Policy Making in Multilevel Systems: Federalism, Decentralisation, and Performance in the OECD Countries

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-204
Author(s):  
Arjan H. Schakel
Author(s):  
Stefanie A. Lindquist ◽  
David M. Searle

This chapter concerns positive political theory (PPT) within the context of comparative administrative law. In general, PPT posits that governmental actors—whether elected or appointed—have preferences over policy outcomes, respond rationally to incentives produced within their political and institutional environments, and anticipate the actions and preferences of other influential players in the policy-making game. In this light, the chapter first describes the application of PPT to the delegation of discretionary power to administrative agencies in the US. It then reviews the literature that has extended PPT to understand the design and performance of administrative agencies in other governmental systems and through comparative analysis, including in parliamentary and authoritarian governments. Lastly, the chapter addresses issues of corruption and transparency in government, and concludes with recommendations regarding fruitful avenues for future research.


Author(s):  
Deborah S. Carstens ◽  
Stephen Kies ◽  
Randy Stockman

With the transition from government to e-government, greater transparency in government accountability has occurred. However, state government budgets and performance reports are voluminous and difficult to understand by the average citizen. There is a need for government Websites to promote public trust while providing understandable, meaningful, and usable government accountability information. The public needs to have access to information that links the outcome of government spending so that government can be accountable for their spending. There are three fundamental functions for government: accountability, budgeting, and policy-making. The chapter discusses literature specifically relating to government accountability resulting in a checklist being developed to provide a mechanism for evaluation of government Websites from a technical and usability perspective. Therefore, it is not only important for a Website to have the government accountability information but to also display it in a useful and meaningful format understandable by citizens accessing the Website.


2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (12) ◽  
pp. 54-62
Author(s):  
O. Bogachyova ◽  
O. Smorodinov

The article deals with development of public sector pay systems in OECD countries. It is noted that reforms in this sphere began in the 1980s as part of the implementation of the broader concept of “New public management”, which was based on active introduction of market mechanisms and instruments in the activities of public sector organizations. The authors consider how the reforms affected changes in all elements of the pay systems – the basic and variable parts of payment, the tariff schedule, and the classification of jobs (positions). It is shown how transition from traditional unified tariff schedule of basic remuneration to a grade scale was connected with the shift of career model to position model, in which the key role was assigned to employee’s qualifications and performance. Further reform of pay systems has resulted in expansion of competence-related pay and further strengthening the role of grading as a tool for organizing pay in public sector. In this regard, the role of job classification, professional standards that allow to objectively assess the value of each type of activity (each position) for a specific organization and form an effective grading scale of basic pay has significantly increased. Reforms of pay systems in OECD countries have affected both basic, and variable parts of pay, as a result of which different pay systems can be applied not only within a single country, but also sometimes within a single organization. The article discusses the most common of these systems – performance-related pay, competence-, skill- and merit-based pay systems.


1975 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Stren

Over the past ten years, African governments have wrestled with the problems of designing and implementing comprehensive rural development policies. In an overwhelmingly rural continent with, for most areas, only a recent history of urbanisation, such an emphasis is understandable. But if African cities are for the most part young, and small by world standards, they are also growing faster than cities in any other major world region. This rapid growth, superimposed on a meagre resource base, will put increasing pressure on planners to devise solutions for the adequate and equitable distribution of urban services. The solutions that emerge, however, will be heavily conditioned by two sets of factors: the immediate demands of urban growth, and the wider political/administrative and social context within which policy-making takes place.


2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (03) ◽  
pp. 481-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Po-Chi Chen ◽  
Ming-Miin Yu ◽  
Ching-Cheng Chang ◽  
Shih-Hsun Hsu ◽  
Shunsuke Managi

The objective of this paper is to provide a more comprehensive efficiency measure to estimate the performance of OECD and non-OECD countries. A Russell directional distance function that appropriately credits the decision-making unit not only for increase in desirable outputs but also for the decrease of undesirable outputs is derived from the proposed weighted Russell directional distance model. The method was applied to a panel of 116 countries from 1992 to 2010. This framework also decomposes the comprehensive efficiency measure into individual input/output components' inefficiency scores that are useful for policy making. The results reveal that the OECD countries perform better than the non-OECD countries in overall, goods, labor and capital efficiencies, but worse in bad and energy efficiencies.


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