Bureaucratic Effectiveness Through EGovernment: Institutional or Technological Determinism Theory an

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Bureaucratic Effectiveness Through E-Government
Institutional or Technological Determinism?
Theory and Cross-National Evidence

• Rumel Mahmood AABEA
• WashU. in St. Louis Dec.
  2006
  New York

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Outline

• What is E-governance and why is it important?
• Theories of state capacity and bureaucratic
  delegation
• Evidence of the determinants of e-governance from
  145 countries worldwide

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1. What is e-governance and why is it important?
(Boilerplate)

• E-governance is the ability of a state to
  interact and conduct transactions with its
  citizens, or businesses, through the internet or
  wireless technology
• Almost always provides citizens, businesses, and
  governments substantial cost-savings
• E-governance enables a government to interact
  with its citizens or businesses 24/7/365
• In the nomenclature of e-commerce, e-governance
  streamlines G2C, G2B, and G2G interactions
• In short, e-governance is an important component
  of a states capacity

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The E-government literature

• CEG (2001)
• The Economist (2000)
• Heeks (1999)
• Fountain (2001)
• UNPAN (2002, 2003)
• Mahmood (2004)
• Can e-government reduce corruption? A Case Study
  from South Asia

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The Research Centers (US)

• NCDG, KSG _at_ Harvard
• NSF Digital Government Research Program
• The Center for Digital Government (Folsom, CA)
• The E-governance Institute, Rutgers (NJ)
• Centre for Excellence for Electronic Government,
  St.Gallen (Switz.)
• Centre for Electronic Governance, India Institute
  for Management-Ahemedabad (Gujurat)

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Some of the luminaries

• Weber (1958) Modern bureaucracies are needed to
  cope with industrialization, and are also made
  possible because of industrial advancement.
• Riker (1964) Each advance in the technology of
  transportation makes it possible to rule a larger
  geographic area from once center, to fill a
  treasury more abundantly, to maintain a larger
  bureaucracy and police, and most important of
  all, to assemble a larger army.Hence it is that
  technological change and a sense of competition
  together guarantee that governments will expand
  to the full extent that technology permits (2).
• So, Is technology deterministic?

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No, Technology is not deterministic

• Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) Theory
• The impact and effects of a technology are highly
  mediated by societal factors the impact is not
  linear (Bijker 1993 Smith Marx 1994)

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2. Theories of state capacity and bureaucratic
delegation

• Objective In search of testable hypotheses
• Let us be deductive, not inductive
• It is easy to run regressions
• Heeks (1999) Political will necessary? I.e.,
  high seat share?

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Polisci examples from formal (game) theory

• Geddes (1994) Stalemate has lead to bureaucratic
  reform in Latin American countries
• Epstein OHalloran (1996, 1999) Huber and
  Shipan (2002) Policy conflict has lead to
  decreased discretion allocated to bureaucrats
• Huber Shipan (2002, 25) the administrative
  state does not exist all bureaucrats must
  ultimately heed the warnings and interests of
  Congress, at least in the US Case. Cites some
  limited cross-national evidence

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Remaining Questions from Bureaucratic Literature

• Does the findings of Geddes (1994) and Epstein
  OHalloran (1996, 1999) and Huber Shipan (2002)
  conflict? Or are they mutually exclusive?
• The former argues that stalemate led to
  bureaucratic reform, while the latter argue
  stalemate leads to less discretion in
  bureaucratic delegation

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Proposal a Unification

• Something that attempts to quantify stalemate
  beyond dummy variables of divided or unified
  legislature may be suggestive
• Using such a measure for explaining large-N study
  of a policy or bureaucratic outcome

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3. Evidence of e-governance from 145 countries
worldwide

• The hypotheses
• Data
• Operationalization of the variables
• Regression analyses

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Hypotheses

• H1 Technology will be most significant factor in
  explaining cross-national variation
• H2 Institutions in terms of democracy vs.
  autocracy will be most significant factor in
  explaining cross-national variation (Dahl 1971)
• H3 Parliamentary vs. presidential
• Persson and Tabellini (2000a, 2000b)

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Hypotheses

• H4 The quality of a nations e-government
  presence will improve when the government parties
  control a smaller seat share
• H5 The quality of a countrys national
  e-government presence will improve when the
  amount of ideological polarization between
  executive and legislature increases

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The Dependent Variable

• Web Quality Information Services
• UNPAN data from 2001
• 6 months of observation for each country
• 145 countries
• Measures quality of website, with goal of
  measuring service orientation and ability of site
• 1-4 scale with 0.25 increments

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Data The Independent Variables

• Economics/Technology/Development UNPAN, World
  Bank
• GDP PPP 2001
• Technology variables
• Political Rights Freedom House
• Government power Database of Political
  Institutions
• Herfindahl Index
• Polarization

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GDP Per Capita Technology Correlation

• Web 0.66
• PCs per 100 0.92
• Internet Hosts 0.66
• Population Online 0.84
• Telephones per 1000 0.91
• Mobile Phones per 1000 0.91
• TVs per 1000 0.77
• InfoIndex 0.6
• Egov Index 0.78
• .

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Herfindahl Index

• The sum of the squared seat shares of all
  parties in the government. Equals NA if there is
  no parliament. If there are any government
  parties where seats are unknown (cell is blank),
  the Herfindahl is also blank. No parties in the
  legislature (0 in 1GOVSEAT) results in a NA in
  the Herfindahl. In the case of other parties,
  Herfindahl divides the number of other seats by
  the number of other parties and uses this
  average for the size of the other parties.
  Independents are calculated as if they were
  individual parties with one seat each.

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Control Variables

• Trade
• James (1999) Globalization is a function of
  trade (in ICTs)
• M2
• Amount of liquidity in the economy
• Aid (Wade 2002)
• Developing countries only improve in e-government
  because of donors

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Regression Equation

• Web Quality a ß1log(GDP/capita) ß2(Trade2)
  ß3(M2) ß4(Aid) ß5(Democarcy)
  ß6(Parliamentary) ß7(Presidential)
  ß8(Herfindahl Index) e
• With continental fixed effects (results not
  shown, but not altered greatly. Reveals Africa is
  not doing as well as other continents.)

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Dependent Variable Quality of E-gov, 1-5
-.8269 .7002 .4768 .0792 -.0128 .0065 .00005 .
00003 .0036 .0023 -.0481 .0374 -.0470 .0246 -.3
206 .2256 .0273 .0879
-.1876 .7352 .5364 .0759 -.0162 .0057 .00006
.00003 .0006 .0022 -.0869 .0382 -.6816 .2328
-.4236 .2195 -.6223 .2424
-.0.918 .6736 .5508 .0732 -.0156 .0058 .00006
.00003 .0009 .0022 -.0827 .0351 -.5968 .2354
-.3459 .2201
-1.711 .0584 0.6108 .0684 -.0159 .0059 .000
07 .00003 .0005 -.0482 .0235 -.0343 .02246
-1.77 .6407 0.5796 .07934 -.0184 .0063 .000
08 .00003 .0019 .0022 .0017 .0023
Intercept Log(Income) Trade Trade2 M2 Aid D
emocracy Parliamentary Presidential Herfindahl
Polarization
0.592 85 0.624 3.29e-15
0.6088 93 0.6001 1.33e-15
0.6222 103 0.5575 8.76e-16
0.6327 106 0.5315 1.55e-15
0.631 99 0.457 6.51e-12
RSE DF R2 p-value
0.001 0.01 0.05 0.1
Significant Codes
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Preliminary Conclusions

• Political Institutional Variables play an
  important role
• Decreases in the strength of the government
  play a most explanatory role in leading to good
  electronic governance
• (Politics is more important in fixed-effect
  models results not shown)

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Future Considerations

• Principles components analysis (PCA) to combine
  technological variables
• Time-series analysis with 2001-2005 data
• UNPAN, Accenture, CapGemini
• Panel-corrected standard errors (PCSEs) lagged
  dependent variable
• Case studiesthick description to strengthen
  the thin description
• Federalism context

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Multi-level analysis? Federalism

• Continent
• Country
• Bureaucracy/Agency
• Sub-national/State
• Bureaucracy/Agency
• Local
• Bureaucracy/Agency