International Review of Administrative Sciences 

About: International Review of Administrative Sciences is an academic journal published by SAGE Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Public sector & Government. It has an ISSN identifier of 0020-8523. Over the lifetime, 1808 publications have been published receiving 34919 citations.

Governing the smart city: a review of the literature on smart urban governance:

Abstract: Academic attention to smart cities and their governance is growing rapidly, but the fragmentation in approaches makes for a confusing debate. This article brings some structure to the debate by analyzing a corpus of 51 publications and mapping their variation. The analysis shows that publications differ in their emphasis on (1) smart technology, smart people or smart collaboration as the defining features of smart cities, (2) a transformative or incremental perspective on changes in urban governance, (3) better outcomes or a more open process as the legitimacy claim for smart city governance. We argue for a comprehensive perspective: smart city governance is about crafting new forms of human collaboration through the use of ICTs to obtain better outcomes and more open governance processes. Research into smart city governance could benefit from previous studies into success and failure factors for e-government and build upon sophisticated theories of socio-technical change. This article highlights that sma...

Government Decentralization in Comparative Perspective: Theory and Practice in Developing Countries

Abstract: The need to decentralize development planning and management has become a recurring theme in the plans and policies of international assistance agencies and developing nations in recent years. With the shifting emphasis in development strategies toward promoting more socially equitable economic growth and meeting the basic needs of the poorest groups in developing societies, widespread participation in decision-making is considered essential to the development process, and decentralization has been advocated as a way of eliciting that participation.

Public–Private Partnerships: from Contested Concepts to Prevalent Practice:

Abstract: This article explores the current state of knowledge in relation to public–private partnerships (PPPs), taken to mean working arrangements based on a mutual commitment (over and above that implied in any contract) between a public sector organization with any organization outside of the public sector. Since it originally became fashionable over 25 years ago, the concept of PPPs has been strongly contested. However, PPPs are now to be found in the public domain in many countries around the world and their number has been increasing in recent years. This article looks at how this has happened, what have been the strengths and weaknesses of this development and what the future may hold for PPPs. It argues that we are still at an early stage of learning which types of PPP are appropriate for which tasks and at managing PPPs to increase public value. It will be essential to apply principles of good governance to the future development of PPPs — but it will also be necessary to ensure that these principles are ...

Open government: connecting vision and voice

Abstract: The term open government is often used to describe initiatives of putting government information on the Internet. This conceptualization is too restricted since open government is not only about openness in informational terms (vision) but also about openness in interactive terms (voice). On the basis of an analysis of 103 articles, this article provides insight into the concepts of openness, transparency and participation, their interactions, and the manner in which they have been discussed in the literature. This analysis shows the differences and similarities between economic, political science and legal perspectives on open government and argues that a multidisciplinary approach needs to be taken. The authors conclude that open government is much too important to leave it to the ‘techies’: scientists and practitioners with backgrounds in law, economics, political science and public administration should also get involved to build sound connections between vision and voice that facilitate active citize...

Comparing measures of citizen trust and user satisfaction as indicators of good governance: difficulties in linking trust and satisfaction indicators

Abstract: Until recently, public administration mainly used so-called ‘hard indicators’, such as resources and outputs, to monitor performance. Increased attention on accountability and issues around impacts and outcomes have stimulated the introduction of ‘soft’ indicators — e.g. citizen and user satisfaction targets. Moreover, there is increased demand for information on performance in relation to ‘governance’ as a whole, including ‘quality of life’ indicators. Politicians, journalists and citizens increasingly express their worries about a decreasing level of trust in government and the detrimental effects this has on government and on the cohesion of society — they appear to assume that more trust and more satisfaction equal better governance. Increasing the quality of governance will thus also lead to citizens who are more satisfied and more trusting. This article shows that current attempts to measure trust and satisfaction in government are misleading if they claim to be measuring good governance for two reasons. First, satisfaction is difficult to measure and very servicespecific. Second, trust in government is easier to measure but its linkages with good governance are far from clear. Even when trust in government can be measured, it is not at all clear whether changes in the level of trust are actually influenced by government-related factors. We suggest, finally, the hypothesis that trust could be insufficient but necessarily part of a set of indicators which are unnecessary but sufficient for good governance.