Search results

Vor dem Hintergrund von Theorien der Öffentlichkeit und theoretisch fundierten Konzepten des öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunks (Public Service Broadcasting - PSB) untersucht der Beitrag, ob und inwiefern öffentlicher Rundfunk den Erfordernissen einer europäischen Öffentlichkeit Genüge tun kann. Dazu werden Sinn und Merkmale eines normativen Modells von Öffentlichkeit diskutiert, nach den Überschneidungen von PSB und Öffentlichkeit gefragt, sowie der Beitrag des PSB zu europäischen Öffentlichkeit im Hinblick auf seine Möglichkeiten und Grenzen analysiert. Public Service Broadcasting definiert sich als im öffentlichen Interesse agierend. Im europäischen Rahmen ist es im öffentlichen Interesse, dass bestimmte Themen europäischer Dimension ihr Publikum finden. PSB muss es suchen und ansprechen und muss selbst seinen Auftrag angesichts der Veränderungen am Medienmarkt neu definieren. Die Erweiterung seiner kulturellen und gesellschaftlichen Ziele im Hinblick auf seinen Beitrag zu einer europäischen Öffentlichkeit sollte ein Bestandteil davon sein. PSB ist aufgrund von Herkunft, rechtlichem Rahmen und Praxis eine national begrenzte Institution. Mandat, Potential und Ressourcen lassen eine Europäisierung der sich durch sie konstituierenden nationalen Öffentlichkeiten zu. Fazit: Das duale Rundfunksystem in Europa mit starkem öffentlichen Sektor muss beibehalten werden. (RG)

AbstractPublic policies can be understood as practical judgments which involve both self-regarding prudential reasoning and other-regarding moral reasoning. A general model of decision-making that has an adequate concept of policy rationality should have a place for both kinds of practical reasoning. Two paradigms of decision-making have dominated contemporary studies of public policy-making, but neither meets this test. Pluralist-exchange models assume that the reasons backing policy decisions are always self-regarding. Elitist-planning models assume they are exclusively other-regarding. Because each of the paradigms separately produces only partial models of decision-making, they must be used together to provide a full account of public policy-making.

Based on qualitative research primarily carried out in the Netherlands, this article describes corporate investigations within the private sector in terms of investigators' operational autonomy, which, in only a minority of cases, involves contact or cooperation with governmental law enforcement agencies. It is argued that, given this de facto public–private separation, theoretical concepts within the literature that take the nation-state as the imagined historical origin and/or continuing partner of corporate security—concepts such as privatization, responsibilization, or multilateralization—fail to capture the autonomy of corporate investigations. Furthermore, such concepts are politically distracting and potentially dangerous for public policy, since they imply that corporate security is effectively surveilled and supervised by the state within a framework of public–private cooperation. Nothing could be further from the truth; indeed the limited liaisons that do occur are initiated by the private sector.

Private companies contract with governments to deliver a broad range of goods and services such as construction, infrastructure, health care, facility management and much more. Such relationships implicate transaction costs, broadly understood as "all the cost which do not exist in a Robinson Crusoe economy." (Cheung, 1998; 515). However, whereas most previous literature has focused on the transaction cost considerations of governments in the public/private contracting relationship, much less scholarly attention has been devoted to the transaction costs of private companies in the relation. This paper aims to address part of this knowledge gap by examining the pre-contractual transaction costs of private companies vending services and products in contracts with governments. First, we draw on transaction cost theory and broader economics and industrial organization literature to develop a framework that combines theoretical and firm-, contract-, and government-level transaction cost factors. Second, we utilize data from a unique survey of Danish companies to examine the magnitude and determining factors of companies' transaction costs across eight industries that regularly contract with the public sector. Our findings underline the need for taking private companies' transaction costs more seriously in the planning and execution of public sector contracting to maximize the likelihood of win-win outcomes for government and business.

The article discusses the development of non-public monetary systems (NPMS), defined as a specific economic institution. It presents their comparison with public money systems depending on the size of transaction costs. The authors come to the conclusion that in conditions of the information economy on the basis of Internet-technologies NPMS receive a new impetus to their development and can make serious competition in regard to public monetary systems.

Given the intensive and ideologically charged debate over the use of private contractors for publicly funded services, it is somewhat surprising that many social scientists have preferred to explain government outsourcing by the pursuit of economic efficiency. Starting out from different theories, we investigate political explanations of government outsourcing using a Swedish data set in which outsourcing varies between municipalities and over time, as well as between services. Our identification strategy focuses on two services with similar contracting problems and local market conditions: preschools and primary schools. We study a period in which Swedish municipalities had full discretion in the provision of preschools, while their influence on the private provision of primary education was limited by a national voucher system. The comparison of preschools with primary schools in a difference-in-differences model suggests that the political color of the ruling majority influences outsourcing, which is consistent with the Citizen Candidate model of representative democracy.

Given the intensive and ideologically charged debate over the use of private contractors for publicly funded services, it is somewhat surprising that many social scientists have preferred to explain government outsourcing by the pursuit of economic efficiency. Starting out from different theories, we investigate political explanations of government outsourcing using a Swedish data set in which outsourcing varies between municipalities and over time, as well as between services. Our identification strategy focuses on two services with similar contracting problems and local market conditions: preschools and primary schools. We study a period in which Swedish municipalities had full discretion in the provision of preschools, while their influence on the private provision of primary education was limited by a national voucher system. The comparison of preschools with primary schools in a difference-in-differences model suggests that the political color of the ruling majority influences outsourcing, which is consistent with the Citizen Candidate model of representative democracy. [Copyright Elsevier B.V.]

Only 25 percent of the respondents to a survey conducted in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina identified government as their most important source of aid. Government relief to disaster victims is often less effective than aid provided by volunteers, non-profit organizations, and commercial enterprises, and it often facilitates corruption, encourages growth in disaster-prone areas, and crowds out self-help. Adapted from the source document.

This special edition of the IJPSM is primarily concerned with the contemporaryrole of the hospital nurse and the effects that new management arrangementsare having (and are not having) on their work and ability to provide effectivecare. Given the controversy that surrounds the provision of health care inBritain and elsewhere, the contribution of this special issue is timely, and wethink it offers many insights into current issues