ICPP4 Montreal 2019: e-governance panel
IPSA Poznan 2016: Transparency panel
Business meeting at Posnan, 2016
Posnan 2016: book publication announcement
|
ICPP4 Montreal 2019: e-governance panel |
IPSA Poznan 2016: Transparency panel |
Business meeting at Posnan, 2016 |
Posnan 2016: book publication announcement |
IPSA RC 48: Research Committee on Administrative Culture
Abstracts accepted by RC48 from participants
for the IPSA World Congress, 2018
Abstracts grouped by panel
48.01 Administrative Culture amid Issues of the New Nationalism, Borders, Margins, Post-Colonialism or Inequality(Panels 3, 4 and 5 were cancelled and remaining papers were consolidated with other panels. This unofficial arrangement is of course, subject to change. The official information is found at wc2018.IPSA.org. The business meeting for RC48 will be scheduled by IPSA and will be announced here.)
48.02 Developing Public Policy in Collaboration between the State and Civil Society Groups
48.06 Transparency, Open Government, E-governance, Surveillance, Sous-veillance, and the Changing Culture of Administration
48.01 Administrative Culture amid Issues of the New Nationalism, Borders, Margins, Post-Colonialism or InequalityThe rise of nationalist politicians across many democracies in recent years has revived the fears of De Tocqueville (1835) of the tyranny of the majority. In addition, flows of migrants across porous borders have raised issues of national identity and severely challenged free trade pacts. Refugees and ethno-religious minorities existing at the margins of society have also suffered waves of discrimination or expulsion. Post-colonial effects and widespread inequality also challenge bureaucracies in many societies. From all of these turbulent processes, how will administrative culture be changed? Papers are welcome on any of these topics, with preference given to those having impact beyond one country.
Administrative Culture in South Asia: Can it Facilitate Organizational Change?
Prof. Syeda Lasna Kabir and Prof. Sk. Tawfique M. Haque
Organisations and managers all over the world have learned, the hard way, that drawing-table based, highly structured and meticulously planned organizational change specially in public organizations does not always work. The complexity of change, combined with the peculiarities of organisational behaviour, makes controlled change difficult. Organisational change involves a lot more than simply rolling out well-designed strategies. Changing an organisation is is not a highly controlled, single act of creation, but rather an evolution to a desired end. In many cases engineered change becomes an illusion because of its non compatibility with administrative culture. This paper focuses on the interrelationship between the administrative culture and organizational change in South Asian civil service. It seeks to examine the perceived relationship between these two important phenomena related to organizational behavior. The dimensions of national culture suggested by Hofstede have been used as an analytical framework to explain the cultural perspectives of organizational change. Hofstede’s four cultural dimensions-- power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism vs. collectivism and masculinity vs. femininity-- have been used to search for the link between administrative culture and organizational change (both planned and organic change) and to examine the norms, values and customs as visible in the South Asian administrative system. Sensitivity to the wider system is a crucial condition for successful adaptation and change. An organization is sensitive to the wider system if it accepts the multiple interactions and the fundamental interdependence between the different actors and factors. ‘Sensitivity to the system’ implies that an organization accepts that many of its actions are not autonomous and they, in turn, produce unintended responses. There are evidences from South East and East Asian countries which indicate that many of their organizational changes were successful because of the compatibility between change initiatives and their administrative culture (primarily driven by Confucianism). South Asian experiences are not much encouraging. In most of the cases the change initiatives of South Asian public service failed to utilize the administrative culture in an organic and positive manner to achieve intended results.Good Governance Enabled Administrative Cultures in India: A Review
Ms. Manju DalalAdministrative system in India is the institution of governance with legal and regulatory mechanisms something more than rational cooperative action which emphasis on civil society and cultural values of the people. Administrative culture at the root lies in shared norms, values, attitudes, perceptions and behaviour of public bureaucrats that shape the cultural characteristics of any organization. Good governance refers to a set of instruments through which people living in a state share a common core of values, govern themselves by means of laws, rules and regulations enforced by the state apparatus. As per the World Bank governance is the process by which governments are selected, monitored and replaced for effective formulation and implementation of sound policies; the respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and social communications among them. Good governance includes a range of activities involving all cultural communities, governmental institutions, political parties, interest groups, private sector and the public at large. It implies a complexity of activities which derive strength from its cultural diversity and it is pluralistic in nature, inclusive in decision-making, empower the weaker sections of society and attempt to achieve the common good. The capacity to govern depends upon the political legitimacy obtained by creating conditions in the polity. For good governance to be sustained, cultural diversity needs protection as the administrative culture of a nation has an obligation to foster the convergence of such democratic ideals as respect for individuals, individual freedoms, equality, justice, rule of law and constitutionalism. In this paper an attempt would be made to discuss about the conceptual aspects of good governance and to highlight the new initiatives of governance to reflect liberal democracy, public service ethics, control of corruption in an organization. An attempt has been made through this paper to analyze the scope of the implementation of the good governance concept for sustained development. The secondary sources have been used in the study from books, journals etc.
Interface between Globalization and Administrative Culture in South Asia: Emerging Patterns
Dr. C. K. Gautam and Mr. Arunoday Bajpai
Frederick Riggs’ study of public administration in developing countries in 1960s, with the help of ecological perspective, seems still valid in South Asian Societies even in the age of globalization. Riggs argued that the socio-economic environment prevailing in developing countries (Prismatic Societies) produces a distinct administrative structure and cultural pattern known as SALA Model. The SALA administration is characterized by Heterogeneity (different types of patterns and rules existing); Formalism (wide gap between theory and practice); and Overlapping (differentiated and undifferentiated structures existing simultaneously).
The South Asian countries, mainly the eight members of SAARC (South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation in South Africa)-Afghanistan, Pakistan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and India- shared various features of SALA model in different measures. As a region, South Asia houses 24 percent of the global population in 3.4 percent global land area. South Asia has many daunting development challenges and the administration bears a major responsibility to address these challenges.
These countries as well as their administrative structures have been equally exposed to globalization process in last two decades. This exposure is not limited to mainstream ideas of Globalization but also to the new administrative mechanisms, ideas and tools evolved and advanced during globalization era. Some of these ideas and mechanisms are: the New Public Management, the Good Governance, the Public Value approach and so on.
This paper seeks to investigate interface between globalization and Administrative culture in three countries (India, Nepal and Bangladesh. The basic assumption is that the prevailing administrative culture and the process of globalization have two-way interaction- both influence each other and get influenced by each other. More precisely, the paper will identify, discuss and analyze the emerging patterns of administrative culture in these countries as a consequence of above interaction. The paper adopts ecological approach- the globalization is taken as an environment of national administrative systems functioning in these countries. The study will discuss the impact of globalization on administrative features of heterogeneity, formalism and overlapping. The data and facts to be used in this study are taken from both primary and secondary sources.
Rural Poverty Fighting Programs’ Assessment in Angola - The case of Cabinda
Prof. Miguel Rocha de Sousa and Mr. António Cabeche
This papers examines government poverty fighting policies in a specific South African country- Angola. We analyze the region or province of Cabinda, namely we assess poverty fighting policies its four main districts: Cabinda, Cacongo, Buco-Zau and Belize municipalities, and finally all the 4 regions and last but not least all Angola.A Study on Women Empowerment in South-Asian Countries
We use the Human Development Index (HDI) for a comparison with all Angola, for the Cabinda Province we construct the first (qualitative) regional HDI in those provinces in Angola, by assigning grades (in a rank from 1 to 5) through all the dimensions of the HDI.
Finally we use the quantitative DEA method, which is data envelopment analysis to measure the efficiency of the poverty fighting and inclusion government policies. So, we rank and assess the value of technical efficiency across all the 3 components of the measures of HDI, as known income, health, and education in the poverty fighting programs.
Preliminary results tend to show that Cabinda capital has more efficient programs than that the rest of the three areas, Cacongo, Buco-Zau and Belize. Besides, preliminary results tend to show that Angola as a whole is more efficient that all the 4 regions in Cabinda. Another interesting result is that most part of the HDI result in the four provinces in Angola comes from the income part. Another important aspect is that this is, as far as we know, the first effort to rank poverty issues through Data Envelopment Analysis, thus the newness of this paper and specifically the focus on Angola.
Keywords: Angola, Cabinda, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Human Development Index (HDI), Poverty Assessment analysis. JEL Codes: C60; C65; O10; O20; O22
Ms. Teena Karamveer
Women are marginalized in the human society from the day of its origin in all parts of the world. Like any other region of the world, south Asia is not a region, with this major problem. This paper is an attempt to make a comparative analysis on Women empowerment in seven South Asian countries. Since international comparison provides us a better comparison of status, ranking is compared mainly. This comparison can be done effectively by comparing few indices like Gender Related Development index, Gender empowerment measure, Gender inequality in Education, Gender Inequality in Economic activity, Political Empowerment Measure etc. This paper is a small piece of a major research done over this area.
This paper has compared only the comparative women empowerment indicators like Gender Related Development index and Gender empowerment measure for a point of time and found that women are not in equal status throughout this South Asian Region. According to the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report 2016, released on Tuesday (March 21), India ranks 131 of 188 when it comes to the Human Development Index (HDI). This puts it in the ‘medium’ category. The index is based on three dimensions: life expectancy at birth, mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling, and gross national income per capita. India’s HDI, at 0.624, makes it as the third SAARC country on the list, behind Sri Lanka and Maldives (both of which fall in the ‘high’ HDI category). South Asia’s Gender Development Index (GDI) is also the lowest across regions. The GDI takes into account the disparity between the HDI’s of men and women – the higher the disparity, the lower the GDI. India’s GDI is 0.819, compared to the developing country average of 0.913.
48.02 Developing Public Policy in Collaboration between the State and Civil Society GroupsThere is renewed interest among scholars of public administration in exploring the possibilities of civic participation in policy-making and implementation. This varies from the White House wikis that encouraged participation online about policy proposals in the US, to the Russian attempts to provide some budget for civil society groups to conduct public administration. In western, pluralist democracies there are tens of thousands of civil society groups attempting to persuade administrators of policy -- but how are these developing in other countries, and with what effects? How much room is there in authoritarian regimes for state-civil society administration? Papers are welcome on any of these topics, with preference given to those having impact beyond one country.
Does Political Inclusion Ensure Social Accountability in Local Government of Nepal? Provoked or Achieved?
Dr. Tek Nath Dhakal and Dr. Narendra Raj Paudel
Social accountability is the relationship between elected local government leaders and general citizens. According to Principal-Agent Theory, local leader are agent who need to be accountable towards ordinary citizens (principal). It means ordinary citizens can sanction or reward after evaluation of their political acts performed during their tenure. The electoral accountability may not be sufficient condition for ensuring social accountability. Citizens should get opportunities to judge the political acts performed by elected local government leader when they are going to formulate policies, programs and projects. It is equally pertinent to arrange the mechanism so that citizens have opportunities to judge not only process of implementation but also its impacts on society. It means each activity political leaders performed which should be tested before their citizens. In this regards, the assumption of the research is that more political representation/inclusions of each segments of the society at local government makes assurance of more social accountability.
In this context, local election 2017 held in Nepal after 20 years. There is huge changes in the electoral mechanism which makes wider representation of women, marginalized caste and ethnicity and Dalit(untouchable) in new constitution 2015 formulated through constituent assembly. Legally, the representation is shifted from 20 percents in 1999 to 36 percent in 2017. It is interesting to explore to what extent political inclusion ensures social accountability in local government of Nepal. Specifically, how is participatory planning carried out by elected political leaders? Is there social audit performed to evaluate their activities at the local government? What is the level of people’s judgment on political acts of local government’s leaders so that ordinary citizens can reward or punish them?
To answer above questions, 15 local governments out of 753 local governments- eight highest scorer and seven lowest scorers on the basis of Minimum Condition Performance Measurement (MCPM) index developed by Ministry of Local Development are chosen purposively. 744 respondents who come to get service from local government are selected by using systematic random sampling methods for structured interview. Likewise, 30 Mayors and Dy-mayors are interviewed in-depth to measure the relationship between political inclusion and social accountability.
Regional Practices of Collaboration Public Policy in Russia: Troubles and Prospective.
Dr. Andrey Dakhin and Mrs. Elizaveta Solonchenko
Modern regional practices of public policy in Russia are developing towards practices of collaboration between the State and civil society groups. In the light of basic theoretical approaches it is possible to resume that the one stream is related with the ground of theories of representative democracy and the other regards to theories of participatory democracy.
The paper shows key difference between the State regional government in Russia and the municipal government and shortly the difference can be described in terms of social self-government or self-determination: a city’s policy making (municipal government) in Russia stays more close to practices of social self-government / self-determination, but the State regional government is more close to the Kremlin (the federal) policy making process. Taking into account this features the authors analyze political processes, structures and institutions which regards to both patterns of democracy. The main point of conclusion is that against a background of institutional contradictions of the representative democracy practices there is more progress in the field of participatory democracy activity. Also, this trend is more expressive in a city public policy.
The Gender Gap in Math Achievement in Argentina: Do Provincial Bureaucracies and Institutions Make a Difference?
Dr. Lorena Moscovich and Dr. Melina Furman
Argentina's national education ministry in 2016 introduced a standardized assessment test, Aprender, to measure the language, mathematics, and natural and social science learning achievements of primary and secondary school students. Data from the Aprender assessment tests are used in this study to identify students’ mathematics performance by gender across the 24 Argentine provinces, and to assess whether the gender composition of the personnel staffing provincial education ministries, along with other characteristics of the ministries, explains the degree to which females underperform males in primary and secondary school mathematics tests.
Ethical Governance and Human development: A Study of National Food Security Policy of India
Dr. Nittam Chandel
Since independence India has progressed in different sectors. Indian economy is the fastest growing economy in the world. It has become the world's tenth-largest by nominal GDP and third-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). However, the high economic growth rates have failed to improve food security in India. In fact India’s progress in different sectors can be evaluated by the various Human Development Reports of the UN which are published from time to time. Although the National Food Security Act passed by the parliament of India in 2014 was aimed at to abolish hunger and malnutrition from the country but the recent report indicate an increase in GHI indicates the worsening of a country’s hunger situation.
India’s position is in not good as we slipped from 97 in 2016 to 100 in 2017. India has a ‘serious’ hunger problem and ranks 100 among 119 developing countries, lagging behind countries such as North Korea and Iraq, according to recently published global hunger index report.
In fact, Govt. of India has enacted National Food Security Act in September 2014 to meet the challenges of hunger and food access in the country. This makes India probably the first country to recognize that ensuring food security to citizen is not moral and ethical but also legal imperative as well. The programme, which is largest programme in the world, provides legal rights to about sixty seven percent of the population for a uniform quantity food grains at a fixed price through ration shops. While India has seen impressive economic growth in recent years, the country still struggles with widespread poverty and hunger. Therefore, there is a dire need to regulate the governance of Food Security Policies in the country.
48.06 Transparency, Open Government, E-governance, Surveillance, Sous-veillance, and the Changing Culture of Administration
From small beginnings in the 1970s with a movement for freedom of information and privacy laws, the transparency movement now encompasses the majority of nation states. Inquiry ranges from journalists' rights to information to officials' rights to privacy; from official email on private servers to online delivery of administrative services; and from surveillance by intelligence services to sous-veillance of police by citizens with cell phones. In this rapidly changing environment, what is the effect on administrative culture and practice? Papers are welcome on any of these topics, with preference given to those having impact beyond one country.
E governance and Effective Resource Allocation For Citizens : A Study of India, Sri Lanka & Bangladesh
Dr. Saraswathi Unni
This paper analyses the initiatives of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka on the use of e-government as a tool to work and share information more effectively while delivering better services to the public. The primary objective being that of empowering citizens through digital literacy and universal access to digital resources in addition to providing collaborative digital platforms for participatory governance It also provides a general understanding of the challenges faced by these governments in expanding the base of e-governance. The basic methodology will be use of time series data retrieved from the United Nations e-government survey. Web surveys of the government websites, will assess the usability, accessibility, level of interactivity and level of response to external demand of service deliver. Questionnaires to select groups of citizens will also be used which assess the level of service delivery for a predefined selection of services. The presence, or absence of specific features contribute to determining a country's level of progress in allocating resources to its citizens.
The focus of the paper will be on emerging trends, issues, challenges and opportunities in e- governance. like education, health services, banking, provision of digital identity in particular to disadvantaged sections of society in under-served and unreached regions and communities. This will entail studying: 1) The economic impact: Keywords: As per the World Bank report, a 10% increase in mobile and broadband penetration increases the per capita GDP by 0.81% and 1.38% respectively in the developing countries. How much employment has it actually generated?
2) Social impact: The penetration of mobile devices may be highly useful as a complementary channel to public service delivery. To what extent has e- governance made access to services and resources easier in social sectors such as education, healthcare and banking? 3) Environmental impact: Have the stated environmental goals like lowering the carbon footprint, efficient energy management and greener workspaces been met?
Government as a Platform: Critics of a Technocratic Culture of Public Governance in Digital Era
Prof. Leonid Smorgunov
The formation of the digital government nowadays belongs to the main directions of reforming public policy and governance. In Russia, the Federal Target Program "Digital Economy" is planned to be implemented with a conjugate transition from electronic to digital government. At the heart of the formation of the digital government is the idea of the state as a platform that allows to effectively implement state functions and services on a new technological basis. The technocratic approach that dominates this idea is accompanied by the conviction that effective public policy and governance is possible almost without a person and public relations. The paper aims to critically analyze the technocratic cultural values of the state as a platform. Adequate answers to the political challenges of the digital government (values of control, centralization, excessive governability, etc.) are possible when integrating a new culture of political opportunities for co-production and the emerging system of state governability through cooperation. The empirical basis of the critical approach to the state as a platform is the analysis of the budget for citizens in developing economies (primarily in the Russian regions) using the fs / QCA methodology.
Transparency and Open Government: Changing Culture of Administration for Good Governance
Dr. Ashok Ranjan Basu
Governance refers to all processes of governing, whether undertaken by a government or any other agency. It relates to the processes of interaction and decision-making among the actors involved in a collective problem that lead to the creation, reinforcement, or reproduction of social norms and institutions.Open Government is the notion that the people have the right to access the documents and proceedings of government.
Administrative culture, is the modal pattern of values, beliefs, attitudes, and predispositions that characterize and identify any given administrative system.There are two main perspectives administrative culture of an organization. First, the government administration in all nations happens to be larger and more complex than any single organization. Second, policies and administrative decisions get implemented through the state apparatus, state financial and other resources are distributed, and the entire society is affected in many ways by attending administrative culture. Transparency and accountability are the main constituents of good governance, while good governance is a pre-condition to achieving human development which is the main concern or mission and the ultimate goal for all states' programmes and activities.
With the initiation of freedom of information and privacy laws, there is a great demand for journalist's right to information to official rights of privacy; from official on private servers to online delivery of administrative services ; from surveillances by intelligence services to sous-veillances of police by citizens. With the development of communication services both print and electronic, there is a great impact on administrative culture and practices.
The paper examines the changing culture of administration to cope up with the new aspect of transparency, open government and e-governance etc. for achieving good governance. The Human Development Index, Quality of Life Index and World Governance Index etc have been discussed The empirical and doctrinal approach has been used for the study. Though the paper is general to global scenario the emphasis is mostly on Asian countries in general and India in particular.
Transparency, Data Privacy and Digital Governance in the Era of Social Media: Current Global Indices and Issues
Prof. Jeremy Lewis
Access to official information (ATI) or Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, once highly controversial in the 1970s in the US and UK and in the 1980s in Canada, have become in 2000-2020 almost universal. Data privacy, of limited interest in the US but raising scandals in Western Europe in the 1990s and twenty-first century, has become a major policy shift in 2016-18 with any business trading with the European Union. E-governance, an idea only in the 1990s for most purposes, was legislated in some countries from 2002 and was widely adopted in the decade beginning 2010. Social media and cell phone apps, one of the fastest-adopted technologies in history, are currently the frontier for new, interactive adventures in public administration. These developments are all being evaluated by a global community that takes advantage of all of them. This paper will explore a few of the latest global reports and rankings to establish patterns in the rapid development of e-governance and open government.
Ethical Values in Governance: Indian Perspective
Dr. Surendra Kumar
Governance is imperative for the well-being of the society. The well-being can be ensured if people have faith in the institutions created for managing their social, economic and political affairs. Faith of the people, in turn, can be earned by governance if it is honest, transparent, responsive and sensitive. Governance has to be absolutely objective in enforcement and fair in the delivery of services.
Ethics in public life is all-pervasive and to be understood in all its manifestations and dimensions. The unity and stability of the society demands that ethical restraints must operate not only in respect of individuals but also organised groups - be they industrial, business and trade associations, labor unions, political parties, military and civil services, judiciary, academic or professional associations, agriculturists' organisations, apart from the government itself. How influential and powerful people conduct themselves in private life and the public domain set a precedent for others to follow or to seek justification for their own self-seeking or even scandalous conduct. Values and ethics are gaining importance in the discourse about governance today. There is a general perception that standards in public life are declining. Questions are being raised regarding misconduct and mismanagement on the part of those who have been entrusted with guarding public interest and resources. People are losing confidence in government. There have been incidences of dramatic failure of accountability in governmental system leaving people vulnerable and resulting in mistrust among the citizens.
Therefore, world over there has been an increased emphasis on ethics and morality to promote good governance. India, too, has taken several initiatives in this direction. But the main issue is to ensure honest and sincere implementation of these measures to promote transparency, openness, accountability, rule of law, equity, responsiveness and so on in the governance which will, in turn, result in the overall development of the society and the country as a whole.
Page revised on 21 July 2018 by Jeremy Lewis