Søren Serritzlew

Experiments in Public Management Research

ABSTRACT This article argues that experimental methods are underused in public management research. This is lamentable, since this research field faces especially severe endogeneity problems. We introduce five different experimental designs together with a discussion of their strengths and weaknesses in public management research: lab, survey, field, natural, and quasi-experiments. We also discuss whether experiments are low on external validity. This objection is often raised, but we think it is false.

Jurisdiction Size and Local Government Policy Expenditure: Assessing the Effect of Municipal Amalgamation

Across the developed world, the last 50 years have seen a dramatic wave of municipal mergers, often motivated by a quest for economies of scale. Re-examining the theoretical arguments invoked to justify these reforms, we find that, in fact, there is no compelling reason to expect them to yield net gains. Potential savings in, for example, administrative costs are likely to be offset by opposite effects for other domains. Past attempts at empirical assessment have been bedeviled by endogeneity—which municipalities amalgamate is typically nonrandom—creating a danger of bias. We exploit the particular characteristics of a recent Danish reform to provide more credible difference-in-differences estimates of the effect of mergers. The result turns out to be null: cost savings in some areas were offset by deterioration in others, while for most public services jurisdiction size did not matter at all. Given significant transition costs, the finding raises questions about the rationale behind a global movement that has already restructured local government on almost all continents.

Explaining Oversized Coalitions: Empirical Evidence from Local Governments

Government coalitions should be minimal winning. However, it is an empirical fact that oversized coalitions exist. Several theories have been offered to explain this phenomenon, but they are seldom put to a systematic empirical test. When empirical tests are performed, they are typically based on data on national government formations in post-war Europe. Since these are the data that gave rise to the theories in the first place, there is a risk of post hoc hypothesis reformulation. The purpose of this paper is to test explanations of oversized coalitions systematically in a new empirical setting and thus avoid this circularity problem. We focus on local governments in Denmark and have collected data by a survey sent to almost 3,000 local councillors. We draw hypotheses from three broad theoretical perspectives on oversized coalitions and test them in a logit regression analysis. The analysis shows that oversized coalitions cannot be explained by traditional coalition theories. Our results question the minimalist behavioural logic inherent in most coalition theories and suggest that parties may be motivated by norms.

Linking Budgets to Activity: A Test of the Effect of Output-Purchase Budgeting

Activity-based budgeting is designed to strengthen the link between activity and budgets. If budgets automatically follow fluctuations in demand, uncertainty is reduced for agencies and politicians can focus more on long-term decisions. Activity-based budgeting is likely to fail unless activity can be defined and measured with reasonable accuracy. An equally fundamental condition is the credibility of the budgeting rules. This article provides an empirical test of the effect of output-purchase budgeting based on data over time from public and private schools. Potentially disturbing variables are held constant, allowing for analysis of the interplay of budgeting systems and credible commitment. Output-purchase budgeting does indeed strengthen the link between activity and budgets, provided that politicians are able to credibly commit themselves to the rules.

Do Corruption and Social Trust Affect Economic Growth? A Review

Abstract Two separate literatures suggest that corruption and social trust, respectively, are related to economic growth, although the strengths of the relationships, and the direction of causality, are still debated. This paper reviews these literatures and evaluates the evidence for causal effects of corruption and trust on economic growth, and discusses how corruption and trust are interrelated. The reviews show that absence of corruption and high levels of social trust foster economic growth. The literatures also indicate that corruption has a causal effect on social trust, while the opposite effect is more uncertain. The conclusion offers the suggestion that fighting corruption may yield a “double dividend”, as reduced corruption is likely to have both direct and indirect effects on growth.

Social Capital in the Brain

Introduction The social capital concept has demonstrated its relevance. To name a few examples, it is crucial for understanding determinants of economic growth (Knack & Keefer, 1997), how democracy works (Putnam, 1993a), and more fundamentally, cooperation in collective action problems. But social capital is also a contested concept. There is no clear consensus on how to define it, some say that it is ambiguous, and some even that it should be abandoned (Arrow 2000: 4). One of the hotly debated topics relates to the psychological basis of cooperation. Is cooperation grounded in rational calculations, directed by strong social norms or soaked in affective and emotional motivations? Such core questions directly pertain to how social capital is translated into cooperative behavior by individual minds. The alternatives presented in the debate draw on significantly different models of the human actor, and as long as these questions remain unresolved, so will other core concepts such as cooperation and social capital. This chapter reviews recent studies from the growing discipline of cognitive neuroscience. By offering the social sciences radically new kinds of data on psychological processes, these studies have the potential to shed new light on the psychological basis of cooperation and related questions. The message of this chapter is that the neuroscientific evidence strongly suggests that cooperative behavior is a real phenomenon motivated by the elicitation of context-sensitive emotional systems that primarily operate in situations of a moral character. However, it is also necessary to approach the new field of cognitive neuroscience with caution. We will return to this aspect in the conclusion. The next section describes the contested nature of the social capital concept in more detail. We then move on to a description of the potential of cognitive neuroscience to shed light on some of the contested issues. This paves the way for a review of a series of studies where neuroscientific methods were used to investigate when and how cooperation emerges in experimental economic games. Based on this review, the idea of context-sensitive moral emotions

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.

Portfolio Allocation or Policy Horizons? Determinants of Coalition Formation in Danish Local Government

Abstract It is widely assumed that policy considerations are important when parties form government coalitions. But if this is so, and if coalitions are negotiated in multi-dimensional policy spaces with no majority parties, then a rapid turn-over of coalitions should be observed, cf. the chaos theorem. However, we rarely witness this. Here we analyse two of the most prominent theories that address this puzzle: Laver and Shepsles portfolio allocation model; and Warwicks policy horizon hypothesis. We do not analyse the ‘usual suspects’ (i.e. national government formations in Europe), but present a new empirical testing ground: Danish local governments. We rely on Laver and Shepsles Winset programme to identify ‘strong parties’ in the portfolio allocation model but develop a new measure of Warwicks policy horizons that better deals with problems of multi-dimensionality. In a conditional logit analysis of survey data from 3000 local councillors, we find support for the policy horizons model, but not for the portfolio allocation model.

Local News Media and Voter Turnout

Abstract A reasonably high turnout is a quality of a local democracy. In this article, we investigate whether media coverage of politics leads to increased or decreased voter turnout. Based on a unique data set, our analysis shows that local news media coverage has a positive effect on voter turnout, but only if the news media provide politically relevant information to the voters and only at local elections. Both findings are in accordance with the Information Model, which states that rising levels of political relevant information increases the probability of voting.

Does Education Produce Tough Lovers? Trust and Bureaucrats

Abstract Trust is an important catalyst for co-operation among bureaucrats. We find it useful to think of the ideal bureaucrat as a “tough lover”. Just as economic man, tough loving bureaucrats are “tough” because they respond to defection with defection. Like political man, the tough lover follows the social norm of meeting others in a “loving” and trusting manner. We discuss how education may increase trust and offer three hypotheses on how education is linked to trust, and how this relationship depends on the level of corruption in a country. We investigate these relationships in a database covering 21 countries and conclude that education does have positive effects on social trust and institutional trust in non-corrupt countries. In corrupt countries, education has the opposite effect on institutional trust. I do not think that the doctrine of self-interest as preached in America [“self-interest rightly understood”]… contain[s] many truths so clear that for men to see them it is enough to educate them. Hence it is all-important for them to be educated, for the age of blind sacrifice and instinctive virtues is already long past, and I see a time approaching in which freedom, public peace, and social stability will not be able to last without education. (Alexis de Tocqueville 1969: 528)