THE ROLE OF POLITICS AND INSTITUTIONS IN THE ITALIAN ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM TR…

This article applies broad conceptual categories of comparative politics to the explanation of administrative reforms in Italy. It takes as its argument some lines of influence on public sector reform of the features of the party system in Italy, the executive-legislative balance, the politician-bureaucrat relationship, and the role of administrative law. In the search for explanations for the …

THE DIFFICULT TRANSFORMATION OF STATE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN PORTUGAL. …

Portugal has been characterized by a late discontinuous democratization process. This contribution discusses the case of state and public administration reform in Portugal by using approaches from democratization, modernization and Europeanization theories. In order to understand the Portuguese case, the concept of ‘neo-patrimonialism’ is used. We characterize Portuguese public administration a…

ADMINISTRATIVE TRADITION AND REFORMS IN SPAIN : ADAPTATION VERSUS INNOVATION

The main purpose of this paper is understanding public administration formation and change in Spain. Its development before and since the years of Franco from 1939 to 1975, is noticeably path dependent in nature. As this paper will show, the foundations were laid before the Franco regime. Then came a period of political domination of the bureaucracy and the emergence of a key structural element…

DISTINCTIVENESS OF ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM IN GREECE, ITALY, PORTUGAL AND SPAIN…

This article, the final part of the symposium, concentrates on the common characteristics of Southern European states and administrations that can explain the distinctiveness of the reforms there. First, we briefly consider the theoretical aspect of the country papers, that is, historical institutionalism. We then briefly review some common features of contextual factors such as welfare state, …

ONLINE SERVICE PROVISION : ARE MUNICIPALITIES REALLY INNOVATIVE? THE CASE OF …

The employment of information and communication technologies for the delivery of information and services has been considered a major objective of the modernization agenda of municipalities. This article contributes to the advances in the e-government literature by assessing the current status of ICT adoption among larger Italian municipalities and investigating whether the municipalities at a …

MULTI-LAYERED ACCOUNTABILITY. PERFORMANCE-BASED FUNDING OF UNIVERSITIES

In most Western countries there has been an increasing demand for new and different types of audit, evaluation and reporting systems that reveal the output of public sector organizations (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2000). Quality assessments have had a profound impact on the funding of university research, most visibly in the UK. However, the relationship between qualitative and quantitative indicat…

STRENGTHENING THE LINK BETWEEN PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT AND DECISION MAKING

Many public agencies now face dual pressures to meet external accountability demands on one hand, and improve their internal performance on the other. This begs the question whether the demands that are made on public agencies to externally report on their performance have a limited or wide ranging impact on the utilization of performance indicators (PIs) for internal improvements. This article…

UNDERSTANDING LOCAL GOVERNANCE : INSTITUTIONAL FORMS OF COLLABORATION

The article discusses institutional forms of governance, understanding governance as hybrid forms of collaboration, involving government, market actors and/or civil society actors. By utilizing data from a study made of three Norwegian cities, six collaborative efforts are presented, and discussed in relation to analytical characteristics derived from both network theory and organizational theo…

CORPORATE CAPACITY AND PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE

Corporate capacity is arguably a key determinant of the success or failure of public sector organizations. However, while there is growing evidence on the extent of corporate capacity, few researchers have systematically examined whether it is linked to public service performance. Does a larger corporate centre lead to better or worse performance for the organization as a whole? To answer this …

THE THIRD SECTOR, USER INVOLVEMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICE REFORM : A CASE STUDY I…

The ‘modernization’ of British public services seeks to broaden public sector governance networks, bringing the views of third sector organizations, the public and service users (among others) to the design, management and delivery of welfare. Building on previous analyses of the contradictions generated by these roles, this paper draws on longitudinal qualitative research to enunciate the chal…

TOWARDS DEVELOPING NEW PARTNERSHIPS IN PUBLIC SERVICES : USERS AS CONSUMERS, …

The causes and effects of marketization of public services have been analysed extensively in the literature, but there is relatively little research on how those policies impact on the development of new forms of governance, and the role of users in these new arrangements. This study reviews examples of competition, freedom of choice and personalized care in health and social services in Englan…

DOES OWNERSHIP MATTER FOR THE PROVISION OF PROFESSIONALIZED SERVICES? HIP OPE…

In terms of clinical procedures (to take the example used in this article, hip operations), both public and private organizations provide highly professionalized services. For this service type, our knowledge about ownership differences is sparse. To begin to fill this gap, we investigate how the ownership of hip clinics affects professional behaviour, treatment quality and patient satisfaction…

ANALYSING POLICY DELIVERY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM : THE CASE OF STREET CRIME AN…

For all governments, the principle of how and whether policies are implemented as intended is fundamental. The aim of this paper is to examine the difficulties for governments in delivering policy goals when they do not directly control the processes of implementation. This paper examines two case studies – anti-social behaviour and street crime – and demonstrates the difficulties faced by poli…

FAITH-BASED INITIATIVES AND THE CHALLENGES OF GOVERNANCE

The task of this paper is to offer an analysis of the Faith-Based and Community Initiative (FBCI) established by George W. Bush and continued under the Obama administration based on a critical and decentred approach to governance (networks). The paper starts out by placing FBCI in the context of the welfare reform of 1996 arguing that both share certain basic assumptions, for example, regarding…

CHANGES IN PUBLIC SERVICE BARGAINS : MINISTERS AND CIVIL SERVANTS IN DENMARK

Edition

Volume 89, Issue 3, September 2011, pages 1015–103

ISBN/ISSN

00333298

Collation

-

Series Title

Public Administration

Call Number

-

MANAGERIAL CHALLENGES IN PUBLIC SERVICE CONTRACTING : LESSONS IN GREEN-SPACE …

In this article, we address a series of interrelated issues in the managerial challenge of public service contracting. This is done by prompting ten issues within four objectives and highlighting their relevance and potential interrelatedness in effective contract management. In contrast to prevalent piecemeal and theoretically one-dimensional approaches, the objectives and issues constitute a …

THE IMPACT OF FORMAL ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE ON POLITICO-ADMINISTRATIVE INTE…

The effects of different organizational structures are often assumed, expected or promised but seldom well documented through systematic studies (Christensen et al. 2007, p. 144). Using evidence from a natural experiment including organizational data from 65 Danish municipalities and survey responses from 1014 politicians and 403 administrators, the article analyses whether and how two differen…

PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN SPANISH LOCAL GOVERNMENTS. A CROSS-CASE COMPARISON…

This paper explores local government in Spain: the nature of and extent to which performance measures are developed and how they are used in some of the biggest Spanish local governments. The features of performance measurement in Spain raise the question of why non-mandatory performance indicators are introduced and why specific initiatives are undertaken. A cross-theory strategy allows us to …

FUZZY JOBS IN LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS : CASE STUDIES OF URBAN AND RURAL REGENERATI…

By means of an Anglo-French comparison, this article shows the existence of certain atypical forms of public sector work that are associated with internal and external coordination, particularly in the context of locality based partnerships. In the case of rural and urban development in France in the 1980s, such atypical work involved organizations that were on the fringe of local authorities, …

ATTRACTION TO PUBLIC POLICY-MAKING : A QUALITATIVE INQUIRY INTO IMPROVEMENTS …

This article presents improvements for the dimension of ‘Attraction to Public Policy-making’ within the Public Service Motivation measurement scale. The literature concerning the theory behind this and a large number of empirical studies point out the shortcomings of this dimension with regard to both the contents and the methodology employed. This article deals in depth with the aspect of ‘Att…