This study expresses the need for a communications model created specifically for government communications that is centered on the concept of transparency. However, it also recognizes the previous research done pertaining to government communications and public relations. Importantly, the study recognizes the lack of trust in American government at city, state and federal levels and the need to improve trust, which is very closely related to transparency. The study focuses primarily on a model created in 2007 called the three-dimensional model for government communications. The model has four parts: the base of the model is the need to value transparency; the other three parts are communication practices, provision of resources, and organizational support. This study seeks to test and quantify the three-dimensional model through the creation of a survey based on the four parts of the three-dimensional model. The study seeks to determine if by following the guidelines established in the three-dimensional model a city will be more transparent. The findings come from the point of view of city communicators. Over two hundred city communicators from the largest cities in America participated in the study. The findings show that following the tenets of the three-dimensional model does in fact lead to greater transparency. Although the study only surveyed government communicators at the city level, the findings are important to government communicators at all levels of government. The study illustrates the importance of creating a communications plan that is based on transparency and the three-dimensional model. It also illustrates that the frustrations found at the federal level are similar to those faced at the city level. The study also sheds light on the need for future research pertaining to government communications.

No description available.

Darbe „Savivaldybių ekonominės ir socialinės funkcijos bei jų veiklos analizė“ aprašomos savivaldybių ekonominės ir socialinės funkcijos, pateikiama savivaldybių ekonominių ir socialinių funkcijų analizė, šioms sritims skiriamas savivaldybių finansavimas bei savivaldybių galimybės pasinaudoti Europos Sąjungos struktūrinių fondų parama socialinėms ir ekonominėms problemoms spręsti. Darbe bandoma išsiaiškinti savivaldybių teikiamų ekonominių ir socialinių paslaugų poreikį, įvairovę bei jų efektyvumą. Remiantis analize siūlomi savivaldybių ekonominių ir socialinių funkcijų tobulinimo kryptys ir būdai kaip didinti šių paslaugų efektyvumą. Tyrimo tikslas - atskleisti savivaldybių ekonominių ir socialinių funkcijų įgyvendinimo metu kylančias problemas ir jų priežastis, bei pasiūlyti galimus sprendimų variantus. Tyrimo hipotezė - Lietuvos savivaldybėse ekonominės ir socialinės funkcijos įgyvendinamos nepakankamai efektyviai. / In the Paper “The Economical and Social Functions of Self-Governments and Analysis of Their Activities”, the economical and social functions of self-governments are described, an analysis of economical and social functions of self-governments is provided, financing of self-governments allotted for these spheres as well as the opportunities of self-governments to use European Union‘s structural funds for a settlement of social and economical problems are discussed upon. Herein, it is tried to clear up the needs in economical and social services provided by self-governments, as well as diversity and efficiency of such services. On the base of the analysis, the directions of an improvement of economical and social functions of self-governments and the ways of increasing an efficiency of the said services are proposed. The aims of the investigation: to disclose problems arising on execution the economical and social functions of self-governments as well as their causes; to offer possible versions of their settlement. The hypothesis of the investigation: in Lithuania, execution the economical and social functions of self-governments is insufficiently efficient. In course of the investigation, the competence and functions of Lithuanian self-governments were reviewed, an analysis of an efficiency of the economical and social functions of self-governments was carried out, and attempts to go deep into the most urgent today problems of Lithuanian self-governments and to forecast... [to full text]

This thesis hinges upon the acknowledgement that Fiscal Decentralisation (FD) is an important ingredient in the current modernisation of government in numerous countries. Two basic questions are addressed. Firstly, it examines why some countries are more fiscally decentralised than others and secondly, it analyses the likely effects that such a decentralisation might have on the efficiency of the State. Two complementary approaches are followed to address the first question. Firstly, an econometric model to explain FD is estimated in Chapter I. The General Government appears to respond positively to income, population density, grants, military expenditures and trade. While urbanisation shows a negative effect, no significant impact on FD was detected in the cases of ethnic diversity and income distribution. As for decentralisation in the provision of housing and health, income has a negative effect. Also housing is negatively related to population density and positively affected by urbanisation. Secondly, the cases of USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Argentina, Mexico and Chile are put under close examination in two basic aspects. Chapter II analyses the funding mechanisms of Sub National Governments (SNGs). Chapter III focuses on those responsibilities being held by SNGs and their historical origin. Anglo-American and Spanish traditions seem to have had a major influence in the institutional evolution of some countries and the extent of their FD. Regarding the effects of FD, Chapter IV examines a range of variables to explain Government's performance. It uses a two stages procedure that combines Data Envelopment Analysis with a set of Tobit regressions. The basic conclusion is that FD does not seem to affect macroeconomic variables, but it does have a positive and significant effect on the government's provision of health and education.

CHDS State/Local / Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / State governments have been recognized as the fusion point for a significant portion of policy, operational, and implementation activities for homeland security. Additionally, the most critical decisions for allocating resources and prioritizing efforts have been delegated to states. The federal government has required this role of states and has asked them to organize task forces to deal with these challenges but has provided little guidance about how states might establish, administer, and ensure effectiveness of these structures. States have begun to establish decision-making bodies independently, inconsistently, and with few measurements to evaluate effectiveness. This thesis provides a roadmap to success for individual state organizational approaches for Homeland Security. The recommendations are based upon an analysis of directives, expectations, national strategies, existing approaches and a case study of one state's efforts. The call for organizing for the war on terror is acknowledged, accepted, and for the most part, vigorously answered. But how the nation's states organize and to what ends their resources are applied will determine national and even international victory in this war. This project provides a model charter, recommended outcomes and outputs for a state structure, and several policy considerations for the State of Washington's Homeland Security infrastructure. / Director, Washington State Emergency Management Division, Washington Military

This thesis tries to build a set of theoretical and empirical premises of the important issues pertaining to a decentralized government structure. While the questions that we attempt to answer in this thesis are varied, the common theme that runs through the essays is its focus on issues from a regional perspective. Our empirical outcomes are based on the Indian federal system, more specifically, the 15 major states of India, which account for over 90 per cent of the population and 95 per cent of GDP. The period under consideration is 1985 - 2000. We consider this to be a crucial period because a lot of stress in state finances emerged during this period. The research questions we broadly seek to answer are the following: 1. What are the causes of differences in developmental levels across the major Indian states? 2. What is the role of political alignment in determining the budgetary considerations of states? 3. What accounts for differences in human developmental outcomes across the states? 4. In normative terms, can it be argued that a decentralized structure need not automatically lead to the iformation of a hard budget constraint? Further, can it be claimed that under certain circumstances, particularly when dealing with State-run natural monopolies, that a soft budget constraint may lead to better outcomes? The starting point of our analysis or the first essay (Chapter 2) deals with the question as to why have Indian states had different levels of development and growth? The existing literature argues that states, which have followed better policies in terms of macroeconomic probity and identification of developmental issues, have had better outcomes, which we feel is an inherently circular argument. The existing literature does not answer the basic issue of what prompted certain states to follow better policies? We add to the burgeoning literature on growth in Indian states, by looking at institutional quality. We argue that some states in India have better institutions than others, and these have set better policies. We suggest that the level of political accountability and the quantum of 'point resources' such as minerals would have an impact on the quality of institutions. The idea being that a region can be 'cursed' with high mineral wealth and having unaccountable politicians. This can lead the politician to try to subvert institutional quality in these regions to facilitate 'rent seizing', leading to lower developmental and growth prospects for such states. We try to prove this through a theoretical model as well as an empirical exercise. The second essay (Chapter 3) is more empirical in its construct and analyses the impact of political affiliations and the quality of fiscal institutions on regional budget constraints. While we do not make any normative judgments here regarding the welfare implications of soft budgets, we argue that the correct political alignment and poor fiscal institutions might combine to lead a state to greater fiscal profligacy. This is because of the inability to have institutional checks on expenditures and due to a higher probability of an ex post bailout by the central government, through higher ad hoc transfers. The third essay (Chapter 4) considers not merely ' budgetary output' levels such as the quantum of expenditures, in isolation, but looks at the 'outcomes' of such expenditures, viz. the impact of expenditure on health on an 'outcome' indicator like Infant Mortality Rates (IMR). across the major Indian states. We argue that analyzing the budgetary allocations on any expenditure tells us merely half the story. Since the Indian states are constitutionally required to spend more on human development expenditures such as health and education as compared to the central government, the correct way to look at 'effective' expenditure would be to analyse the determinants of variation in 'outcome' indicators. We in our essay, consider variations in IMR to be our measure of 'outcomes'. We suggest that political accountability might have a major role in determining human developmental outcome levels through better utilization of expenditures. Since we argued in the second essay that the potentially harmful impact of poor fiscal institutions and political alignment, is softening of the budget constraint, our final essay (Chapter 5) is a theoretical piece of work, which looks at the micro-foundations of a 'soft budget constraint' and tries to analyse the normative issue of the welfare considerations in this regard. We try to prove two concomitant factors in the federalism and soft budget literature. First, contrary to some of the existing literature, decentralization, need not automatically increase a commitment to the hard budget and second, in normative terms, under certain circumstances, a 'soft budget' is preferable to a 'hard budget'. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Economics, 2004.

While the major goal of intergovernmental equalization transfers is the pursuit of equity, there are also a number of unintended consequences produced by equalization programs. In this dissertation we analyze the negative effect of equalization on the size of factors that are either used to measure the equalized jurisdictions' fiscal capacity in gap-filling equalization programs or are taxed with the purpose of further redistribution among jurisdictions in tax base sharing programs. We propose a theoretical framework in which the comparative statics analysis shows how equalization programs can induce substitution effect in the representative individual's consumption bundle via changes in the perceived price of the good that is associated with the size of the factor used to measure the equalized jurisdictions' fiscal capacity or taxed with the purpose of further redistribution among the jurisdictions. As the representative individual changes consumption of this good, the size of the factor also changes, resulting either in a reduction of the budget revenue collections or in the size of tax bases in the equalized jurisdictions. In the empirical part of this dissertation we examine the existence and economic significance of these effects using two cases of equalization programs. First, we examine the adverse effect of the equalization programs on revenue collections in Russia's regions where regional governments redistributed resources among their constituent municipalities based on the size of their actual revenue collections. Second, we examine the adverse effect of the tax base sharing program in the Twin Cities Metropolitan area of Minnesota on the size of commercial and industrial property where this property is taxed at a uniform rate and then reassigned to the municipalities in the inverse proportion to the size of their per capita real property. In both cases our empirical results support the hypothesis that the equalization programs adversely affect the size of the factors that are used to measure the equalized jurisdictions' fiscal capacity or that are taxed with the purpose of further redistribution among jurisdictions in tax base sharing programs.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Supervisors: Peter Trubowitz and Rodolfo de la Garza. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request