Improving Government Effectiveness Research Articles

The role of governance indicators to minimize the carbon emission: a study of Saudi Arabia

PurposeThe main purpose of the study is to examine the impact of governance indicators, to control carbon emission, through the environmental awareness and pro-environmental behavior. Previously, researchers have attempted to explore the factors of carbon emission and report the number of solutions. Despite that, the environmental degradation process is surging.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses quantile regressions (QR) techniques by using the yearly data of Saudi Arabia for the period of 1970–2018. QR reports the results at different quantiles which is useful for conclusion.FindingsThe empirical results have confirmed the significant and negative coefficients of governance indicators, mentioning that governance effectiveness and regulatory quality leads to reduction of carbon emission, in the case of Saudi Arabia.Practical implicationsThe Saudi Government has to improve governance effectiveness to eradicate environmental hazards. However, it is necessary to enhance the quality of regulations regarding formation as well as the implementation of policies to confirm that firms and public follow the pro-environmental behavior.Originality/valueThe study is the pioneer, which addresses the governance parameters, governance effectiveness and regulatory quality to minimize the carbon emission for Saudi Arabia.

How a Good Governance of Institutions Can Reduce Poverty and Inequality in Society for Supporting a Sustainable Economic Development?

The main aim of this study is to analyze how institutional change, measured with a set of governance indicators, can reduce poverty and inequality in society that are essential prerequisites for supporting sustainable economic growth of nations. This study investigates 191 countries to explain the relationships between institutional variables and socioeconomic factors of nations with different level of development. Central findings suggest that a good governance of institutions supports a reduction of poverty and income inequality in society. In particular, results here show that the critical role of good governance for reducing inequality and poverty has a higher effect in countries with stable economies than emerging and fragile economies. Overall, then, this study reveals that countries should focus on institutional change directed to improve governance effectiveness and rule of law that can reduce the poverty and inequality, and as a consequence support the long-run socioeconomic development of nations.

IS HIGHER GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY BRINGING ABOUT HIGHER INNOVATION?

This research analyzes the impact of government effectiveness on innovation by using unbalanced panel data from the World Bank on 166 countries spanning 1996 to 2018. We analyze the impact of government efficiency on innovation through various panel fixed-effects models, while incorporating control variables such as GDP, education, and industrial structure into the analysis framework. The empirical results conclude that, in our selected countries, government efficiency has a significantly positive impact on innovation output and more importantly verify the positive impact from the improvement of bureaucracy quality on innovation. The evidence again shows the positive impacts of government efficiency on innovation output by addressing endogenous and robustness checking via the series of methods. Furthermore, the heterogeneity and mechanism of this relationship would be explored. Therefore, the research results provide an alternative method for national governments to promote innovation output by improving government effectiveness.

Sources of accountability inside the boardroom

Purpose Despite indications of scholarly interest, there are still gaps in the research of the concept of felt accountability, especially the felt accountability of board members. This paper aims to clarify the sources of accountability experienced by board members. Especially those in a non-executive capacity. How these sources can be accessed to enhance felt accountability and thereby governance effectiveness is explored. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative, exploratory research methods were used. In total, 15 semi-structured, in-depth interviews were completed with non-executive board members of Johannesburg Stock Exchange listed companies in South Africa. Thematic content analysis was used to analyse data. Findings The findings clarified the formal and informal sources of accountability experienced by non-executive board members. This included relational and structural mechanisms that can be used within corporate governance to enhance both types of accountability. Accessing the identified sources of accountability through appropriate mechanisms could increase the levels of felt accountability experienced by the individual non-executive board member, thereby strengthening accountability inside the boardroom and improving overall board effectiveness. The study also revealed a layer of implicit and explicit accountability. Research limitations/implications The study was conducted solely in South Africa, with non-executive board members of Johannesburg Stock Exchange listed companies. Originality/value There is limited research that clarifies the sources of accountability experienced by non-executive board members. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by providing techniques on how to enable the clarified sources of accountability to improve governance effectiveness.

Covid-19 mortality is negatively\xa0associated with test number and government effectiveness

A question central to the Covid-19 pandemic is why the Covid-19 mortality rate varies so greatly across countries. This study aims to investigate factors associated with cross-country variation in Covid-19 mortality. Covid-19 mortality rate was calculated as number of deaths per 100 Covid-19 cases. To identify factors associated with Covid-19 mortality rate, linear regressions were applied to a cross-sectional dataset comprising 169 countries. We retrieved data from the Worldometer website, the Worldwide Governance Indicators, World Development Indicators, and Logistics Performance Indicators databases. Covid-19 mortality rate was negatively associated with Covid-19 test number per 100 people (RR = 0.92, P = 0.001), government effectiveness score (RR = 0.96, P = 0.017), and number of hospital beds (RR = 0.85, P < 0.001). Covid-19 mortality rate was positively associated with proportion of population aged 65 or older (RR = 1.12, P < 0.001) and transport infrastructure quality score (RR = 1.08, P = 0.002). Furthermore, the negative association between Covid-19 mortality and test number was stronger among low-income countries and countries with lower government effectiveness scores, younger populations and fewer hospital beds. Predicted mortality rates were highly associated with observed mortality rates (r = 0.77; P < 0.001). Increasing Covid-19 testing, improving government effectiveness and increasing hospital beds may have the potential to attenuate Covid-19 mortality.

Explaining the Shadow Economy in Europe

This paper examines the drivers, and reestimates the size of shadow economies in Europe, with a focus on the emerging economies, and recommends policies to increase formality. The size of shadow economies declined across Europe in recent years but remains significant, especially in Eastern Europe. In the emerging European economies, the key determinants of shadow economy size are regulatory quality, government effectiveness, and human capital. The paper argues that a comprehensive package of reforms, focused on country-specific drivers, is needed to successfully combat the shadow economy. The menu of policies most relevant for Europe’s emerging economies include: reducing regulatory and administrative burdens, promoting transparency and improving government effectiveness, as well as improving tax compliance, automating procedures, and promoting electronic payments.

How (when) does technological innovation improve government effectiveness? An empirical investigation with cross-national evidence

Abstract How to understand the impacts of government effectiveness (GE) on technological innovation has received full attention. But in turn, it is still a puzzle how technological innovation promotes GE. With the intention of providing rigorous empirical evidence to fill the gap, authors efficiently selected variables based on novel machine learning and analyzed the influence mechanism of technological innovation on GE through different models, using panel data from global countries over 20 years. The investigation has revealed that the relationship between technological innovation and GE is not a simple linear relation but a more complicated inverted U-shaped relation. We also distinguished the impacts of technological innovation on GE in countries with diverse democratic and developing levels. This pioneering work has provided new insights to our understanding of innovation diffusion and determinants of GE.

Country-level governance, accounting standards, and tax avoidance: a cross-country study

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of country-level governance and accounting standards on corporate tax avoidance.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is an empirical work using a sample of listed companies from 36 countries.FindingsThis paper finds that firms resident in countries with stronger country-level governance engage in less tax avoidance. Aspects of stronger country-level governance include higher government effectiveness and regulatory quality, and stronger enforcement of law and control of corruption. This paper also finds that firms adopting international accounting standards (IFRS) engage in less tax avoidance than those using local accounting standards. Further examination of the effect of interactions between country-level governance and the adoption of IFRS on tax avoidance finds that there is a substitute relationship between country-level governance and the adoption of IFRS.Social implicationsThis study has significant implications for policy makers, corporate management and academics. It documents that when a country implements governance targeting improving government effectiveness, enhancing regulatory quality, strengthening enforcement of laws and controlling corruption, this will lead to less corporate tax avoidance. It also shows that the adoption of IFRS will reduce corporate tax avoidance, probably by enhancing accounting quality and disclosure, and that the adoption of IFRS provides a bond mechanism in reducing tax avoidance in countries with weak governance.Originality/valueThis paper is the first study to examine the impact of country-level governance on tax avoidance at the corporate level. It is also the first study to examine how country-level governance interplays with IFRS in shaping firms’ tax avoidance activities.

Explaining the Shadow Economy in Europe: Size, Causes and Policy Options

This paper examines the drivers, and reestimates the size of shadow economies in Europe, with a focus on the emerging economies, and recommends policies to increase formality. The size of shadow economies declined across Europe in recent years but remains significant, especially in Eastern Europe. In the emerging European economies, the key determinants of shadow economy size are regulatory quality, government effectiveness, and human capital. The paper argues that a comprehensive package of reforms, focused on country-specific drivers, is needed to successfully combat the shadow economy. The menu of policies most relevant for Europe’s emerging economies include: reducing regulatory and administrative burdens, promoting transparency and improving government effectiveness, as well as improving tax compliance, automating procedures, and promoting electronic payments.

Fiscal transparency, government effectiveness and government spending efficiency: Some international evidence based on panel data approach

The global financial crisis and the debt crisis of the EU countries revealed serious weaknesses in fiscal reporting. As a consequence, uncertainties regarding the real situation of the public accounts of the countries raised doubts in relation to the effectiveness of government policies. Since then, countries are undertaking reforms in order to improve fiscal transparency. This paper analyzes whether countries are making efforts to enhance fiscal transparency, and whether fiscal transparency affects government effectiveness and government spending efficiency. We consider two channels through which this effect occurs. The first channel is indirect and it works through public debt. The second channel is the direct effect that transparency has on government effectiveness and government spending efficiency once transparency enhances accountability and thus the task of resource allocation. We use a sample of 82 countries (68 developing and 14 developed) for the period 2006–2014, and panel data analysis. Comparing the scores of fiscal transparency between 2006 and 2014, we observe that approximately 80 per cent of the countries made efforts to improve fiscal transparency. The results suggest fiscal transparency is important to reduce public debt and to improve government effectiveness and government spending efficiency.

Planning for Change

Many governments have adopted strategic plans to improve outcomes, but these efforts often fail because they do not take implementation into consideration as they plan. Past research indicates that the situational context of a strategic initiative influences implementation success. This study explores how context influences the relationship between implementation best practices and success by examining 155 strategic initiatives from 36 U.S. municipalities through a series of multiple regression analyses. The evidence indicates that context does alter the success rate of implementation best practices and should be taken into consideration during strategic planning in order to improve government effectiveness.

The evolution of citizen and stakeholder engagement in Canada, from Spicer to #Hashtags

AbstractGovernment‐led citizen and stakeholder engagement is undertaken with the broad aims of improving government effectiveness and strengthening perceived legitimacy for government action. However, some aspects of the digital era that are challenging and stretching these traditions include changing economics of attention, heightened expectations of citizens and stakeholders, and a reconfiguration of the nature of policymaking discourse. Seven Government of Canada citizen and stakeholder engagement cases, spread over the past 27 years, are reviewed against the emergence of digital technologies within the context of traditional engagement exercises to understand how governments are experimenting with new approaches, and how new models may still be needed to respond to this shifting technology landscape. A future research agenda is sketched that anticipates how expanding technological capabilities, changing expectations on the part of citizens and stakeholders, and new approaches to policy discourse might require a reappraisal of our concepts of citizen and stakeholder engagement.

Drivers of Structural Transformation: The Case of the Manufacturing Sector in Africa

This paper analyzes the driving factors of manufacturing development in Africa. Using the system-GMM technique with four-year average panel data over the period 1995–2014, including 53 African countries, the paper finds four main results. (1) There is a U-shaped relationship between the manufacturing share of GDP and per capita GDP. (2) Exchange rate depreciation stimulates Africa’s manufacturing sector. (3) Good governance, especially a low level of corruption and better government effectiveness contribute to Africa’s manufacturing development. (4) The size of domestic market positively affects the manufacturing share of GDP. On the other hand, the paper finds no significant effects of FDI and urbanization on manufacturing development. The implication of these findings is that improving the level of competitiveness, expanding the size of domestic market, combating corruption as well as improving government effectiveness are key for Africa’s manufacturing sector development. Moreover, the U-shaped relationship between the manufacturing share of GDP and per capita GDP, implies that African countries should not expect industrialization to automatically happen with income increase, but rather, they should proactively tackle key obstacles to the development of the manufacturing sector.

Good governance as a foundation for sustainable human development in sub-Saharan Africa

Data indicate that good governance and human development continue to be major issues throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The findings show a significant relationship between the measures of good governance and human development. The findings suggest that policies and efforts aimed at improving government effectiveness and political stability would have the most significant impact on human development and poverty reduction efforts. The findings lend support to the adoption of integrated policy approaches that take into consideration political development along with economic development to reduce poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

Some Bad News Is Good News for Foreign Investors: The Case of Intellectual Property Rights Infringement in China

AbstractDespite China's attractiveness to foreign investors, intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in China has not caught up with international standards. This research aims to quantify the relationships between IPR violations, government effectiveness, and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in the context of China. Our econometric modeling and estimation based on provincial level data over 2002‐2012 show that in an early development stage of law and regulatory enforcement, the bad news of a rising number of IPR dispute cases signals the good news of an improvement in law and regulatory enforcement, which encourages IPR owners to raise legal cases. By contrast, in the later development stage, when law and regulatory enforcement has become much more effective, the bad news of a rising number of IPR disputes manifests itself as very bad news. Furthermore, this study confirms that FDI inflows enhance IPR protection through improving government effectiveness, and government effectiveness is one of the key factors promoting FDIs. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Corruption: what are the effects on government effectiveness? Empirical evidence considering developed and developing countries

This study analyses the impact of corruption on government effectiveness for a sample of 130 countries. The findings suggest that less-corrupt countries have better quality of public service, better quality in the formulation and adoption of policies and greater credibility and government's commitment to such policies. The findings also suggest that the effect of corruption on government effectiveness is higher in developed countries. Moreover, the estimates also reveal that countries with the most indebted governments and with higher inflation rates have less-efficient governments, and an increase in rule of law represents a good strategy to improve government effectiveness. In turn, regarding developing countries, the findings show that countries with more democratic regimes have a higher degree of government effectiveness.

Does media freedom improve government effectiveness? A comparative cross-country analysis

Government effectiveness could be explained by the level of well-informed electorate members, who use the press to learn more about politicians and public servants. Thus, a free press may improve citizens’ accessibility to this information, which in turn will make it more difficult for politicians and public servants to cover up or get away with corrupt behaviour, so the quality of the government could be affected by the media freedom. Accordingly, the main aim of this paper is to determine the effect of the freedom of the press on government effectiveness, considering additionally environmental, institutional, and political characteristics as factors that could determine the level of government effectiveness. To achieve this aim, we examined 202 central governments and compared them across countries using the World Bank data set of Governance Indicators for 2002–2008. The results show that the media, the organizational environment, and political characteristics may be determinants of the level of government effectiveness, taking countries’ economic development into account.

Do individual disclosure rules for parliamentarians improve government effectiveness?

The pros and cons of stricter disclosure rules for parliamentarians are hotly debated. Some argue that disclosure rules for parliamentarians increase transparency of the legislative branch, leading to lower levels of rent-seeking and corruption, increased citizen trust in parliament, and better quality of law-making. Others argue that disclosure rules endanger the privacy of parliamentarians, that their introduction would stop businesspeople and lawyers from running for seats, which would decrease the quality of law-making. This is the first attempt to empirically test these conjectures on the composition of parliament empirically. We find that the introduction of disclosure rules is usually not accompanied by a significant shift in the proportion of lawyers and businesspeople in parliament (direct effect). In general, we did not find significant effects on rent-seeking and trust and, when we did, individual disclosure rules were correlated with worse, rather than better, governance quality. However, individual disclosure rules do seem to curb government deficits, at least marginally (indirect effects).

Redefining political-administrative relationships in South Africa

This article is an overview of shifting political—administrative relationships in South Africa, with particular reference to growing politicization (partisan control of the bureaucracy). Studies of politicization of public services are important because political involvement in management has often led to negative effects on service delivery. The article sets out a theoretical framework for political—administrative relationships, examining the growing politicization of public services, the impact of New Public Management (NPM) and political—administrative relationships in developing countries. It then looks at political—administrative relationships in South Africa, including the apartheid history, the development of a new framework in the democratic South Africa and politicization in the staffing of the public service. It examines three functional areas — the decentralization of powers, contract appointments and performance management — and discusses the implications of this changing framework for service delivery. The methodology consisted of interviews with a number of senior government officials, including three current directors-general and a former Minister for the Public Service and Administration, an analysis of government legislation, Public Service Commission (PSC) data including surveys, unpublished data of the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), policy papers of the African National Congress (ANC) and an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study of political involvement in bureaucracies. The article concludes that growing politicization of the public service has contributed to poor service delivery, and that the South African government needs to place greater emphasis on merit as the basis for appointments and promotions. Points for practitioners This article is useful for professionals working in public management and administration because it looks at the following debates and issues, which have practical implications: frameworks for understanding political—administrative relationships in the public service; the impact of the politicization of staff in the public service; and how merit-based appointment can improve government effectiveness. The article also offers lessons to developing countries wishing to create more professional public services.

Do Individual Disclosure Rules for Parliamentarians Improve Government Effectiveness?

The pros and cons of stricter disclosure rules for parliamentarians are hotly debated. Some argue that disclosure rules for parliamentarians increase transparency of the legislative branch, leading to lower levels of rent-seeking and corruption, increased citizen trust in parliament, and better quality of law-making. Others argue that disclosure rules endanger the privacy of parliamentarians, that their introduction would stop businesspeople and lawyers from running for seats, which would decrease the quality of law-making. This is the first attempt to empirically test these conjectures on the composition of parliament empirically. We find that the introduction of disclosure rules is usually not accompanied by a significant shift in the proportion of lawyers and businesspeople in parliament (direct effect). In general, we did not find significant effects on rent-seeking and trust and, when we did, individual disclosure rules were correlated with worse, rather than better, governance quality. However, individual disclosure rules do seem to curb government deficits, at least marginally (indirect effects).