Issue 2018 no6 contents:

The analysis of any leader’s tenure in the public sector is particularly useful for mapping past mistakes and making projections about the future. However, when the analysis is conducted on a leader’s tenure in some democratic regions, it can be confusing. It is difficult to measure the performance of the leader due to the asymmetric programs and policies in this region – fully implementation of some programs and policies take longer than the tenure lasts. This study offers an assessment of the influence of leadership toward the implementation of good governance in a new autonomous region – Lamandau – so that any confusion can be avoided. By using a quantitative approach, this study intended to reveal the influence of leadership in the public sector toward good governance implementation in Lamandau city, Indonesia. It examined four independent variables from a leadership aspect: vision (X1), communication (X2), collective purposes (X3), and individual capacity of the leader (X4) toward four dependent variables from good governance: Transparency (Y1), accountability(Y2), independency (Y3), and justice (Y4). Results of a quantitative analysis from a series of empirical data (derived from various variables) have a signifi cant value. The discussion of this study is limited to a historical context of public sector leadership and good governance in Indonesia generally and particularly in Lamandau City, combined with their theoretical foundation. Furthermore, it also offers the future projection of the Lamandau leader based on the analysis of this research. This study could have a signifi cant impact, in particular regarding leadership and good governance in this new autonomous region of Indonesia.

This study investigates the effects of pay vis-à-vis elements of the ethics infrastructure that contribute to effective administrative control; and to unethical practices in the Nigerian public service. Based on critical analysis of primary official and secondary data, the study reveals that corruption and financial impropriety are far more common and intense among higher public officials who, incidentally, are better remunerated, than among the lower cadre officials, who are poorly remunerated. The study shows that despite the emphasis on the compliance or sanction approach to administrative ethics rather than the virtue approach, there is still wide incongruence between the ethical approach adopted and the expected results. This is because of the existence of a weak political and administrative control system at the higher administrative functions. The study suggests that reducing unethical practices should aim at improving openness and transparency at the high level through more citizen involvement and civil society action, reviewing the criminal justice system to ensure severe punishment that can serve the purpose of deterrence and prevention, speedy dispatch of corruption cases and strengthening of oversight linkages between the public institutions and ethics coordinating institutions.

Public administration organisations in some countries, while focusing on project implementation through innovative approaches, are starting to apply an organisational matrix structure. This approach involves the adaptation of Lean in public administration by creating a model for rational project team members’ selection in public administration organisations. To examine this relatively new tool for public administration organisations, the authors base their research on the public administration organizations of Latvia and Russia and their employees by reporting the results of several studies.
This interest in the Lean concept and its application in public administration, particularly in the sphere of human resource management activities, has been supported by the analysis of data retrieved from studies by the authors (primary quantitative and qualitative data analysis) and other researchers (secondary quantitative and qualitative data analysis) on public administration employees’ competences and personal preferences in Latvia and Russia. The article includes a comparison of personal preference identification concepts by various researchers (monographic research). Finally, the authors demonstrate the developed model, providing a detailed description and application guidelines. The authors conclude that the model’s application should be supported by its integration into a public administration employees’ performance assessment (by competences) system such as NEVIS which is used in Latvia.
Public administration organisations can implement the proposed model, which is an example of the rational project team selection approach. The model considers both the competences and personal preferences of the potential project team members. The project team members’ selection process model also includes a mathematical decision-making model for solving optimisation tasks based on linear programming.

This paper aims to investigate the narrative of smart city policy in four Indonesian cities. Yogyakarta City, Surabaya City, Magelang City, and Madiun City were chosen as the locus of this study since these cities were winners of the Indonesian Smart City Index 2015.
The author compares their medium-term development planning documents using analysis of policy narrative approach which reconstructs the stories that actors tellabout policy issues written in the official policy document. This study endeavours to analyse how these cities engage with smart city policy and initiative from a comparativebased study.
Based on the content analysis as a research method, it can be concluded that these cities conceptualise the smart city program in different ways since there is no specific regulation guiding smart city policy in Indonesia. The result of this study also maps the main themes of smart city as stated in their medium-term development planning document. Theoretically, it contributes the discourse of smart city policy studies in a developing country context. Practically, this study suggests a policy implication that cities need to consider as a specific grand design on how local government implement smart city initiative.

This work explores the social elements that characterize the city of Tijuana, with the purpose of understanding ifthere is a disposition related to social capacities for the implementation of an electronic government. In the first part, a theoretical and contextual analysis of electronic government is made; afterwards the data obtained for Tijuana is analyzed as a result of a direct investigation in Baja California, with an emphasis on Tijuana. The main finding is whether or not the social conditions exist to make an implementation of an effective electronic government in Tijuana. The mixed methodology used part of Gurr’s postulate regarding the link between relative deprivation and social conflict and we hypothesized that it is required to have a medium-high degree of social satisfaction in order to make the implementation of an electronic government.

In the last decade, governments have expanded the utilization of performance measurement and reporting techniques to include the application of social media activities. While each of the two trends has been explored distinctly, their intersection is oft en neglected. Through the analysis of the official Facebook pages from a random sample of Florida Benchmarking Consortium (FBC) participating municipalities, this study explores the utility of social media in the collection and dissemination of performance information. The results of the analysis suggest an insufficient application of social media for performance-related issues. Out of the three main social media strategies typically available to governments, ‘push, pull and networking strategies,’ FBC local governments typically employ the ‘push strategy,’ wherein the municipality reports performance directly to citizens, and to a lesser extent, the ‘pull strategy,’ wherein the municipality attempts to engage potentially interested citizens’ attention. The ‘networking strategy’ was not utilized, indicating the potential need for a greater use of social media platforms to engage citizen involvement in the performance measurement and management process.

The article analyzes the current situation in the state administration of Syria on the basis of statistical data. It is shown that the changes in the structures of the Syrian state power observed over the past few years have demonstrated the inability to change the highly decentralized, ineffi cient and non-transparent system, or to create an integral, balanced, reliable and eff ective public administration. The main shortcomings of the  Syrian state now lie in its inability to provide an effective impact on the distribution of limited resources and the disparity in the distribution policy of limited resources to the prevailing public perception of justice. It is substantiated that the existing problems stemming from the poor effectiveness of the Syrian public administration authorities, taking into account resource constraints, population reduction, inflation and unemployment growth, and the growing gaps between rich and poor and rural and urban residents can be solved by introducing the technology of management of change “Point localized impact”, which seems to be an effective tool for increasing the efficiency of public authorities, the establishment of public services, and the provision of conditions for economic growth and social well-being. The article argues that the change management can ensure the development of territorial communities and the state as a whole, since the subjects of management themselves can exercise control over the areas that require improvement and development.

Citizenship is a core value of a democratic system that shapes political behavior of community members to be actively involved in the decision-making process and promote collaboration and reciprocity. However, we do not know how to assess the quality of the citizenship of our community. We need a method to analyze the degree of citizenship quality in order to ensure a sustainable and democratic environment. This study proposes a Citizenship Index based on the citizenship concept of Bellamy (2008) for measuring the degree of citizenship. Bellamy (Ibid) addresses three main indicators of citizenship: membership of a political community;  collective duties and rights as a consequence of membership; and participation in the social and political process. The study was conducted in September-October 2016 using a survey method and 429 respondents who are citizens of Makassar City, Indonesia were interviewed. Based on the three variables of Bellamy’s citizenship concept, this study found that the citizenship quality of Makassar citizens is active and strong in terms of getting engaged in development programs of the Makassar government. Moreover, Makassar citizens are altruistic and eager to collaborate with people from ethnicities and religious backgrounds. This method can help decision-makers to analyze and map the citizenship quality of a particular community as a consideration in formulating and implementing further public policies.

The purpose of the study is to review the history of politicization in local government (LG) and determine the major factors that affect local coordination in Bangladesh maintaining the relationships between politics and administration under the changing provisions of the Upazila Parishad (UZP) Act of 2009 and the partisan LG provisions of 2015. The study is entirely based on a literature review where only qualitative data has been explored. Eighteen documents were selected as a data set through searching Web of Science, SCOPUS and Google Scholar databases by using the relevant key-words. The study found a number of factors that are outlined by inter- and intra-organizational perspectives which negatively effect on local coordination in Bangladesh. Among these factors, lack of proper division of work, financial dependency on central government, lack of a chain of command among LG bodies, and the compulsory advisory role of Member of the Parliament (MP) over UZP are found to be major inter-organizational factors, whereas dual loyalty of transferred departments, unequal project distribution among Union Parishads (UP), and the domination of non-elected members in UZP are also identified as intra-organizational factors that are negatively associated with local coordination. Despite these existing problems, recently adapted partisan LG provisions are also creating a huge conflict in not only the local administration but also in local politics. In this regard, the government will have a great opportunity to address these burning issues properly through removing these legal and practical barriers for ensuring better local coordination.

The paper considers the transformation of the public funding mechanisms of theatres during the period from the last years of the USSR and early years of post-Soviet Russia up to the present. It analyses the differences between models applied at different times.
Several parameters of these models are taken into consideration, including the requirements that public bodies impose on the activities of theatres due to funding, and special features of budgetary tools which among other things characterize the approach to the determination of amounts of funding transferred to the theatres. Four models of public funding are juxtaposed with the state cultural policy objectives in theatrical activity set by the Constitution of the Russian Federation and federal statutory and regulatory enactments. The hypothesis that there is no direct orientation towards such objectives is put forward and fi nds its confi rmation. A new model based on the public grants mechanism that meets the requirement of being policy objective-oriented is proposed.

The paper looks into how the law formulated by A. Wagner can be used to stimulate economic growth in a post-crisis period. The major principles of the concept of fiscal economy are given. It is mainly focused on identifying regularities in perpetually growing state spending, which can be explained by increasing the fiscal needs of the state. On the basis of data from 1960 to 2015, this regularity is confi rmed for the G7 countries and Russia. It is shown that state spending goes up mostly due to growing pension payments. The authors present the results of Wagner’s Law testing obtained by researchers based on the analysis of data on both developed and developing countries. It has been discovered that it is impossible to conclude categorically about a positive effect of fiscal stimulation on economic growth. The main factors which affect the efficiency of the applied fi scal measures are described. Russia is given as an example, where the growth of state spending due to an increase in fiscal needs has not made it possible to ensure the necessary economic growth rate due to its low efficiency. The authors have found out that the main cause of the continually growing budget spending is a large share of the state presence in the Russian economy. This slows down the process of its recovery growth, which does not allow for realizing the existing potential. It has been concluded that state spending efficiency must be improved, among other things, due to a structural transformation of state spending in the budgeting system of the RF.

Financial and legal aspects in the formation of models of national debt management in the Russian Federation have become a topic of research. Having shown that the current state of legal regulation in national debt management is not effective due to the lack of legislative adherence to this concept and failure to take advantage of the various organizational models of national debt management, the authors offer a number of suggestions for the improvement of the budget legislation regulating questions of national debt management. A definition is given to the concept of “national debt management” and its standard and legal adherence in the Budget code of the Russian Federation and also three models of national debt management – traditional, alternative and mixed – are entered. National debt management is understood as a set of financial actions of the state represented by its authorities on the regulation of the size, structure and cost of servicing central government debt, and which are carried out at the strategic and tactical levels with use of a set of legal methods of regulation. It is pointed out that it is necessary to take into account the optimum scenario of social and economic development of the state – target (forced), infl uencing efficiency in national debt management. In practice, it has been proved that it is necessary to use the international experience in the sphere of national debt management, namely, to transform the traditional model of management into alternative, allowing it to exercise similar control of the independent subject, combining powers of public authority and fi nancial economic entity. As a similar subject, Vnesheconombank of Russia is offered. The importance of the interrelation of national debt management model with methods of central government debt management is emphasized.