We use data from the World Values Survey to describe and compare levels of confidence in the civil service in a series of countries, and study determinants of this confidence. Instead of focusing on citizen satisfaction with specific public services in a specific country, we analyze citizens’...

Measuring and comparing the overall performance of countries' public sectors requires agreement on definitions and objectives of government. I argue that such an agreement is about finding a consensus rather about finding better definitions. Measuring government requires a number of leaps of...

There is an increasing interest to study public administrations, public managers or citizens interactions with, and views towards government from a comparative perspective in order to put theories to test using cross-national surveys. However, this will only succeed if we adequately deal with...

The measurement and comparison of the public administration output of universities is an important means for mapping the state of the field. Yet, such exercises are very sensitive to design choices made in the ranking and measurement methodology. Following an overview of existing research on...

Purpose of this paper: A number of studies and indicators have ranked European countries in terms of the performance of their public sectors. This paper demonstrates there are important conceptual problems with such rankings and comparisons.Design/methodology/approach: Using the existing...

We use data from the World Values Survey to describe and compare levels of confidence in the civil service in a series of countries, and study determinants of this confidence. Instead of focusing on citizen satisfaction with specific public services in a specific country, we analyze citizens’...