Distribution Of Public Goods Research Articles

Capacity and transparency of potable water regulation in Tijuana, Mexico: challenges for ensuring water quality at community level.

The ability of public institutions to provide efficient and equitable potable water services is key to reducing water-borne diseases, one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the developing world. In this article, a case study of potable water and public health programs in Tijuana, Mexico, is used to direct attention to practical examples of policy and institutional incapacities. A qualitative methodology was used to gain access to local context and the formal and informal actions of the key informants. This paper concludes that public health agencies are creating the illusion of program action through disease surveillance, however capacity gaps demonstrate that institutional policy is not pragmatically reflected on the local community level. Political client-patron relationships are used to circumvent bureaucratic barriers and distribute resources at the local level. This raises the question of whether further accountability will bring the much-expected equitable distribution of public goods in the developing world.

The South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus, 1970 to 1988

V. 0. Key observed that the legislature in South Carolina gives direction, cohesion, and continuity to the politics of the state (Key, 1949, p. 2). The South Carolina legislature, similar to legislatures throughout the South, was a bastion of prejudice and reactionary social policy (Willingham, 1985, p. 3). It was both a product and vehicle of the state's racist and undemocratic social order. The social order was characterized by a political system in which race determined the administration and distribution of public goods and services that affected the quality of everyday life. African Americans were excluded from public administration and the decision-making process. Public officials extracted revenue from the Black community without providing that community with public goods and services. The political system reinforced the exploitation in the workplace (Reed, 1979). Thus, the election of African Americans to the South Carolina legislature in the 1970s represented a significant departure from the state's political history. Seated in a powerful political institution from the state, Black legislators could now challenge the traditional conservative and anti-Black orientation of the general assembly. This study focuses on the issue of Black legislators' responsiveness to the Black community of South Carolina. As Michael B. Preston asserted, adequate representation of Black demands as well as the potential that Black interests may prevail over conflicting White preferences require that there be Black officeholders to translate these demands into policy (Preston, 1974, p. 198).

Avenues of Participation

Singerman's work calls for the field of political science to redefine its notions of political participation in the context of developing societies. Determining the efficacy of the state's distribution of public goods and measuring the degree of popular participation in politicaJ activity are two of the five components of political development in the literature on which young political scientists have cut their teeth for several decades (Almond and Verba, 1963 ). Singerman is not challenging these notions, but rather marking the territory opened for her research on the informal economy and the so-called household politics since the earlier works of development theory gained ascendance. Arguments regarding the importance of the informaJ economy have been made earlier with regard to Egypt, notably by such scholars as Mah­moud Abdel-Fadil ( 1975, 1980), John Waterbury (1983), Robert Mabro (1974), Abdel Khalak and Tignor (1982), and Ibrahim Oweiss (1990). Other research examining the household level of the economy has been done by Homa Hoodfar (1988, 1990), with whom Singerman bas collab­orated, and by such CEDEJ participants as Nadia Khouri-Dagher, Ragui Assaad, and others (Egypte Recompositions 1988) ...

Passing the Baton: Transformational Political Leadership from Gorbachev to Yeltsin; from de Klerk to Mandela

The leaders of the Soviet Union and South Africa have both attempted the rare feat of bringing about what Zygmunt Bauman calls a peaceful, systematic revolution (Bauman, 1994, p. 15). Each attempted to bring about fundamental changes in the political constitution, social institutions, the distribution of public goods, and the way people relate to each other at work and play. The transformational task in such situations poses extraordinarily difficult problems for those who are trying to bring it about. Change unleashes not only hopes of a better future for many, but the fears and hatred of large groups of individuals whose interests and values are being challenged. Totalitarian or tyrannical leaders can deal with that backlash through the use of terror, intimidation, and a relatively unconstrained use of state power to buy up support from strategically placed individuals and communities. The leader committed to a democratic and peaceful change must constrain these emotions without the use of such devices (Bauman, 1994)1. My thesis is that the relationship between the leaders of the old and the new orders can play a critical role in the success or failure of attempts at transformation. If the effort is to remain peaceful and move toward democratic forms, both sides must understand that they are in a cooperative enterprise. The leaders coming out

Hedonic price functions and progressive neighborhood improvement: A theoretical exploration

Neighborhood improvement programs which involve the input of public funding are generally formulated with two goals in mind: to provide a more equitable distribution of goods and services within the metropolitan area and to expand the municipal property tax base. However, a critical factor in the success of any neighborhood improvement program is the way in which the program affects and is affected by the housing market. The relationships between the urban property market, large inputs of public funding and residential mobility are not well understood. This paper investigates the likely effects of public funding on the housing market, under conditions of short-run equilibrium. A modified hedonic price function is used to outline the relationships between housing values, levels of public service provision and the property tax. It is concluded that the goal of expanding the tax base is incompatible with the goal of providing a more equitable (or more progressive) distribution of public goods and services. In addition, there are implications in terms of residential mobility. Taken to an extreme, the stimulation of investment in selected neighborhoods can result in the displacement of lower income households. Unless the relationship between neighborhood improvement and property values is taken into consideration, attempts to bring about progressive neighborhood improvement will ultimately result in regressive solutions.

The Passivity of the Administration

The welfare state claims to provide for its inhabitants. Normally the duration of this provision is specified: from the cradle to the grave. This implies a specific role for the state, the role of distributor of public commodities and services. Among the possible ways of bringing about a distribution of commodities and services in a community, there are two extremes. The one extreme is distribution by way of the market mechanism. The other extreme is distribution by bureaucratic procedure. The development of the welfare state brought with it the transfer of the distribution of public goods from the market sector to the bureaucratic sector, as well as to various intermediate forms. There are many methods conceivable, by which the government can distribute its commodities and services. It is possible to do it by means of a lottery, as is the case with the admittance to particular university courses in Holland. Another method, based on the adage ‘the early bird catches the worm’, is frequently applied in public transport and theatre performances. One may offer the provision to anyone who is at a particular place, as with traffic lights at a busy crossing.

Process Accountability and the Creative Use of Intergovernmental Resources

1hile the national government has been collecting more revenues, it has been spending proportionally less. This is a major reason why state and local units of government constitute a major economic, social, and political force in the U.S. governmental system. Because of their massive expenditure of resources they have the potential for impeding and/or facilitating economic growth, stability, and the distribution of public goods and services. This is perhaps a main reason why Congress set up the Intergovernmental Science, Engineering and Technology Panel (ISETAP) to solve or ameliorate and speed the introduction of innovation into state and local governments.3 State and Local Governments: Public Concern About Cost and Performance. As more public resources shift to the state and local levels of government, public concerns about curbing cost and promoting effective performance have become issues at these levels. The recent tax revolt, commonly associated with the passage of Proposition 13 in California,4 has contributed to heightened public concern about spiraling inflation, the rising tide of public employee strikes, the continuing rise in public budgets and payroll, increasing taxes, and the perceived wastefulness in the spending of tax resources and the low level of government performance (productivity).' A number of innovative techniques such as cost effectiveness analysis, program analysis, planning-programming-budgeting systems (PPBS), zero-base budgeting (ZBB) and program evaluation have been introduced to minimize public expenditure and achieve greater cost effectiveness, program impact, and responsiveness to publicly articulated demands. In many of the governmental units, agencies, and programs where application of these techniques have been introduced, there is still public clamor and demand for greater congruence between planned and achieved objectives. There is a credibility gap about the efficacy of public programs. The view is held that waste, mismanagement, and corruption are rampant in public service programs. Additionally, the difficulty in achieving the appropriate accountability for intergovernmental funds makes them especially vulnerable to mismanagement. When Congress and/or the state legislature make funds available, recipient governments or private agencies tend to adopt a spendthrift syndrome believing that when funds are available they must be sought and when obtained they must be spent.6 To improve and/or overcome the conditions that give rise to these practices, this paper briefly examines the definition of accountability and explores the potential and creative uses of process accountability in the intergovernmental setting. Understanding process accountability may be a key to maximizing responsiveness and effectiveness in the management and delivery of public goods and services.

La multirationalité et le sous-développement: écologie du processus décisionnel dans l'administration locale zaïroise

All administrative structures are affected by their cultural, social, economic, and political environments. The daily interactions between the two sectors comprise the substance of the administrative activity. In 1973 Zaïre's local administration was subjected to a reform which centralized and standardized its structures. This article examines the reform of the administration from the perspective of social underdevelopment. The local administrative cadres appeared to emerge from the reform with more power and prestige in social planning. However, the actual outcome of the reform in terms of development was doubtful since the authorities who acquired politico-administrative functions were engaged in their own lucrative activities and the public had little control over their administrative actions. Thus the administrative structure became an instrument which the dominant class—the bourgeois politico-administration—could use to strengthen its power over the economy. It could scarcely be otherwise in a situation in which underdevelopment creates and sustains a continual crisis. The consequences are inequalityx in the distribution of public goods and inequity in public decisions. All of these factors produce real stagnation in the society, in spite of the apparently revolutionary upsets which have occurred from time to time. They permit external domination to strengthen its hand and allow internal domination to carve out a suitable empire. To change the situation and free up local administration would require a genuine revolution in the devolution of power to the whole public.

Partisan Politics and the Budgetary Process in Oslo

Two alternative models of political effects on budgetary decisions are set out: the party programmatic model and the alliance structure model. Multiple regression tests of the validity of each model are conducted with reference to systematic interview/questionnaire responses from agency officials in the municipal government of Oslo, Norway. Support from various political parties and alliance structures is shown to have substantial effects on agency budget success at each level in the budgetary considerations. Results from submission of the data to multidimensional scaling routines suggest (1) the dimensions along which political parties divide in terms of agency supportiveness during the budgetary proceedings and (2) the dimensions which divide various alliance elements with regard to agency supportiveness. Patterns of public expenditure in Western democratic societies often appear markedly deterministic. As decisional complexities abound, the incremental style holds sway, with marginal percentage increases granted year after year. As financial stress proliferates in the form of limited revenues, decisional options are restrained and choices are limited by factors over which decisionmakers have no direct control. If, indeed, the nexus between the distribution of public goods and the centrality of partisan politics is weakening, then those democratic theorists, inclined toward the modification of normative theory on the basis of empirical evidence, have a dialectical song and dance routine of monumental proportions before them. Normative democratic theorists have never treated the problem of budget

Inequalities: Open and Hidden, Measured and Immeasurable

The paper discusses which inequalities can, and which cannot, be measured by the economist's data. Among the inequalities of wealth, income and consumption, the second is shown to be the most relevant, although it must be corrected for the redistributive effects of taxation and transfer payments and then summed with both the distribution of public goods and services and the distribution of freely rendered non market private services. Beyond the distribution of these measured and measurable components of satisfaction, account is also taken of nonmeasurable sources of welfare, such as work and leisure. Their distribution is shown to be positively correlated with the unequal distribution of money income, and guesses are made concerning their relative importance.