ABSTRACT The need for public sector transparency cannot be overemphasized. Citizens cannot hold public officials accountable if they do not know what the officials intend to do (transparency in decision-making), what they are doing (transparency in the process of doing), or how their actions will affect the public (outcome transparency). However, evidence from the available literature and some observable practical effects show that such expectations are usually overstated or accompanied by unforeseen negative repercussions. Public sector transparency is clouded by this ambiguity, resulting in a never-ending debate. However, even though there exists a vast body of literature on public sector transparency, there seems to be no overarching synopsis that synthesizes the ambiguities and complexities affecting transparency at all levels of government in the public sector. Thus, the question becomes, why does public sector transparency frequently manifest as a complex idea in both theoretical and practical terms in the public sector? To better understand public sector transparency, this dissertation examines seven questions through three different but related lenses: a systematic review of why certain factors associated with public sector transparency have both positive and detrimental effects; an empirical reexamination of one such factor (democracy) to better understand its directional relationship with public sector transparency; and a systematic review of why public sector inconsistencies are so prevalent and how to navigate them moving forward.
Englische Version: This dissertation comprises three essays which empirically investigate consequences of transparency. The first essay investigates how transparency, demanded by the government as a customer of firms, affects firms' financial reporting. It provides evidence that, relative to firms without government customers, government suppliers have a higher quality of financial reporting. Findings indicate that government procurement requirements, which are linked to internal control over financial reporting, can positively affect the external information environment of firms. The second essay examines how managers react to a stricter transparency mandate in pension accounting, if this mandate increases the expected volatility of balance sheet items. Managers of affected firms change decisions on pension plans which mitigate volatility and in addition, affected firms exhibit less volatile accruals but more volatile discretionary real actions suggesting managers reduce volatility in balance sheets. Findings imply that a transparency mandate in pension accounting may have (unintended) consequences for managerial decision-making if the mandate reveals more economic volatility on balance sheets. The third essay studies how (data-transparently) researchers visualize their quantitative findings and how this affects the impact of academic work. It finds that, compared to articles in field-specific economics journals, articles in economics journals with a broader audience use more figures than tables and that articles visualizing (data-transparently) with figures receive more citations. An online experiment, which manipulates how a fictive study visualizes scientific results, finds that participants assess the internal validity of research as being higher and are more willing to cite research if it visualizes results data-transparently. The findings imply that (data-transparent) visualization can enhance the impact of academic work.
This Ph. D thesis is made up of six chapters: together with Introduction and Concluding Remarks, there are one extensive literature review and three main essays. The theme of this thesis is 'The Political Economy of Public Sector Governance' and I explore it by analysing the two main actors in the interaction between citizens and politicians: Mass Media and Bureaucracy. The World Bank in several publications since early 2000 has brought to the attention of politicians, public servants, social scientists and, as far as an institution like the World Bank can do, the general public that what really is important and does make a difference in the economic growth and social development of nations are not policies but (political and social) institutional quality. In order to make institutions work well, so they are able to promote the greatest welfare for all the citizens, it is necessary to have good governance. One of the ingredients of an optimal governance arrangement is the possibility for the citizens to make their government accountable for what it does (not) and responsive to their needs. Therefore, in order to have good political institutions citizens have, on one hand, to control their government and, on the other hand, to voice their needs, preferences and ideas, also when the ballot box is not ready at hand. Mass Media has at least these two functions in the relationship between the citizens and the (incumbent) politicians. In the first essay I analyse citizens' voting decisions and collusion between media and politicians and how this phenomenon affects the behaviour of citizens towards disciplining and selecting the incumbent politician, when citizens have at their hands two sources of information about the quality of the incumbents and their performance: the quantity of a good publicly supplied by the government and a signal coming from the mass media on politician honesty. The setting comprises a two period game, where voters, in the first period, have to decide, observing the information available through media and good publicly produced, whether to vote off or reelect the incumbent politician to the second period electorate mandate. By employing both two signals, citizens manage to sort out honest politicians from dishonest ones more often than if they were relying on media information only. Moreover the existence of both signals makes collusion harder to achieve than in the case of one signal only. Furthermore, the welfare analysis reveals that, contrary to previous findings, the presence of media is not always welfare improving. The usefulness of media for citizens depends critically on the time discount factor between the two periods: when the time discount factor is larger than a certain threshold, it is optimal for the citizens to receive information from media; when the time discount factor is lower than the threshold, their optimal decision is not to get any information. Finally, I argue that when rules at the constitutional level are not possible and citizens cannot commit to have less information, then collusion between media and politician can be welfare improving for citizens, contrary to previous results in the literature. In the second essay I investigate the role of Mass Media as a bottom-up way of communicating dispersed information from citizens to incumbent. Citizens transmit useful information thanks to the newspapers they buy and read. However, these newspapers are produced by a third party (a Media Tycoon) that has his own incentives. In particular the Media Tycoon has to decide whether to produce a newspaper that allows the citizens to participate in the public debate (Broadsheet) or does not (Tabloid). Given the fact that this instrument can be bought but not directly produced by the citizens, there exists a tension between the benefit of using a newspaper to express citizens'views and the possibility that this newspaper can be actually produced. Results show that producing a Broadsheet always improves the quality of policy decision making on part of the incumbent. A notable result is that in order to enhance the quality of the public decision making it is better to have any Broadsheet than not having one, whatever is the public stance the newspaper takes about the issue at stake. In this essay I first assume that there is only one group of citizens which is interested in having the optimal policy adopted, i.e. the Middle Class and I assume the Middle Class citizens are the only one who read newspapers. Subsequently I analyse how the results change when citizens from the other classes read newspapers as well. I show how the 'partisan readers', committed to buy the Broadsheet supporting the policy they prefer, can ease the production of the Broadsheet. In this case the existence of partisanship and of ideological readers make the implementation of optimal policy easier, not harder, contrary to conventional wisdom. In the work of the World Bank, and in all the scientific production about how to establish and foster the development of good governance, corruption is one of the main diseases that can affect the correct relationship between citizens and public officials. So it is important to study how good institutional quality can fight corruption in several different fields of the political and economic environment. The third essay evaluates the effect of corruption on the regulation of business entry. A theoretical agency model of bribes is introduced, with strategic interaction between the firm, the corruptible public sector employee and the government. This model allows the evaluation of reforms targeting business startup procedures with regards to the incentives of the various actors involved in this process. Findings show that corruption in equilibrium between entrant firms and public servants could be self-sustained in the absence of government intervention. When deriving the equilibrium outcomes of some reforms like performance wages, privatisation and full liberalisation of entry, results show that transaction costs related to bribes are central in determining the optimal reform strategy. Although liberalisation is the preferred reform option for firms, government fiscal revenues and overall social welfare, firms surprisingly would prefer performance wages implemented in public registry service rather than the privatisation of this service. This holds despite the additional tax burden on firms necessary to finance higher civil servants'wages.
The introduction by the end of the Nineties of Results-based budgeting (RBB) at the United Nations was led by a gradual development in budgetary theory and practice over the previous two decennia and prompted by the desire to increase the transparency and accountability of programme managers so as to enable Member States to assess the mandates and decisions of the Organization. After a brief introduction to the concept of Results-based budgeting (RBB) and the context which led to its adoption at the International level, the general aspects and requirements of performance programmes and budget formulation in the United Nations (UN) system are addressed, also through some examples of practical experience in the field. The research shows that RBB is not just about budgets, but it has the potential to bring about a radical change in strategic management, accountability and responsibilities. Therefore it should be especially useful to professionals, experts and also civil servants delegated to deliver inputs to policy makers in the concerned field.
Many countries are still struggling to adapt to the broad and unexpected effects of modernization initiatives. As changes take shape, governments are challenged to explore new reforms. The public sector is now characterized by profound transformation across the globe, with ramifications that are yet to be interpreted. To convert this transformation into an ongoing state of improvement, policymakers and civil service leaders must learn to implement and evaluate change. This book is an important contribution to that end. Reforming the Public Sector presents comparative perspectives of government reform and innovation, discussing three decades of reform in public sector strategic management across nations. The contributors examine specific reform-related issues including the uses and abuses of public sector transparency, the "Audit Explosion," and the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction in Europe. This volume will greatly aid practitioners and policymakers to better understand the principles underpinning ongoing reforms in the public sector. Giovanni Tria, Giovanni Valotti, and their cohorts offer a scientific understanding of the main issues at stake in this arduous process. They place the approach to public administration reform in a broad international context and identify a road map for public management. Contributors include: Michael Barzelay, Nicola Bellé, Andrea Bonomi Savignon, Geert Bouckaert, Luca Brusati, Paola Cantarelli, Denita Cepiku, Francesco Cerase, Luigi Corvo, Maria Cucciniello, Isabell Egger-Peitler, Paolo Fedele, Gerhard Hammerschmid, Mario Ianniello, Elaine Ciulla Kamarck, Irvine Lapsley, Peter Leisink, Mariannunziata Liguori, Renate Meyer, Greta Nasi, James L. Perry, Christopher Pollitt, Adrian Ritz, Raffaella Saporito, MariaFrancesca Sicilia, Ileana Steccolini, Bram Steijn, Wouter Vandenabeele, and Montgomery Van Wart.
Today, transparency is a widely heralded value, and the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is often held up as one of the transparency movement’s canonical achievements. Yet while many view the law as a powerful tool for journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens to pursue the public good, FOIA is beset by massive backlogs, and corporations and the powerful have become adept at using it for their own interests. Close observers of laws like FOIA have begun to question whether these laws interfere with good governance, display a deleterious anti-public-sector bias, or are otherwise inadequate for the twenty-first century’s challenges. Troubling Transparency brings together leading scholars from different disciplines to analyze freedom of information policies in the United States and abroad—how they are working, how they are failing, and how they might be improved. Contributors investigate the creation of FOIA; its day-to-day uses and limitations for the news media and for corporate and citizen requesters; its impact on government agencies; its global influence; recent alternatives to the FOIA model raised by the emergence of “open data” and other approaches to transparency; and the theoretical underpinnings of FOIA and the right to know. In addition to examining the mixed legacy and effectiveness of FOIA, contributors debate how best to move forward to improve access to information and government functioning. Neither romanticizing FOIA nor downplaying its real and symbolic achievements, Troubling Transparency is a timely and comprehensive consideration of laws such as FOIA and the larger project of open government, with wide-ranging lessons for journalism, law, government, and civil society.
Meta-Analysis for Public Management and Policy is a groundbreaking book that introduces meta-analysis and includes proven techniques for research in public management and policy. The book provides statistical approaches to meta-analysis most useful for public policy and management and features five examples of original meta-analyses of important questions in public management and policy conducted by the author and his team. These original studies show step-by-step how to conduct a meta-analysis and contribute original research on ...
