Archive for April 2011
Andrews’ article is top Governance download in 2010; now open access
An article by Professor Matt Andrews of Harvard Kennedy School, “Good Government Means Different Things in Different Countries,” was the most downloaded article from the Governance archive in 2010. Governance is providing open access to the article for the next thirty days. Andrews’ article criticizes the “one-best-way model of effective government” that is built into benchmarking projects such as the World Bank’s World Governance Indicators. The article was downloaded from the Governance archives 1,796 times in 2010.
Governance’s readership jumps twenty percent in 2010
Wiley, publisher of Governance, reports that article downloads for the journal increased by twenty percent in 2010. There were 85,220 downloads in 2010, compared to 70,951 the previous year. In absolute terms this is the biggest annual increase ever. Compared to other leading journals, Governance‘s readership is geographically diverse: 46 percent of downloads went to the United States and Europe, while 54 percent went to the rest of the world.
Ten years later, a policy half-completed: Performance pay in Italian municipal government
Ten years after Italy’s parliament passed a law requiring pay-for-performance systems for senior officials in municipal government, almost half of municipalities have failed to implement the reform. In the new issue of Governance (24.2, April 2011), Greta Nasi, Daniela Cristofoli, Alex Turrini and Giovanni Valotti examine the reasons why some municipalities complied, while others did not. Economic pressures were “not important at all,’ the authors conclude. What mattered more was the desire for improved public legitimacy, the leadership of top bureaucrats, and the the degree of consensus among key internal stakeholders. Read the article.
Civil service reform after joining the EU: Sometimes progress, sometimes reversal
The eight countries that joined the European Union in 2004 were required to professionalize their civil services as a condition of membership. In the new issue of Governance (24.2, April 2011), Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling of the University of Nottingham examines what happened next. Three Baltic states continued on the path of reform; four countries — Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia — reversed course; while in Hungary, developments are hard to interpret. The EU “failed to address the issue of post-accession durability,” Meyer-Sahling says, and “devised virtually no instruments to prevent backsliding.” Read the article.
Open access: Tommasi on state capacity in Latin America
Debates about state reform in Latin America often focus on fashions such as developmental statism or neoliberalism. But what really matters “is not so much what you do, but how you do it,” says Mariano Tommasi of Argentina’s Universidad de San Andrés. In the new issue of Governance (24.2, April 2011), says that policy success hinges on the capacity of political systems to implement effectively, assure stability over the long run, and adapt policies to changing circumstances. If countries do not have these capabilities, Tommasi concludes, policies will not achieve good outcomes, “no matter how good they look on paper.” Open access to the commentary
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