Government Performance Evaluation Research Articles

Partisanship in a Pandemic: Biased Voter Assessments of Past and Present Government Performance

AbstractAccountability relies on voters accurately evaluating government performance in addressing the important issues of the day. This requirement arguably applies to an even greater extent when addressing fundamental societal crises. However, partisanship can bias evaluations, with government partisans perceiving outcomes more favorably, or attributing less responsibility for bad outcomes. We examine partisan motivated reasoning in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, using panel data and a survey experiment of over 6000 respondents in which vignettes prime respondents about the UK government’s successes and failures in tackling the pandemic. We also propose a novel extension of the partisan bias thesis: partisans arrive at biased judgements of government competence by recalling the past performance of the government differently, according to whether or not their favored party held power at that time. We find that even in the relatively consensual partisan context of the UK’s response to Covid-19, where both major parties endorsed both lockdown and vaccination programs, there is evidence of both current and recall partisan biases: Opposition partisans are more likely to blame the government for negative outcomes and less likely to recall positive aspects of the government’s recent and past performance unless prompted to do so. Our findings have implications for understanding the limits of democratic accountability under crisis conditions.

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Performance Evaluation to Reduce Potential Greenwashing Based on Sustainable Fitch Index

Increasing company awareness of environment, social, and governance (ESG) issues is getting more important in relation to financial performances. Investors and other stakeholders require ESG-related information to help them making decisions, in particular investment decisions. This study employed the Sustainable Fitch index to assess the ESG performance, by examining Company G as a case study as this company is considered the first company in Indonesia which went through Sustainable Fitch index evaluation. Sustainable Fitch index was chosen as this index is considered the most related ESG index for companies who would like to publish sustainability bonds and it has a unique methodology. The findings suggest that any companies conducting a Sustainable Fitch ESG assessment should calculate scope 3 emissions and clarify the emission reduction target timeline, including target verification with respect to the United Nations' Science-Based Target (SBT) or net zero targets. These measurements are considered as part of environmental accounting, an emerging accounting issues, related to sustainability. Besides, social performances are also crucial, and one of them is improving the number of women in management positions at all levels.

Analisis Informasi Publik di Kepolisian Sektor Pademangan

This research discusses public information in the Pademangan Sector Police. Public information is an important part of public administration. Public information is all information that is publicly available and can be accessed by the public freely. This information may include government data, public reports, legal documents, or other relevant content. The importance of public information in society is to encourage transparency, accountability and citizen participation in the democratization process. However, effective management and access to public information also raises issues related to privacy, security and ethics. The use of public information is also to provide open and transparent access to information produced or managed by the government or public institutions to the general public. This aims to enable the public to understand, monitor and participate in government and decision-making processes. Public information enables the public to have sufficient knowledge to evaluate government performance, understand public policy, and play an active role in community development and maintaining government accountability. Therefore, it is important for the government and other agencies, including the police, that provide public information to consider the interests of the community and maintain the basic principles of fair and just public information.

Retracted: Corporate Environmental Governance Performance Evaluation and Index System Construction under the Mobile Communication System

Retracted: Corporate Environmental Governance Performance Evaluation and Index System Construction under the Mobile Communication System

The role and influencing factors of government performance evaluation: A test of Chinese public officials’ perceptions in Gaoming district

Government performance evaluation has a long history. However, major differences of opinion regarding its role still exist both in Western and Chinese academia, from theoretical, and practical perspectives. In this article, we conduct an empirical measurement of the role played by government performance evaluation and construct a regression model to explore the major factors influencing public officials’ perception, relying on survey data from a district government of county level in Guangdong Province. The study reveals that the average value of 14 items measuring government performance evaluation was 3.36 points (out of a possible 5 points). The role of the government in setting annual objectives, tasks, and priorities, as well as strategic planning, and target setting, and strengthening departmental accountability, had the most significant effect on the perception of efficacy of performance evaluation, whereas departmental budget setting, resource allocation, and reduction of operating costs had the least effect. Furthermore, performance communication and feedback, as well as the validity of the performance indicator system, also significantly influence the perception of the role played by government performance evaluation. The article concludes with a discussion of the differences between government performance evaluation in the West and in China.

How does e-government use affect citizens’ trust in government? Empirical evidence from China

Although much literature has discussed the potential of e-government for improving citizens’ trust in government, the question of how e-government use affects citizens’ trust in government remains underexplored. To investigate the driving mechanism of the effects of different types of e-government use on trust in government, this research develops a conceptual framework based on the institutional-based trust theory, the process-based trust theory, and the expectancy-disconfirmation model. Based on data collected from 1668 citizen users living in five cities in China, the study verifies the proposed mediated moderation model and then tests the robustness of the results using process analysis. The results reveal that citizens’ use of e-government revitalizes their trust in government indirectly, via influence on citizens’ evaluation of government integrity, performance, and responsiveness from the experience of using e-government, while the mediating effects of citizens’ evaluation of government on relationship between e-government use and public trust are diminished by citizens’ expectations for their government. The analysis also offers strong support for the conclusion that the effects of different types of e-government use on public trust are differentially distributed among multiple levels of governments in China.

Measuring up in a pandemic: information attention, source credibility, and public evaluation of the government COVID-19 response in mainland China

This study examines the interaction effects of attention to COVID-19 information and perceived source credibility on the evaluation of government performance in the Hubei province of mainland China; the study is based on two waves of panel data drawn from a sample of 1896 respondents. The results demonstrated that COVID-19 information attention positively influences the evaluation of both central and local government performance. These direct relationships are contingent on the perceived source credibility of central and local government institutions, but they are not influenced by the perceived credibility of social media sources. More interestingly, there is a negative moderating effect of the perceived credibility of local institution sources on the relationship between COVID-19 information attention and the evaluation of central government performance. This study extends the current research on the impacts of information consumption on political attitudes by integrating various theories or hypotheses (e.g. cognitive media model, attitudinal policy feedback, message persuasion, and informational incongruity).

Partisanship, attribution and approval in a public health shock

Political scientists have long agreed that partisanship can bias how voters evaluate government performance and attribute responsibility. However, less is known about how – and to what extent – these biases work across different types of voters, or how they respond to positive or non-partisan policy outcomes. In this research note we address these questions, focusing on how voters respond to a positive, non-partisan public health shock: the successful early rollout of Covid-19 vaccinations in England. Through a pre-registered information experiment embedded in the British Election Study (N > 6000), we test how voters respond to claims that the quasi-independent National Health Service, rather than the government, deserved credit for the success of the programme. On average, subjects do attribute less responsibility to government, but this has no downstream effect on general approval. Exploratory heterogeneity analyses suggest that government and opposition supporters, as well as historic swing voters, respond homogeneously to our intervention. Our findings are not fully explained by rational or selective frameworks of responsibility attribution, and add nuance to existing experimental work on the political effects of the pandemic.

Corruption and Governance Factors as The Determination of The Regional Government Revenue in Indonesia

This study aims to analyze the factors of corruption and governance in determining the amount of Regional Government Revenue in all provinces in Indonesia. This research method uses quantitative approach by analyzing the number of corruption cases that have been taken in kracht in court as well as the results of evaluations of the regional government performance from 2010 to 2017. A total of 30 provinces from 34 provinces in Indonesia were taken as samples to avoid abnormal distribution. The model used is the Fixed Effect Model (FEM) showing that the factors of corruption and governance determine significantly in the opposite direction, where the corruption factor determines the negative direction while the governance factor determines the Regional Government Revenue positively. The two independent variables show that there is a close relationship between corruption and governance, this can occur with improved governance, which will reduce the level of corruption so that it can increase Regional Government Revenue. One way of governance to reduce the occurrence of corruption is to implement the application of one-stop service and e-system.

Cutback management strategies and citizen evaluation of government

AbstractThrough a behavioral approach, citizen evaluations of government performance have been an area of study in public administration. Research has explored how different factors influence citizens’ perceptions of public organizations, such as public sector bias and reference points. Understudied in this literature is how citizens evaluate government based on their use of financial management strategies. The Pandemic and other economic challenges have forced governments to engage in cutback management strategies to balance the budget. How do citizens evaluate governments based on their cutback strategies? To answer this theoretical question, we employ a survey experiment design with over 1600 respondents from the U.S. to explore how four cutback management strategies can influence citizen evaluations of government. Our findings suggest that cutback management strategies do influence citizens’ evaluation of government in trust, satisfaction, performance, and fairness. Citizens are more favorable to infrastructure or materials and contractor cuts than increasing taxes or reducing personnel. Further analysis by respondent partisanship indicates Democrats are more accepting of tax increases. Republicans rate governments lower when they cut capital and infrastructure and rate governments higher when they decrease personnel expenditures.

Construction and Preliminary Application of the Carbon-based Spatial Governance Performance Evaluation System ——Taking Zhejiang Province as an Example

Construction and Preliminary Application of the Carbon-based Spatial Governance Performance Evaluation System ——Taking Zhejiang Province as an Example

How Do Economic Conditions Influence Support for Democracy?

Abundant political economy work has found that societies tend to be less supportive of the political system that governs their country when the economy deteriorates. This paper seeks to enrich the existing literature on economic and democratic assessments by including the relatively under-explored group of developing countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, many of which are Muslim countries. Using public opinion data from the World Values Survey of 78 countries from 2005 to 2020, the author applies multi-level regressions to test whether the relationship between democratic support and economic growth varies along three dimensions: country affluence, MENA versus non-MENA regions, and type of political regime. Consistent with past studies, the findings in this paper confirm that higher real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth significantly enhances public support for democracy. However, it also identifies that the more robustly significant predictors of public support for democracy are political variables, particularly evaluation of government performance. The interaction variables analysis reveals that the effects of economic growth on public support for democracy is weaker in the presence of higher country affluence as well as in more liberal democracies, while being located in the MENA region strengthens the relationship between economic growth and public support for democracy. In addition, respondents who consider free and fair elections as well as protection of civil liberties to be essential features of democracy tend to be more supportive of democracy itself. Meanwhile, those who associate democracy with redistributive policies tend to have a more negative assessment of democracy.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PROVISION OF BASIC SERVICES OF THE SELECTED BARANGAYS IN BAYUGAN CITY AGUSAN DEL SUR, PHILIPPINES: IT’S ADMINISTRATION AND GOVERNENCE

Governance has been defined as “the manner in which power is exercised in the management of the country’s economic and social resources for development”. However, governance is not simply about how government conducts business in its own sphere. It is also about how government interacts with civil society. It tells how well government has encouraged and facilitated people’s participation not only in the delivery of services but also in evaluation and monitoring of government performance itself. In spite of technological advancement in information systems, people remain the most important factor in private and public organization. None of these techniques or management methods is effective unless they are administered and carried out by competent Barangay officials. Considering the importance of human power development, The City Government of Bayugan, Agusan del Sur conducted training programs, leadership seminars, and other Seminar-Workshop to fully reach the competence of leadership for the improvement of Barangays in. Projects are being monitored every year to see and testify if one City has improved under the administration of the said officials.

Coordination evaluation and dynamic adjustment mechanism of China’s green development at inter-provincial level

The inter-provincial green development evaluation is an essential tool for monitoring regional green development and helping the government create green development policies in China. This study defines the green index, economic index, and social index, and creatively constructs an index-based indicator system for evaluating green development. With the coordination of green development as an analytical guide, the current state of green development in each region of China is examined from a spatial perspective in both vertical and horizontal dimensions with the help of coupling coordination. The empirical findings demonstrate that each province’s three index values present distinct development features, which are reflected as an uncoordinated green development. With the macro policy incentive as the evaluation guide, a new dynamic weighting method of three indexes is proposed based on the measured data of the overall green development process of each province. For the purpose of realizing a dynamic evaluation method that can adopt differentiated government performance evaluation criteria according to the different green development evolution processes of each region, a lag extension evaluation theory is pioneered using dynamic policy incentives as the entry point. This will encourage each region to invest in the development of its weaker links.

Do citizen perceptual measures align with archival performance measures: a meta-analysis

While archival performance measures and citizen perceptual measures are widely used to gauge government performance, the relationship between the two remains inconclusive due to conflicting empirical evidence, which obscures the role of citizen evaluation in government performance measurement. This study conducted a meta-analysis of 362 effect sizes from 36 existing studies to estimate the relationship between archival and perceptual measures. The findings show that, in general, the two measures are weakly correlated. This correlation stays relatively weak even when the measures are related to output and outcomes. These results underscore the distinctions between citizen perceptual measures and archival performance measures in evaluating government performance and advocate for the integration of subjective and objective measures to comprehensively capture government performance.

Foreign aid and its impact on Afghanistan s Economic Setup: Purposes and Implications

The notion that foreign aid harms recipient governments' economic autonomy and undermines citizens’ trust in political institutions and actors remain prevalent and paradoxical. The fact that foreign aid has come to mean development assistance has raised a series of questions that have been debated in the scholarly literature. Moreover, it is universally acknowledged that donors use aid to achieve objectives other than development and poverty reduction. This study assesses the impact of foreign aid on the economic autonomy of different regimes (2001–2021) in Afghanistan. The study opines that foreign aid supported economic growth and the longevity of the Afghan government. However, on the other hand, both on-budget and off-budget foreign aid funding had several ripple effects. This study offers a comparative analysis of foreign aid in the Karzai and Ghani era; and explores the knock-on economic implications of aid dependency in Afghanistan. The comparative analysis of regimes in the post-9/11 context illustrates that stringent conditions were attached to aid granted to the Ghani administration compared to the Karzai administration. The study has found that US aid has undermined the economic setup in Afghanistan. However, the leverage of US aid to influence decision-making is minimal. Afghanistan's strategic calculation and policymaking are determined by regional security conditions rather than US influence. Furthermore, it is pertinent to note that since 2014, a significant decrease in US aid has been witnessed due to divergence between the two states. The significance of assistance in US foreign policy towards Afghanistan is minimal. The study suggests that foreign aid projects harm institutional trust by lowering citizens' evaluations of government performance and administrative competence. Additionally, aid projects can incentivize rent-seeking behavior and hurt citizens' perceptions of political corruption. In mapping the future discourse on aid in Afghanistan, the current authorities need to be more oriented toward foreign aid. As a policy tool, support has not been confined to the roles that foreign and economic policy theorists have prescribed. Key Words: Afghanistan, Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEoA), Taliban, Foreign Aid, Economic Autonomy.

The Impact of Government Performance Evaluation on Environmental Performance in Organizations

Using GPE performance gaps (the difference between actual and standard levels of performance), this article explores the relationship between the GPE outcomes of public organizations and their environmental performance (EP). We utilize Korean GPE data related to qualitative/quantitative and financial/non-financial performance indicators that the government uses to evaluate public organizations. The GPE does not cover every important environmental activity in which public organizations may engage; the EP measure can incorporate results from all environmental activities, even those excluded from the GPE. Our investigation revealed that the EP of public organizations varied according to their GPE performance gaps. Low GPE performers favored GPE-included environmental activities over GPE-excluded environmental activities, but high GPE performers engaged in environmental activities were excluded from the GPE. A negativity bias occurs when public organizations adjust their environmental activities in response to GPE performance gaps. For environmental activities excluded from the GPE, low GPE performers avoided them more than high GPE performers engaged in them. These findings indicate the importance of a well-designed organizational performance evaluation for balanced engagement in environmental initiatives. This article is of theoretical interest to academics and has practical value for practitioners.

Aid and Governance: Impact of Chinese Aid on the Evaluation of Government Performance in Sub-Saharan Africa

One of a government's primary responsibilities is to provide public goods and services for the benefit of citizens. A government that excels in such provision may therefore win favorable evaluations from its citizens. However, if external state and non-state actors through foreign aid issuance become providers of what citizens expect from their government, citizens may doubt their government's competence. In recent decades, China has become an important donor to Africa, providing the continent with several aid projects. Consequently, this study examines whether aid from China undermines citizens’ evaluations of government performance. Geocoded data on Chinese aid projects are matched to 4 waves of Afrobarometer survey respondents from 31 sub-Saharan African countries. Using an instrumental variable estimation, the findings indicate that Chinese aid undermines the evaluation of government performance. Testing for the mechanism through which this effect manifests, the results suggest Chinese aid engenders corruption perceptions and erodes trust.

CAN GOOD GOVERNANCE ENHANCE LOCAL GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE?

The first objective of this study is to examine the effect of audit results on the local government performance. Secondly is examining the moderating role of good governance on the relationship between audit results and local government performance. This study collected 536 local governments data from 134 local authorities in Indonesia from 2016 to 2019. The data employed for audit results were extracted from findings and rectification of audit reports. For the Good Governance, this study develops the Good Governance Principles index by mapping the data taken from Evaluation of Local Government Performance by the Ministry of Home Affairs RI with IGI indicators. Meanwhile, the local government performances were measured using the total local own revenue. This study uses multiple moderated regression analyses to explain the relationship between the audit results and good governance on local government performance. As the result, it has a significant effect on both variables tested. This research also found a significant interaction between audit results and good governance on local government. These results assert that good governance enhances local government to be more effective in responding to audit results to improve their performances in the following years.

Institutional trust, scientific literacy, and information sources: What factors determine people's attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines of different origins in China?

This study aimed to investigate the different attitudes of Chinese residents toward COVID-19 vaccines produced in China and the United States in an emergency context, and then explored possible explanations for these different attitudes. Using data collected online in May 2021, we compared Chinese citizens' attitudes toward vaccines originating from China and the US and then adopted ordered logistic models to examine how trust in institutions, scientific literacy, and information sources influence their attitudes toward different vaccines. A total of 2038 respondents completed the survey. Participants reported very different levels of trust in Chinese and American vaccines. The main finding of this paper is that individuals who trust in Chinese institutions, especially those who trust in domestic scientists, typically feel encouraged to also place their trust in domestic vaccines and to distrust those from the US. These individuals' higher evaluation of Chinese government performance makes them more willing to vaccinate with domestic vaccines and less likely to seek US vaccines. Levels of scientific literacy, furthermore, seem to have little influence on attitudes toward different vaccines. Meanwhile, respondents who acquire health information from biomedical journals are more likely to hold a positive view of US vaccines, and these individuals contribute to bridging the gap between levels of trust in Chinese and US vaccines. In contrast with previous findings about Chinese attitudes toward imported vaccines, our respondents are more convinced of the safety and effectiveness of domestic vaccines than of US ones. This trust gap does not arise out of actual disparity in the quality and safety of the different vaccines per se. Instead, it is a cognition concern that is closely bound up with individuals' trust in domestic institutions. People's attitudes toward vaccines of different origins in an emergency context are more influenced by socio-political beliefs than by concern with objective information and knowledge.