International Public Management Review
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Accountability, Corruption and Government Effectiveness in Asia: An Exploration of World Bank Governance Indicators
Get PDFThis study utilizes World Bank Governance indicators to investigate government effectiveness in Asia, both regionally and across sub-regions. Several factors seem to influence the level of government effectiveness: accountability and voice, control of corruption, and wealth and income. The presence of a democratic form of government does not seem to be an important factor, but we note that more sensitive measures of democracy might produce more positive results. We then comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the dataset and offer some suggestions for future research
Editorial Essay: Restructuring Public Organizations in Response to Global Economic and
No full textThis essay is intended to provide information that elected officials, public managers and others need to understand and to better assess alternative methods for improving the management of economic and fiscal stress through restructuring. Analysis of restructuring may be segmented into a variety of sub-topic areas including the causes of economic and fiscal stress, methods for improved management of restructuring, issues and dilemmas faced by public officials and managers attempting to manage restructuring, The range of non-mutually exclusive approaches to management of restructuring includes (a) doing nothing, likely to work only for a short time if economic and fiscal stress persists, (b) increasing revenues through a variety of means including borrowing while reducing expenditures, (c) increasing employee and organizational productivity and employing a set of more innovative responses that are productivityrelated. This essay addresses all of the issue areas indicated above in the context of the ongoing global condition of economic stress. In terms of the immediacy of the issues addressed in this essay, at the time of this writing the fiscal crisis in Greece was most prominent in the news, and a key question arose whether a bailout of Greece and perhaps other financially weakened European nations, if needed, would or should rely on traditional entities such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or whether a European Monetary Fund should be established. The motivation to resolve the fiscal crisis in Greece was driven by the potential impact of government bankruptcy on the value of the Euro, the common currency of the European Union
Trust and Governance in the Philippines and Singapore: A comparative Analysis
Get PDFAccording to the 2007 World Bank governance indicators, the total percentile rank for Singapore is 514.8 while that for the Philippines is 216.3. Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index for 180 countries shows that Singapore’s rank of 4th position and score of 9.2 is much higher than the Philippines’ rank of 141st position and score of 2.3. Similarly, the level of public trust in politicians’ honesty is higher in Singapore than the Philippines according to the Global Competitiveness Reports, which indicated that Singapore was ranked first from 1999 to 2003-2004 and the Philippines was ranked 49th among 59 countries in 1999 and 94th among 102 countries in 2003-2004. Similarly, in 2007-2008, Singapore was ranked first and the Philippines was ranked 119th among the 131 countries surveyed. The purpose of this article is to explain why the level of trust and governance in Singapore is higher than that in the Philippines. These two countries are selected for analysis because of the availability of comparative data. Apart from examining the differences in levels of governmental effectiveness, political stability, and the effectiveness of anti-corruption strategies, this article also analyzes the significant differences in policy context between the two countries. The article concludes that Singapore’s higher level of trust and governance can be attributed to its effective political leadership which has delivered the goods and succeeded in curbing corruption during its 50 years in power and its favorable policy context. Conversely, the lower level of trust and governance in the Philippines is the result of political instability, the failure of the political leaders to deliver the goods and combat corruption effectively, and its unfavorable policy context
Reforming the Pay System for Government Employees in Egypt
Get PDFThis article attempts to identify what needs to be done to reform the pay system for government employees in Egypt through proposing a set of policy solutions and strategies. After dissecting the structure and composition of the current pay system, and conducting structured interviews with a sample of Egyptian government employees to solicit their views about the adequacy of pay, the authors propose a system for pay adjustment and strategies to resolve the problem. Foremost among these issues are securing the needed extra funding for increasing government employees’ pay, rightsizing the government civil service, enhancing transparency, reducing wage discrepancies, reforming the minimum wage policy and establishing a better link between pay and performance. To conclude, the study stresses that the urgency of the problem requires the Government of Egypt to consider pay reform a top priority and work immediately on developing its civil service reform strategy in consultation with stakeholders
Designing an Anti-Corruption Strategy for Contemporary Indian Administration
Get PDFIndia, the world’s largest democracy, can boast of a vibrant political culture, vigilant press and a politically conscious civil society with an impartial judiciary. Yet the most disheartening fact of Indian society is the rising tide of corruption in almost all walks of life including the Indian administrative system. Although the issue of administrative reforms has received continuing attention in India both at the national and the state levels during the last six decades, corruption is eating into the vitals of the administrative system. It is therefore extremely essential to reform the administrative system by properly designing an anti-corruption strategy to control corruption. In order to answer some of the serious questions like what needs to be done to reaffirm the trust of the people in the state organizations like the bureaucracy or why the existing anti-corruption vigilance institutions have failed to control the rising tides of corruption in most public institutions and in the context of globalization what anti-corruption reforms need to be implemented, one needs to first shed light over the indigenous causes that have encouraged the growth of corruption in Indian administration. Thus the article brings to light the different indigenous causes that lead to the growth of corruption in Indian administration. It also analyzes the existing anti-corruption laws like the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 and working of the major vigilance institutions like the Central Vigilance Commission and Central Bureau of Investigation to identify the loopholes that are giving rise to corruption. On the basis of such weakness the article suggests a new anticorruption strategy to contain corruption in contemporary Indian administration
Development Management as Toolkit on Global Competitiveness in East Asia: the Cases of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
Get PDFThis article reviews the role of development management on global competitiveness in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Development management has emerged in response to improvement in public service delivery, public institution building, and human resource development in the service of the internationally accepted development goals, as the stated by the United Nations Division for Public Administration and Development Management. However, most papers employing this approach seem to stay in the theoretical discussions, and rarely apply empirical evidence to specific projects, programs, or areas.Employing the competitiveness index developed by World Economic Forum (WEF) and the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), this research connects the toolkit approach to competitiveness in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. This research finds that all of these countries have adopted a series of toolkit strategies to promote their global competitiveness. These toolkits can maintain consistent growth. In terms of theory and practice, this research employs cases-comparison strategies to reveal the theoretical components of development management, and thus advance the knowledge in this field
What Should We Know About Politicians’ Performance Information Need and Use?
Get PDFThe question of legislators’ use of performance information is crucial, since – among others purposes – data on outputs and outcomes is meant to inform about the performance of public managers, programs as well as organizations, and ultimately to influence the allocation of financial means. Limited empirical evidence on parliamentarians’ performance information behavior provides contradictory findings with respect to the extent to which this new kind of data is used. This paper aims to draw an outline of the insights we have about politicians’ information need and use in general. It sets a particular focus on the question of how the use of performance information by politicians could be analyzed more systematically in the future by referring to conceptual treatments of earlier periods or allied disciplines. We show how future research could profit by shifting the focus of analysis from the isolated analysis of performance information to the context-bounded politician and her information needs, by considering the political rationale with respect to the information-decision nexus, and by including possibilities of symbolic or strategic types of performance information utilization. Conceiving politicians as need-driven and goal-oriented information users requires a different definition of what data inform about performance
Political Corruption: Establishing the Parameters
Get PDFThis article considers the potential contribution of the New Public Management (NPM) to address a number of World Bank suggestions dealing with political accountability improving the management of the public sector. Previously, (deLeon and Green, 2001) we posed a similar set of questions, but were only able to address them through examples drawn from the American political system. The argument was made that an examination of United States incidents of political corruption would at least test the theory that modernity ameliorates political corruption. We now cast a somewhat wider net, looking at other developed nations as well as the US, to ask the central question: what effects would NPM have on the incidents of political corruption across a number of nations