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In recent years, collaborative innovation of public services has become a growing research field. However, how collaborative arrangements lead to innovation remains quite unclear. We propose that collaborative innovation is dependent on processes of divergence and convergence, which are enhanced by four conditions of collaborative innovation: diversity of ideas and perspectives, learning through interaction, consensus building, and implementation commitment. The combination of these conditions is explored through qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) in 19 European eHealth partnerships. The results suggest a combined effect of these conditions on service innovativeness, which rejects contemporary views on the dichotomous nature of divergence and convergence.

Recent scholarly wisdom suggests that public sector organizations (PSOs) should not always innovate alone. Collaboration with diverse actors is often proposed so that more and better innovations can be developed. However, it remains unclear what capacities PSOs need in order to participate in collaborative arrangements for innovation and to collaborate with diverse innovation partners. Using survey data from Belgian federal and Flemish public managers, we show that the connective and learning capacities of PSOs contribute positively to their participation in collaborative arrangements for innovation, and to the diversity of actors with which they collaborate.

In contemporary public governance, leaders of public organizations are faced with multiple, and oftentimes conflictual, accountability claims. Drawing upon a survey of CEO’s of agencies in seven countries, we explore whether and how conflictual accountability regimes relate to strategic behaviors by agency-CEO’s and their political principals. The presence of conflictual accountability is experienced as a major challenge and is associated with important behavioral responses by those CEO’s. This article demonstrates empirically how conflictual accountability is related to (a) controlling behaviors by principals, (b) constituency building behaviors by agencies, and (c) a general pattern of intensified contacts and information processing by both parties.

Research on regulation has traditionally focused on studying the delegation of regulatory competencies from political principals to an independent regulatory agency. In this article, we argue that this delegation is nuanced by different factors that affect whether a specific regulatory decision is formally delegated. We examine and explain formal delegation patterns at the level of individual regulatory decisions in twelve countries located in Europe, Latin America, and South Asia. The data were gathered by coding the twelve countries' telecommunications legislation. The data analysis was undertaken using a classification tree modela nonparametric model. We found that the maturity of the market has the greatest effect on the formal delegation of regulatory decisions, but this effect is also influenced by the other theoretical factors considered, particularly the level of political constraints and the type of regulation. Resumen La Delegacion Formal De Decisiones Regulatorias En El Sector De Las Telecomunicaciones: una Explicacion Utilizando Los arboles De ClasificacionLa investigacion acerca de la regulacion se ha enfocado tradicionalmente en estudiar la delegacion de competencias regulatorias de los principales politicos a una agencia regulatoria independiente. En este documento, argumentamos que esta delegacion varia levemente de acuerdo con diferentes factores que deciden si una decision regulatoria especifica esta formalmente delegada. Examinamos y explicamos los patrones formales de delegacion a nivel de las decisiones regulatorias individuales en doce paises localizados en Europa, Latinoamerica y el sur de Asia. Los datos fueron recolectados al codificar la legislacion de telecomunicaciones de los doce paises. El analisis de datos fue hecho con un modelo de clasificacion tipo arbolun modelo no parametrico. Encontramos que la madurez del mercado tiene el mayor efecto sobre las decisiones regulatorias, pero este efecto tambien esta influenciado por otros factores teoricos que se toman en cuenta, particularmente el nivel de limites politicos y el tipo de regulacion.

In 2004 Flanders, the northern region of Belgium launched a range of large publicprivate partnership (PPP) projects for a total value of 6 billion euros. Ten years later, PPP has become a well-embedded procurement method for long-term public infrastructure projects. This article makes a critical round-up of PPP experience in Belgium based on the perspectives of infrastructure professionals who were asked to provide their views on performance-related issues in PPP projects. Two workshops were held to further enrich the input and ideas. Based on this empirical material this article formulates 10 lessons to improve PPP performance, which is deliberately broadly defined. It argues that the dominant value for money evaluations, following strictly financial or commercial logics (in both the private and public sectors), need to be broadened. Given the large impact and cost of large infrastructure projects on society, broader societal and spatial contributions of PPPs are needed.

This article has two objectives. The first objective is to review and assess the recent evolution of agency design in Colombia and Venezuela. More specifically, we study the agencies' formal autonomy in these two countries since the year 1999 when Venezuela experienced a major change in government policy towards socialism. Thus, we attempt to explore how this policy change is reflected in the formal autonomy of agencies. Our second objective is to test if, despite the differences in policy choices the two countries have taken in the recent years, there are theoretical factors related to the agencies' design that can explain the level of formal autonomy of the agencies. The results show two main elements: first, even though the patterns of formal agency autonomy in Colombia and Venezuela differed before Venezuela's latter policy change, the differences between these two countries have increased since 2000. This indicates that each country's policy preferences may account for the differences. Second, for both countries, we found that, despite the differences, agency level factors such as the primary tasks that are performed by the agencies and the policy sector in which they are active have had an impact on their level of formal autonomy. However, the results indicate that these relationships do not follow the predictions that have been made based on the different theoretical perspectives.

ispartof: Administration Publique Trimestriel vol:2013 issue:2 pages:135-147 status: published

SAMENVATTING Onze overheden moeten als gevolg van de financiële crisis budgettair besparen. Maar ook in deze tijden van financiële en budgettaire krapte draagt de overheid de eindverantwoordelijkheid voor de uitvoering van vele publieke taken. Deze beleidsuitvoering is de laatste decennia meer op een afstand geplaatst, via verzelfstandiging of via samenwerking met de private sector. Internationaal zien we wel steeds meer dat deze uitvoeringsvormen onder druk komen te staan. In dit beschouwend artikel gaan we in op de impact en de trends inzake verzelfstandiging en publiek-private samenwerking in tijden van crisis.

SAMENVATTING Na de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen van 14 oktober zullen nieuwe bestuursploegen aan de slag gaan met het gemeentelijk apparaat om hun beleid vorm te geven en uit te voeren. Hierbij moeten ze ook stilstaan bij de vraag of de diensten in dat gemeentelijk apparaat wel de optimale organisatievorm hebben voor de taken die ze moeten uitvoeren. Bovendien moeten tegen 1 januari 2014 de huidig verzelfstandigde diensten worden omgevormd naar de vormen die in het Gemeentedecreet zijn toegelaten. Moeten deze diensten verzelfstandigd worden of niet? Zo ja, in welke vorm? En hoe dienen die verzelfstandigde diensten te worden aangestuurd? En hoe kan men ervoor zorgen dat deze verzelfstandigde diensten voldoende afstemmen met andere actoren binnen het gemeentebestuur? Deze bijdrage gebruikt onderzoeksinzichten om vier cruciale uitdagingen te formuleren naar de nieuwe bestuursploegen en roept op om omzichtig en op een doordachte manier om te gaan met het verzelfstandigingsvraagstuk.

Since the late nineties public-private partnership (PPP) has been a rising star in the public sectors firmament, and hence a popular topic for public sector scholars to study. Much of the PPP research so far is focused on general trends, empirical analysis and on particular aspects of PPP, e.g. their democratic quality, the risk allocation, their policy impact, and management issues. However, more integrated work on the level of projects and programs is needed. PPP arrangements do not follow one set path towards a unified model. We argue that PPP arrangements are shaped by contextual elements in which they are constructed and that the capacity of the government to manage PPPs will affect their final configuration and hence their performance. We therefore hypothesize that a good match between (a) complexity of (the environment of) a particular PPP project, (b) the overall capacity of the government to manage PPP projects, and (c) the particular governance strategy applied to a PPP project, is required to achieve good performance, and vice versa. To test this hypothesis, this article takes a more integrating perspective on PPP arrangements by using a holistic design that draws on a range of insights in PPP and public management literature, trying to combine and test them in a novel way. In the first part of the article, we introduce the conceptual framework. Next, we test it in a case study that involves the design, the construction, financing and maintenance of social housing infrastructure. Finally, we draw up some conceptual, empirical and theoretical lessons

Across Europe, public employment services are experimenting with more holistic and cross-sector collaborations to tackle the wicked problem of long-term unemployment. These collaborations operate in a context characterised by tensions produced by multiple demands for accountability. Based on case studies of the accountability relations and challenges in five such collaborations in the Netherlands, Belgium (Flanders), Estonia, Scotland and Denmark, we found that rigorous use of quantifiable measurement regimes made it difficult to attribute salience to important aspects of the progress made by the unemployed citizen; standardised accounts come with the risk of reductionist understandings of the citizen's social circumstances and resources; superficial participation by local politicians resulted in rather weak political accountability and a marked ambiguity of the role of the client as both accountee and accountholder. This work was supported by the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant number 726840 (TROPICO project).