Public trust in the Chinese government and life satisfaction during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic

International Review of Administrative Sciences, Ahead of Print.
It is important to understand the public’s trust in the government’s ability to handle crisis events. Based on China Family Panel Studies data in 2018 and 2020, this paper explores the interaction between government trust and life satisfaction during the pandemic. It is found that with the increase in public trust in government officials, individual life satisfaction has been significantly improved. The main mechanism is that government trust enhances people’s confidence in the future and promotes the government’s investment in the livelihood fields. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, individual life satisfaction suffered a negative impact. Individuals with high trust in the government before the pandemic had a small decrease in life satisfaction. At the same time, when faced with the pandemic, individuals were more willing to trust the government due to the desire to overcome common threats, which will alleviate the negative impact of the pandemic on individual life satisfaction. The research reported in this paper helps to explain the role of government in the crisis period from the perspective of public trust and provides useful information for the government to formulate and adjust policies to mitigate the impact of the crisis events. Points for practitioners In China, trust in local governments is related to public satisfaction.People are more willing to increase trust in the government to overcome a common crisis, thus reducing the negative impact of the crisis on individual life satisfaction.Perhaps more important is to promote the public service motivation of government officials through government trust.Providing public services, increasing accountability and transparency in society, and increasing citizen engagement are all effective ways to foster institutional trust.

A commentary on “Different strokes for different folks? The translation of public values into official meanings”

International Review of Administrative Sciences, Ahead of Print.
This commentary on the article “Different strokes for different folks? The translation of public values into official meanings” considers the merits of the authors’ arguments and offers several recommendations for researchers interested in public values.

Different strokes for different folks? The translation of public values into official meanings

International Review of Administrative Sciences, Ahead of Print.
It is well known that the meanings of public values can vary significantly across different settings, given their abstract nature. Despite this knowledge, however, the public values literature has not significantly examined the official meanings of public values in their local setting. Against this backdrop, on the basis of a translation perspective we examine the context-specific meanings of 219 public values as defined by the core values statements of 61 Nordic central government agencies. We show variation and patterns in the meanings, emphasizing how the meanings vary depending on whether the values are translated into (1) a work and service delivery theme, (2) an internal relations theme and (3) an external relations theme. Through these findings, the study highlights the importance of taking into consideration the official meanings of agency core values for understanding the relationship between public values and administrative behaviour.Points for practitionersThe findings from this study inform public managers and administrators of the possible variation in the official meanings that could be attributed to core values. They suggest that public managers should carefully consider how they want their agency's core values to be understood by the employees. Specifically, when translating core values, public managers are advised to assess whether the signifiers they use to translate the values should guide work and service delivery, internal relations or external relations, respectively, or a combination. By drawing attention to the intended meanings of core values, the findings create increased awareness of how different translations of core values implicate different administrative behaviours.

Factors influencing political corruption. An empirical research study of regional governments

International Review of Administrative Sciences, Ahead of Print.
International organisations assert that political corruption is a major global problem. However, it is still unclear how to combat corruption. Previous research has studied corruption in central or local governments, rarely in regional ones. In this paper, we aim to identify factors influencing political corruption in regional governments. Using panel data, we analyse the statistical association between 29 economic, financial, political and socioeconomic variables and the corruption perceived by citizens, from January 2006 to September 2019. The results reveal that perceived political corruption is affected by government spending and ideological distance, among other factors. We propose several measures to reduce political corruption.Points for practitionersThe study has found that political corruption needs to be combatted through different measures for each administrative level. Our results support the idea that the following variables influence the perceived level of corruption within the regional governments: the volume of government borrowing, the ideological distance between the voter and the government, the percentage electoral participation and the volume of dependent and immigrant population of the region. Likewise, we also confirm that regional governments with higher values on the Quality of Government Index are perceived as less corrupt.

Comply while keeping your autonomy, or the art of managing paradox through dialogue

International Review of Administrative Sciences, Ahead of Print.
Our paper analyses the role of dialogue in managing the autonomy and compliance paradox within a public authority. The literature on paradoxes presents management as being characterised by the coexistence of contradictory elements. We propose to build on this work by drawing on the literature on the concept of ‘dialogue’. By focusing on the case of a French Departmental Council that set up a procedure to manage travel authorisations for its staff, we study the way in which the dialogue between stakeholders ensured both the application of the framework prescribed by the procedure and the autonomy of the management teams when it came to managing these rules on the ground. Using a longitudinal analysis methodology combining semi-directive interviews and observations of working group meetings, we show that this space for dialogue provides an important opportunity for a face-off between the demands for compliance and autonomy and their further evolution.Points for practitionersThe research raises awareness among public managers of the importance of establishing forums as a way of managing the complementarity of the logics of autonomy and compliance. Discussion offers opportunities to explore together the different possibility of management. Our paper thus underlines the importance of the art of interaction and discussion between the stakeholders, by creating opportunities for brainstorming and convergence.

Drivers and risk factors of German local financial sustainability focusing on adjusted income

International Review of Administrative Sciences, Ahead of Print.
Analysing the financial sustainability of local governments is of great interest, as they offer a wide range of services and are close to citizens. Various organizations have pointed out the need to analyse the determinants of financial sustainability, and recent research has focused on several European countries, using adjusted income as a dependent variable. To fill the research gap in the context of German local governments, we conduct an empirical analysis with 5 years of data from 363 local governments from North Rhine–Westphalia to analyse the impact of socio-demographic and financial-economic factors on financial sustainability, focusing on the adjusted income. Our results indicate that financial sustainability is influenced by factors on which the local governments have no impact or at least only a limited impact. Specifically, the debt level and the level of population are identified as risk factors, whereas own taxes, rate support grants and the net cash surplus serve as drivers of financial sustainability.Points for practitionersUnderstanding the determinants of financial sustainability is important for politicians and public managers in order to improve their risk management and decision-making processes and to prevent future sustainability problems. This paper identifies several socio-demographic and financial-economic determinants of FS, on which the local governments have only a limited impact. Considering that the financial sustainability of German local governments in North Rhine–Westphalia largely depends on external factors might be of great interest for policymakers with regard to future financial crises.

Public auditing: What impact does the quality of the institutional framework have on the level of corruption?

International Review of Administrative Sciences, Ahead of Print.
Supreme audit institutions (SAIs) are a component of a nation's institutional system. This article defines the concept of an institutional anti-corruption system centered on the SAI through four main characteristics: independence, accountability, mandate and collaboration. The article aims to assess the impact that the quality of the anti-corruption system has on perceived levels of corruption. Data from the 2019 International Budget Partnership Open Budget Survey covering 117 countries are used for this purpose. The regression results show that the quality of the institutional anti-corruption system centered on the SAI is associated with a low level of perceived corruption. However, other elements must be implemented to create an anti-corruption environment, such as citizens’ involvement as controlling actors.Points for practitionersIt is important that policy makers recognize and leverage the potential of SAIs in reducing corruption. Contemporary governance and the complexity of corruption require the protection of SAI's independence, but also call for the establishment of collaborative mechanisms that engage civil society and the media.

Public management, agility and innovation: The Swiss experience with the COVID-19 loan scheme

International Review of Administrative Sciences, Ahead of Print.
Within only 10 days of March 2020, the Swiss administration had designed and implemented a loan guarantee scheme for enterprises. The implementation phase was also short: it lasted less than five months. This article examines how that was possible, considering the complexity of the institutional setting and the scheme's innovative form, especially in terms of IT, including breakthroughs for the Swiss e-administrative practice: the scheme used algorithms to verify clients’ applications, a unique identification number for companies was implemented on a large scale, Swiss banks were integrated into the project's preparation and implementation, and some of their client operations were centralised on a government e-platform. The salient features of the process are identified through an analysis of the unfolding of operations during those ten days. The circumstances and context leading to radically new forms of public governance are also identified. Besides, an output analysis was undertaken to single out the innovative features of the deliverable. The case under consideration was short, and came unpredictably, so that no data or observations could be collected before or during the case. Accordingly, the study is by and large based on ex-post enquiries. With no explicitly formalised mandates, structures, or roles, the project participants came up with an informal organisation system. A well-defined deliverable was a powerful driver of the process. Several characteristics of the project, such as efficient networks, real-time information flow, flexible roles, flat hierarchy, and swift iterative subprocesses were akin to those of ‘agile organisations’. Tasks were performed concomitantly instead of sequentially.Points for practitionersIt is striking that not much scholarly research has been published so far with a view to collecting and sharing the ‘lessons learned’ from the unique experience of emergency support packages during the pandemic, including at intra-organisational level. Research could be done regarding replicability both for future emergencies and for adjusting normal-times public management practices. This proposal aims to contribute to this conversation with a view to inspiring practitioners in public administrations and government entities. It foregrounds the relationship between governmental crisis management and the digitalisation of public administration processes using computer-enabled tools.

What determines public affairs researchers’ motivations for policy impact? Results from an exploratory study

International Review of Administrative Sciences, Volume 89, Issue 3, Page 901-918, September 2023.
Although public policy and public administration are intuitively practical fields of scholarship, much public affairs research never affects practice. Previous studies have shown that one major predictor of whether a given research study or researcher achieves impact is the researcher's motivation to do so. Using data from a survey of 409 authors of articles in major public affairs journals, we present and test models of the determinants of researchers’ use motivations with regard to specific research studies and over the course of their careers. Results indicate that previous experience as a practitioner is positively associated with perceived career-long use motivation and rewards for use associated with tenure and promotion, although not with annual evaluations. In addition, project-specific use motivation is positively associated with perceived career-long use motivation, academic age, a study suggestion made by a practitioner, and methodological contribution. Motivations based on a desire to appear productive or on suggestions from researcher colleagues are negatively associated with study-specific use.Points for practitionersAcademic motivation to affect policymaking is positively associated with rewards associated with tenure and promotion, although not with year-end evaluations.Longer-serving researchers, and those with practitioner experience, report greater motivation to affect practice through their research.

Meta-governance, uncertainty and self-organization in corporatist social service sectors: The case of Hong Kong

International Review of Administrative Sciences, Ahead of Print.
This article explores the relationship between meta-governance, uncertainty and governance network responses. A social network analysis was conducted on the interlocking directorate network among nonprofits before and after a market-oriented collibration triggered by a new public management reform to the corporatist social service provision system in Hong Kong. By unpacking and showing the distinct processes of network formation in response to substantive and strategic uncertainty arising from the market-oriented collibration, the study shows that although more nonprofit actors were directly included in the formalized policy venues after the reform, the network density and clustering coefficient dropped after the reform, potentially reducing the self-coordinating capacity of the governance network. However, for some nonprofit actors, node betweenness centrality increased and node degree centrality decreased, creating an enabling condition for adaption.Points for practitionersThe uncertainties in meta-governance may bring about network processes at variance with the original intentions of public meta-governors that actors with complementary resources and competences combine their efforts in the provision of services and service innovation.To manage substantive and strategic uncertainties, public meta-governors need to find ways to increase the shared understandings of social problems, enhance the clarity of policy goals, and find a balance when collaborating between collaborative and market modes of governance.