Government Performance Evaluation Research Articles

The Vulnerability of Developing Countries to the Economic Crisis Due to the Pandemic: What Can Indonesia Do?

The spread of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the global economy, including in Indonesia. The pandemic affected all economic performance, including growth, price stability, exchange rates, unemployment, poverty and so on. Although the crisis was felt by all countries, developing countries felt a greater impact than developed countries. Through a qualitative analysis, this paper aims to explain why this can happen, what are government policies for pandemic mitigation and what are their impact. The results show that the crisis caused by the pandemic in Indonesia was caused by four things, namely the dominance of the informal sector, limited fiscal space, poor governance and demographic differences between developed and developing countries. So, a strategy is needed to overcome these obstacles. Strategies that can be carried out are through evaluating government performance, increasing the budget deficit and moderating lockdowns. These three strategies are expected to be able to help Indonesia through the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
 Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic, Demographic Differences, Informal Sector, Limited Fiscal Space, Poor Governance

Evaluation of government performance from foreign currency exchange market : A comparison of martial law administrator and civilian government through factor copula statistical model

This paper evaluates government’s performance of foreign exchange market in the country. We have a way to deal with the issue in various manners. A reverse strategy for appraisal, with the usage of factor copula demonstrating method was utilized in this exploration to consider the confidence association of money exchange rates as subordinate features through which the display of civilian government and martial law administrator in the country was assessed. Through guideline, part investigation, basic elements for money trade rates were acquired. Results reveal that adapted on the normal factor, the relationship between the chose monetary forms is sensibly lopsided in both the tenures, and situation on essential issue Clayton copula displaying speculation is more fitting for martial law Administrator. Nonetheless, we notice high left end dependence between foreign cash returns through political government terms, and circumstance on essential aspect Gumbel copula representative supposition that is more material, which shows that martial law director performed outclass then civilian government in the country.

The more actions, the higher the performance evaluation? Evidence from the crisis management of COVID-19 in China

Governments around the world have taken measures in fighting against COVID-19, but how the government's response affects the public evaluation of government performance in crisis remains to be examined. The study investigated how government actions, the public's trust in government, risk perception, and negative emotions influenced the public evaluation of government performance based on a primary survey. The findings showed that: (1) government actions and public evaluation of government performance in crisis are significantly and positively associated; (2) trust in government can positively lead to the public evaluation of government performance in crisis; (3) risk perception and negative emotions can negatively moderate and attenuate the previous positive relationship. The research revealed that the public evaluation of government performance is formed by the government actions through mediation effect of trust in government and also moderation effect of risk perception and emotional factors. Thus, this study innovatively developed a moderated mediation model of public perceived government performance which may serve as a basis for improving public evaluation while dealing with the crisis in other countries and regions.

코로나19와 복지 태도: 정부 활동 평가를 중심으로

본 연구는 코로나19 사태가 한국인들의 복지 태도에 미치는 영향을 정부활동 평가의 영향을 중심으로 분석한다. 코로나19 사태라는 유례없는 위기의 발생은 사회 전 분야에 걸쳐 국가의 역할을 확장시켰고, 이는 한편으로 시민들이 정부의 활동과 역량을 평가할 수 있는 계기가 되었다. 그렇다면 이러한 정부의 코로나 사태 대응에 대한 시민들의 평가는 한국 복지국가에 어떤 함의를 제공하는가? 전국 설문조사 자료를 활용한 분석 결과, 코로나 사태 이후의 정부에 대한 신뢰 상승이나 정부의 전반적인 코로나 대응에 대한 긍정적인 평가는 복지국가에 대한 지지에 긍정적인 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 구체적인 정책 차원에서는 복지와 직접적인 관련이 있는 정책뿐만 아니라 기타 정책 가운데서도 정부 신뢰 제고와 관련이 있는 정책에 대한 긍정적인 평가는 복지국가에 대한 지지로 이어졌다. 마지막으로 이러한 양상은 계층별로 차이를 보여, 상대적으로 소득이 높은 집단에서 정부 활동에 대한 평가의 영향이 더 중요한 것으로 나타났다.

Trust in Providers of Domestic Water: A Comparison of the Public Utility and Informal Vendors in Dar Es Salaam

This article examines factors associated with trust in the public water utility and informal water vendors in the city of Dar es Salaam. We model trust in terms of citizens’ perceptions of what water providers deliver, how well the service fits with their lifestyle and values, the ease with which they can contact and influence the provider, and how well the government handles water issues. Our data come from a survey of the adult population of the four main residential districts of Dar es Salaam, conducted in March 2018. We find that trust in water providers is built on different foundations for the public utility and informal vendors. For the public utility, trust depends mainly on habituation to the service, knowledge of the vernacular and evaluations of government performance. For informal vendors, trust depends mainly on habituation to the service and capacity for engagement with social issues. Our study illustrates the how trust in service providers is an outcome of social accountability at the micro-level.

IMPLEMENTATION OF REGIONAL PLAN INFORMATION SYSTEM IN THE REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING AGENCY OF ROKAN HILIR REGENCY

This study aims to analyze the implementation of the Regional Government Information System at the Regional Development Planning Agency of Rokan Hilir Regency. The Local Government Information System policy in Rokan Hilir Regency is a system that can document and administer regional development data into information that can be used as information for the community in the context of planning, implementing, and evaluating government performance. This research uses a qualitative research method with a descriptive research type. The main informants in this study were officials within the Regional Development Planning Agency of Rokan Hilir Regency. Sample selection is done by (purposive sampling). Based on the results of research and data analysis, it shows that: (1) The basis for implementing Local Government Information System for financial management in the Rokan Hilir Regency Government is the Regulation of the Minister of Home Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia Number 70 of 2019 concerning Regional Government Information Systems, (2) Problems that occur in the application of Local Government Information System A Rokan Hilir Regency was reviewed through the policy implementation approach model by Van Meter and Van Horn (1975) in the form of problems of Standards and policy objectives, Resources, Communication between related organizations, Characteristics of implementing organizations, Social, economic and political environment, and Implementing Attitudes.

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING THE E-MONEV APPLICATION SYSTEM INTHE PLANNING PROCESS IN THE REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING AGENCY OF ROKAN HILIR REGENCY

This study aims to analyze the effectiveness of the use of the E-Monev Application System inthe Planning Process at the Regional Development Planning Agency of Rokan Hilir Regency.The EMonev Application System in Rokan Hilir Regency is a system that can document andadminister regional development data into information that can be used as information for thecommunity in planning, implementing, and evaluating government performance. This research uses a qualitative research method with a descriptive research type. The maininformants in this study were officials within the Regional Development Planning Agency of Rokan Hilir Regency. Sample selection is done by (purposive sampling). Based on the results of research and data analysis shows that: (1) The effectiveness of using the E-Monev application system in the Rokan Hilir Regency Government is the Regulation of the Minister of Home Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia Number 86 of 2017 concerning Procedures for Planning, Controlling and Evaluation of Regional Development, Procedures for Design Evaluation Regional Regulations concerning Regional Long-Term Development Plans and Regional Medium-Term Development Plans, as well as Procedures for Amendment to Regional Long-Term Development Plans, Regional Medium-Term Development Plans, and Regional Government Work Plans. (2) The problems that occur in the use of the E-Monev application system at the BAPPEDA of Rokan Hilir Regency are reviewed through the concepts and theories of effectiveness that must be met which are described by Robbins (in Handayaningrat, 1985: 16). affect the effectiveness, namely: (1) the existence of a clear goal; (2) human resources; (3) organizational structure; (4) the existence of community support or participation, and (5) the existence of a value system adopted.

Research on Performance Evaluation of Diversified Government Quality Work and Analysis on Application Practice in Nei Mongol

The evaluation of public satisfaction with government quality work is an evaluation form to evaluate government performance from the perspective of the public. The evaluation process is open and transparent, and the results are relatively objective and fair. Taking the application practice in Nei Mongol as an example, in this paper, an index framework is designed and constructed, 12 leagues and cities in the whole region are covered by the investigation, and the actual effect of local quality work is explored and analyzed in combination with big data technology so as to provide enlightenment and reference for relevant research work in the quality field.

Debt and investments: analysis of selected countries

Starting with overview of existing approaches to meaning and use of the terms the paper focuses on analysis of two indicators vital in any economy – debt and investments. It discusses the differences of sovereign and country debts as well as internal and external debts. Public debt is important indicator for government performance evaluation but outcome and impact of total external debt should be on focus too for sustainable growth of any country. The article discusses the results of analysis conducted with regard to the gross public debt, gross external debt by sectors. Further analysis is focused on Foreign Direct Investment and External Debt stocks of the selected countries which are from developing and emerging economies. Empirical analysis of external debt and foreign direct investments of Kazakhstan is carried out as of the country which leads the list of Foreign Direct Investment related component of the external debt. We discuss the important factors to be further investigated with regard to debt management and investment policy of a country.

The policy-seeking voter: evaluations of government performance beyond the economy

Voters hold governments to account through elections, but which criteria are most important to voter evaluations of incumbent performance? While (economic) outcomes have long been central to studies of retrospective voting, recent studies have considered the influence of policy output—the policies implemented by incumbents to achieve their goals. Building on this promising development, this study identifies three ways in which policy output is expected to affect voter evaluations of incumbent performance—the congruence between implemented policy and (1) individual preferences; (2) public opinion; and (3) election pledges. A discrete choice experiment was designed to assess the relative importance of these three aspects of policy output in comparison to each other; as well as to two important economic indicators. Overall, the findings support the notion that policy output matters to voters even beyond outcomes. The findings also show that voters value congruence between policy and their personal preferences considerably more than policy congruence with public opinion; and election pledge fulfillment. This indicates that voters are egotropic in their evaluation of implemented policy, and more policy-seeking than accounted for in much of the empirical retrospective voting literature. These results inform our understanding of how policy output matters to voters, as well as of how voters hold governments accountable for their performance.

Tweets Responding to the Indonesian Government’s Handling of COVID-19: Sentiment Analysis Using SVM with Normalized Poly Kernel

Background: Handling COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease-2019) in Indonesia was once trending on Twitter. The Indonesian government's handling evoked pros and cons in the community. Public opinions on Twitter can be used as a decision support system in making appropriate policies to evaluate government performance. A sentiment analysis method can be used to analyse public opinion on Twitter.Objective: This study aims to understand public opinion trends on COVID-19 in Indonesia both from a general perspective and an economic perspective.Methods: We used tweets from Twitterscraper library. Because they did not have a label, we provided labels using sentistrength_id and experts to be classified into positive, negative, and neutral sentiments. Then, we carried out a pre-processing to eliminate duplicate and irrelevant data. Next, we employed machine learning to predict the sentiments for new data. After that, the machine learning algorithms were evaluated using confusion matrix and K-fold cross-validation.Results: The SVM analysis on the sentiments on general aspects using two-classes dataset achieved the highest performance in average accuracy, precision, recall, and f-measure with the value of 82.00%, 82.24%, 82.01%, and 81.84%, respectively.Conclusion: From the economic perspective, people seemed to agree with the government’s policies in dealing with COVID-19; but people were not satisfied with the government performance in general. The SVM algorithm with the Normalized Poly Kernel can be used as an intelligent algorithm to predict sentiment on Twitter for new data quickly and accurately.

Understanding public blame attributions when private contractors are responsible for civilian casualties

When the actions of private military contractors result in civilian casualties during war, who do citizens blame? This study argues blame attributions can be shaped by people’s inferences about the motivation of actors operating on behalf of the government. Using national survey data, this study randomizes whether casualties are the result of state military forces or private military forces contracted by the government. The results show that inferences about the motivation of state military forces insulate both military personnel and public officials from blame, while inferences about the motivation of private contractors disperse blame onto contractor personnel and the government. The results provide new theoretical insight into how citizens evaluate government performance and the potential drawbacks of utilizing private contractors to achieve public policy objectives.

Evaluation of Government Performance in Haze Pollution Control and the Optimization Path in Beijing

In recent years, Beijing has been more often confronted with serious haze pollution, especially in autumn and winter. The People’s Government of Beijing Municipality has adopted a package of measures to control the haze pollution with its best efforts. To objectively evaluate how effective these haze pollution control measures are from different perspectives and in an all-round way, it is necessary to adopt a scientific and reasonable approach. Based on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) idea, we establish a system of indexes to evaluate the government performance of Beijing in haze pollution control from the four perspectives of development quality, public services, government management and development potential, and use a combination of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and entropy weight method (EWM) to determine the index weights, and objectively evaluate Beijing’s performance in haze pollution control from 2010 to 2016. The results show that the scores for the four perspectives are all on the rise, and since the implementation of the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan in 2013, the government’s haze pollution control measures have achieved significant results, and made a much higher overall score. On that basis, we propose the optimized path for Beijing’s haze pollution control, namely, accelerating the upgrading of development quality, improving the public services level, strengthening the government management, tapping the development potential of haze pollution control and increasing the linkage and cooperation between the governments of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei.

Is Performance Management Reform Living up to its Expectations? An Analysis of Public Management Reform in China’s Guangdong Province

Performance management has a long tradition in China, but questions remain as to its effectiveness. This article presents the results of a comparative time-series analysis that assessed the impact of performance management reform in the province of Guangdong, China, on two outcomes of interest—improved citizen satisfaction with government performance and improved government financial performance. The study used data survey data on citizen satisfaction from the Government Performance Evaluation Center in China and financial data from the statistical yearbook and the fiscal yearbook from 2010 to 2014. This coincides with two periods of development of performance management in China: (1) before 2012, when efforts focused on economic development followed by an emphasis on citizen-oriented and sustainable government services; and (2) between 2012 and 2014, when pilot programs of performance management systems were implemented. A difference-in-differences test comparing the outcome variables before and after the pilot project in Guangdong suggests that overall performance management reform had a positive impact on citizen satisfaction but it had mixed results on financial performance in the county-level jurisdictions that implemented the pilot program.

Public sector corruption and perceived government performance in transition

AbstractWe offer evidence that public sector corruption has an inverse association with evaluations of performance at both the local and central government levels. Consistent with ex ante expectations, perceptions of corruption among local government officials are directly and negatively related to performance evaluations at the local government level and relatively less so at the central government level. Conversely, perceptions of corruption among overall government officials have a stronger negative association with performance evaluations of central governments relative to performance evaluations of local governments. These results confirm that individual evaluations of public sector corruption affect perceived government performance evaluations, with local–local, local–central, central–local, and central–central level variances. Regressions by country groups—such as European Union membership, or geographic clusters, such as Southeastern Balkan or the former Soviet Union states—continue to support the core findings with one caveat. Results from two‐level random intercepts and slopes regression models show that the negative association between perceived corruption and government performance evaluation is weaker in contexts with relatively higher levels of public corruption.

The Partisan Origins of Economic Perceptions in a Weak Party System: Evidence from South Korea

While political accountability requires that voters can form an accurate picture of government performance, public evaluations of government performance in established democracies are often distorted by partisan considerations. We test whether the same factors bias evaluations of government performance in a new democracy where partisanship is less stable and defined. This analysis estimates individual-level models of retrospective national economic evaluations in South Korea’s 2017 presidential election. South Korea has unstable party politics, low levels of party institutionalization, and high levels of public distrust in political parties. Yet even in this context we find that voters’ economic evaluations are significantly affected by political loyalties such as party identification. This endogeneity is sufficiently large that it results in aggregate consumer evaluations of the economy that systematically vary across regions depending upon the relationship of the president to that region. The findings confirm that party identification shapes citizen opinions even in a context where its effect would likely be weak.

Are managers susceptible to framing effects? An experimental study of professional judgment of performance metrics

Evidence suggests that citizens evaluate government performance differently when equivalent performance information is presented with either a positive or negative framing—but do experienced public managers also suffer from this framing effect? To address this question, we conducted an experiment with 191 public service professionals in the U.S. in which we experimentally varied the framing of performance information about customer satisfaction, job satisfaction and goal achievement for various federal government agencies. Our findings show that public service professionals—just like ordinary citizens—are susceptible to framing effects. Specifically, they tend to evaluate federal agency performance more negatively when percentages of “job dissatisfaction” and “targets not met” were presented, as opposed to logically equivalent percentages of “job satisfaction” and “targets met.” The pattern is the same for “customer dissatisfaction” versus “customer satisfaction” rates, although the results are not statistically significant. These findings provide a deeper understanding about the use of government performance information, as well as how such information is comprehended and perhaps misunderstood by decision makers.

Private Contracting and Citizen Attitudes Toward Local Government

Lawmakers use privatized service delivery to simultaneously maintain low taxes while also satisfying citizen demands for high-quality public goods and services. However, what effect does private contracting have on people’s attitudes toward local government? I design a survey experiment that tests how public–private collaborations alter how people attribute responsibility to government for the successes and failures of the delivery of goods and services. I show that private contracting makes it less likely that people will connect public services to government, which erodes their evaluations of government performance and the feeling that local government represents their interests. Moreover, I show that citizens are also more likely to blame local government for private service delivery failures than they are to praise it for private service delivery successes. This asymmetry in responsibility attribution makes it difficult for local governments to build support among its citizens when it relies on private contracting.

Local Government Competition and Regional Green Development in China: The Mediating Role of Environmental Regulation.

Green development is an important way to meet the challenges of ecological and environmental protection and economic growth, as well as an inevitable choice to realize China’s sustainable development in the new era. The Chinese economic system is such that local government competition has become a key factor affecting regional green development under the current leadership. Based on the inter-provincial panel data of 30 provinces in mainland China from 1997 to 2017, this paper uses the total-factor non-radial directional distance function and slack-based measure data envelopment analysis (SBM-DEA) to measure the green development efficiency of the provinces. Additionally, it also uses the Malmquist–Luenberger (ML) index to decompose green development efficiency and analyzes its internal driving factors. Finally, taking environmental regulation as a mediating variable, this paper empirically analyzes the influence mechanism of local government competition on green development efficiency from three perspectives including growth competition, fiscal competition and investment competition. The study found that: the green development efficiency of Chinese regions showed a downward trend, with significant regional differences; technological progress is the key factor to improve the efficiency of green development, and its role gradually decreases from eastern to western and central regions; pure technical efficiency has become a bottleneck restricting the improvement of green development efficiency, while scale efficiency shows significant regional differences; the growth competition, fiscal competition and investment competition of local government all have a significant inhibitory effect on the efficiency of green development. This paper puts forward policy suggestions supporting enterprise technology research and development, optimizing energy conservation and emission reduction as well as improving the local government performance evaluation system for green development.

Who follows the leader? Leadership heuristics and valence voting at the UK’s 2016 Brexit referendum

Recent accounts of British voting behaviour emphasise the importance of voters’ valence judgements on deciding which party to support: significant numbers of voters do not rely on their membership of particular socio-economic groups or ideological preferences; instead, they rely on evaluations of government performance to determine their vote. Part of this evaluation comes from ‘fast and frugal’ heuristics such as their evaluations of party leaders and other senior politicians. Such heuristics have been shown to be influential in the United Kingdom’s 2016 Brexit Referendum for example. We extend this research to show that the influence of leadership heuristics on individuals’ chances of voting for Brexit varied depending on evaluations of leading politicians associated with the Remain and the Leave campaigns. Moreover, feelings toward the party leaders had a larger influence on the referendum votes of those holding middle-of-the-road views on Europe than on those who were themselves either strongly pro- or anti-EU.