Policies under Cameron: modernisation abandoned

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Dorey
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Welfare Recipients ◽  
David Cameron ◽  
Welfare Provision ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor

Upon becoming Conservative leader in December 2005, David Cameron spoke passionately about the need for the Party to move on from Thatcherism. In so doing, he alluded to the need for a more compassionate and constructive Conservatism, one which was more sympathetic to the poor, and which also wanted to foster a partnership with professionals in the public sector. However, following the 2008 financial crash, the Conservative Party's policies became increasingly hostile both to welfare recipients and the public sector, whereupon the need to cut public spending was repeatedly invoked to justify major cuts in welfare provision and further marketisation or privatisation of the public sector. Regardless of Cameron's initially emollient rhetoric and allusions to One Nation Toryism, the trajectory of key Conservative policies since 2010 has remained firmly within a Thatcherite paradigm. Conservative modernisation has quietly been abandoned.

Portal for Employees in the Public Sector

2018 ◽  
pp. 342-362
Author(s):  
Ana Campos Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Human Resources ◽  
Human Resources Management ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
The Public ◽  
Administrative Reforms ◽  
Shared Management ◽  
New Public

The need to reduce public spending has led Portugal to make administrative reforms. To that end, it called on the so-called e-government, using ICT as a mechanism to increase the quality and transparency of public services while lowering costs and operationalizing new public policies. Although administrative decentralisation is enshrined in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, only recently has it been prioritised as one of the great objectives of the administrative reforms of the state. To this end, the transfer of the necessary financial and human resources are foreseen. This will imply the implementation of human resources management strategies and mechanisms that avoid surplus or shortage of human resources, both in Central and Local Administration. Therefore, in this chapter, the creation of the “Portal for Employees in the Public Sector” is proposed as a shared management tool.

Portal for Employees in the Public Sector

2022 ◽  
pp. 659-679
Author(s):  
Ana Campos Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Human Resources ◽  
Human Resources Management ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
The Public ◽  
Administrative Reforms ◽  
Shared Management ◽  
New Public

The need to reduce public spending has led Portugal to make administrative reforms. To that end, it called on the so-called e-government, using ICT as a mechanism to increase the quality and transparency of public services while lowering costs and operationalizing new public policies. Although administrative decentralisation is enshrined in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, only recently has it been prioritised as one of the great objectives of the administrative reforms of the state. To this end, the transfer of the necessary financial and human resources are foreseen. This will imply the implementation of human resources management strategies and mechanisms that avoid surplus or shortage of human resources, both in Central and Local Administration. Therefore, in this chapter, the creation of the “Portal for Employees in the Public Sector” is proposed as a shared management tool.

Iraq's Abadi likely to survive reform challenge

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Financial Assistance ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Step Down

Significance Criticism of his reforms, which involve sweeping cuts to government positions and an anti-corruption drive, has mounted in recent weeks despite initially receiving strong support from Shia politicians. However, parliamentarians are now openly debating whether parliament should withdraw its support for the reforms, with some even suggesting that Abadi should step down. Impacts Abadi's reform drive may stall if he is forced to reverse his cuts to government positions and create new ones to rebuild his support base. Failure to rein in public spending will affect Iraq's attempts to seek international financial assistance. Abadi's weakening would strengthen the Shia militias, and thereby reduce prospects for reconciliation with the Sunni community. It would also increase attempts by hardliners to sideline the US military in the fight against ISG. Abadi may well climb down on the public sector salary issue and attempt to depoliticise it.

State capture from below? The contradictory effects of decentralisation on public spending

2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Mueller ◽  
Adrian Vatter ◽  
Tobias Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Political System ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
State Capture ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Swiss Cantons ◽  
Self Rule

AbstractThis study analyses the contradictory effects of decentralisation on public spending. We distinguish three dimensions of decentralisation and analyse their joint and separate effects on public spending in the Swiss cantons over 20 years. We find that overall decentralisation has a strong, significant and negative effect on the size of the public sector, thus confirming the Leviathan hypothesis. The same holds for fiscal and institutional decentralisation. However, the extent to which political processes and actors are organised locally rather than centrally actually increases central and decreases local spending. This suggests that actors behave strategically when dealing with the centre by offloading the more costly policies. The wider implication of our study is that the balance between self-rule and shared rule has implications also for the size of the overall political system.

scholarly journals Public Employees as Politicians: Evidence from Close Elections

2017 ◽  
Vol 112 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARI HYYTINEN ◽  
JAAKKO MERILÄINEN ◽  
TUUKKA SAARIMAA ◽  
OTTO TOIVANEN ◽  
JANNE TUKIAINEN
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Public Employees ◽  
The Public ◽  
Employment Sector ◽  
Municipal Employees ◽  
Election System ◽  
Municipal Employee ◽  
Information Advantage

We analyze the effect of municipal employees’ political representation in municipal councils on local public spending. We use within-party, as-good-as-random variation in close elections in the Finnish open-list proportional election system to quantify the effect. One more councilor employed by the public sector increases spending by about 1%. The effect comes largely through the largest party and is specific to the employment sector of the municipal employee. The results are consistent with public employees having an information advantage over other politicians, and thus, being able to influence policy.

scholarly journals Issues in the Designing of Public Sector Reform

1998 ◽  
Vol 37 (4II) ◽  
pp. 299-327
Author(s):  
Nadeem ul Haq
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Civil Service Reform ◽  
Sector Reform ◽  
Management Reform ◽  
Public Sector Management ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Government

“Civil service reform,” which has become the nickname for public sector management reform in the parlance of development economics, has only recently and grudgingly been accepted by those who advise on policy in the poor countries. Even then, the approach is somewhat paternalistic in that it emphasises externally-designed rules and processes for management, organisation, audit and accountability. It recognises the role of people in terms of noting that incentives and employment policies matter but only in terms of right-sizing the government and second to the need to spread budgetary resources over the politically chosen level of employment. What it does not accept is that and the drive to manage the public sector better has to be led and implemented by the domestic talent and in that they must have both the incentive and the honour of doing just that. This paper argues that the main reason that the public sector management has suffered in many of the poor countries is that incentives have been allowed to erode rapidly as public sector employment was viewed politically as a means of providing welfare.

Public Expenditure: Policy and Control

1979 ◽  
Vol 90 ◽  
pp. 68-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.W.R. Price
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Expenditure ◽  
Government Intervention ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Financial Control ◽  
State Spending ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Background ◽  
And Control

The present government came to office with a commitment to cut state spending while reducing government intervention in the economy and extending the sphere of private choice through tax reductions. This philosophy, while of significance for the longerterm development of the public sector, is actually of limited use in explaining the 1979 public expenditure reductions. These stem from one of the recurrent crises of financial control which have afflicted public spending plans in the last decade and a half. The purpose of this article is to analyse the financial and economic background to the cuts, which, it is argued, would have called for programme adjustments whatever administration had been in office, though the type of reductions made may bear the imprint of different political philosophies.

Not always on an equal footing: power, partiality and the conditional effect of multiparty government on public spending

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-355
Author(s):  
Juha Ylisalo
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Target Groups ◽  
Voting Power ◽  
The Public ◽  
Equal Footing ◽  
Conditional Effect ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Number Of Parties

AbstractPublic spending arguably increases with the number of parties in government as each party seeks to secure benefits to its target groups. In this study, two factors that affect the budgetary consequences of multiparty government are identified. The first is the distribution of a priori voting power. An uneven distribution of voting power implies that all government parties are not expected to be equally successful in budgetary negotiations. The second is the degree of impartiality of the public sector. If the public sector is characterized by corruption and other forms of partiality, distributive issues can be expected to gain importance in representative politics. An analysis of data from 30 European countries suggests that changes in the number of government parties are associated with changes in public spending in cases where equally powerful parties are in government and the public sector is relatively partial.

United We Stand? A Household Perspective On The Impact of Public Employment on Attitudes towards Retrenchment of Welfare Spending

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Troels Fage Hedegaard
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Unemployment Benefit ◽  
Public Employment ◽  
Welfare Spending ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The Impact

This article explores the impact of public sector employment on attitudes to retrenchment of social spending from a household perspective. The idea the employees of the public sector will stand together to preserve public spending exists throughout the literature on support for and persistence of the welfare states. The empirical evidence for this link, however, has been poor. In this article, I show that this link can be established when studying it from a household perspective. Using a nationally representative survey from Denmark I show that people living in a household where one or both are employed in the public sector are more willing to spend more on the public sector. This effect is, however, only for some policies – unemployment benefit, social assistance, education grant, and integration services – which were generally the least popular policies in the eyes of the public.

scholarly journals Economic Growth and the Optimal Size of the Public sector in Jordan

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 72-79
Author(s):  
Jameel A. Aljaloudi ◽  
Taleb A. Warrad
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Gross Domestic Product ◽  
Inverse Relationship ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Optimal Size ◽  
The Public ◽  
Official Data

The relationship between the size of public sector and the rate of economic growth has been widely examined empirically in different countries. Most applied studies confirmed the validity of the inverse relationship between the increasing role of the state in the economy, measured by the ratio of public spending to gross domestic product and rates of economic growth. These studies estimated the optimum rate that would guarantee achieving the highest economic growth rates. This study aims to analyses this relationship for the case of the Jordanian economy. Using a theoretically justified econometric model, the researchers have utilized an ARDL econometric technique to quantitatively assess this relationship for the period (1970-2018). The study relied on official data related to the gross domestic product published by the Central Bank of Jordan and official data related to public spending and public revenues published by the Jordanian Ministry of Finance. The econometric results of the study confirm the existence of an inverse relationship between the size of public sector and the rate of economic growth in Jordan, which may lend support to the hypothesis of the Armey curve. The optimal size of the government (public sector) is estimated to be about 26 percent, which is much lower than the actual average government size in Jordan. The researchers recommend the need to gradually cutting down the size of public sector through adjusting the real spending structure and restructuring the independent public institutions. The restructuring of independent public institutions requires the abolition of institutions that are not economically feasible and constitute more financial burdens on society on the one hand, and the merging of a number of them into an independent public institution that provides its services to the community in an efficient and effective manner. Researchers also recommend the need to continue privatizing the public sector and activating the role of partnership between the public and private sectors. Keywords: size of public sector, government spending, economic growth, ARDL, privatization.

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