Abstract
In 2008, the world underwent one of its worst economic and financial crises, whose consequences are still visible in some countries. This paper aims to analyse the impact of the crisis ...within the long-term care systems of Germany, England, Sweden and Spain from a comparative perspective. The time period analysed spans from the outset of the crisis in 2008, up to 2017. This article starts off from the thesis of the divergent impact of the economic crisis in these countries and the convergence between the impact of the crisis and long-term care contractions in the most afflicted countries. The outcome highlights the power of economic and financial pressures in order to explain the contractions within the care policies. Equally, it emphasizes the contradictions between the formal development level of the care systems and their practical institutional implementation in the field.
While there is a substantive literature on the link between welfare states and individuals’ trust, little is known about the micro-linkage of the conditionality of welfare as a driver of trust. This ...study presents a unique randomized social experiment investigating this link. Recipients of the regular Dutch social assistance policy are compared to recipients of two alternative schemes inspired by the basic income and based on a more trusting and unconditional approach, testing the main reciprocity argument in the literature: a trusting government will harvest trust from welfare recipients in return. Particularly trust in local government – the level at which the experiment was implemented – increases among recipients of the alternative treatments. Subsequently, we innovatively theorize and test rigorously which mediating mechanisms might explain this increase. Policy evaluation, social integration, and psychological well-being are studied in this respect. Of these, the only underlying mechanism proven to mediate the treatment effect in local political trust, is citizens’ satisfaction with policy.
The 'Holy Grail' of decades of public sector reform has been the public availability of readily-understandable, reliable and meaningful performance information about government activities and ...programmes. Maps have been drawn; processes have been developed; some actual progress has been made in a number of countries; but the end is not in sight. Put simply, particularly in Westminster government-type systems, it remains the case, at least in broad terms, that the government is responsible for policy; the public service for administration and service delivery; and the parliament for oversight and review. In reality, the situation has become more complicated with the growth of the 'information economy', internationalization, the greater involvement of the private sector in government activities generally and changing public views and expectations of government, not least in respect of trust and confidence in politicians and public institutions. At the very least, it is still a situation of 'work-in-progress' trying to catch up with the changing national and international environment.
Since attaining independence in 1980, the government of Zimbabwe has adopted numerous reform measures aimed at improving public sector corporate governance. These include the leadership code, the ...central bank’s Corporate Governance Guidelines, the Corporate Guidelines for State Enterprises and Parastatals (SEPs) and the Zimbabwe Code on Corporate Governance (ZIMCODE). Furthermore, corporate governance principles and best practices were embedded in the Constitution of Zimbabwe in 2013, the Public Finance Management Act Chapter 22:19 and the Public Entities Corporate Governance Act Chapter 10:31. Despite the adoption of the aforementioned reform measures, corporate governance principles and best practices have not taken root in Zimbabwe’s public sector. Scholars such as Moyo, Zhou, Chigudu, Ncube and Maunganidze and Chavhunduka and Sikwala have conducted research on public sector corporate governance in Zimbabwe. However, their work does not comprehensively explain why public sector corporate governance has failed to take root in Zimbabwe’s body politic, especially among SEPs. Thus, this paper seeks to fill this lacuna in academic literature. Data was collected through documentary search. Government policy documents such as ZIMCODE and legislation that provides for corporate governance, ruling party policy documents such as the leadership code, reports by the Bretton Woods institutions journal and newspaper articles were analysed. The research findings reveal that public sector corporate governance reforms have failed to take root in Zimbabwe because of systematic corruption or rent seeking behaviour, captured anti-corruption bodies, patronage networks, party/state conflation, militarisation of the state and absence of political will. We argue that before reform measures aimed at improving public sector corporate governance in Zimbabwe can take root, Zimbabwe’s body politic needs to be demilitarised and liberated from the predatory securocrat comprador bourgeoise and politically linked cartels that have captured the state.
The purpose of this paper was to discuss the efficacy of public sector reforms that were introduced in Botswana in the early 1990s. In terms of design/methodology/approach, the paper used the ...intrepretivist research philosophy and survey research strategy. Data collection was in the form of secondary sources. Since the efficacy of public sector reforms cannot be directly measured, proxy measures in the form of Customer Satisfaction Surveys were used. Data analysis was in the form of document analysis. The paper concluded that the fruit from public sector reforms is poor. Poor Customer Satisfaction Surveys suggest that these public sector reforms have not improved the quality of public services in Botswana as it was intended. Reasons for the poor results are yet to be investigated. However, institutional and environmental contexts matter, so, this paper, using institutional and environmental contexts analysis, argues that founding conditions were unfavourable. Thus, there is a need to prepare the ground before introducing reforms. Since the paper is anchored in a Botswana-specific context, its generalisability is limited. Despite the limited generalisability of this case study, there are common lessons when introducing public sector reforms; first things must happen first. That is, preparing the soil (founding conditions) before planting the seed (reform).
Institutional aspects of performance measurement (PM) in public sector organizations are attracting increasing research interest. Only recently, however, has the literature on this topic recognized ...the pertinent critique of neo-institutional sociology (NIS) pivoting around its view of managers and organizations as primarily passive adaptors to change. This paper explores how the properties of institutional processes associated with recent reforms in the Norwegian health care sector impinge on the extent of pro-active choice exercised by senior management in the development of multidimensional PM reflecting the interests of a wider range of institutional constituencies. Addressing this issue, we draw on Oliver’s (1991) conceptual framework, based on a continuum of responses characterized by a varying degree of pro-active choice. The study thus provides a more detailed analysis of the managerial tactics in developing organizational PM than most prior research informed by NIS. We find support for several of Oliver’s hypotheses regarding the influence of institutional aspects, particularly those pertaining to the causes of the adoption of PM practices, the pattern in which these are diffused and the influence of constituency multiplicity and dependence, but also identify some areas requiring conceptual refinement in this respect.
Building digital state Kassen, Maxat
Online information review,
04/2019, Letnik:
43, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review and illustrate historical milestones and evolutionary stages of public sector reforms in such a typical transitional society as Kazakhstan through the ...prism of existing e-government development strategies, implementation models and institutional regulations.
Design/methodology/approach
The research is mostly based on a retrospective analysis of technology-driven public sector reforms and content analysis of various e-government strategies and platforms implemented by national and local executive authorities in Kazakhstan for the last two decades.
Findings
The results of the analysis has confirmed previously made assumptions that typical developing states tend to adopt different non-linear and multidimensional implementation strategies in advancing e-government reforms in comparison with developed countries. As it turns out, the continuity of actual stages or levels of such development not always corresponds in a consecutive manner to the formal phases of the most popular e-government maturity models proposed previously in academic literature.
Research limitations/implications
One of the fundamental limitations of the case study is that its findings and recommendations could relate only to a limited number of countries that have similar political, socioeconomic and administrative contexts. Taking into account the fact that Kazakhstan is not only a typical developing economy but also a transitional post-communist and post-totalitarian society that has its own unique political and socioeconomic features of governance, the results of case study could not be generalized and extrapolated to all developing countries, presumably narrowing them only to a very limited number of similar states, mostly, in Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia.
Practical implications
The main practical contribution of the article is that it provides a close review of e-government politics in Kazakhstan that could be helpful for policy makers and practitioners in evaluating, learning and improving the work of various technology-driven public sector projects in the area, especially from a regulatory point of view.
Originality/value
This inherently ethnographic narrative, which is based on the analysis of e-government legislation and implementation strategies derived from diverse administrative practices, could be interesting for those who seek to understand an ever-changing truly evolutionary nature of technology-driven public sector reforms in a typical transitional society.
This article focuses on the mix of reorganisation measures recently adopted by Italian governments in the delivery of public services in four policy sectors that are (co)managed at different levels ...of government, but all mostly delivered locally. The aim is twofold: to understand whether a single, coherent approach to rationalisation can be identified in the policy provisions; and how - and how much - the onset of austerity affected governments' choices. Little attention has in fact so far been paid to the task of providing an overall, cross-sectoral analysis of the changes that have been made to the organisation of public intervention at the local level, and especially those bodies actually providing public services to citizens. The empirical evidence adduced shows that the recent changes in the Italian administrative geography have been the effect of a cost-cutting-oriented, recentralising trend reflecting a one-size-fits-all solution for each and every policy sector: consolidation through 'merger mania' or upscaling. Moreover, the reorganisation measures described for the various policy sectors have had side effects with significant political implications, especially as far as centre-periphery relations are concerned.
Background: The article examined the need to keep up with the growing demands of governance and the best way to improve efficiency and productivity in the Nigerian public service. In response to the ...demands of environmental dynamics, organisations strive to cope with or manage change.Aim: The aim of this article was to devise a mechanism that would enable civil servants to work better or achieve better results, as well as organisations embark on reorganisation, amongst others, to improve their mode of operations to fulfil their statutory public mandates.Setting: The article focussed on all the parastatals, ministries, departments and agencies that make up the Nigerian public service.Methods: The methodology of this study entailed a conceptual and contextual analysis of literature and official documents to analyse the area of investigation. The article deployed the qualitative research method to analyse data and information to reach a conclusion.Results: The findings revealed that public sector reforms in Nigeria have largely failed to bring about the desired reinvention of the public service. This lack of desired impact has occurred because the reforms were not radical and comprehensive enough in terms of the envisaged changes.Conclusion: To transform society from its relatively underdeveloped polity, transformation must be planned by the government, through its administrative agencies, to be the facilitator of development. To be an effective agent of socioeconomic development, the public service must also adapt itself (through administrative reforms) to cope quickly with dynamic changes and new demands that emanate from its environment.
State-civil society (CS) partnerships are increasingly common in the water and sanitation (W&S) sector of many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) as a means of expanding service coverage for ...poor and marginalised communities. However, there has been limited research regarding the drivers, nature, successes and challenges of such partnerships. Findings from in-depth qualitative interviews of 24 participants from 16 different CS-state partnerships in the Northern region of Ghana highlight: 1) the value to both civil society organisations (CSOs) and local governments in increasing access to safe drinking W&S facilities for poor communities through pooling of resources, knowledge and expertise; 2) the distinctive role of CSOs including, reducing service inequities and facilitation of a more effective participation of poor and marginalised people in service delivery decisions; 3) three different forms of partnerships that can be harnessed for effective service delivery, comprising of project, network and strategic collaborations and 4) significant challenges, including funding, programming, legitimacy and sustainability issues that need to be overcome to enhance the success and contributions of these partnerships. The article suggests need for longitudinal and quantitative studies to assess the sustainability and impact of these partnerships on intended beneficiaries.
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