International Public Management Review
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Comment from the Editors
Get PDFThe articles in this issue are intended to be of interest to both academics and practitioners. This issue is comprised of articles on a variety of interesting public management and policy topics. The first contribution to this issue is a tribute to our late and much beloved and respected colleague Professor June Pallot. It is titled "June Pallot: A Voice of Reason," and was written by her close friend and colleague Susan Newberry. The second piece in the issue is an editorial essay that defines public management as an international academic field of study. The third article in the issue, co-authored by Montra Leoseng and Willi Zimmermann, is titled, "Limits to Environmental Policy Implementation. The Case of User Charge Implementation in Thailand." The fourth article by Ling Lan is "Open Government and Transparent Policy: China’s Experience with SARS." The fifth article in this issue is by Enrique Cabrero, "Between New Public Management and New Public Governance: The Case of Mexican Municipalities." The next article is by Bruce J. Perlman and Gregory Gleason, "Comparative Perspectives on Third Generation Reform: Realignment and Misalignment in Central Asian Reform Programs." The article that follows is by Willie Seal and Amanda Ball on, "Regulating Corporate Performance and the Managerialization of Local Politics." These articles are followed by an edited IPMN listserver dialogue on, "Outyear Budgetary Consequences of Agency Cost Savings?" with additional comments by L. R. Jones. This dialogue was stimulated by a question to the listserver from Steven J. Kelman at Harvard University. The last piece in this issue is a report on the IPMN 2004 Rio Conference co-authored by Bruce J. Perlman, Eugenio Caperchione and Turo Virtanen
Limits to Environmental Policy Implementation. The Case of User Charge Implementation in Thailand
Get PDFImplementation research is an almost ‘unknown quantity’ Thailand. This research project explores the implementation of the user charge for waste water treatment in three cities with limited success. The bureaucratic complexity is mostly very high; it is reduced by a socio-economic local elite. The implementation often happens within a double structure of the State on the one hand the ‘rational legitimate state’, on the other, a configuration that resembles a ‘traditional organic state authority’. Legal authority and responsibilities are unclear. There are no implementation guidelines or proper programs. The management and costing of the user charge is often arbitrary which leads to court cases. The deficiencies of the implementation might be ‘compensated’ by capacity building. However, in a broader context than the user charge, the authors argue that a triple paradigm shift - from (i) a traditional to modern polity, (ii) command and control to economic policy instruments, (iii) centralized to decentralized forms of government - lead to an overload of the policy arena and policy implementation failures. These are due to missing skills, knowledge and expertise on the part of central government actors and agencies, and to the ‘unpreparedness’ of the ‘local actors’ and the prevalence of tradition. This message is particularly relevant because almost all countries of the Region have engaged in public administration reforms
Report on the International Public Management Network Research Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Get PDFThe IPMN 2004 biennial research conference was held on November 17-19 in Rio de Janeiro hosted by the prestigious Brazilian School of Business and Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV/EBAPE), Brazil’s leading school of public and business administration. Members of IPMN are grateful for the wonderful reception and management of the conference by the staff and faculty of EBAPE. The conference was attended by approximately fifty academics from all over the world including the U.S., Europe, Russia, and Latin America, with a strong contingent of practitioners from Brazilian local governments
Transformation of National Defense Business Management: Current Initiatives and Future Challenges
Get PDFThe major transformational challenge facing DOD in the period 2005-2008 is how to continue to re-capitalize and modernize the fighting forces while also pushing the pace of business transformation to increase efficiency. This must be accomplished while continuing to pay the high price of waging the war on terrorism. In essence, what DOD must fund and support in the short-term must be traded-off against longer-term investments to improve efficiency and force readiness
Improving the Disclosure of Financial Information in Local Governments
Get PDFIn the public sector, as well as in the private sector, the objectives of financial reporting are determined by the needs of its users, which are typically summarized in two categories: (1) a means to effectively control the manner in which resources are administered and legal obligations are accomplished, and (2) a supporting tool for decision making. Thus, terms such as "accountability" and "decision making" are usually employed to frame the basic objectives of accounting reporting (IFAC, 1991, par. 62). Different types of users deem the relative importance of each objective differently. However, in the public sector, it is widely accepted that users are more interested in the accountability purpose. Therefore, governments should orient their reports to subordinate the "utility focus" and emphasize the "accountability focus.
IPMN Symposium on Performance Budgeting and the Politics of Reform
Get PDFVarious systems to integrate performance measurement into budgeting are applied in nations around the world. Governments at all levels have embarked on a journey into performance measurement and management. Performance budgeting, and the application of performance analysis in budgeting, is a topic of a considerable discourse in the public management community. This symposium provides dialogue and comment on efforts to integrate performance evaluation into the executive budget process at the federal government level in the United States of America under the administration of President George W. Bush. The experience of other nations also is addressed
Book Review: The New Public Management by Michael Barzelay
No full textMichael Barzelay (London School of Economics and Political Science) gained considerable scholarly attention for his book Breaking Through Bureaucracy (1992). His latest book began as an invited lecture delivered in 1997 in tribute to the late Aaron Wildavsky at the invitation of the Goldman School of Public Policy (GSPP) at the University of California, Berkeley. GSPP hosts the Wildavsky Forum annually and Barzelay’s lecture was the third in this series
Comment from the editors
Get PDFThe articles in this issue are intended to be of interest to both academics and practitioners. The first piece presents the views of four internationally recognized public management scholars, Steven Kelman, Fred Thompson, L. R. Jones, and Kuno Schedler, on how the PM may be defined and understood as an emergent discipline. Their dialogue took place on the International Public Management list server in October 2003 and is reproduced here with only minor editorial changes. The second work in this issue by Clay Wescott explores how decentralization supports the policy commitments made by the Viet Nam government to increase citizen participation and accountability, and to reduce poverty and regional disparities. The article includes a review of basic definitions of decentralization to place this case study into an international context, a brief look at the unique historical context of Viet Nam, a comparison of policy intention versus implementation reality, an analysis of the impact of decentralization, and a concluding section on remaining challenges
Brautigam, D. (2011). The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Get PDFOpening the Doors of Invention: Institutions, Technology and Developing Nations
Get PDFWhat can the knowledge economy offer developing countries? Can developing nations hope to transform existing social and economic relations into an information society? What are the roles of trust, social forces, laws, internal governance structures, financial and information intermediaries, regulators and civil society? Does the creation of an information society represent a paradigm shift in development that requires different thinking and a different path from that taken by agrarian societies that have industrialized? This article explores these questions, investigating the path that developing nations can follow to build a knowledge-based service economy