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Moving beyond public service motivation. Exploring the link between work motivations and employee attitudes in public sector organisations
No full textThis dissertation examines employee work motivations, attitudes, and outcomes within the public sector drawing upon quantitative cross-country survey data. It challenges the dominant idea that public service motivation (PSM) is the only form of work motivation that matters for public servants by examining PSM against traditional intrinsic and extrinsic work motivation based on the framework of self-determination theory (SDT). It links these motivation types to different employee outcomes such as job satisfaction, ethics, and employee engagement while also taking into consideration stress in the workplace. It then shifts focus to examine interpersonal relationships at the organisational level through the concept of organizational social capital (OSC) and how management instruments support or impede OSC. This is relevant as it introduces conceptual and empirical differentiation between PSM and SDT, which is limited, or conflated, in PSM research. Additionally, understanding how management tools are linked to social capital provides a new angle for assessing management interventions and how they support or hinder the values, trust, and support within organisations. This research analyses civil service perceptions and attitudes across Europe and is presented in the form of four distinct papers. Overall findings show that PSM and SDT work motivation are different based on temporal focus, motivation needs, and measurement strategies and their individual utility differs depending on what type of attitude and outcome is measured. SDT appears to be more strongly related to job-related outcomes, while PSM is more strongly related to attitudes associated with job purpose. However, more nuanced findings suggest that different motivations may compensate for the failings of another and that they behave differently in different contexts and different stressors. Results also show that management tools focusing on interpersonal interactions are associated with positive social capital and can deter the impact of political interference. This dissertation contributes to the theoretical and empirical differentiation between PSM and SDT work motivation, providing evidence to support the fact that motivation types are context-specific and different motivations matter in evoking specific attitudes and behaviours. Consequently, future research should identify which motivations are most appropriate for which line of study and management actions should take this into consideration when designing institutional policies and interventions
Populism in the era of Twitter: How social media contextualized new insights into an old phenomenon
No full textWith the advent of social media, political communication scholars have systematically revised theories and empirical corollaries revolving media use and democracy at large. Interestingly, in about the same period of time, a reinvigorated political populism trend has taken place across different latitudes in the world. This widespread populist movement has expanded regardless of whether these political systems were established democracies, emerging democracies, or societies immersed in political contexts at peril. This essay serves as the introductory piece to a special issue on populism. First, it highlights the ways in which “populism,” being an old phenomenon, has further transpired into the political realm in the era of social media. Second, the essay seeks to better contextualize what populism is and how it has developed within today’s hybrid media society. Finally, this introduction also lays out the ground to six central theoretical and data-driven papers that encapsulate many of the important issues revolving the phenomenon of populism today
The Rodrik Trilemma and the Dahrendorf Quandary: An Empirical Assessment
No full textRodrik’s Trilemma rests on the incompatibility of democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration: any two can be combined, but never all three simultaneously and in full. Addressing the same problématique, Dahrendorf´s Quandary posits that, over time, maintaining global economic competitiveness requires countries either to adopt measures detrimental to the cohesion of civil society, or to restrict civil liberties and political participation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the empirical foundations of Rodrik’s and Dahrendorf’s propositions.
Assessing developed market economies from 1991 to 2014, evidence suggests that in only rare cases the Trilemma can be overcome, and the tensions the Quandary hypothesises build up to a significant extent. In most cases examined, however, the performance of the countries is too varied to support the broad claims Rodrik and Dahrendorf put forth in their respective writings. Specifically, next to the small group of five cases where either the Trilemma or the Quandary apply, there are twice as many countries that generally managed to grow moderately in terms of economic globalisation, liberal democracy, and social cohesion, while avoiding some of the tensions implied in the Quandary or reaching Trilemma conditions. For an even larger group of countries the evidence suggests that growing economic globalisation can co-exist with lower societal stressor levels
Growth Accelerations Strategies
No full textSetting a country’s structural growth rate on a higher path, i.e. sparking and sustaining a growth acceleration can have quantitatively huge implications for national income and, more broadly, for people’s wellbeing. We develop a novel statistical framework to identify systematically the set of binding constraints that were unlocked before the 135 growth acceleration episodes that took place between 1962 and 2002 worldwide. We employ this information to characterise the acceleration process, which tends to be preceded by a deep recession and major economic policy changes. Once we combined this information with a set of counterfactual analyses, we find however that successful acceleration strategies should not contain off-the-shelf approaches or necessarily all-encompassing “shock therapy” solutions. On the other hand, they call for a careful tailoring to local conditions. Richer countries tend to experience fewer accelerations, but once these have been ignited, they are better positioned to make the most out of them. Despite standard growth determinants doing a fairly good job at characterising successful accelerations, we note how take-offs remain extremely hard to engineer with a high degree of certainty
Euro area architecture: What reforms are still needed, and why
No full textThe publication in 2017 of joint proposals for reforming the euro area by a group of seven French and seven German economists triggered a considerable debate on Vox. This volume offers a selection of the contributions to this debate together with a summary of the original proposal
Dividing Lines: Understanding the Creation and Replication of Fragmentations Among NGOs in Hybrid Regimes
No full textFew would underestimate the role of nondemocratic governments in controlling and steering NGOs. However, this article highlights that in hybrid regimes, the rules for NGO–government and interorganizational relations are not simply dictated from above but actively shaped and sustained by NGOs themselves. Building on data from two policy fields in competitive authoritarian Armenia, this article illustrates that the government sent ambiguous signals to NGOs, thereby cultivating divisions between them. It then shows that, surprisingly, NGOs themselves amplified these divisions. They did so by (1) avoiding confrontation with the government, (2) claiming ownership of their own policy initiatives or ties to government, and (3) distancing themselves from other NGOs. The article explains this behavior by focusing on the institutional environment and perceived uncertainty. In view of a worldwide trend toward increasingly contradictory policy environments for civil society, the approach and findings of this article are of relevance beyond Armenia and beyond competitive authoritarian regimes
Finding the Golden Mean: Country Size and the Performance of National Bureaucracies
No full textThis article contributes to the debate on environmental determinants of public service performance by analyzing the effect of country size (population size) on public service effectiveness. It theoretically describes and empirically tests a size-induced trade-off between economies and diseconomies of scale in national bureaucracies. The main argument is that public service performance increases with size due to economies of scale, but it decreases after the optimal country size when bureaucracies become too large and cumbersome to manage. The hypothesized curvilinear effect is tested for the first time empirically in cross-sectional regression models and multilevel within-between RE models that isolate the theoretically relevant between-country effect. The results support the expected inverse U-shaped relation on a global scale and in the subsample of democracies. The findings and their implication for research and practice are discussed: Public management must adapt theoretically and practically to country size as it is a contextual factor beyond the control of managers
Eine länderbasierte Prognose zur Bundestagswahl 2017
No full textWhen elections are distant, polls are poor predictors. Too few voters are paying attention and too much can change before election day. Structural models can establish baseline expectations but suffer from high uncertainty and underspecification imposed by small samples. We present an early forecast of the 2017 Bundestag election results for individual parties that leverages economic and political data as well as state parliament (Landtag) election results in the German states (Länder) to sidestep these shortcomings. A linear random effects model provides our estimates. Länder elections are dispersed over the calendar and offer the advantage of capturing both actual voter preferences and new political issues. We argue that this approach offers a promising method for early forecasts when polls are not informative
Corona: A European Safety Net for the Fiscal Response
Get PDFIn order to avoid permanent scars from the economic impact of the Coronavirus in Europe, a determined fiscal response will be necessary. We argue that there should be a clear division of labor between Europe and national governments: the latter will have to provide stimulus with targeted measures, while Europe needs to build a safety net so that member states will not lose access to bond markets due to speculative attacks. This safety net should have three components: A commitment by member states to use ESM instruments without conditionality; a commitment by the ECB to use all of its tools; and a number of flanking measures to underscore member states’ commitments