As we commence a new year and a fresh volume of Public Money & Management, we can look forward to a continuation of the immense changes working through politics and public administration internationally. Despite the intensification of often atavistic populism, of the radical left and right, the economically integrative impact of globalization is irreversible. Although the enduring reform of the public sector in countries around the world takes place within local settings, many of the problems, wicked issues and encouraging innovations we discern have conveyable lessons. It is the role of PMM to explore and analyse these in both academic and practitioner-impact terms.
Accordingly, this issue looks back to understand the lessons of the past to be applied to understanding the present and the future and does so across different levels and sectors of public management, as well as comparable and contrasting countries and governance systems. We begin with three short articles (Sandford, Harrison, and Torsteinsen) that debate the issues of fiscal decentralization, alternative delivery models and corporatization in local government, alongside a recognition of the need to have comparative and multi-disciplinary studies. The issue continues with a review of the global financial crisis 10 years on (p. 9) and a discussion regarding the different government responses to it and ways to address and perhaps prevent its repetition if we explore what really happened and how it occurred.
There follow papers that launch the new year, debating how performance indicators might be made more relevant to citizens, facilitating democratic accountability (Lewis, p. 19) and a solid, original, empirical study that evaluates shared service delivery (administrative and tax collection) in English local government (Dixon and Elston, p. 29). A paper with an obvious relevance for many practitioners. These are followed by provocative and stimulating work on Australian public management reform (Rana, Hoque and Jacobs, p. 41) that asks if reformers ought to be leveraging an integrated approach to transform business decision-making into risk-based strategic decision-making. While Shaxson (p. 51) looks at two initiatives from the US and UK respectively, to improve attitudes to evidence-based policy-making. Purwohedi and Gurd (p. 61) discuss how Social Return on Investment (SROI) in public infrastructure projects can be used to provide lessons for managers involved in delivering these projects.
We conclude with two new development pieces. Chan (p. 69) argues through the changes to the Chinese government's approach to improving the country's ‘stock of human capital’, now that the poverty-alleviation strategies are entering a new phase. There is a continuing rise in investment, especially as the country marches towards becoming the world's largest economy and the need for a highly-skilled workforce has to be met. Finally, Goeminne and George (p. 75) provide an evidence-based argument that deliberates NPM perspectives on the determinants of financial performance in public organizations.
Christopher Pollitt†
We cannot begin the year without leaving the last word to Christopher Pollitt, an outstanding public sector management scholar who sadly died in July of 2018. Christopher was also an active member of our editorial advisory board for many years and a good friend of the journal (and those of us who are associated with it). Christopher was a passionate believer in the need for academic research in public administration to be relevant to the real world and also to engage with other disciplines in order to address the major concerns of citizens. He was a ‘good man’ in both the classical and modern sense. Just before he died, he argued:
An EGPA survey and interview conceived by Geert Bouckaert was carried out 8 years ago and showed that a strong majority of PA scholars believed both in the scientific study of the subject AND in its values and ethic of improved services for citizens from respected, well-trained and remunerated public servants. As do I. Yet today, we face rising populism, nationalism and racism. The authority, expertise and impartiality of civil servants is under attack on all sides, but what we see in academic PA is too often a retreat into scholasticism or, at the other extreme, a kind of highbrow management consultancy. Of course, we need both these types, but we also need a solid core of PA scholars who practice independent, high-quality critical analysis of big things which are happening now and will happen in future (climate change, demographic change, migration). Scholars who will build and find funding for ambitious projects aimed at those issues, simultaneously growing networks of concerned scholars across disciplines and fields. And—most importantly—who communicate, not only in learned journals, but also on websites and blogs, radio and TV and the press. Many citizens really are interested in why their schools are failing or their police are corrupt, and far less so in what celebrity politicians said to each other yesterday. We should be a respected voice addressed to that appetite (Bouckaert and Massey, Citation2018).
Notes on contributor
Andrew Massey is Editor of Public Money & Management and Professor of Public Administration, University of Exeter, UK.