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This paper develops a model in which agents have a conflict of interest over what instrument to use for policy adjustment in response to shocks. Three different government systems are analyzed: cabinet systems, in which one decision‐maker has full control over adjustment policies; consensus systems, in which adjustment policies must be agreed upon by all agents; and checks‐and‐balances systems, in which one agent decides what instrument should be used for adjustment, but the remaining agents may veto its use. All three systems may lead to inefficient policies. The cabinet system adjusts too often. The other systems may fail to adjust when adjustment is optimal. The relative performance of the three systems depends on the degree of political fragmentation and the size distribution of shocks.

Electronic Government (e-Government) is an initiative to transform the public-sector delivery system towards providing high-performance services and becoming more citizen-oriented. The emergence of broadband and communications technology has become the catalyst for the growth of online systems that form the main thrust of eGovernment. However, the satisfaction level of e-Government systems among citizens is still low because of recurrent transactions in various isolated systems. This is due to the fact that most e-Government systems have yet to be integrated. Successful integration could only be achieved if interoperability factors are completely defined and introduced in the early stages of systems development. These requirements currently are not fulfilled. Previous studies have identified seven contributing factors towards e-Government systems interoperability. This study extends the findings further by confirming those factors through a qualitative approach. Semistructured interviews were used involving five highly experienced informants from various Government agencies. The empirical data were then analysed using the content analysis method. From the analysis, the seven factors were refined into respective elements, which delineate the characteristics of each factor. The factors and elements then together form an e-Government systems interoperability model.

Electronic Government (e-Government) refers to a system of information, communication and interaction between government and its citizens. E-Government adoption has been studied for more than a decade with several meta-analytic studies being produced in that time. This study is differentiated from prior meta-analyses as it splits the empirical studies into pre-adoption and post-adoption studies to allow a clearer model of e-Government. We found different determinants and distinct models for pre- and post-adoption of e-Government. In the two models (pre-adoption and post-adoption) trust is only related to pre-adoption studies. Originally, 98 studies were coded but with the focus on pre-adoption and post-adoption, 53 were used in the final models as they contained the attributes of interest.

Passing through the different stages of e-government systems, the transactional stage could be considered as one of the most important in the implementation of an e-government system because it represents the highest level of interaction within organisations and between customers and government organisations. The importance of the transactional stage of the egovernment system and its positive impact refers to not only to making the delivery of external services quicker, but also to increasing the efficiency of internal government processes. Consequently, government organisations might seek to reach this stage. However, in order to reach the transactional stage of e-government, there are various dimensions related to government organisations; these dimensions could be challenges, costs or benefits. In fact, there is a lack of studies focusing on the identification of the levels and categorisation of transactional e-government costs. Therefore, this paper will try to fill the information gap based on empirical case studies of two government organisations. This paper will identify the levels and categorisation of transactional e-government costs. Consequently, the work of decision-makers in government organisations will be improved as well as the researchers understanding of transactional e-government costs will be enhanced.

Renewable energy (RE) policies are widely used to decarbonize power generation and implemented at various governance levels. We use an analytically tractable two-level model to study the effects of overlapping RE policies from the federal and state governments. We find that there are contrasting incentives for states to support RE deployment, depending on whether the federal government implements a feed-in tariff (FIT) or an auction system. Under federal FIT, states that bear a greater burden in financing the federal policy under-subsidize RE in order to reduce nationwide RE deployment and thereby lower their costs. Under federal auction, states that bear a greater burden to finance federal policy oversubsidize RE to drive down the quota price, and thereby also their costs. In an application to Germany, we illustrate that the recent shift from FIT to auctions increases incentives for state governments to support RE in the demand-intensive south, while decreasing them in the wind-abundant north.

The most widely used typologies of European local government systems are based on research conducted in the 1980s. The most popular are those of Page and Goldsmith (1987), distinguishing between Northern and Southern European systems, and Hesse and Sharpe (1991), distinguishing between Southern, Northern and Anglo-Saxon models. The rare attempts to include the Eastern part of the continent are far from comprehensive or satisfactory. They usually view the whole region as a distinct group, referring to its specific historical background and recent radical decentralisation (Bennett 1993, Heinelt and Hlepas 2006). Disappointingly, the same approach is presented in the most recent comprehensive analysis of European local government systems (Loughlin et al. 2010). This article tries to fill the gap produced by this simplification, by offering a comprehensive picture of the variation within the Eastern European region and suggesting a first attempt at a typology of around 20 countries of the region. The criteria for this typology refers to those used in earlier classifications of the Western European systems and include: (i) territorial organisation and tiers of elected local governments, (ii) scope of functions provided by local governments (functional decentralisation), (iii) financial autonomy, (iv) horizontal power relations within local government institutions (election systems and relationships between mayors and councils). Adapted from the source document.