Alice Moseley

The Politics of Agency Death: Ministers and the Survival of Government Agencies in a Parliamentary System

This article extends the theory of government agency survival from separation of powers to parliamentary government systems. It evaluates expectations of increased risk to agencies following transitions in government, prime minister or departmental minister, and from incongruence between the originally establishing and currently overseeing political executive. Using survival models for UK executive agencies between 1989 and 2012, the study finds that politics trumps performance. Ministers seek to make their mark by terminating agencies created by previous ministers, which is reinforced by high media attention to the agency. Performance against agency targets is not associated with higher termination risk, and replacement agencies do not perform any better than those that were terminated. Financial autonomy provides some protection for agencies that are less dependent on budgetary appropriations.

Conducting Experiments in Public Management Research: A Practical Guide

ABSTRACT This article provides advice on how to meet the practical challenges of experimental methods within public management research. We focus on lab, field, and survey experiments. For each of these types of experiments we outline the major challenges and limitations encountered when implementing experiments in practice and discuss tips, standards, and common mistakes to avoid. The article is multi-authored in order to benefit from the practical lessons drawn by a number of experimental researchers.

Community-based early intervention for children with behavioural, emotional and social problems: evaluation of the Scallywags Scheme

Scallywags is a community‐based, early intervention programme for young children (aged 3–7) with behavioural, emotional and social problems, which integrates work in the home and school with a parenting curriculum and direct work with children. A pre‐post intervention study across multi‐sites of 340 participants is reported. Using standardised measures, the study found statistically significant reductions in problems at home and school experienced by children who completed the programme, and in parental stress levels. Participation was found to be high and the project acceptable to parents, many of whom would be described as hard to reach. The rigorous evaluation of this real‐life service and its positive outcomes highlight the potential of such programmes to tackle the needs of these children and families, and help prevent longer‐term problems associated with early onset behavioural problems, including social exclusion, antisocial behaviour and educational failure.

Putting Public Policy Defaults to the Test: The Case of Organ Donor Registration

ABSTRACT There is growing interest within public management in using governance tools to influence citizens’ behavior, including changing “choice architecture” by manipulating defaults. This article reports a survey experiment with 4,005 British adults which examined the impact of different defaults on peoples propensity to visit, and register on, the organ donor register. There were significant effects of the different defaults on visits to the registration page but not on actual registrations. A default where people were automatically assumed to be donors but could opt out, and a neutral default where people had to answer either “yes” or “no,” both yielded significantly more organ donor register visits than a default where people were not assumed to be donors but could opt in. Attitudinal data collected suggested a preference for a neutral default. The results indicate that changing to a neutral default for organ donation would be socially acceptable and could potentially generate more donors.

The Internet: Can you get Away Without it? Supporting the Caring Professions in Accessing Research for Practice

This paper argues that staff in the caring professions wishing to use research evidence to inform their practice cannot afford to ignore the Internet, since it is far and away the best means of access to evidence there is. It also provides a description of and rationale for evidence‐based practice, and highlights the benefits of the Internet using examples of currently available research resources. However, the existing evidence from the social care field indicates poor levels of access to the Internet and other electronic research resources. The implications of this are discussed. It is suggested that appropriate training and support must be provided alongside better Internet access. The paper is set in the context of government initiatives encouraging e‐government.

The Effects of Social Information on Volunteering: A Field Experiment

Research indicates that providing social information about other people’s charitable donations can increase individual contributions. However, the effects of social information on volunteering time are underexplored. In this field experiment, we measure the effects of different levels of feedback about other people’s time contributions (very high, high, and moderate) on individuals’ hours of volunteering. The experiment was conducted with students from English universities volunteering for a variety of organizations and with a group of predominantly older people volunteering for a national charity in England. Social information did not increase volunteering for either group relative to a control group receiving individualized feedback with no social comparison. For students whose baseline volunteering time was lower than the median, social information had a demotivating effect, reducing their volunteering, suggesting that donating time is different to donating money.

How best to open up local democracy?: A randomised experiment to encourage contested elections and greater representativeness in English parish councils

ABSTRACT Interventions aimed at increasing the supply and representativeness of elected officials range from facilitative to the formally authorised. This paper reports on a field experiment aimed at testing the effect of facilitative approaches at the local level based on a collaboration between parish councils and the research team. We randomly allocated 818 parish council clerks across five counties in Southern England, either to receive information and the opportunity for member training for recruitment, or not to receive this contact. We investigated the effect of this intervention on political recruitment. Despite evidence of an effect on use of social media, our results suggest that there are significant institutional and structural barriers to participation in local politics that cannot easily be overcome using facilitative measures.

The impact of peer, politician and celebrity endorsements on volunteering: a field experiment with English students

ABSTRACT Endorsement is used by charitable organizations to stimulate public support, including monetary donations. This article reports a field experiment that examined the effect of leader and peer endorsement on student volunteering. The experiment was conducted with over 100,000 students from five UK universities and compared the effect on volunteering rates of email endorsements by politicians, celebrities, and peers, to a control group that received an email but no endorsement. We examined outcomes seven weeks after the original e-mails, including click-throughs to volunteering unit websites, attendance at volunteering training, registration with volunteering units, and actual volunteering. Peer endorsements reduced click-throughs to volunteering unit websites. There were positive treatment effects for endorsement by politicians on subsequent training but no significant effects of any of the endorsements on our other outcome measures. Overall, we found little support for the provision of leader and celebrity endorsement, and confirm negative effects for peer endorsement.

What Explains Agency Heads’ Length of Tenure? Testing Managerial Background, Performance, and Political Environment Effects for Different Forms of Exit

Influences on agency heads’ length of tenure depend on the way in which tenure ends, distinguished by moving to elsewhere in the public sector; the private sector; or retiring. We estimate survival models of agency heads’ tenure using panel data on British central government executive agencies from 1989-2012. Our findings suggest that chief executives of poorly performing agencies are encouraged to retire sooner. We find no evidence of change in political control increasing risk of any form of exit, suggesting that political pressure to leave is not substantial for this type of official. Outsiders (agency heads recruited from outside central government) are relatively difficult to retain for a longer time, such that potential shortfalls in suitable managers caused by retirements in an aging workforce may be difficult to make up by appointing from this source.

Does mobilisation increase family engagement with an early childhood intervention programme? A randomised controlled trial

Research indicates that both doorstep canvassing and postal appeals can be effective in encouraging people to vote although less is known about whether mobilization increases engagement with public services. We compare the effect of two different methods of mobilization – doorstep canvassing and leaflets – on family attendance at early childhood ‘Sure Start’ centres with a sample of 3,444 families. Families who were not already using Sure Start services were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a visit from a Sure Start outreach worker providing information and encouragement; a leaflet about Sure Start; a control group that received the usual service. We found no evidence of a significant difference in Sure Start attendance between the three groups: neither visits nor leaflets were effective in encouraging non-attenders to go to Sure Start.