ABSTRACT Governments in advanced democracies often implement self‐binding mechanisms like regulatory offsetting schemes to counteract short‐term political incentives. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of Germany's offsetting scheme by analyzing over 3000 legal acts for restrictive clauses and passages related to replacing or repealing existing regulations. Despite Germany being a “least likely” case for failure, our analysis indicates that the scheme has not reduced regulatory burdens. These findings suggest that self‐binding measures struggle to override political incentives for rule production, especially with inadequate monitoring. We contribute to the literature by systematically assessing governmental self‐binding effectiveness, introducing a novel methodological approach based on large language models, and employing a robust difference‐in‐differences design to estimate counterfactual effects. Our study highlights the challenges of implementing effective self‐binding mechanisms in democratic governance.

ABSTRACT Financial disclosure through tax returns is the primary regulatory mechanism for holding nonprofits accountable to donors in the USA. The assumption that donors will make rational decisions using disclosed information when giving to nonprofits is central to this regulation. But what if they rely on mental shortcuts instead? This study examines how donors respond to a third‐party nonprofit rating that is simple, unverified, and based on self‐reported data. Using a five‐year panel dataset covering over a million nonprofit‐year records, we find that even these basic ratings have a significant impact on donation behavior. Donors use ratings via two mental shortcuts. First, ratings increase a nonprofit's salience, boosting donations by 7%. Second, donors process higher ratings as a mental accounting shortcut, giving up to 34% more to the top‐rated nonprofits. The findings suggest the limits of information disclosure alone in making nonprofits accountable to donors.

ABSTRACT Over the past seven decades, South Korea has developed a distinctive trajectory in its public administration (PA) through balancing the domains of research, education, and engagement with government. Our analysis shows that it embodies a connected yet distinct character, closely linked to Western administrative science and global PA scholarship, yet continually reshaped by Korea's bureaucratic culture, Confucian legacies, and pragmatic governance needs. To map this evolution systematically, we examine the entire Korean PA ecosystem by (1) analyzing 4447 scholarly articles published in four leading domestic and international journals over the past two decades, (2) reviewing PA curricula across Korean universities, and (3) tracing government‐funded research projects and faculty appointments to senior public positions over the same period. The findings suggest that the strong institutional linkages between research, education, and government have enhanced Korea's administrative capacity and responsiveness, while also highlighting the need for greater intellectual independence and theoretical inquiry.

ABSTRACT This study examines whether street‐level bureaucrats' preferences toward algorithmic decision support (ADS) induce a unilateral shift of technology‐related risks onto clients of the public employment service. Expanding on public value theory and research on moral agency in public service work, we argue that case managers' choices of ADS designs are shaped by a plurality of professional, service, and efficiency values. To test this argument, we conducted a conjoint experiment on a representative sample of German Federal Employment Agency case managers. Respondents compared pairs of hypothetical ADS systems that differed in their design features, reflecting varying degrees of the realization of public values. The empirical results indicate that case managers' choices do not result in biased design. Instead, case managers balance design features reflecting professional and service values while maintaining administrative efficiency. Case managers appreciate ADS support but firmly reject the mandatory use of such advice.

ABSTRACT Prior research on public organizations' strategic responses to performance feedback has focused solely on the intensity of performance feedback while neglecting its temporal dimensions. This study aims to fill this gap by incorporating the lens of time and investigating how performance feedback duration affects performance improvements in the public sector. Drawing on various theoretical perspectives, we theorize an inverted U‐shaped relationship between underperformance (negative performance feedback) duration and public organizations' subsequent performance improvements, and a U‐shaped relationship for overperformance (positive performance feedback) duration. Empirical analyses using the case of China's official city air quality ranking provide evidence supporting our theory. Our findings reveal that “time” (duration) can shape public organizations' responses to performance feedback in nonlinear ways and help reconcile inconsistencies in the existing literature, highlighting the importance of incorporating temporal dimensions of performance to advance performance feedback theory in the public sector.