In recent decades, special districts have come to outnumber general purpose governments in the United States. Yet, little is known about special district workforces and how they compare to general purpose government workforces. Special districts and general purpose governments provide many of the same services (e.g., parks maintenance, drinking water and sewer provision, libraries) and ostensibly have similar workforce needs for similar functions. This study explores how political institutions shape politicians’ preferences for different levels of human capital investment, which in turn shapes overall workforce quality. Leveraging data on water utility operators working at special district and general purpose water utilities in Texas, I investigate differences in human capital investments across two types of political institutions. I find that special districts invest more in human capital than general purpose governments. This study innovatively explores the role of institutions in shaping workforce quality.
This paper investigates the extent of political rent seeking in Hungary in the 2010s. Political capitalism--where powerful private interests influence public policy for private gain--creates opportunities for rent seeking that vary across sectors. The analysis is based on a theoretical model assuming rent seeking occurs in a three-stage process: changes in economic institutions granting regulatory privileges, which are enhanced by political-business networks; this leads to scarcities, and increased market power in certain markets; which then generates rents. To quantify this, the study evaluates Hungarian political capitalism by examining the impact of political decisions on firms' rents, analysing the profit trends of the 1,000 largest Hungarian firms (selected annually by net sales) and comparing their mean profit share (earnings before tax) across two periods: 2008-2012 and 2019-2023. A significant increase in a sector's mean profit share was assumed to indicate increased rent seeking. Using Welch's two-sample t-tests, three sectors were identified as potentially experiencing increased rent seeking: agriculture, construction, and financial and insurance activities. Quantitative findings include a 320% increase in mean agricultural profit share (70% in mean ROA), a more than fivefold increase in construction mean profit share (mean ROA from 3.3% to 10.1%), and a more than 6.5 times increase in financial sector mean profit share. Furthermore, a similar Czech analysis showed no significant increases in any sector's profit share, suggesting that the detected rises in Hungarian sectors are linked to domestic activities rather than external factors, which strengthens the findings.
Causal relationships play a pivotal role in research within the field of public administration. Ensuring reliable causal inference requires validating the predictability of these relationships, which is a crucial precondition. However, prediction has not garnered adequate attention within the realm of quantitative research in public administration and the broader social sciences. The advent of interpretable machine learning presents a significant opportunity to integrate prediction into quantitative research conducted in public administration. This article delves into the fundamental principles of interpretable machine learning while also examining its current applications in social science research. Building upon this foundation, the article further expounds upon the implementation process of interpretable machine learning, encompassing key aspects such as dataset construction, model training, model evaluation, and model interpretation. Lastly, the article explores the disciplinary value of interpretable machine learning within the field of public administration, highlighting its potential to enhance the generalization of inference, facilitate the selection of optimal explanations for phenomena, stimulate the construction of theoretical hypotheses, and provide a platform for the translation of knowledge. As a complement to traditional causal inference methods, interpretable machine learning ushers in a new era of credibility in quantitative research within the realm of public administration.
Trust in governmental institutions is a key factor of socio-political stability and effective governance. Regional authorities occupy an important intermediate position in the system of public administration as they exert influence on socio-political processes at the national, regional, and local levels. The governor is the main political actor in the region, and their image affects the perception of the entire regional authorities. Domestic scholars see public trust as a rational method of overcoming uncertainty. The growing role of internet communications determines the need to study online trust in government authorities among social media users. Using the case of the Kemerovo Region aka Kuzbass, the author identified the main factors of online trust in the local Governor and analyzed its impact on the general trust in the national government. The mass online survey involved 752 social media users residing in the Kemerovo Region and made it possible to measure the level of trust in various official authorities. The level of trust in the Governor correlated with the level of trust in other authorities and served as an integrational factor of legitimacy for the socio-political order in the region. The research also revealed a correlation between the declarative trust in the Governor and the latent factors of public trust. The image of reliability had motivational and instrumental aspects that are crucial for information campaigns aimed at shaping digital trust in the head of a regional government.
The state is responsible for protecting and caring for its citizens, which sometimes requires citizens' compliance. For public health protection, citizens must get vaccinated, and to safeguard children, citizens must report suspected child maltreatment. Whilst previous research often links political trust to compliance, it remains unclear whether trust in specific welfare institutions plays a more decisive role. This paper offers new insights into compliance and its relationship to political and specific trust. Survey data from representative population samples in Finland, Norway, Poland, and Romania compares compliance across healthcare and child protection services. Institutional theory is used to understand patterns of trust and compliance in different welfare state models. While most respondents comply with the state (60 per cent), notable variations exist across institutional context and welfare domains. Across countries, trust in specific welfare institutions, rather than general political trust, is associated with higher levels of compliance. Strengthening the legitimacy of specific welfare institutions can potentially enhance compliance.
Abstract The government of Kazakhstan promotes active citizenship and has introduced state-sanctioned consultative bodies, such as public councils, into the existing public administration. While public councils are formally autonomous, the state controls their agenda and regulate their inclusivity. According to Jayasuriya and Rodan’s model of state-sponsored political participation, irrespective of state control, such institutions can influence policy outcomes and manage social dissatisfaction. Elaborating on this framework, this study finds that local state bodies informally control public councils to ensure the interests of the state and business elites and manage public discontent. This implies that social conflict between the business elite and the state, on the one hand, and the general public on the other, is inadequately managed through the public councils.
This paper examines the impact of import competition on skill premium and the moderating effect of labor market flexibility on it, using panel data from 30 provinces in China from 2010 to 2019. A dynamic panel threshold model with instrumental variables is employed to address the endogeneity problem and to identify the nonlinear moderating effect of labor market flexibility. The results show the following: (1) Import competition has a promoting effect on skill premium, and this effect declines from eastern to western regions in China. (2) The import competition increases the skill premium through the channels of enhancing regional innovation capacity and promoting industrial upgrading and rationalization. (3) There exists a significant threshold effect in the moderating effect of labor market flexibility. When labor market flexibility surpasses the threshold value of 1.330, the enhancing effect of import competition on the skill premium is alleviated, facilitating labor reallocation and wage adjustment. The integration of labor market flexibility into the globalization–inequality debate extends the existing literature for providing a new understanding of the mechanisms behind the skill premium. The policy implications are that targeted labor market reforms are essential for mitigating wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers arising from intensified import competition.
Political institutions and public administration (General)
Political biases in Large Language Model (LLM)-based artificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini, have been previously reported. While several prior studies have attempted to quantify these biases using political orientation tests, such approaches are limited by potential tests' calibration biases and constrained response formats that do not reflect real-world human-AI interactions. This study employs a multi-method approach to assess political bias in leading AI systems, integrating four complementary methodologies: (1) linguistic comparison of AI-generated text with the language used by Republican and Democratic U.S. Congress members, (2) analysis of political viewpoints embedded in AI-generated policy recommendations, (3) sentiment analysis of AI-generated text toward politically affiliated public figures, and (4) standardized political orientation testing. Results indicate a consistent left-leaning bias across most contemporary AI systems, with arguably varying degrees of intensity. However, this bias is not an inherent feature of LLMs; prior research demonstrates that fine-tuning with politically skewed data can realign these models across the ideological spectrum. The presence of systematic political bias in AI systems poses risks, including reduced viewpoint diversity, increased societal polarization, and the potential for public mistrust in AI technologies. To mitigate these risks, AI systems should be designed to prioritize factual accuracy while maintaining neutrality on most lawful normative issues. Furthermore, independent monitoring platforms are necessary to ensure transparency, accountability, and responsible AI development.
Stefanie Schwaar, Franziska Diez, Michael Trebing
et al.
In German public administration, there are 45 different offices to which incoming messages need to be distributed. Since these messages are often unstructured, the system has to be based at least partly on message content. For public service no data are given so far and no pretrained model is available. The data we used are conducted by Governikus KG and are of highly different length. To handle those data with standard methods different approaches are known, like normalization or segmentation. However, text classification is highly dependent on the data structure, a study for public administration data is missing at the moment. We conducted such a study analyzing different techniques of classification based on segments, normalization and feature selection. Thereby, we used different methods, this means neural nets, random forest, logistic regression, SVM classifier and SVAE. The comparison shows for the given public service data a classification accuracy of above 80\% can be reached based on cross validation. We further show that normalization is preferable, while the difference to the segmentation approach depends mainly on the choice of algorithm.
This paper explores the intersection of artificial intelligence and higher education administration, focusing on liberal arts colleges (LACs). It examines AI's opportunities and challenges in academic and student affairs, legal compliance, and accreditation processes, while also addressing the ethical considerations of AI deployment in mission-driven institutions. Considering AI's value pluralism and potential allocative or representational harms caused by algorithmic bias, LACs must ensure AI aligns with its mission and principles. The study highlights other strategies for responsible AI integration, balancing innovation with institutional values.
Social media broadly refers to digital platforms and applications that simulate social interactions online. This study investigates the impact of social media platforms and their algorithms on political interest among users. As social media usage continues to rise, platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) play increasingly pivotal roles in shaping political discourse. By employing statistical analyses on data collected from over 3,300 participants, this research identifies significant differences in how various social media platforms influence political interest. Findings reveal that moderate Facebook users demonstrate decreased political engagement, whereas even minimal engagement with X significantly boosts political interest. The study further identifies demographic variations, noting that males, older individuals, Black or African American users, those with higher incomes show greater political interest. The demographic analysis highlights that Republicans are particularly active on social media - potentially influencing their social media engagement patterns. However, the study acknowledges a crucial limitation - the lack of direct data regarding the content users are exposed to which is shaping their social media experiences. Future research should explore these influences and consider additional popular platforms to enhance the understanding of social media's political impact. Addressing these gaps can provide deeper insights into digital political mobilization, aiding policymakers, educators, and platform designers in fostering healthier democratic engagement.
The processes of the development of the institution of the state and public administration face the discrepancies. The authors propose to consider a number of transformational processes that are currently stable and that systematically affect a fundamental change in the social role and purpose of the state and power management activities. The methodological basis of the research is mainly interdisciplinary in nature, since when considering the digitalization of the institute, the state takes as its basis the problem field, rather than disciplinary requirements. The study also used a discourse analysis of analytical and expert materials, scientific research devoted to both general issues of digital transformation of public policy and individual problems of digitalization of public institutions and practices. The study substantiates that the ideas about the formation of a new form of digital domination are based on the socio-political myth of the universality and objectivity of various algorithmic systems, according to which only innovative digital technologies can ensure justice in society, social equality, and eliminate various forms of discrimination and abuse of public power. In conclusion, the paper substantiates the need to develop and complicate the general concept of public authority and its sociotechnical purpose in the digital age. It is proved that the institution of the state will not only be preserved, but its complexity will occur, its sociotechnical purpose will be adjusted, and the role of the latter will increase during the transition to a new technological order.
B a c k g r o u n d . Public administration undergoes significant transformations in the context of military conflicts, which requires the adaptation of political institutions, legislation and administrative mechanisms. The historical experience of different countries shows that effective management during the war is based on a combination of centralization of power, security and preservation of democratic institutions. Analysis of these processes is important for the development of management strategies that can meet modern challenges. M e t h o d s . The work uses an interdisciplinary approach, including historical, comparative and institutional analysis. The methods of documentary analysis, the study of normative legal acts, the case-stock of individual countries, as well as the synthesis of the results obtained for the formation of general conclusions are applied. R e s u l t s . The study confirms that the adaptation of public administration to the conditions of war is accompanied by an increase in executive power, a change in the legal framework and an expansion of regulatory mechanisms. The study of the experience of ancient Rome, Great Britain, Israel and the United States allows us to outline the main models of management during martial law. It is established that democratic countries try to maintain a balance between the centralization of power and civil rights, which is a key factor in the stability of state institutions. C o n c l u s i o n s . The study of global experiences in the transformation of public administration during armed conflicts confirms that the ability of political institutions to adapt to crisis conditions is a crucial factor in preserving statehood. The examples of Ancient Rome, the United Kingdom, Israel, and the United States demonstrate a variety of approaches to administrative changes, which depend on the political system, legal norms, and historical traditions.
The erosion of the South African state and its public services can be understood through various social, political and economic factors. These issues are complex and multifaceted, often intertwined and mutually reinforcing. Several theories and patterns can help explain the erosion of the state and public services in the country. The core objective of this paper is to elucidate the foregoing factors, using purposely selected theories as philosophical lenses through which to understand why service delivery dilemmas prevail, and why state institutions are eroding. This paper is located within a qualitative paradigm, in particular narrative reviews, where secondary sources of information was consulted. This paper makes a conceptual contribution to the notion of the erosion of South African public sector institutions in general, and the field of Public Administration in particular. The paper recognises that addressing the erosion of the South African state and public services requires comprehensive strategies and reforms, including tackling corruption, improving the education and healthcare systems, creating jobs, and addressing economic inequalities. It also necessitates strengthening institutions and promoting good governance to restore public trust and to ensure sustainable development.
A lot of business and research effort currently deals with the so called decentralised ledger technology blockchain. Putting it to use carries the tempting promise to make the intermediaries of social interactions superfluous and furthermore keep secure track of all interactions. Currently intermediaries such as banks and notaries are necessary and must be trusted, which creates great dependencies, as the financial crisis of 2008 painfully demonstrated. Especially banks and notaries are said to become dispensable as a result of using the blockchain. But in real-world applications of the blockchain, the power of central actors does not dissolve, it only shifts to new, democratically illegitimate, uncontrolled or even uncontrollable power centers. As interesting as the blockchain technically is, it doesn't efficiently solve any real-world problem and is no substitute for traditional political processes or democratic regulation of power. Research efforts investigating the blockchain should be halted.
Efficient and effective service delivery in Public Administration (PA) relies on the development and utilization of key performance indicators (KPIs) for evaluating and measuring performance. This paper presents an innovative framework for KPI construction within performance evaluation systems, leveraging Random Forest algorithms and variable importance analysis. The proposed approach identifies key variables that significantly influence PA performance, offering valuable insights into the critical factors driving organizational success. By integrating variable importance analysis with expert consultation, relevant KPIs can be systematically developed, ensuring that improvement strategies address performance-critical areas. The framework incorporates continuous monitoring mechanisms and adaptive phases to refine KPIs in response to evolving administrative needs. This study aims to enhance PA performance through the application of machine learning techniques, fostering a more agile and results-driven approach to public administration.
The article analyzes the mechanisms of interaction between political elites and state institutions in the process of forming and implementing sustainable development policy in Ukraine. The role of civil society and business in supporting sustainable development is explored, as well as the importance of involving broad segments of the population in decision-making. The transition to sustainable development is a process of changing the value orientations of many people. It was found that close cooperation between representatives of the political elite, state institutions, the public sector and business is necessary to achieve the strategic goals of sustainable development. The priority areas of Ukraine’s sustainable development are environmental safety, energy efficiency, infrastructure development and ensuring social justice. Public administration plays an important role in the implementation of the main principles of sustainable development. Political elites, in turn, are the ones who determine the general strategic vision and make decisions on the implementation of reforms aimed at creating a socio-economic system that meets the principles of sustainable development. The main mechanisms of interaction between the political elite and state institutions in the context of the sustainable development of Ukraine are the development and implementation of the National Strategy for Sustainable Development until 2030, the creation of a system for monitoring and assessing the state of the environment, supporting the development of ecologically clean production, conducting an information and educational campaign on sustainable development, decentralization of power. An important aspect of the interaction between political elites and state institutions is the provision of a comprehensive approach to the implementation of reforms aimed at sustainable development. The effectiveness of the interaction between political elites and state institutions depends on many factors, including the presence of broad public support, the availability of necessary resources, and institutional capacity.
The purpose of the article is to identify historical features in the evolution of human social rights in the context of modern socio-economic and political changes. The author analyzes the main stages of the formation of social rights, from their origin in the mid-20th century to their active implementation and development in modern conditions. Particular attention is paid to international standards and mechanisms of the protection of social rights, such as the General Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well as regional documents. The author examines the impact of globalization, economic crises and the transformation of public institutions on the implementation of social rights, including the right to work, education, health care and social security. The article focuses on the role of the state and civil society in ensuring and protecting social rights. It also considers the challenges and problems faced by various countries in this process. According to Part 1 of Article 7 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, our country is a social state. One of the most important areas of policy is the formation of such an environment and conditions under which a person will be provided with a decent life, as well as opportunities for their free development. At the same time, opportunities are currently being laid for residents of the Russian Federation to ensure a decent life. Based on the experience accumulated over thousands of years of the existence of society and the state, the world community has come to the conclusion that human rights are the main value for each individual and society as a whole. They are the basis for the normal functioning of society and the state, their positive development and a qualitative increase in the standard of living of people. Care and assistance to the elderly, children, persons who do not have or have lost the ability to work and families are universal values of the great importance for any state. In general, the formation of the social security system cannot be called a complete process, and it continues in modern days. The methodological basis of the study is based on the principles of an integrated and systemic approach developed in domestic literature. Their application allowed to study objects in interrelations and interdependencies, to analyze scientific literature, normative legal acts, to make generalizations and conclusions. The study of the origin, formation and development of this institution contributes to the deepening of scientific views on the nature and content of social rights of man and citizen. The stated conclusions can be used in improving the current legislation, as well as in the development of new normative legal acts regulating the issues under consideration. Based on the analysis, the relationship and historical continuity of modern legislation in terms of social support for a person were revealed.
Complex multi-level governance systems face a variety of challenges. As one of the most prominent multi-level administrative systems, the EU has experienced a legitimacy crisis for several years, with many citizens displaying skeptical or even hostile views of European integration in general and the EU’s central bureaucracy specifically. Although citizens often hold such negative views of the EU public administration, they have almost no direct interactions with or substantive knowledge of this institution. Given these circumstances, we ask: How do individual citizens form their views of the EU bureaucracy? Our theory suggests that citizens frequently use mental shortcuts, specifically the “representativeness heuristic,” to make inferences about the EU’s administrative institutions. Empirically, we focus on the case of Romania and show that perceptions of domestic central and local bureaucracies are a significant predictor of perceptions of EU bureaucracies. These findings have wide-ranging academic and practical-political implications. * Please do not cite or circulate without permission by the author. The most recent version of this paper may be obtained at the following URL: http://www.janvogler.net/EU Public Administration.pdf Acknowledgments Helpful comments have been provided by Tanja Börzel, Nick Clark, Catherine De Vries, Mat McCubbins, Paul Taggart, Simon Usherwood, and Erika van Elsas. Furthermore, I would like to thank participants of presentations at Duke University, MPSA’s annual conference, and Central European University. The Duke University Department of Political Science, Mathew McCubbins, the Mercatus Center, and the Institute for Humane Studies provided generous funding for the data collection.