Administration & Society

Publisher:: Sage Publications, Inc.
Publication date:: 2021-08-11

ISBN:: 0095-3997

Issue Number

No. 56-6, July 2024

Latest documents

The Hierarchical Configurations of Policy Networks: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Urban Transport
This study sheds light on a commonly overlooked aspect in network literature: the potential for hierarchized behavior within networks. Providing a longitudinal case study of decision-making behavior in urban transport policy networks, the study also adds to calls for longitudinal studies in the field of public administration. By analyzing documents and interviews, the study reveals the gradual shift towards hierarchical decision-making within networked structures. Furthermore, it highlights how organizational variables shape networked behavior over time, both facilitating and constraining hierarchized behavior. Consequently, this article suggests that hierarchized and collaborative dynamics co-exist and co-evolve within policy networks.
Social Equity and the Responsible Administrator: The Challenge of Equity in Public Policy Initiatives
Social equity is a normative value in the field of public administration; however, policy guidance and associated funding rules are often rooted in values of equality. This perspective explores the conditions under which a public administrator’s professional responsibility to social equity goes beyond a program’s requirements for equality-based outcomes. This mismatch often results in extraneous efforts on the part of the administrator to implement creative solutions above and beyond what is funded and required by bureaucratic guidance. Realigning program rules and providing sufficient funding with an eye for equity will provide responsible public administrators with sufficient resources for success.
Frictions on Both sides of the Counter? A Study of Red Tape Among Street-Level Bureaucrats and Administrative Burden Among Their Clients
Administrative burden research shows that onerous and dysfunctional policy design can have detrimental outcomes among policy recipients. But less is known about the intermediary role played by the street-level bureaucrats who enforce these policies in practice. Using two separate surveys of 775 unemployment benefit recipients and 107 counselors in the Danish unemployment benefit system, I find that recipients report higher levels of administrative burden when served by counselors who themselves experience red tape from the rules and procedures they have to implement. The findings have important policy implications by showing that experiences of frictions among those assigned to convert onerous policies into practice can exacerbate administrative burden among their clients.
Do Service Providers Play a Market Stewardship Role in Social Care Quasi-Markets, and Should They?
Market stewardship of social care quasi-markets has been an important area of inquiry. While most focus has been on central government stewardship, local level actors can also play a role. Using a case study of the Australian National Disability Insurance scheme, this article focuses on both how service providers can be market stewards and whether they should be. Findings suggest that while some aspects of market stewardship are appropriate for service providers to perform, others may be better done by different actors. We propose a preliminary framework for distributed stewardship to help join up the work of local level actors with central agencies.
The Influence of Transparency on Municipal Taxation: An Empirical Analysis
Local government officials are accountable to citizens, who increasingly demand more transparency given the amount of taxes they pay. This paper analyses the relationship between municipal tax revenues and transparency in Spain. Based on a sample of 141 Spanish municipalities with more than 15,000 inhabitants and applying least squares regression and instrumental variable analysis based on two-stage least squares regression, we find that the most transparent municipalities collected more global taxes. Furthermore, more municipal financing through transfers from other levels of government leads to lower taxes on construction and capital gains generated by real estate transfers.
Why Trust Weighs More? Investigating the Endogenous Relationship Between Trust and Perceived Institutional Effectiveness
This study investigates the intricate interplay between citizens’ trust in government institutions and their perceptions of institutional effectiveness. The two may have an endogenous relationship as they influence each other. Yet, since they stem from different sources and have distinct dynamics, their relationship may exhibit a directional bias in terms of causality: citizens’ trust may impact the perception of institutional effectiveness more than vice versa. As the survey results from Hong Kong suggest here, this may indicate that trust is not only performance-based but also character-based, with the latter lasting longer and exerting a greater impact on perceptions of institutional performance.
The Values of the Management of Value Conflict
An increasing number of strategies for dealing with value conflicts in public management have been presented. These include Cycling, Firewalling, Casuistry, Incrementalism, and so on. A closer look reveals an apparent contradiction. The strategies are presented as forms of practical rationality to go beyond instrumentalist approaches and find answers in the common interest, but at the same time they are presented as instrumental rational strategies to deal with blockades for particular interests. This paper uses Paul Ricoeur’s analyses of compromise and of political paradox to overcome this puzzling contradiction and to distinguish more justifiable strategies of value conflict management from less justifiable strategies
Another Civil War in America? Comparing the Social Psychology of the United States of the 1850s to Today
Autonomy by Decree: How Administrative Law Shapes Bureaucratic Autonomy in Four Administrative Traditions
Administrative law is a not a frequent subject of research in public administration, but it can reveal a great deal about the functioning of the public sector and governance in general. The nature of administrative law is, we argue, closely linked with administrative traditions, and therefore administrative law is an especially apt focus for comparative analysis. This article discusses administrative law in four countries representing different administrative traditions. The perspective is that of the student of public governance, rather than that of the lawyer, with the principal concern here understanding bureaucratic autonomy within the administrative system.
You Get What You Pay for: An Analysis of Public Contracts for Engineering Services
To understand the effects of bidder’s strategies on contractual modifications, this study utilized econometric methods and a database containing 5,434 engineering service contracts from Brazilian federal government. The results demonstrate the effects arising from the trade-off between the low prices presented in the contractor selection phase and the contractual performance measured by contract modifications. Competition among bidders in a reverse auction with multiple rounds of bid submissions can exacerbate this trade-off, potentially incentivizing risk-taking strategies by bidders. Subsequently, this may lead to the need for contract modifications to facilitate the ongoing execution of the contract.