Resource Stability and Federal Agency Performance

Resources are essential for organizations to cope with challenges and to achieve their desirable outcomes. Although much scholarly attention has been paid to the type or level of resources allocated or used to enhance organizational effectiveness, relatively little effort has been made to analyze whether and how resource changes influence organizational performance. Considering today’s unstable fiscal climate, this study focuses on how government agencies respond to their budget fluctuations—both gains and cuts—and their distinctive impact on agency performance. Using data from the Performance and Accountability Reports from FY 2004 through FY 2014, we analyze the effect of budgetary resource changes on organizational performance in 52 U.S. federal agencies. Findings show that agency effectiveness is significantly influenced by budget changes. In particular, we find an asymmetric relationship between budgetary resource changes and organizational performance. It appears that budget cuts are not associated with changes in agency performance, whereas budgetary resource gains are associated with dampened agency effectiveness. Ultimately, this study provides insights into public organizations’ resilience and calls for considering change management perspectives when exploring resource–performance linkages.

Tourist tax administration in the fiscal target system for hospitality businesses

Decentralization reforms cause social challenges and shape a new configuration, conditions and behavioral etiquette for business entities in the fiscal environment of local communities in Ukraine. Destinations with significant tourism potential can form a powerful budgetary resource through local taxes, including tourist tax. The study aims to develop a tourist tax administration system in the context of drawing up local budgets and fiscal targets of hospitality businesses. The dynamics of tourist tax revenues to local budgets was traced, which shows a rapid growth in the pre-pandemic period by 47.1% and a slight decrease in 2020. The forecast indicators for the tourist tax growth are determined: by the end of 2022, it is 73.4% compared to 2019. The likelihood of achieving such results is justified by the increase in domestic tourist flows and the possibilities of increasing the efficiency of the tourist tax administration system. Most united territorial communities (UTC) have problems with formalizing the management process, lack of strategic vision, partial or complete lack of information on budgeting and administration of taxes and fees, including tourist tax. This led to the following proposals: the development of strategies and tactics that motivate fiscal discipline; assistance to cooperation of hospitality entities with UTCs; providing digitalization, agilization and forward-looking improvements that set benchmarks for business. The emphasis is on hospitality businesses’ ability of effectively utilize the financial resources generated by the tourist tax, which will contribute to developing the overall potential of UTCs and shaping the competitiveness of territories.

Shadow Economies and the Success of Economic Sanctions: Explaining Why Democratic Targets Are Disadvantaged

The sanctions literature has identified numerous mechanisms by which the adverse economic effects of sanctions impact their success rate. This body of work, however, has mostly focused on targets’ formal economies and has thus overlooked whether sanctions-induced changes in shadow (also known as informal) economic activity influence sanctions’ effectiveness. In this article, we develop two rival arguments that can potentially explain how shadow sector growth affects sanctions’ outcomes. Our grievance mitigation theory argues that increased shadow sector activity decreases the political pressure on leaders to capitulate to sanctions, while our disadvantaged democracy theory asserts that shadow economies create budgetary resource demands and deficits that disproportionately hamper democratic targets’ ability to resist sanctions. We assess the empirical merits of the two theories using time-series cross-national data for 1950–2005. We find robust evidence that the growth of shadow economies increases the likelihood of sanctions’ success in democratic targets while not significantly affecting the success rate of sanctions against non-democratic regimes. Our findings shed new light on the processes by which the economic disruptions and hardships created by sanctions translate into pressure on targeted regimes to concede to sanctions.

United territorial communities in Ukraine in the context of fiscal decentralization

Since the beginning of the administrative and territorial reform in Ukraine, the financial decentralization process has been intensified. It aims at optimizing the budgetary resource redistribution in order to make communities financially independent. This significantly increases the financial capacity for self-organization and self-development of a united territorial community, which determines the need to apply valuation methods to increase the territory’s investment attractiveness.The article outlines the peculiarities of the united territorial communities (UTCs) management under fiscal decentralization, taking into account the need to apply current methods of value-oriented management. At the same time, the use of SWOT analysis as one of the methods of value-oriented management made it possible to evaluate the efficiency and attractiveness of UTCs under decentralization. The financial activity of 665 UTCs was analyzed and the model for managing the united territorial community was created. It is emphasized that the modern understanding of financial support for united territorial communities remains unresolved today, and the expediency to introduce changes in the UTC, which envisage using the subsidiarity principles, is not justified.The key directions for managing the UTCs are identified. This refers to communities that began their activities and already faced the first challenges: management of available resources, provision of needs and sustainable development of the community, changes in the ratio of their income and expenditure components, increase in the budget income per capita.It is recommended to focus on tools of value-oriented management in the united territorial communities in order to attract investors and increase the financial capacity of local authorities.

IMPLEMENTASI KEBIJAKAN PEMANFAATAN SUMBER DAYA KEHUTANAN DI KABUPATEN KONAWE SELATAN

The purpose of this study is to analyze the implementation of forestry resource utilization policies, and the factors that influence the successful implementation of forestry resource utilization policies in Konawe Selatan District. This study uses a qualitative research approach to investigate and analyze three pillars of the implementation process, namely the elaboration of policies, organizing the implementing apparatus, and budgeting and spending; and the influence of resource factors, implementing organization characteristics, implementing attitudes, and the conditions of the target group, on the implementation process. Primary and secondary data were collected by interview, observation, and document study methods, then analyzed by interactive analysis procedures which included data reduction, data presentation, and conclusions/verification.The results of the study indicate that the implementation of the policy on the utilization of forestry resources which includes the elaboration of policies, the organizing of the implementing apparatus, and the preparation of budgets and expenditures, has not run effectively. In these three processes there are still gaps so that the achievement of policy objectives seen from the perspective of household welfare, the policy objectives have not been achieved well. The gap in the implementation of forestry resource utilization policies occurs because of the influence of budgetary resource factors that are lower than needed, implementing organizations that do not yet have adequate service standards and human resource competencies, implementation who do not understand the basic tasks and functions of the organization, and target groups who are still depressed by poverty and low education. Keywords: Implementation, Forestry Resources, Welfare

China's “Soft” Centralization: Shifting Tiao/Kuai Authority Relations

This article analyses China's recent attempts to counter “local protectionism” and establish standardization in policy implementation and enforcement by centralizing a growing number of its regulatory bureaucracies up to the provincial level (what I refer to as “soft” centralization). In this article, I argue that Beijing's experiment with soft centralization, while successful to some extent, has nevertheless fallen short of its goals and that thus far this transformation remains imperfect and incomplete. The institutional cleavages and fragmentation that so often give rise to corruption and other pathologies of the state appear to have shifted from horizontal, geographic lines to vertical, functional ones. Moreover, the principal beneficiaries of this shift to centralized management are the provinces, not Beijing, as the institutional mechanisms of personnel and budgetary resource allocations are concentrated at the provincial level. Although this has curbed localism to a degree by transferring power from local governments to the newly centralized bureaucracies, it has also contributed to a situation in which newly strengthened provinces may play a key role in the emergence of a sort of perverse federalism.