The Politics of Service Delivery Reform

This article identifies the leaders, the supporters and the resisters of public service reform. It adopts a principal–agent framework, comparing reality with an ‘ideal’ situation in which citizens are the principals over political policy-makers as their agents, and policy-makers are the principals over public service officials as their agents. Reform in most developing countries is complicated by an additional set of external actors — international financial institutions and donors. In practice, international agencies and core government officials usually act as the ‘principals’ in the determination of reforms. The analysis identifies the interests involved in reform, indicating how the balance between them is affected by institutional and sectoral factors. Organizational reforms, particularly in the social sectors, present greater difficulties than first generation economic policy reforms

Fungicide resistance of smco mutants of Neurospora crassa.

Fungicide resistance of smco mutants of Neurospora crassa

Fungicide-resistant os mutants of Neurospora crassa

Fungicide-resistant os mutants of Neurospora crass

Variations among extrachromosomal mutants of N. crassa

Variations among extrachromosomal mutant

Assessing Communities of Practice in health policy : A conceptual framework as a first step towards empirical research

Peer reviewe

Measuring the capability to raise revenue process and output dimensions and their application to the Zambia revenue authority

The worldwide diffusion of the good governance agenda and new public management has triggered a renewed focus on state capability and, more specifically, on the capability to raise revenue in developing countries. However, the analytical tools for a comprehensive understanding of the capability to raise revenue remain underdeveloped. This article aims at filling this gap and presents a model consisting of the three process dimensions ‘information collection and processing’, ‘merit orientation’ and ‘administrative accountability’. ‘Revenue performance’ constitutes the fourth capability dimension which assesses tax administration’s output. This model is applied to the case of the Zambia Revenue Authority. The dimensions prove to be valuable not only for assessing the how much but also the how of collecting taxes. They can be a useful tool for future comparative analyses of tax administrations’ capabilities in developing countries.Die weltweite Verbreitung der Good-Governance- und New-Public-Management-Konzepte hat zu einer zunehmenden Konzentration auf staatliche Leistungsfähigkeit und, im Besonderen, auf die Leistungsfähigkeit der Steuererhebung in Entwicklungsländern geführt. Allerdings bleiben die analytischen Werkzeuge für ein umfassendes Verständnis von Leistungsfähigkeit unterentwickelt. Dieser Artikel stellt hierfür ein Modell vor, das die drei Prozess-Dimensionen „Sammeln und Verarbeiten von Informationen“, „Leistungsorientierung der Mitarbeiter“ und „Verantwortlichkeit der Verwaltung“ beinhaltet. „Einnahmeperformanz“ ist die vierte Dimension und erfasst den Output der Steuerverwaltung. Das mehrdimensionale Modell wird für die Analyse der Leistungsfähigkeit der Steuerbehörde Zambias (Zambia Revenue Authority) genutzt. Es erweist sich nicht nur für die Untersuchung des Wieviel, sondern auch des Wie des Erhebens von Steuern als wertvoll. Die vier Dimensionen können in Zukunft zur umfassenden und vergleichenden Analyse der Leistungsfähigkeit verschiedener Steuerverwaltungen in Entwicklungsländern genutzt werden

Epigenetic gene regulation by Janus kinase 1 in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma

Janus kinases (JAKs) classically signal by activating STAT transcription factors but can also regulate gene expression by epigenetically phosphorylating histone H3 on tyrosine 41 (H3Y41-P). In diffuse large B-cell lymphomas (DLBCLs), JAK signaling is a feature of the activated B-cell (ABC) subtype and is triggered by autocrine production of IL-6 and IL-10. Whether this signaling involves STAT activation, epigenetic modification of chromatin, or both mechanisms is unknown. Here we use genetic and pharmacological inhibition to show that JAK1 signaling sustains the survival of ABC DLBCL cells. Whereas STAT3 contributed to the survival of ABC DLBCL cell lines, forced STAT3 activity could not protect these cells from death following JAK1 inhibition, suggesting epigenetic JAK1 action. JAK1 regulated the expression of nearly 3,000 genes in ABC DLBCL cells, and the chromatin surrounding many of these genes was modified by H3Y41-P marks that were diminished by JAK1 inhibition. These JAK1 epigenetic target genes encode important regulators of ABC DLBCL proliferation and survival, including IRF4, MYD88, and MYC. A small molecule JAK1 inhibitor cooperated with the BTK inhibitor ibrutinib in reducing IRF4 levels and acted synergistically to kill ABC DLBCL cells, suggesting that this combination should be evaluated in clinical trials.This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH National Cancer Institute, the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW–Madison) start-up funds, KL2 Scholar Awards UL1TR0000427 and KL2TR000428, the National Cancer Institute Grant 1R01 CA187299 (to L.R.), and the UW–Madison T32 Hematology Training Award T32 HL07899 (to A.C.D.)

Sanctions, Benefits, and Rights: Three Faces of Accountability

As countries throughout the world democratize and decentralize, citizen participation in public life should increase. In this paper, I suggest that democratic participation in local government is enhanced when citizens can reply affirmatively to at least three questions about their ability to hold local officials accountable for their actions: Can citizens use the vote effectively to reward and punish the general or specific performance of local public officials and/or the parties they represent? Can citizens generate response to their collective needs from local governments? Can citizens be ensured of fair and equitable treatment from public agencies at local levels? The findings of a study of 30 randomly selected municipalities in Mexico indicate that, over the course of a decade and a half, voters were able to enforce alternation in power and the circulation of elites, but not necessarily to transmit unambiguous messages to public officials or parties about performance concerns. More definitively, citizens were able to build successfully on prior political experiences to extract benefits from local governments. At the same time, the ability to demand good performance of local government as a right of citizenship lagged behind other forms of accountability

Poverty reduction during 1990-2013: did millennium development goals adoption and state capacity matter?

While poverty reduction remains central in the Post-2015 Agenda, its determinants remain debated in the literature, especially the role of structural conditions related to governance. This paper provides an assessment of two key dimensions: the global adoption of MDGs and state capacity. We do so by studying whether they facilitated convergence in income poverty measures, using cross-section and panel methods, with data on 89 developing economies for the period 1990–2013. We find that poverty headcount and gap measures tended to decrease faster in countries with initially higher income poverty. Such convergence accelerated after 2000, suggesting that MDGs adoption was instrumental to poverty reduction. However, this still leaves unexplained substantial variation in poverty reduction performance across countries. Such variation is explained by state capacity: countries with greater ability to administer their territories in 1990 experienced faster income poverty reduction and were more likely to have achieved the MDG target. This result is insensitive to robust regression methods and to a large set of controls (initial level of income, dependence on natural resources, education and health inputs, dependence on foreign aid, ethnic fractionalization, regional effects and a set of governance variables). As good governance and effective institutions are included in the Sustainable Development Goals, this result provides empirical justification for this move, suggesting that more effective states could be crucial to sustain the development progress achieved so far