Public Administration Literature Research Articles

The Determinants of Fiscal Health: An Exploration of Municipalities in Brazil

ABSTRACT The public administration literature has largely focused on local government fiscal health, mostly using data from the U.S. However, how well does this research hold up in other contexts? Using data from 5,524 municipalities from 2013 to 2021, we explore determinants of financial conditions, employing two financial indicators tailored to Brazil’s context: operational positioning and immediate liquidity. Our findings reveal that municipalities with experienced mayors and greater fiscal autonomy tend to have more favorable fiscal conditions. While local characteristics such as per capita income, population size, and density occasionally played a role, they were not consistently the most significant factor.

From agents of the people to agents of authority? How illiberal populism impacts interactions between regulatory agencies and external stakeholders

AbstractThe decline in democratic quality and the increasing electoral popularity of illiberal populist parties are among the most notable global phenomena in the past 20 years. This article builds a bridge between the growing body of political science literature addressing how democratic backsliding impacts linkages between governments and organized interests and the public administration literature exploring how illiberal populists reshape the bureaucracy. Focusing on regulatory agencies in four post‐communist countries that have recently experienced varying degrees of democrating backsliding, we explore whether and how interactions between bureaucrats and interest groups have changed amid democratic decline. We find that even in the context of backsliding, professionalization (i.e. internal organizational development) and expertise provision are strong positive predictors of interest groups' access to regulators. However, our analysis unequivocally shows that exclusion by illiberal populist incumbent parties has a profound and negative effect on organizations' ability to reach bureaucracies. We draw on a new survey dataset, which grasps relationships between organized interests and political institutions (i.e. governments, parties, regulatory agencies, parliaments) in the region.

Public Budgeting Best Practices for Cross-sector Collaborations: Emphasizing the Values of Social Equity, Transparency and Accountability, and Ethics

Cross-sector collaboration has become a major emphasis in collective action as governments, private corporations, and nonprofits work together to tackle today’s complex issues. The existing cross-sector collaboration literature primarily addresses major events like natural disasters, e.g., hurricanes and wildfires, and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is a significant gap in the public administration literature regarding cross-sector collaboration in addressing underlying social and financial issues. This paper discusses the need for public budgeting best practices through cross-sector collaboration in three areas: (1) equity; (2) transparency and accountability; and (3) ethics. Through the collaborative governance theory, each sector—public, private, and nonprofit—can contribute to the integration of resources, networks, and approaches for the benefit of citizens. This paper concludes by highlighting key implications for theory and praxis, including an increase in public trust and a greater emphasis on inclusivity in the budgeting process.

Examining sustained sub-national health system development: experience from the Western Cape Province, South Africa, 1994-2016.

Governance and leadership are recognized as central to health system development in low- and middle-income countries, yet few existing studies consider the influence of multilevel governance systems. South Africa is one of the many (quasi-)federal states. Provincial governments have responsibility for managing health care delivery within national policy frameworks and norms. The early post-apartheid period saw country-wide efforts to address the apartheid legacy of health system inequity and inefficiency, but health system transformation subsequently stalled in many provinces. In contrast, the Western Cape provincial health department sustained service delivery reform and strengthened management processes over the period 1994-2016. This department can be considered a 'pocket of relative bureaucratic effectiveness': an organizational entity that, compared to others, is relatively effective in carrying out its functions in pursuit of the public good. This paper considers what factors enabled the development of the Western Cape health system in the period 1994-2016. Two phases of data collection entailed document review, participatory workshops, 43 in-depth interviews with purposively selected key informants from inside and outside the Western Cape and a structured survey testing initial insights (response rate 42%). Analysis included triangulation across data sets, comparison between the Western Cape and other provincial experience and deeper reflection on these experiences drawing on POE theory and public administration literature. The analysis highlights the Western Cape experience of stable and astute sub-national governance and leadership and the deepening of administrative and technical capacity over time-within a specific provincial historical and political economy context that sustained the separation of political and administrative powers. Multilevel governance systems can create the space for sub-national POEs to emerge in their mediation of wider political economy forces, generating spaces for skilled reform leaders to act in the public interest, support the emergence of distributed leadership and develop robust management processes.

Managing paradoxes in the public sector: a systematic and problematizing review of macro-level concepts

PurposeThis article investigates different terms and concepts of paradox dimensions in Public Administration because these terms are often used interchangeably. The aim is to reveal the theoretically based macro-level concepts and establish a common ground for a shared dialogue about managing paradoxes in the field.Design/methodology/approachThis article uses a complementary review approach. First, a systematic literature review is executed to identify the macro-level paradox concepts and to capture their theoretical common ground. Second, the problematizing literature review aims to reflect Public Administration literature with literature from outside the field, mainly from Organization Studies and General Management.FindingsFor the most part, the macro-level paradox concepts in Public Administration are used to illustrate the context or situation of another research topic, rather than as standalone theories to be conceptually or empirically explored. In 63 out of 589 articles, we found a theoretical definition of the mentioned macro-level paradox concept. This definition refers mainly to the sources of paradoxical situations and focuses less on the decisions and reactions thereto. Based on the review findings, an analytical model for the management of paradoxical situations in the public sector is provided and applied, followed by recommendations for further research.Originality/valueThis article aims to combine the macro-level paradox concepts in Public Administration with the insights of Paradox Theory and reveals that paradoxes could be a core topic in the field. Scholars in Public Administration could approach paradoxical situations from their own perspective while simultaneously strengthening the field’s identity by encouraging multiperspectivity.

The power of relative performance information in competing communications

ABSTRACT The public administration literature has long recognized the importance of reference points in interpreting performance information. However, little is known about whether invoking reference points can change citizens’ perceptions of performance in competitive information environments. Across three survey experiments with Chinese respondents, we showed that providing informational cues about China outperforming other countries improve citizens’ ratings of government performance. Moreover, competing information does not balance the positive effects. Findings from an independent experiment refute the likelihood that the treatment effect is an artefact of demand characteristics, thus strengthening the internal validity of our findings.

The roots and routes of public health institutes in Scandinavia

AbstractThis article aims to increase the knowledge of the roles and functions of public health institutes (PHIs) by exploring and comparing the Scandinavian PHIs, their roots, and developments over time. The research questions are the following: What was the history behind these public institutions? How have they changed over time? Have they followed divergent or parallel paths of change? How, if at all, have they been influenced by public sector reforms? Comparing the three Scandinavian countries based on an institutionalist approach, the article seeks to increase the understanding of the role of PHIs in governing public health. The article is based on documents from parliaments and governments from the public health institutes, supplemented by institution narratives and relevant public health and public administration literature. The Scandinavian PHIs have common roots from the early 1900s, have followed different routes, and have different institutional characteristics and different roles as public health institutions. However, after more than 100 years, the Scandinavian PHIs belong to the international PHI organization. They are responsible for knowledge dissemination, surveillance, and preparedness for the handling of epidemics and pandemics. The article argues for more comparative research on institutions related to public health authorities, such as the PHIs.

Religion and representative bureaucracy: Does religion guide administrative discretion?

In this paper we seek to understand how religion influences discretion in a developing fragile society: Palestine. Drawing on a recent review of the religion and public administration literature and the theory of representative bureaucracy, we ask: Does active representation on behalf of a religious identity exist? And if so, what does it look like? We explore four different possible manifestations, including none at all. In other words, this is a study of how religiosity influences civil servant behaviour in instances of discretion. Using original small-n in-person survey data, we find active representation by a majority of mid-level civil servants on behalf of a religious identity; we find evidence of religious service being underpinned by public service motivation and by pro-social motivation. Others are guided by traditional Weberian bureaucratic values while others are guided by what they perceive to be the religious foundation of the bureaucracy.

How has stakeholder theory served the public administration literature? In search of the intellectual structure of the field

ABSTRACT This investigation aims to contribute to the intellectual structure of public administration stakeholder theory. There is a need for dedicated effort to understand the real contribution of the most cited references in the field. The literature review is carried out using bibliometric and lexical analyses. The main conclusion is that articles have used concepts from four theoretical bases: collaborative governance, stakeholder salience, legitimacy, and wicked policy problems. This represents a step forward in the existing literature on public administration stakeholder theory extant literature as we advocate the return to using stakeholders to explain performance determinants.

What Determines the Engagement of Nurses in Organizational Learning Post Covid-19? The Role of Street-Level Bureaucracy and Florence Nightingale Theories

This paper aims to explore what has caused nurses to engage in organizational learning since Covid-19. The empirical sample comprises 27 semi-structured interviews with nurses working full-time in public hospitals in the context of the developing economy of Egypt. Thematic analysis was subsequently used to determine the main ideas in the transcripts. The findings include the following three categories of factors: individual (discretionary power, ensuring care to large numbers of patients), contextual (absence of stakeholder pressure, poor funding and resources, lack of communication) and job-related factors (long working hours and demanding duties, low status of nurses) that determine the engagement of nurses in organizational learning. This paper contributes to the literature in public administration, human resources management, organizational learning and healthcare management as a pioneering study specifically addressing organizational learning among nurses before and after Covid-19 in a developing country (Egypt).

Using policy codesign to achieve multi-sector alignment in adolescent behavioral health: a study protocol

BackgroundPolicymaking is quickly gaining focus in the field of implementation science as a potential opportunity for aligning cross-sector systems and introducing incentives to promote population health, including substance use disorders (SUD) and their prevention in adolescents. Policymakers are seen as holding the necessary levers for realigning service infrastructure to more rapidly and effectively address adolescent behavioral health across the continuum of need (prevention through crisis care, mental health, and SUD) and in multiple locations (schools, primary care, community settings). The difficulty of aligning policy intent, policy design, and successful policy implementation is a well-known challenge in the broader public policy and public administration literature that also affects local behavioral health policymaking. This study will examine a blended approach of coproduction and codesign (i.e., Policy Codesign), iteratively developed over multiple years to address problems in policy formation that often lead to poor implementation outcomes. The current study evaluates this scalable approach using reproducible measures to grow the knowledge base in this field of study.MethodsThis is a single-arm, longitudinal, staggered implementation study to examine the acceptability and short-term impacts of Policy Codesign in resolving critical challenges in behavioral health policy formation. The aims are to (1) examine the acceptability, feasibility, and reach of Policy Codesign within two geographically distinct counties in Washington state, USA; (2) examine the impact of Policy Codesign on multisector policy development within these counties using social network analysis; and (3) assess the perceived replicability of Policy Codesign among leaders and other staff of policy-oriented state behavioral health intermediary organizations across the USA.DiscussionThis study will assess the feasibility of a specific approach to collaborative policy development, Policy Codesign, in two diverse regions. Results will inform a subsequent multi-state study measuring the impact and effectiveness of this approach for achieving multi-sector and evidence informed policy development in adolescent SUD prevention and treatment.

Book Review: The scaffolding is on and Public Administration literature will change

With the attempt to put behind the fallacy of considering the doctrine of separation of religion and state as an ideal for Public Administration (PA) globally, Edoardo Ongaro and Michele Tantardini (2023) have brought out an important book that makes an important contribution to the field of PA. The book not only reinforces the recognition of the significant impact that religion has on the studies and practice of PA but, more importantly, helps to establish a framework that could serve as the groundwork for future research in this field.

Social Choice and Citizen Participation: Bringing Democratic Theory to Public Administration

Recent years have seen a rapid growth of interest in the inclusion of citizen participation in the work of public institutions, advancing a well-established literature in public administration, which aims to reconcile the goals of public bureaucracies with those of democracy. Consequently, a rich body of literature and empirical work has emerged, which explores the extent to which the aspirations of the literature are reflected in practical experiences of participatory initiatives. In this article, we argue that this literature would benefit from a deeper connection with democratic theory. In particular, we suggest that our ability to make assessments over the functioning of citizen participation initiatives would be strengthened by a closer engagement with the contributions made by social choice theorists. We aim to promote a constructive dialogue, suggesting that considering social choice perspectives in analyses of participation might allow the claims made by proponents of citizen involvement in public administration to be strengthened considerably.

A new measure of US public agency policy discretion

Abstract The US bureaucracy routinely issues major public policy decisions that affect Americans’ lives. Government agency leaders make those decisions based on a subjective understanding of their agency’s available policy discretion. Over time, discretion has become a prominent theoretical construct in the bureaucratic politics and public administration literature, but it is rarely measured directly. In this article, we create a new measure of agency policy discretion. We draw on research suggesting that discretion is derived from the bureaucracy’s key political principals: the elected executive, legislators, and interest groups. We use data from the American State Administrators Project and trigonometry to calculate the discretion area scores for 8,955 state agencies between 1978 and 2018. We then evaluate the measure through a series of construct validation assessments. The article offers an innovative and generalizable way to operationalize discretion that will advance future scholarship in organizational behavior, public administration, and bureaucratic decision-making.

Integrating the neo-Weberian state and public value

Two thematic areas have grown in significance in the contemporary scientific literature of public governance, public administration and public management over the past 20 to 30 years: the theory and practice of public value, and theorisation of the neo-Weberian state (NWS). In this paper, we argue that, while these two important thematic areas have so far developed in a mostly unconnected way from each other, they both might benefit from integrating each other's perspective into their theoretical frame, and we outline the contours of such a framework. We argue that the NWS and public value might theoretically be combined in three forms of integration of the respective perspectives: the integration of the NWS conceived of as model with an approach to public value conceived of as an addition of value through the actions by public managers; the NWS as an ideal type with public value conceived of as an addition of value through the actions by public managers; and the NWS as an ideal type with public value conceived of as a contribution to the public sphere. The NWS may benefit from integrating the public value perspective in order to develop some of its core components: how it compounds input legitimacy with output legitimacy, and how it integrates the managerial components into a narrative of managerial action for the public purpose. The perspective of public value may benefit from engaging into a dialogue with NWS, if it aspires to be a truly global paradigm for managing public services. Points for practitioners 1. Public managers could and should pursue courses of action aimed at creating public value within the frame of NWS institutions and processes. 2. The adoption of a public value perspective is compatible with an NWS framework and mutually beneficial. 3. The development of the NWS in jurisdictions across the world is strengthened by the integration of the public value perspective, which can lead to matching output legitimacy and input legitimacy.

Toward an Organizational Ethics Culture Framework: An Analysis of Survey Data From Local Government Managers

This research explores what public managers think about the elements of an ethical organizational culture predominately discussed in the literature. It develops a multidimensional framework of these elements and uses it to explore data from a national survey of local government administrators. The framework is derived from the literature in public administration on organizational ethics. This research tests the organizational ethics framework on city managers, one type of public manager. The results of the survey at the local level showed a need for more priority setting in public administration on ethics and organizational culture. Our major finding is that an ethical organizational culture is multidimensional, containing six main elements. Together these should be understood to explain the ethics culture in local government organizations and potentially other governments.

Public Sector Collective Bargaining: A Meta-Review

Public sector labor unions and their commitment to collective bargaining are central to the study of public sector human resource management. This study explores collective bargaining scholarship in the United States as exemplified in the public administration literature. Systematically coding 220 articles from the top fifteen (mainstream) peer-reviewed public administration journals over a period of 50 years (1970–2020), this study examines how public sector collective bargaining is framed and conceptualized in public administration research, identifying, and studying the dimensions of public sector collective bargaining research in the United States. The primary purpose of this article is to map trends and gaps in local, state, and federal public sector collective bargaining scholarship, which is an essential public personnel function in need of further academic attention. It is also hoped that this study could stimulate future research into public sector collective bargaining.

Collaborative Leadership in Waste Management: A Case Study of Watampone City, Indonesia

The concept and practice of leadership is continuously evolving. In public administration literature, collaborative leadership is a serious discussion and collaborative leadership is encouraged to be applied at all levels of leadership including the leadership of the Regional Head. Waste management as a very serious public problem is a challenge to modern civilisation and Indonesia is one of the countries with the largest populations in the world, producing more than 19 million tons of waste in 2022, while Watampone is one of the cities in Indonesia that certainly contributes to the waste pile. As a developing city, preventive measures must be taken before following in the footsteps of big cities that are dealing with waste problems because there is no inherent prevention. Therefore, its leadership model can be a key factor. In these terms, it is important to study waste management policy using a collaborative leadership approach. This study aims to look at the characteristics of collaborative leadership in waste management. This research uses descriptive qualitative methods and data collection techniques in interviews with relevant stakeholder leaders as informants combined with documentation studies. The results show that the collaborative leadership model in waste management has a positive impact; this is because the involvement of multiple parties helps manage waste problems and share roles. The characteristics of collaborative leadership expressed by Wilson as a reference in this study show that waste management must involve many parties with the characteristics of awareness of functions, division of authority, cooperation for a common vision, and mutual trust by all operators involved. As a suggestion, waste management using a collaborative leadership approach should be conducted by clearly mapping the roles of all stakeholders involved. Another aspect that supports and strengthens waste management collaboration in Watampone City is the culture of gotong royong (mutual aid) that has been rooted in the lives of the people of Watampone City.

The Role of Organizational and Client Reactions in Understanding Representative Bureaucracy

The public administration literature has long observed the efforts of street-level bureaucrats to actively represent the clients with whom they share a social or demographic identity. However, it has not examined the responses that street-level bureaucrats receive when they represent minorities and how these responses shape how they use discretion in implementing policies. We explore these issues empirically through in-depth interviews with 23 Israeli Arab social and community workers and 32 Israeli LGBTQ+ teachers. This exploratory study reveals the variety of reactions that street-level bureaucrats encounter when representing minorities. Furthermore, it highlights the significant role of reactions from clients and organizations in encouraging, reducing, or impeding the efforts of minority street-level bureaucrats to represent those with whom they share an identity, which, in turn, underscores the importance of external responses for confirming and legitimizing active representation.

Public Health Service Management is Characterized by 3 Pillars of Innovation

Traditional political science and public administration literature have long held the belief that the innovation in public service management is primarily contingent on the level of financial resources available. However, recent developments in China challenge this assumption, as they raise questions about why certain regions, despite having limited financial resources, are selected as pilot areas for "treatment first" reforms, and why some of these less affluent regions demonstrate superior implementation of specific pilot measures compared to their wealthier counterparts in the eastern regions. This article introduces a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the innovation in public service management, positing a three-pronged approach that considers the interplay of finance, supply-side factors, and demand-side dynamics. It argues that the innovation in public service management within a given region is the result of a complex interaction among these three key elements. Drawing on empirical data, this article conducts a comparative analysis of the factors influencing "treatment first" reforms in four distinct regions of China: Wuhan, Shanxi, Chongqing, and Hunan. By exploring the unique dynamics at play in each of these regions, the study sheds light on the nuanced relationship between finance, public service supply, and demand. Additionally, it elucidates how these factors jointly determine the success and trajectory of public service management innovation in different locales, challenging conventional wisdom and providing valuable insights into the contemporary governance landscape in China.