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Abstract
The government effectiveness and control of corruption is general principle supported in the public sector. By using cross-national secondary data from 191 countries, this study examines how the development of e-government relates to this principle through a two-step cluster analysis. Considering the critical roles of senior civil servants in enacting administrative reforms, the Public Service Bargains (PSB) Theory was employed to analyze the similarities and differences among clustered countries in terms of the level of professionalism, the autonomy of civil services, and the nature of political-administrative relationships. The empirical results indicate a positive association between e-governments’ development and government effectiveness, as well as between e-governments’ development, and their control of corruption. The study contributes to the body of knowledge on the importance of establishing a stable PSB, whether a trustee or agency type, with the minimal internal bureaucratic resistance needed to successfully enact e-governments’ development and eventually improve the overall government’s effectiveness and corruption control.
Acknowledgments
The authors express their gratitude to Professors Shen Yongdong, Guo Sujian, Liu Xiaoting and other anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 See Carter and Bélanger, “The Utilization of e-Government Services,” 5–25.
2 See for example Al-Shafi, “Factors Affecting e-Government Implementation and Adoption in The State of Qatar.”
3 See Cheung, “The Politics of Administrative Reforms in Asia,” 257–282.
4 An effective implementation of e-government necessitates a strong commitment from policy makers. See Wallis and Zhao, “e-Government Development and Government Effectiveness,” 479–491.
5 See for example Wallis and Zhao, note 4 above; Thijs et al., “A Comparative Overview of Public Administration Characteristics and Performance in EU28.”
6 Existing empirical studies that predict government effectiveness are very limited according to Garcia-Sanchez et al., “Determinants of Government Effective-Ness,” 567–577.
7 Several authors provided meaningful definitions and description on e-government and what it entails. See for example Siffin, “Two Decades of Public Administration in Developing Countries,” 61–71; Bonsón et al., “Local e-government 2.0,” 123–132; Moon, “The Evolution of e-Government among Municipalities,” 424–433.
8 See Ciborra and Navarra, “Good Governance, Development Theory, and Aid Policy,” 90–110.
9 The United Nations through the Department of Economic and Social Affairs provide a periodic e-government development ranking for United Nations member states. The reports discuss the importance of e-government for the public sector efficiency while providing benchmarks and case studies on major e-government reforms. As far as efficiency in the public sector is concerned, several scholars have confirmed the potential of technology applications. See Finger and Pécoud, “From e-Government to e-Governance?”; Dorj and Altangerel, “Simple Infrastructure in Measuring Countries e-Government.”
10 See Choi et al., “Two-Dimensional Approach to Governmental Excellence for Human Development in Developing Countries,” 340–353.
11 See Wallis and Zhao, note 4 above.
12 Ibid.
13 See Thijs et al., note 5 above.
14 See for example Salomonsen and Knudsen, “Changes in Public Service Bargains,” 1015–1035; Hondeghem and Steen, “Evolving Public Service Bargains For Top Officials,” 3–8; Elston, “Conflict between Explicit and Tacit Public Service Bargains in U.K. Executive Agencies,” 85–104.
15 See for example Hood, “Control, Bargains, and Cheating,” 309–332; Hondeghem and Steen, note 14 above; Mishima, “A Big Bang for Japanese Mandarins? The Civil Service Reform of 2014,” 1101–1113; Shaw and Eichbaum, “Politicians, Political Advisers and the Vocabulary of Public Service Bargains,” 312–326.
16 See Hood, note 15 above; Wallis and Zhao, note 4 above.
17 See Ronaghan, “Benchmarking e-Government.”
18 See Hood, note 15 above.
19 See Kaufmann et al., “The Worldwide Governance Indicators,” 220–246.
20 See note 10 above; Wallis and Zhao, note 4 above.
21 See note 19 above.
22 See Basu, “E-Government and Developing Countries,” 109–132.
23 See Bertot et al., “Citizen-Centered e-Government Services”; Finger and Pécoud, note 9 above.
24 One can deduce that e-government limits corruption as it is attested that the use of an e-government leads to reductions in corruption. See for example Andersen, “E-Government as an Anti-Corruption Strategy,” 201–210.
25 Several authors suggest that an e-government has the potential to reduce corruption and increase transparency. See for example Bhatnagar and Deane, “Building Blocks of E-Government”; Cho and Choi, “E-Government to Combat Corruption,” 719–735; Ciborra, “Interpreting e-Government and Development,” 90–110. Other researchers have proposed the correlations between e-governments’ development and control of corruption and even confirmed the significance impact of e-government development on the control of corruption. See for example Shim and Eom, “E-Government and Anti-Corruption,” 298–316; Bertot et al., “Using ICTs to Create a Culture of Transparency,” 264–271; Krishnan et al., “Examining the Relationships Among E-Government Maturity, Corruption, Economic Prosperity and Environmental Degradation,” 638–649; Elbahnasawy, “E-Government, Internet Adoption, and Corruption,” 114–126; Nam, “Examining the Anti-Corruption Effect of e-Government and the Moderating Effect of National Culture,” 273–282.
26 See UNDESA, “The United Nations E-Government Survey.”
27 See note 10 above.
28 See World Bank, “Worldwide Governance Indicators.”
29 See Nam, note 25 above.
30 See Okazaki, “What Do We Know About Mobile Internet Adopters? A Cluster Analysis,” 127–141.
31 The silhouette coefficient helps determine the relative quality of the clusters and validate the results. Its value can vary between -1 and 1, with a negative value being undesirable. See for example Rousseeuw, “Graphical Aid to Cluster Analysis,” 53–65; Sarstedt and Mooi, “Cluster Analysis,” 273–324.
32 See Sarstedt and Mooi, note 31 above.
33 The ANOVA test is useful for comparing two or more groups to determine statistical significance. See note 10 above.
34 See note 8 above.
35 See for example Wallis and Zhao, note 4 above.
36 See Chen and Aklikokou, “Network Administration: Benchmarking e-Government in Togo”; Wallis and Zhao, note 4 above.
37 Corruption includes illegal financial and/or administrative behaviors conducted by public authorities for their own private gains. See for example Elbahnasawy, note 25 above; Nam, note 25 above.
38 The transparent dimension of e-government enables the control of corruption. See Bertot et al., note 23 above; Nam, note 25 above.
39 See Zhao et al., “E-Government Development and the Digital Economy,” 734–766.
40 See Wallis and Zhao, note 4 above.
41 See Xiaoyun and Im, “The Basic Models, Characteristics, and Directions of Civil Service Reform in China,” 53–62.
42 See Wallis and Zhao, see note 4 above.
43 See Thijs et al., note 5 above.
44 Ibid.
45 See Plaček and Ochrana, “A Comparison of Selected Characteristics of the Senior Civil Service of the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom,” 880–898; Thijs et al., note 5 above.
46 See Raphaeli, “The Senior Civil Service in Israel,” 169–178.
47 See note 3 above.
48 See Mishima, note 15 above.
49 Bureaucratic corruption still poses a serious challenge to good governance in Asia. See note 3 above; Tjiptoherijanto, “Civil Service Reform in Indonesia,” 39–53.
50 See Thijs et al., note 5 above.
51 See note 3 above; Rogger, “Who Serves the Poor? Surveying Civil Servants in the Developing World.”
52 See Hood, note 15 above.
53 See Otenyo, “Is Vincent Ostrom's Democratic Administration and New Public Management at odds in East Africa’s Public Administration,” 55–70.
54 See Thijs et al., note 5 above.
55 See note 3 above.
56 See Salomonsen and Knudsen, note 14 above.
57 See Wallis and Zhao, see note 4 above.
58 See note 17 above.
59 There is a strong advocacy among scholars for reforms that can comprehensively upgrade technical expertise and competency in the civil service. See for example note 41 above.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Lijun Chen
Lijun Chen is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at Zhejiang University with expertise in Public Policy, Public Administration and Political Psychology. Her research interests include individual and organizational integrity, public confidence on government, human resource management in private and public sectors, organizational behavior (psychological contracts and organizational commitment).
Apetogbo Komlan Aklikokou
Apetogbo Komlan Aklikokou is a Ph.D. student in the School of Public Affairs at Zhejiang University. His research interest includes e-government, technology acceptance behavior, public policy, and public administration.