Productivity is a key performance measure, consisting of the ratio of outputs produced to the inputs used in producing them. Since at least the 1980s, public management scholars have analysed the determinants of productivity among public sector organisations, mirroring the approach undertaken by...

The rapid changes in electoral systems and party systems in Britain since 1997 pose fundamental problems of explanation both for electoral system analysts and for students of British politics. We first describe the main types of electoral system change introduced and show how the new systems...

The co-Director of Democratic Audit, Professor Patrick Dunleavy was asked by the leading Scottish newspaper, the Sunday Post, to write a report on the costs of transitioning to a new government in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote in Scotland’s independence referendum. The report argues that an...

Starting from Walzer's account of `complex equality', an integrated treatment is given of three fundamental decision principles - equality of supply, proportional equality and equality of deficits - which between them exhaust all applications of `equality' considerations in policy analysis. They...

The role of innovations in improving government productivity and the effectiveness of services has previously been little studied. This report surveys central departments and agencies to ascertain what kinds of innovations they have recently made, and analyses the factors that they see as...

Productivity is defined as the ratio of outputs to inputs. When applied to the public sector, productivity becomes a key performance indicator that shows how efficiently public resources are employed in providing public services. Until not too long ago productivity in the public sector was...