Suchergebnisse

This study explores the effect on mayoral decision-making of three aspects of the decision environment: issue salience, context, and constraint. The study also tests the moderator effect that decision environment may have on a mayor's qualifications in terms of education and experience. These effects were tested on data drawn from a survey-experiment whose subjects were 120 incumbent mayors representing 12 Latin American countries. Mayors were presented with a hypothetical municipal problem in which their decision consisted of dealing with the problem by themselves or by delegating spending authority to a private agency. After manipulating the salience of the municipal problem (education vs. infrastructure), stressful context (statement about presence of guerrillas vs. no statement), and choice constraint (capable vs. incapable delegated private agency), analysis of variance and logit results show that under no constraint, mayors tend to delegate spending authority to a private agency for dealing with education, but not for infrastructure problems. Findings may suggest that mayors see more opportunities for rent-seeking and/or political benefits from handling spending personally in infrastructure but not in education. In Latin America, the position of city manager does not exist, making the elected mayor the primary decision-maker, and as most of the social spending takes place at the municipal level, mayors' decisions have a significant impact on development. Adapted from the source document.

This article presents the first empirical study in a Latin-American country on the effects of managerial quality upon municipal performance in education. Using 6 years of data from 40 Colombian municipalities, I assess the influence of mayoral qualifications -- education and job-related experience -- on the percentage of the eligible population actually enrolled in school. After considering other political, economic, and demographic factors, the findings show that mayoral qualifications are associated with greater school enrollment. This positive influence, however, decreases under external constraints, such as the presence of illegal armed groups. The findings should apply in any setting where the provision of social services is decentralized and where the mayor also plays the role of city manager, performing both political and administrative functions. The study has implications for countries struggling to eradicate illiteracy as results show that mayoral human capital enhances educational performance. Adapted from the source document.

In most local developing settings, the political leader and the municipal manager are embodied in the same figure, the directly elected mayor. This research explores the impact of mayoral quality on local public finances in a developing country. Mayoral quality is operationalized as educational background and job‐related expertise to analyze its impact on two local financial indicators: property tax collection and social spending per capita. The mayoral quality thesis is tested across 40 Colombian municipalities over five years (2000–2004). After considering other political, economic, and external influences, the findings reveal that mayoral quality is associated with greater property tax collection and more social spending per capita. This positive influence, however, decreases under external constraints—such as presence of illegal armed groups. This study demonstrates how much influence the mayor can have when circumstances permit. The findings point to the significance of electing qualified mayors, as decentralization may not directly improve subnational finance. Instead, through decentralization, qualified mayors contribute to improved local public finance.

AbstractThe public service motivation (PSM) theory has emphasized the distinctive motivational character of public employees in serving public institutions. However, scarce research has explored whether public service motivation extrapolates to civic engagement as another way to participate in public affairs. We contend that public employees' stronger sense of public interest expands toward higher engagement levels in social, economic, political, and civic organizations. Using data from the most recent wave of the World Values Survey from 2017 to 2020 in 77 countries—this study compares the degree of civic engagement of public servants with general citizens' level of engagement. Results across all world regions, except Africa, support the hypotheses that public servants are more willing to participate in civic organizations. However, public employees' civic engagement is contingent on organizational type (modern vs. traditional) and bureaucratic rank (top‐ vs. street‐level), for street‐level bureaucrats participate more in traditional but not modern organizations.