐series panel data and spatial models, and strong empirical support is found.
Have New Public Management (NPM) reforms in public organizations improved the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery of public policies? NPM reforms, understood as a style of ...organizing public services towards the efficiency and efficacy of outputs, have been controversial. They have been accused of importing practices and norms from the private sector that could collide with core public values, such as impartiality or equity. Yet, with few exceptions, we lack systematic empirical tests of the actual effects that NPM reforms have had on the delivery of public services. In this introductory article, we summarize a special issue devoted to cover this gap. And, overall, we find that neither the catastrophic nor the balsamic effects of NPM reforms are confirmed, but the success (or failure) depends on the administrative, political and policy context those reforms take place.
Despite massive investments, studies suggest that anticorruption efforts often times fail and that countries and regions with historically deficient quality of government tend to be stuck in a ...vicious cycle of high levels of corruption and inadequate public service delivery. However, this study suggests that despite the stickiness of subnational quality of government, regional quality of government does shift over time. Using the 2021 European Quality of Government Index (EQI), and comparing the results to previous rounds of this survey, we show that there has indeed been noticeable shifts in the regional level of Quality of Government both within countries and across time. Overall, we find a slight increase in the perceived quality of government of European regions compared with 2017. However, some regions have evaded the positive trend, most notably in Poland and Hungary, whose response to the pandemic – probably not coincidentally – has involved important infringements of democratic rights and institutions. These changes in Quality of government call for a close mapping of the trends within countries and across regions and a focus on their determinants. To this end, the paper also serves as an introduction to the use of 2021 European Quality of Government (EQI) index, which is the most comprehensive survey to date to measure perceptions of subnational quality of government with a total of 129,000 respondents in 208 NUTS 1 and NUTS 2 regions and all EU 27-member state countries.
Previous studies have identified institutional, organizational, and individual factors that promote innovation in public organizations. Yet they have overlooked how the type of public ...administration—and the type of administrators—is associated with innovative attitudes. Using two large, unique comparative data sets on public bureaucracies and public managers, this article examines how bureaucratic politicization and legalistic features are associated with senior public managers’ attitudes toward innovation in 19 European countries. Results of multilevel analysis indicate that the bureaucratic politicization of an administration and the law background of public managers matter. Public managers working in politicized administrations and those whose education includes a law degree exhibit lower pro‐innovation attitudes (i.e., receptiveness to new ideas and creative solutions and change orientation).
Charron N., Dijkstra L. and Lapuente V. Regional governance matters: quality of government within European Union member states, Regional Studies. This study presents novel data (European QoG Index - ...EQI) on the 'quality of government' (QoG) - understood as low corruption, impartial public services and rule of law - for national and sub-national levels in twenty-seven European Union countries. The EQI shows notable within-country variations: while high-performing regions in Italy and Spain (for example, Bolzano, País Vasco) rank amongst the best European Union regions, others perform well below the European Union average. The index is highly correlated with sub-national levels of socio-economic development and levels of social trust, yet political decentralization is uncorrelated with greater within-country, or higher levels of overall, QoG.
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