<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> In Public Administration, it is taken for granted that reforms are initiated and conducted by leaders. However, one can wonder whether change is indeed always coming from leadership and whether the concept thereof as the driving force behind change and the panacea for all the problems encountered during reforms is not a bit overrated in recent literature. This paper presents the argument that it is not the leaders but the employees in the teams and working groups and the experienced organizational members in particular who are the real carriers of reforms. It goes through the recent and older theoretical literature as well as through known empirical research regarding the matter and suggests that mainly co-workers are able to provide reform in terms of content, direction and practical solutions. The conclusion is that leadership is indeed an overrated factor in explaining reforms. The emphasis on leadership disregards an old-fashioned but perhaps still relevant concept, namely that working groups / project teams are oft en self-regulating, despite what leaders believe. Although empirical research taking organizational tenure into account is scarce and scattered, there is some evidence that the communities of practice are important for conserving, changing and developing organizational values and norms.In consequence, theorizing about reforms and especially the implementation thereof needs to pay more attention to horizontal relations in the organization - the role of colleagues and especially the role of experienced organizational members.</abstract>

Associate Professor, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Professor, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands

The Limits of Leadership

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> There appears to be a remarkable contradiction between what is happening in public-administration science and in public-administration practice. In the former, legal approaches have been displaced by managerial and political approaches. Th is shift sharply contrasts with the continuous legalization and juridification of publicadministration practice. Public-administration practice has gradually converged with the law. Lawyers and legal scholars applaud the convergence of the law and public administration as the ultimate realization of the ideal of the Rechtsstaat. A public-administration perspective should take a more critical stance. From a publicadministration perspective, the Rechtsstaat produces both functional and dysfunctional effects. Assessing these effects requires comparative and multi-disciplinary research. Comparative research will reveal different legal and administrative traditions both within Europe and between Europe and other parts of the world. The Rechtsstaat should therefore return onto the public-administration research agenda.</abstract>

Rule of Law or Law Overruled ? Why the Rule of Law Should Be on the Public Administration Research Agenda

Guy Peters – Institutional Theory in Political Science: The New Institutionalism. Perspectives from Central and Eastern Europe

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> 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.</abstract>

Dissemination of Environmental Information and its Effects on Stakeholders’ Decision-Making: A Comparative Study between Swedish and Polish Municipalities

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>In consideration of the fact that public administrations worldwide face a number of challenges, many governments are dedicated to improving the ethical climate in public administrations. The same issue is also the focus of the attention of many transnational associations. The basic goal is to ensure the development of comparable ethical climates, ethical behaviour in different public administrations and to develop comparable, suitable ethics infrastructures to enable this. Modern public administrations must bring ethical conduct to the fore and resist unethical behaviour. There are different ideas on how to build ethics infrastructures in public administrations, and examples of good practice that could facilitate the development of such infrastructures are found in the public and private sectors of different countries. In this paper, we connect ethics infrastructures and ethical climates. The evaluation of Slovenia’s ethics infrastructures is based on the framework prepared by the OECD, using its questionnaire developed by Victor and Cullen. The results show that there is no general relationship between ethics infrastructures and ethical climates in public administrations. Nevertheless, some determinants of ethics infrastructures correlate to a high degree to the ethical climate, the strongest impact on ethics climates being the ethical infrastructure’s determinant “public involvement and scrutiny”.</abstract>

An Analysis of the Ethics Infrastructure and Ethical Climate in Slovenian Public Administration

<abstract xml:lang="en"><title style='display:none'>Public Administration and Management Reforms in CEE: Main Trajectories and Results</title>The common feature of CEE systems is that they change drastically. Political systems change, e.g. from dictatorships to democracies, and their elites are removed. Democratic checks and balances are established. State structures are reshuffled, e.g. toward more decentralisation. The economic system changes its nature, e.g. from state monopolies to market systems with private firms. Societal and social systems with NGOs, not-for-profit organisations and citizen action groups are established and are designed for people to participate actively in the public debate and to become stakeholders of their society and their communities (Peters 1996).To achieve planned changes, CEE countries had to choose their strategies. In focusing on the administration and the management of public systems, five scopes of reform are possible, from very narrow and limited to a very widespread and broad span of reform (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004). Choosing one of these models has tremendous practical implications for the content of a reform programme, for the choice of the reform projects, for the sequence and timing of the reform portfolio. It also requires different tactical choices to be made. One of the issues is how many degrees of freedom there are to reform the public sector.Just as in many other countries, mixed strategies have been chosen for public- sector reform in CEE countries, and these choices have changed over time. However, it seems that the span of reform has rather been broad than narrow. It also seems that tactics could have been more visible than strategy because of electoral cycles.This brings us to the question of the trajectories to move ahead. Our article, heavily based in the joint NISPAcee research project4 tries to respond to some selected dimensions of the question of what the common and different trajectories and selected outcomes of public administration / management reforms are in the CEE region.</abstract>

Public Management Institute, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

Institute of International Relations and Political Science, University of Vilnius, Lithunia

Faculty of Economics, Matej Bel University, Slovakia

Public Administration and Management Reforms in CEE: Main Trajectories and Results

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Despite numerous attempts to transform Swedish older adult care, similar problems regarding its coordination have persisted over the years. This literature review aims to identify which coordination mechanisms can be perceived as the alleged culprit of poor coordination of integrated health and social services for seriously ill older individuals in Sweden between 2000 and 2022. Classical and contemporary coordination theories are utilised to pinpoint these coordination mechanisms, and the analysis is based on the content of collected articles from this thematic area. This literature review reveals that the following coordination mechanisms are perceived as the primary cause of poor coordination in older adult care: (1) plans, programmes, rules, and standardised work processes. Research has confirmed that decentralisation, the autonomy of regional and local authorities, new regulations implemented in the spirit of NPM, and double principalship have hindered care integration for seriously ill older adults; (2) roles, standardisation of skills, and direct supervision. Neither organisational principal adequately addresses excess employee workloads and an insufficient number of employees providing care services, which generates stress, conflicts, and even occupational burnout among staff. They do not prioritise staff competency development; (3) proximity, feedback, and adjustments through mutual communication. Most studies have shown that communication among staff is crucial to achieving integration, but it could be more effective among staff members involved in providing care. Knowledge about “objects and representations” and “routines and standardisation of outcomes” is somewhat limited and deserves further research.
</abstract>

The Alleged Culprit of Poor Coordination of Integration of Health and Social Care Services for Very Ill Older Persons in Sweden, 2000-2022

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The paper is mixed-method research on reducing administrative burden and, more specifically, the learning costs of filling out a property tax declaration form. It presents the development process of a guidebook, which simplified the instructions and experimentally tested the effectiveness of the guidebook in lowering the error rate. Young Slovak adults (N=43) were divided into two groups; the treatment group worked with the guidebook, and the control group used the official instructions the Ministry of Finance provided. The guidebook aimed to decrease learning costs using behavioural support (simplification, highlighting, examples, and the like). The results suggest that the guidebook helps significantly decrease the number of errors compared to the complex instructions the Ministry of Finance provided. However, while the guidebook is very effective in reducing errors in simple tasks, it may not be sufficient help for more complex tasks such as mathematical calculations. Therefore, simplified instructions must go hand-in-hand with interventions such as pre-populating of forms.
</abstract>

Reducing Error Rate in Property Tax Declaration Forms through Simplification and Highlighting Instructions

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The main objective of this study is to assess the impact of corruption on the social, economic, environmental and political domains of sustainable development from individuals’ perspective. The study also attempts to relate individuals’ perceptions to their socioeconomic characteristics. The study uses the convenience sampling approach, where 521 responses are collected through an online-administered questionnaire. Each domain of sustainable development is defined by a set of items measured on a five-point Likert scale. Individuals’ perceptions of the impact of corruption on sustainable development domains are assessed by measuring the mean score value of each item. The association between individuals’ perceptions and their socioeconomic characteristics is evaluated using the independent-samples t-test. The study finds that the impact of corruption on the four domains of sustainable development as perceived by individuals is within the high level. Results also show a statistically significant difference between individuals from different socioeconomic groups in their perceptions of the impact of corruption on sustainable development. Results revealed that a high level of corruption would hinder the progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at all levels. Therefore, improving the quality of governance in public institutions and controlling corruption is crucial to attaining economic and sustainable development.
</abstract>

Assessing Individuals’ Perceptions of the Impact of Corruption on the Domains of Sustainable Development: A Cross-sectional Study in Palestine

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The technical efficiency of water companies plays a crucial role in ensuring the reliable and sustainable delivery of clean and safe drinking water. It also influences the effective management of water and wastewater services. Services of this kind, usually provided by a monopoly supplier, offer operators no market incentives to innovate, or improve their efficiency. So, the mission of the regulatory institutions is to simulate a competitive environment. The main aim of this contribution is to use Network Data Envelopment Analysis (N-DEA) to assess and benchmark the technical efficiency of 14 water and wastewater companies offering their services in Slovakia from 2019 - 2021. The methodology of N-DEA allows us to assess the activity’s cost and delivery efficiency, and its overall technical efficiency. We show that full cost efficiency was achieved by two small and one large water companies operating in different regions. Three of the largest suppliers of water and wastewater services and one small company achieved the efficient delivery of water services. Overall efficiency was achieved by one large company in 2021 and one small company in 2019 and 2020. The outcome of our empirical analysis demonstrates the excellent skills of managers in technically efficient companies, regardless of company size and region. That outcome may be of interest to regulatory institutions and the management of individual water companies.
</abstract>

The Technical Efficiency of Slovak Water Companies: An Application of Network DEA

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The paper is based on the use of evidence to scrutinise the effect of the Public-Private Partnership Act on the local public utility providers, where the context of the water and wastewater sector in Slovenia serves as an example. The Act affected the legal status of public enterprises, where solely public ownership was prescribed, and therefore demanded the reorganisation of existing public enterprises. The paper aims to evaluate the reorganisation process and the trend of remunicipalisation, the motives of reorganisation (political, pragmatic or transformative) and the advantages and disadvantages of the reorganisation process. A detailed, structured online questionnaire was designed and pretested for primary data collection to reach these aims. The questionnaire was sent to the Slovenian local public utility providers in water and wastewater management. The data was collated from 2018 to 2020. It was used in the analysis to provide evidence about the outcomes of the reorganisation process. The results show that new legislation contributed to increased public ownership in local public utility provision. The results also reveal that pragmatic motivating factors contributed to increased municipal buying out of private investors from (public) enterprises. The reorganisation process led municipalities into remunicipalisation, meaning that full municipal ownership and control increased.
</abstract>

Reorganising Local Public Utilities: Where and Why We Can Argue for the Remunicipalization Trends?

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The information society offers governments the opportunity to work closer with citizens and companies, to respond better to their requirements, and to create the conditions for the functioning of a modern, efficient, and democratic public administration. Due to the development of the information society, e-governance and e-participation appeared and developed, through which the communication of governments with stakeholders became more straightforward and less expensive. This research aims to identify and analyse comparatively how the telecommunications infrastructure and Internet users influenced the expansion and diversification of e- government and e-participation that contributed to the human development index in the EU states in 2010-2022. In the longitudinal data analysis, we apply fixed and random estimators to see the most critical determinants of the human development index. In the second part, we cluster the 27 EU countries in four clusters by Ward’s hierarchical algorithm. The hierarchical clustering emphasised that there is still a digital divide among EU countries. The digital divide occurs because of the lack of Internet access of the population from marginalised communities of European countries, resulting in socio-economic disparities. Therefore, some EU states should have initiatives to bridge the gap to digital technologies. The research results are essential for those governments coordinating the policies and the entire process of integrating information technologies and dedicated e-government and e-participation applications in central and local administration.
</abstract>

Hierarchical Clustering of the European Countries from the Perspective of E-government, E-participation, and Human Development

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>The New Public Management movement regards citizens as customers and, accordingly, focuses on the quality of services provided by public-sector organizations. Since this approach negatively affected democratic values, there has been a shift of the focus from consumer satisfaction and quality of services to quality of governance. The latter implies the improvement of the relationship between government and citizens as active members of the community. Over the last twenty years, participatory budgeting (PB) has become a popular form of co-production intended to improve the quality of local governance. The aim of the article is to provide a comparative analysis of the use and role of PB in Croatia, Poland and Slovakia and to identify the models of PB used in selected countries. In order to compare the case studies of municipalities in selected countries, a qualitative analysis has been used and the classification of PB models applied. Most analyzed local units use the “Porto Alegre adapted for Europe” model, but the “Consultation on public finances”, “Representation of Organized Interest” and “Proximity participation” models are also represented. The main findings are that PB indeed enables better allocation of public sources according to citizens’ needs (various public services were delivered following the trend of social innovation and co-creation), but the problem lies in the low amount assigned for PB from public budgets and the relatively low interest of citizens to participate in the PB processes. PB might also bring certain risks linked with its implementation, e.g. misuse of the idea for political reasons or additional costs of projects delivered in the PB process.</abstract>

Faculty of Law, University of Zagrebv, Zagreb, Croatia

Department of Public Economics and Regional Development, Matej Bel University in Banska Bystrica, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia

Department of Regional Development and Quantitative Methods, Kazimierz Pulaski University of Technology and Humanities in Radom, Radom, Poland

Participatory Budgeting: A Comparative Study of Croatia, Poland and Slovakia

<abstract xml:lang="en"><title style='display:none'>Technological Change: A Central yet Neglected Feature of Public Administration</title>This overview paper has two aims. The first is to indicate that technological change has been a somewhat neglected, or at the least esoteric, topic within the academic field of public administration. The second is to argue that this neglect is damaging for the PA community, because technological change is actually fundamental to developments in public administration, in a variety of ways.In order to demonstrate these two points, a wide range of literature is called upon, across many sectors.In conclusion a framework is offered to encourage the kinds of analysis of technological change that should ensure strong links with the central concerns of public administration scholarship.</abstract>

Technological Change: A Central yet Neglected Feature of Public Administration

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>This article exposes contemporary approaches to transparency and trust. It explores the links between the two concepts in 10 countries between 2007 and 2014, using open-data indexes and access-to-information requests as proxies for transparency. So far, most studies have focused on conceptual models, specific aspects of transparency in particular case studies or have compared legal frameworks from different countries. Here, data about citizens’ requests to get access to administrative documents have been gathered. This dataset, combined with existing indexes on open data and government, has enabled us to establish a national ranking, particularly useful in a comparative perspective. Data about trust have been collected from reports published by international organisations. Key findings prove that there is no sharp decline of trust in government in all countries considered in this article. They also tend to show that transparency and trust in government are not systematically positively associated. Therefore, this article challenges the common assumption, mostly found in the normative literature, about a positive interrelation between the two, where trust in government is conceived as a beneficial effect of administrative transparency. Finally, it suggests that mis(trust) may be considered a key driver of transparency and would as such call for more transparency from public bodies.</abstract>

Transparency and Trust in Government (2007–2014): A Comparative Study

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>The goal of this paper is to document and to analyse public administration reform dynamics and outcomes in three selected areas – transparency and accountability, civil service and local self-governments.The high level of potential access to government information in Slovakia does not “produce” increased accountability, predictability and also does not effectively serve as a tool to control corruption. We argue that citizens are not only victims, but also accomplishers: their tolerance for corruption, excessive bureaucracy and rentseeking is confirmed by many existing studies.Concerning civil service reform, Slovakia shows a substantial reform reversal towards politicisation and centralisation after 2001, which clearly threatens the fundamental features of democratic governance. Soon after the EU accession in 2004 major regressive changes took place, and the Civil Service Office was abolished in 2006. The new legislation in force from 2017 (forced by the EU conditionality) should return the Slovak civil service back on the right track – let us to see.With regard to self-government the reforms aimed towards the establishment of more independent local and regional self-government. However, the major issue here is the extreme fragmentation on the municipal level – almost 3,000 municipalities in the country, most of them bellow 1,000 inhabitants. Many studies confirm that amalgamation (or at least functional amalgamation) is necessary – but there is no political will to start it.What are the main lessons from the Slovak case ? The information provided indicates that the Slovak Republic belongs to the “standard” group of CEE countries – after the first wave of democratisation reforms immediately after 1989, most of the later changes were realised “thanks to” external motivations and pressures – and not always really welcomed. The specific issue, however, is the decentralisation reform in 2000 – 2005. This change, providing really fragmented local self-government by extra rights and responsibilities, was internally driven, with positive results from the point of view of self-government principles, but with many hurdles caused by too large a number of too small municipalities.</abstract>

Public Administration Reforms in Slovakia: Limited Outcomes (Why ?)

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> Economies of scale are a standard topic in economic theory, frequently applied, for example, in the analysis of monopolies. They exist when a firm optimising its production costs while facing some fixed costs enjoys lower per-unit production costs as the production increases. Similarly to other production units municipalities have to be large enough to minimise average costs. We analysed the local public services in 205 municipalities with extended powers in the Czech Republic for the first time in this context, using regression analysis, a correlation diagram of local public services and statistical analysis. The paper examines this issue using data from 2008 to 2012. Our analysis showed that economies of scale cannot be clearly identified for local services in municipalities with extended powers in the Czech Republic and that the size of a municipality is not a key factor influencing the provision of local services.</abstract>

Municipality Size and Local Public Services: Do Economies of Scale Exist ?

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NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy

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Online ISSN: 1338-4309  The Journal is predominantly devoted to public administration, public policy and public governance issues in Central and Eastern Europe, but high-level submissions...

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Online ISSN: 1338-4309  The Journal is predominantly devoted to public administration, public policy and public governance issues in Central and...

AHEAD OF PRINT

Volume 16 (2023): Issue 2 (December 2023)

Volume 16 (2023): Issue 1 (June 2023)

Volume 15 (2022): Issue 2 (December 2022)

Volume 15 (2022): Issue 1 (June 2022)

Volume 14 (2021): Issue 2 (December 2021)

Volume 14 (2021): Issue 1 (June 2021)

Volume 13 (2020): Issue 2 (December 2020)

Volume 13 (2020): Issue 1 (June 2020)

Volume 12 (2019): Issue 2 (December 2019)

Volume 12 (2019): Issue 1 (June 2019)

Volume 11 (2018): Issue 2 (December 2018)

Volume 11 (2018): Issue 1 (June 2018)

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

Volume 10 (2017): Issue 1 (June 2017)

Volume 9 (2016): Issue 2 (December 2016) Openness, Transparency and Ethics in Public Administration: Do they Support Each Other?

Volume 9 (2016): Issue 1 (June 2016)

Volume 8 (2015): Issue 2 (December 2015) Issue Title: Towards Meaningful Measurement: Performance Management at the Crossroads of Internal Efficiency and Social Impacts, Issue Editors: Juraj Nemec, Gyorgy Hajnal Wouter van Dooren Jarmo Vakkuri Aleksander Aristovnik

Volume 8 (2015): Issue 1 (June 2015)

Volume 7 (2014): Issue 2 (December 2014) Special Issue: Strong Local Governments: Community, Strategy, Integration, Editors: Juraj Nemec, Calin Hintea, Bogdana Neamtu, Colin Copus, Linze Schaap

Volume 7 (2014): Issue 1 (June 2014)

Volume 6 (2013): Issue 2 (December 2013)

Volume 6 (2013): Issue 1 (June 2013)

Volume 5 (2012): Issue 2 (December 2012) The Politics of Agency Governance

Volume 5 (2012): Issue 1 (June 2012)

Volume 4 (2011): Issue 2 (December 2011) Law and Public Management Revisited

Volume 4 (2011): Issue 1 (June 2011) Editors: Juraj Nemec, Geert Bouckaert, Wolfgang Drechsler and Gyorgy Jenei

Volume 3 (2010): Issue 2 (December 2010) Public Management Now and in the Future: Does Technology Matter?, Editors: Wolfgang Dreschler, Rebecca Moody, Christopher Pollitt and Mirko Vintar