Volume 10 (2017): Issue 2 (December 2017)

According to Action Agenda 21, which was adopted at the Rio Conference in 1992, sustainable development is a major objective for local and global development. Economic growth, good living conditions, and protection of the earth’s natural environment are important to all people in the world. This article focuses on one aspect of sustainable development, i.e. on environmental sustainability. Research shows that local government can take a leading position in protecting the natural environment and disseminating information on it among stakeholders. However, our knowledge about the dissemination of environmental information practices among stakeholders is limited. The purpose of this research is to fill a gap in current knowledge, to describe and compare the practical work with dissemination of such information among stakeholders in Swedish and Polish municipalities. The questions to be answered are: What environmental information is collected and produced by the local government ? At what stakeholders is such information targeted ? and What effects does it have on decision-making by stakeholders in the investigated municipalities ? The study is based on state regulations, the homepages of municipal offices, and policy documents, official reports, and semi-structured interviews with key managers responsible for the protection of the natural environment in the studied municipalities. Data were collected from late 2015 to early 2017. This research indicates that dissemination of environmental information has a positive effect on the decision-making of internal stakeholders. In both countries, the municipal authorities follow the EU recommendations, resulting in innovative work and growing environmental awareness among the municipal authorities, the residents, and other stakeholders. Improvement of the natural environment is perceived as “a must” for the future. Nonetheless, especially larger municipalities face challenges because the production and dissemination of environmental information is time-consuming. In the long run, however, surprisingly positive effects on the local protection of the natural environment appear.

Ensuring the public safety and limiting administrative barriers have been the two core objectives of most reforms in the area of business inspections and regulatory enforcement for the past decade. However, measuring these efforts has proved quite challenging both in OECD countries and in Russia. Lack of attention to the results achieved or misinterpretation of progress may affect the success of the reform efforts. Th e objective of this paper is to develop a framework for defining and evaluating both the effectiveness and the efficiency of regulatory enforcement and to apply this framework to several areas of inspection activities (such as occupational and food safety) in Russia. Th e proposed framework advances the existing international approaches to measuring the performance of government inspection bodies and accounts for perspectives of citizens, businesses and governments as crucial stakeholders of inspection reforms. Th e paper is based on both qualitative and quantitative methods (sociological surveys and statistical research). Th e results suggest that evaluating the performance of business inspections should include all aspects of minimizing risks and losses in the controlled area - from prevention of violations (reducing risks) to ensuring the reimbursement, should the risk event happen. Various levels of results, including final outcomes (impact), intermediate outcomes and outputs, are needed as they allow for detecting important inconsistencies and gaps in the performance of government inspection bodies. Th e use of various sources of performance data, independent from inspection bodies, is critical for the successful implementation of the proposed framework.

Drawing on the policy-transfer literature, where processes such as Europeanization accentuate the role of policy networks as facilitators or constraints in the implementation of acquis, in addition to the familiar mechanism of “conditionality”, the principal objective of this article is to explore the challenges of policy learning toward administrative-capacity building and, more specifically, the role of what I refer to here as “donor-bureaucrat-contractor” networks in the Western Balkans. By employing a qualitative methodology consisting of forty semi-structured interviews and focus groups with policymakers, donor officers, civil-society experts and consultants in the region during the period of January 2011 to December 2016, a critical analysis of aid-supported policy learning via training as a conduit to administrative capacity-building reveals a series of context-specific dimensions, such as the informality of such networks, overreliance on local NGOs as “capacitybuilding” implementation partners and the ability of the context to affect donor behaviour - all ultimately contributing to the (non-) occurrence of policy transfer. Th e overarching conclusion this article draws is that potential answers to problems with aid-supported policy learning in the region may probably lie in the invisible workings of the aforementioned networks rather than solely in the official channels of communication between Brussels and regional governments. From a policymaking standpoint, this conclusion in itself may as well be construed as a recommendation to mobilize future research surrounding the impact of such networks on European Union (EU) accession processes in the region. Th is may encourage research organizations both in the EU and the region to (re) orient future endeavors towards this dimension of administrative capacity-building - a core requirement for EU accession - especially as the EU itself faces its own enlargement dilemmas following Brexit while the region faces threats of a potential revival of “old” ethnic conflicts, both affecting the progress of administrative reforms and prospects of EU accession.

Law and innovation are oft en seen as antagonistic notions, particularly in administrative (authoritative) relations. Th is paper addresses this issue based on the regulation of administrative procedures, since they represent core public-administration activities in contemporary society. Hence, they need to be codified and implemented, both on the EU and national levels, in a more flexible and party-oriented way, even though still preserving legal certainty. The author argues that Europeanisation contributes to innovation in administrative procedure law, with institutions such as alternative dispute resolution or one-stop-shops. In order to explore the potential drivers of and barriers to innovation, particularly in Eastern Europe, a survey and several structured interviews were carried out in Slovenia as a case study. Th e results reveal that the culture in the region is legalistically driven and thus hinders innovation, even that which has already been introduced in the law. Consequently, a key obstacle to be addressed in future measures is the mind-set in public administration rather than a pure legal change.

Computer simulation, an active learning technique, is now one of the advanced pedagogical technologies. Th e use of simulation games in the educational process allows students to gain a firsthand understanding of the processes of real life. Public- administration, public-policy and political-science courses increasingly adopt simulation games in universities worldwide. Besides person-to-person simulation games, there are computer-based simulations in public-administration education. Currently in Russia the use of computer-based simulation games in Master of Public Administration (MPA) curricula is quite limited. Th is paper focuses on computer- based simulation games for students of MPA programmes. Our aim was to analyze outcomes of implementing such games in MPA curricula. We have done so by (1) developing three computer-based simulation games about allocating public finances, (2) testing the games in the learning process, and (3) conducting a posttest examination to evaluate the effect of simulation games on students’ knowledge of municipal finances. Th is study was conducted in the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) and in the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) during the period of September to December 2015, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Two groups of students were randomly selected in each university and then randomly allocated either to the experimental or the control group. In control groups (n=12 in HSE, n=13 in RANEPA) students had traditional lectures. In experimental groups (n=12 in HSE, n=13 in RANEPA) students played three simulation games apart from traditional lectures. Th is exploratory research shows that the use of computer-based simulation games in MPA curricula can improve students’ outcomes by 38 %. In general, the experimental groups had better performances on the post-test examination (Figure 2). Students in the HSE experimental group had 27.5 % better scores than students in the HSE control group. Students of the RANEPA experimental group had 38.0 % better scores than students in the RANEPA control group. Research indicates that lecture-based courses are less effective than courses with more interactive approaches. Therefore, our study highlights the need to implement computer-based simulation games in MPA programmes in Russian universities. Computer-based simulation games provide students with practical skills for their future careers.

Environmental taxes should play an important part in environmental policy as they help to internalize externalities, reduce damage, and increase the quality of life; besides they allow raising revenue for national and local governments. The aim of this paper is to evaluate environmental effectiveness, economic efficiency, equity impact, administrative feasibility and cost, and political acceptability of environmental (energy, transport, and natural-resource) taxes in Latvia. The study is based on desk research. The results demonstrate little evidence that existing environmental taxes lead to a significant reduction in environmental pollution and waste flows, but they have a significant fiscal effect. Most of the environmental taxes in Latvia apply direct and indirect subsidies, but most of the revenue comes from taxes on energy and transport. Environmental tax rates in Latvia are the result of political compromise and are not backed by the research on environmental costs of the particular activity. This paper fills the gap in environmental policy evaluation by looking at the performance and effectiveness of environmental taxes in Latvia.

The goal of this paper is to assess the role of “national curricula” (national education standards) determining the contents of public-administration (PA) education. To achieve our goal we deliver five case studies describing relevant information about the situation in the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Russia and Slovakia, all with different approaches how to apply national PA curricula. In the final part we try to evaluate the pros and cons of “national curricula” from the point of view of the development of PA education. Our research documents that extremes (no regulation and too strict regulation) do not deliver in less developed countries; the right path for such conditions should be somewhere in between - indicative national curricula and also indicative course contents should be available - something that seems to be achieved in Romania somehow.

Although it is well-known that public-funded research has contributed to economic development, even these days it is not clear how to support this research effectively. Tailoring the proper support system still remains a challenge for the government. Th is is also the case for research support for universities, which are one of the main “engines” of public-funded research. One possible answer is performance-based funding. Th is funding has recently come to be increasingly used by many countries. However, performance-based funding may have several inconveniences. Th is article will analyze the performance-based funding that has already been introduced in the Slovak Republic. Our research outcomes prove the fact that this system has resulted in an increase in publication performance, but at the same time in a higher orientation on quantity instead of quality with several new negative effects.

This paper deals with crowdfunding as a new and alternative mechanism of nonprofit funding which has thus far attracted little scholarly attention in the Czech context. It focuses on the factors that affect a campaign’s overfunding rate and determines whether these factors are consistent among different forms of project creators. A comprehensive analysis of reward-based crowdfunding in the Czech Republic was conducted based on the data from 617 projects using the Czech crowdfunding platform Hithit that were categorized according to the status of the project creator. Using binary logistic regression, a statistic estimation on an overall sample and on a sample of purely nonprofit projects was executed in order to observe if the outcomes diff er. Th e key empirical finding is that NGOs tend to raise fewer additional funds than other forms of project creators. Except for certain specific factors, the effects of the examined factors were consistent across all samples. Th is new and innovative approach to resource insufficiency by using alternative funding sources presents an important and unexplored research gap in the (post-) transitive context of nonprofit sector studies, enabling a view of policy implications for Czech NGOs.

The content of this paper is a proposal for a new explanatory variable that can be used instead of commonly used variables expressing the dates of parliamentary elections. The proposed variable is then used to verify the existence of the impact of the political-budget cycle in the area of taxation on a sample of countries belonging to the European Union (EU28) over the period from 2000 to 2012. Combining the use of this variable and the Pearson correlation coefficient, a statistically significant effect of PBC was identified, particularly in the field of indirect excise taxes, and especially for countries belonging to the group of new EU Member States. The article also contains a comparison of results using traditional indicators which take into account the date of parliamentary elections and the results using a new variable. The results obtained show that with the help of two of the four indicators, statistically significant changes in tax policy in the area of indirect excise duties were identified. When evaluating a new variable, it can be noted that it is a variable which is appropriate for testing the effect of PBC, since not only has the number of statistically significant correlation coefficients been increased, but additionally, illogical results contrary to PBC theory have not been identified.