The Trudeau government and GIC appointments in Canada

PurposeAccording to the traditional view of public administration, a critical component of good policy formulation is the provision of frank and fearless advice to elected decision-makers. This advice can be provided by permanent public officials or by the people selected by the elected governments to fill key and continuing posts. However, there are major questions as to whether new Governor-in-Council (GIC) appointment processes rooted in new public governance (NPG) are yielding the expected results promised, such as less partisanism, as a consideration for appointment.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses a mixed methods approach to examine the GIC process as it is used in Canada. In using these methods, the authors employed interviews with senior officials, governmental documents review and expert validation interviews to triangulate its main findings.FindingsThe paper uses the case of the revised appointment process for GIC appointments in Canada and suggests that the new arrangements do not deliver on merit-based criteria that ensures independence is protected between political executive and senior bureaucratic officials. Although new processes may be more open and transparent than past processes, the paper suggests that such processes are more susceptible to partisan influence under the guise of being merit-based.Research limitations/implicationsThe research was limited to one country context, Canada. As such, it will be necessary to expand this to other Westminster countries. Testing whether manifestations of new public governance in appointment processes elsewhere will be important to validate whether Canada is unique or not.Practical implicationsThe authors are left to wonder if this innovation of merit-based appointments in the new administrative state is obscuring the lines of accountability and whether it forms the basis for good policy advice despite promises to the contrary.Social implicationsTrust in the government is affected by decisions behind closed doors. They appear partisan, even when they may not be. Process matters if only to highlight increased value placed on meritorious appointments.Originality/valuePrevious studies on GIC appointments have generally been to explore representation as a value. That is, studies have questioned whether diversity is maintained, for example. However, few studies have explored appointment processes using institutional approaches to examine whether reforms to such processes have respected key principles, such as merit and accountability.

Resilience in the Context of Pandemics and Disasters: A Framework for Public Governance, Ecosystem Innovation, Co-creation, and Co-production

This article, through a literature review, explores evidence that public governance positively influences and stimulates the innovation ecosystem, the co-creation, and co-production of resilience in communities that are victims of disasters, shocks, and even pandemic disasters, such as COVID-19. Disaster scenarios of all kinds cause millions of damage to society. The negative impacts of these contexts disasters, shocks, catastrophes, even if pandemic, such as COVID-19, can be greater or lesser, depending on the dysfunctions of governance and the negative barriers to the creation of public policies consistent with the capacity for resilience. Thus, the possible solution to this scenario may be based on public governance, if the pubic governance is instituted in an organized, integrated, and articulated manner. For this purpose, a theoretical conceptual framework of value creation is proposed through public governance that values and stimulates the innovation ecosystem, the co-creation, co-production of value, and a static, hierarchical, and linear structural vision. There is theoretical evidence that public governance can promote resilience in communities that are victims of disasters, shocks, pandemics or disturbances, through an ecosystem of innovation, co-creation and co-production of value. In this regard, at the end of this article, a theoretical-conceptual framework for creating public value is proposed.

Mediating role of trust in the relationship between public governance quality and tax compliance

This paper examined the mediating role of trust in government on the influence of public governance quality indicators (accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption) on tax compliance in Africa. Cross-country data obtained from 38 African countries for 2015 was used and analyzed using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis. The study found that accountability, political stability, control of corruption, and trust have a significant influence on tax compliance among the sampled African countries, but government effectiveness, regulatory quality, and the rule of law and have insignificant influence on tax compliance. The result of the mediating effects revealed that trust mediates the influence of accountability and political stability on tax compliance in Africa. However, it failed to mediate the influence of government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption on tax compliance among sample African countries. The study offers theoretical insights on the role of trust as a mediator on social exchange relationships from the context of public governance quality on tax compliance. It also implies to the policymakers that building trust is an important mechanism through which the impact of public governance on tax compliance would be more pronounced. The study further calls for replication of its findings in other continents such as the Americas, Asia, and Europe.

Understanding the Field of Public Policy in the Context of Public Administration Evolution

Public policy is classified as a major field in public administration. Therefore, to understand the context of public policy as a field, it is essential to explore its root developments in public administration from epistemological and chronological perspectives. This chapter is a review study referring to main scholarly works including books, academic articles, and studies. The chapter first helps researchers and students in comprehending the evolution of public administration in its four main stages including classical public administration, new public administration, new public management, and new public governance. Second, the chapter presents a general overview of the evolution of the public policy field with particular attention paid to the concepts of Harold Lasswell who is seen as the father of public policy. The chapter then discusses different definitions of public policy. Various classifications of public policy are also investigated. The chapter ends with a critical discussion of the stages model (heuristics).

Influence of media convergence on public governance subjects in Russia

The objective of the article consists in representation of a sociological portrait of the subject of management in a digital society. Based on the analysis of the texts of the Russian media and Russian-speaking social networks and in-depth interviews with the heads of media editorial offices, the authors obtained the following results. The phenomenon of media convergence is manifested in the need to take into account in the management process those phenomena and trends that radically change the life of society, in particular, integration between individuals and digital devices, which gradually blurs the border between reality and the virtual world leading to the need for the subjects of management to acquire new communication skills, work with information resources, understand digital threats and know how to protect against them. The influence of media convergence is manifested in the fact that Russian subjects of government, using various digital devices to enter the virtual space, do not indicate their personal data and can act in contradictory ways, acting in different social roles. Conclusions: the formation of digital society requires monitoring the formation of social digital institutions, the principles of integral collective intelligence and symbiotic intelligence, including value foundations, norms, culture of behavior and interaction, systems of statuses and roles. The subjects of management cannot apply the old formats of the command style of management and administrative pressure in the virtual space. Therefore, it is necessary to develop specialized communication formats in the process of implementing public administration.

Directions of modernization of the system of state strategic planning in Ukraine

The systematically organized state strategic planning is the crucial factor of effective public governance. However, main problems of such planning in Ukraine may be noted as absence of the systematic forecasting and long-term strategic planning, undetermined links and mechanisms of coordination between strategic documents, lack of clear and unified standards, procedures and functions' distribution between actors in planning process. Therefore, the aim of this study consists in determination of modernization directions of the state strategic planning in Ukraine by means of the integrated planning system formation. The definition of "state strategic planning" is proposed in this study with using comparative analysis of various approaches and viewpoints concerning strategic management and strategic planning. The proposed definition and problem analysis of current organization structures and procedures of planning in Ukraine assume as a basis of recommended modernization directions to form the System of State Strategic Planning in Ukraine. The appropriate system of strategic planning documents in Ukraine at national, regional and sectoral levels is suggested with using hierarchy analysis across these levels and analysis of the current set of Ukrainian approved documents in proper field. Special attention is given to national level because national strategic directions and goals constitute general framework for strategic documents at other levels. The 10-years Development Strategy of Ukraine is proposed as the main strategic document of national level. The study generalizes methodological principles, and develops institutional mechanism for making and executing mentioned Strategy, proposes the functions' distribution between governmental and other actors involved in this mechanism

Role of Governance and Public Trust on Government Debt-Economic Growth Nexus (A Global Empirical Analysis)

High government debts in several countries have the potential to trigger or exacerbate economic instability. These concerns are consistent with the results of this study, where countries that have a high debt ratio tend to have declining economic growth. To provide more understanding about this effect, this study tries to examine the effect of debt on economic growth by utilising the governance and public trust level as a contextual variable and mediator. Empirically, both variables have a prominent role in the debt and economic growth nexus. The debt threshold as a budgetary rule is necessary but might not be sufficient to validate the rationality of rising debt. The capability of government in providing public governance and the effect of additional debt on public trust is another crucial aspect that needs to be seriously scrutinised, or when the addition of debt becomes inevitable (such as in pandemic situation), the government should strengthen governance capability to ensure the productivity of debt and mitigate the decreased public trust. This finding implies that the debt policy should not only be based on budgetary rule but also the capacity of governance and the potential implication of the falling public trust.