Jennifer Dineen, Mark D. Robbins and Bill Simonsen
Fiscal conditions and budget constraints in the United States have placed solutions to budget deficit problems at the center of the public policy debate. Preferences for deficit…
Abstract
Fiscal conditions and budget constraints in the United States have placed solutions to budget deficit problems at the center of the public policy debate. Preferences for deficit reduction strategies are likely to be heavily associated with particular ideologies and other demographic and economic variables. Therefore, since this study is a true randomized experiment, it provides strong evidence about the influence of question wording on deficit reduction preferences, and therefore the likelihood it is susceptible to manipulation. We find clear evidence that using the word ‘tax’ significantly and substantially influences respondents’ choices. This result is robust over two experimental trials about a year apart and whether or not control variables are included.
Within the Minister of Education's expanded programme of educational building the influences of the Industrial Training Bill, the Robbins Report and the Newsom Report are all to…
Mark D. Robbins, Bill Simonsen and Emily Shepard
This article reports on a design for citizen identified performance measures for budgeting that seeks to overcome problems of validity and representativeness that typically exist…
Abstract
This article reports on a design for citizen identified performance measures for budgeting that seeks to overcome problems of validity and representativeness that typically exist in citizen involvement processes. This design selected participants using random sampling so that each resident had the same chance of being invited to be in one of the focus groups that worked to develop outcome measures for a set of town services. In order to assure that the resulting measures were helpful to residents at large, an additional phase of the process involved a large sample survey of town residents to validate the results. The results were a set of performance measures that were developed by a small group of citizens that the population at large found useful to them when thinking about local services.
Mark D. Robbins and Bill Simonsen
In this article we explore two citizen-based approaches to solving the problem of selecting a desirable level of public goods for a jurisdiction. The first approach seeks to…
Abstract
In this article we explore two citizen-based approaches to solving the problem of selecting a desirable level of public goods for a jurisdiction. The first approach seeks to inform decision-makers about citizens’ preferences by observing the choices of citizens faced with the actual budget constraint facing the government and asking them to choose service levels within that constraint. The second approach gauges citizens’ willingness-to-pay for their share of the cost of a desired level of public expenditure. In an effort to foster discussion and research into new modes of citizen participation in resource allocation we pose a model that combines both the constraints of the jurisdiction with the tax share of the respondent into a survey methodology that will reveal the underlying demand for government services in ways that are useful for public managers.
The subject I have been asked to speak to is EEC Social Policy so before examining what the EEC is doing in the social field, perhaps I should just outline its principal…