38 research outputs found
Civil societies' input for reform of social protection in Ghana
No full textAuthor: Clara K. Beeri Kasser-Tee (Esq), University of Ghana School of Law; Assisted by: Rushaiya Ibrahim-Tanko, Kasser Law Fir
ANTHROPOCENTRIC OR BIOCENTRIC? SOCIO-CULTURAL, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND POLITICAL DRIVERS OF URBAN WILDLIFE SIGNAGE PREFERENCES AND SUSTAINABLE COEXISTENCE
No full textWhat determines whether the public favors anthropocentric or biocentric signage in urban contexts? As cities face the intensifying challenges of human–wildlife encounters in the Anthropocene, the need for policy responses grows urgent. This research positions signage preferences within the fields of public administration, local politics, environmental governance, and urban management, conceptualizing signage as a policy instrument that reflects broader socio-environmental and political dynamics. Unlike earlier studies that approach signage mainly as a behavioral nudge, we examine the socio-cultural, environmental, and political dimensions that influence attitudes along the anthropocentric–biocentric spectrum. While anthropocentric signage highlights human safety and casts wildlife as hazardous or problematic, biocentric signage underscores coexistence, ecological interdependence, and shared constraints. Using data from a large-scale public opinion survey, we analyze the case of wild boars and the related urban-environmental tensions in Mount Carmel and the municipality of Nesher. The findings reveal that socio-cultural vulnerability, perceptions of harm, support for policy, and political ideology all play a decisive role in shaping signage preferences. By doing so, the study contributes to scholarship on environmental governance, urban management, urban semiotics, and policy design, showing how signage functions as a contested political and ecological symbol. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for municipal governance, morality policies, and the aesthetics of urban signage
Lack of reform in Israeli local government and its impact on modern developments in public management
No full textTurnaround management strategies in local authorities: managerial, political and national obstacles to recovery
No full textHow effective is central enforcement? Evidence from convened committees in failing local authorities
No full text The recent economic slowdown has revealed weaknesses in existing fiscal arrangements and led to the reintroduction of enforcement mechanisms on local authorities within the OECD. One extreme intervention approach for municipalities in financial distress includes neutralization of the elected local leadership and its replacement with a convened committee. Yet how effective are such enforcement methods in the stabilization of local authorities? We present, for the first time, a complete empirical examination of how neutralization affects the financial performance of failing local authorities, as measured by municipal spending, revenue and fiscal balance. We apply the difference-in-differences methodology using data on 77 Israeli municipalities during 2000–2011 to answer this question. We find a sizeable effect of convened committees on the financial performance of local authorities, including an 11% reduction in municipal labor costs, a 6% reduction in current deficits and a 40% reduction in municipal debt. We also find some evidence for an increase in local tax collection. The fall in debt is partly due to an increase in targeted government transfers and may reflect increased political trust. We discuss the results in light of possible tensions between the neutralization approach and local democracy and conclude that while convened committees improve the financial performance of local authorities, they should be reserved for extreme municipal crises. </jats:p
Comparing the adoption of co-production in health and welfare contexts
No full textThe healthcare sector is facing new challenges related to changes in demographic, epidemiology and lifestyle of the worldwide population. To optimize current healthcare services, it is important to identify solutions that support providers in understanding patients’ needs and expectations (OECD Publishing, 2018). Co-production has been identified as a possible solution as it involves ‘service users in any of the design, management, delivery and/or evaluation of public services’ (Osborne, et al., 2016). Despite this approach has been adopted in several field, healthcare is one of the most used (Dhirathiti, 2018) and challenging one (Bovaird, et al., 2016). Healthcare professionals have highly professionalized skills and competences that distinguish them from patients or caregivers. This disequilibrium of knowledge makes the equal discussion between patients and professionals more complex to put in place (Parrado, et al., 2013). On the one hand, professionals with specific clinical knowledge feel at higher level than patients, on the other hand, patients feel unable to contribute due to their lack of competences and experience in the field (Crompton, 2019). This discrepancy in term of power is a barrier for the adoption of co-production, which requires an equal partnership between actors (Weaver, 2018).
This article investigates this issue by comparing the power dynamics that arise from co-production (in particular, co-design) process in the healthcare and welfare sectors. The aim is to study how the power dynamics affect the co-production process in the healthcare sector compared to the welfare one.
To achieve this objective, we adopt a multiple case study methodology, comparing two examples of co-design processes with service users in the healthcare and welfare sectors. In the first case, we analyze the co-design of the patient surgical journey in an orthopedic department of an Italian hospital. In the second care, we investigate the co-design of a new service for family caregiver of fragile and non-self-sufficient elders in a remote and rural area of Italy. Comparing the same process in different sectors allows us to deepen the influence of the context on the power dynamics (Farr, 2018). In the healthcare case, we carry out 4 co-design workshops, involving 1 researcher, 6 clinicians and 6 patients overall. In the welfare case, we organize 4 co-design workshops with 24 family caregiver, 4 researchers and 2 providers overall. Workshops last from 80 to 120 minutes and are verbatim transcribed to increase the effectiveness in the analysis of non-numeric data (Halcomb and Davidson, 2006). The transcripts are analyzed through a well-defined process with the support of NVivo software. The process uses an inductive approach that starts labelling the text with ‘in-vivo-codes’ and grouping codes in categories (Glaser, 1967). Once we have compared results with the existing literature, we organize categories in themes, identify patterns and generalize results (Saldaña, 2015).
We expect to find few examples of equal relationships among stakeholders in the healthcare sector, proving the major role of power dynamics in this sector. By comparing the interactions among actors in these two sectors, we will try to assess the drivers that influence both in positive and negative way the equal collaboration. Disequilibrium in competences, knowledge (Crompton, 2019) and expectations, the presence of hierarchical structure (Weaver, 2018) with fixed practices and processes (Brown and Head, 2019), the inability to set the roles and duties during co-production processes are only some of the drivers recognized by the literature that influence power dynamics among actors (Agranoff, 2016).
This raises the question of how (and if) co-production can be implemented in the healthcare sector. In line with this consideration, this paper suggests possible guidelines that may facilitate the adoption of co-production in this field in the next future
Willingness to pay taxes through mutual trust: The effect of fairness, governability, tax-enforcement and outsourcing on local tax collection rates
No full textThis study extends our understanding about the interrelationship between taxation policy, democracy and financial performance in local governments. Every government, particularly local ones, would like to make their residents more willing to pay taxes. Based on the trend of making local authorities less reliant on national budgets and the ever-increasing expectations that they provide high quality services, we investigated how public perceptions about the local government's fairness, tax enforcement, governability and the outsourcing of local tax collection affect the percentage of local property taxes collected. We used a survey of 607 Israeli residents randomly sampled from municipalities that do and do not outsource, and independent data about tax collection rates. The results indicate that perceptions about tax enforcement and governability mediate the relationship between perceptions about fairness and tax collection rates. However, only within local authorities that outsourced tax collection was there a positive relationship between perceptions about tax enforcement and tax collection rates and a positive relationship between perceptions about governability and tax collection rates. Implications of the findings are discussed in the era of local democracy and local governance
Does Performance Management Relate to Good Governance? A Study of Its Relationship with Citizens’ Satisfaction with and Trust in Israeli Local Government
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