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Estonian Science Foundation awared three new personal research grants to researchers at DPA for 2012-2015.
Prof. Tiina Randma-Liiv was awarded a grant on the topic 'The impact of economic crisis on public management: the case of Estonia'.
Description of the project: Besides explicit consequences to the economy, the recent economic crisis has invaded also patterns of governance, though these changes may not be as immediately visible. Although a variety of indicators started to refer that the recovery phase of the financial crisis began already in 2010, the crisis will have long aftermath for the public sector as austerity measures will most likely last for several years to come. The basic question about public management responses to the crisis is whether the governments maintain their existing paths of governing or whether the crisis initiates change, and even fundamental change, in the patterns of public management. The main goal of this project is to analyze the impact of the economic crisis on public management patterns within the central government of Estonia. The research project will address the following questions: Is the financial crisis a result of systemic failures in public management? Has the economic crisis influenced the patterns of governance? What is the scale of changes? Does the crisis cause temporary or more enduring shifts in public management? Are the short-term changes and long-term trends in accordance with each other? Has the crisis influenced public management reforms towards NPM or away from NPM ideas? If the latter, which tendencies could be identified? As the limited scale of the ESF grant does not allow analyzing an entire complexity of public management, the project focuses more specifically on three key sub-topics of public management: decision-making process, public sector organization and performance management. The project will apply a combination of explorative and explanatory design by combining literature review, analysis of relevant policy documents, in-depth interviews, case studies, and workshops with practicing civil servants. The aim is to publish at least five internationally peer-reviewed articles on the basis of this research project. An additional deliverable of the project involves policy recommendations which will be discussed with politicians and practising civil servants in relevant workshops in the final phase of the project.
Dr. Veiko Lember was awared a grant on the topic 'Public-private partnerships and public service delivery: impact on economic development'
Description of the project: The academic debate in the field of Public Administration and Management has to a large extent ignored the question whether contractual public-private partnerships in public service delivery can be deliberately used to facilitate innovation, technology development and, therefore, economic development in general. At the same time, the economic development aspects of public service delivery have been getting a growing attention in other fields, most notably in developmental studies, innovation policy and evolutionary economics, where public sector contracting with private sector – be it in the form of traditional procurement, contracting-out of public services or more mutual partnership mechanisms – is seen as potentially a powerful tool to be used to facilitate economic development. Moreover, many governments around the world are currently re-discovering policies from 1970s that would put public procurement – usually worth 10-20% of countries GDP – explicitly into the service of technology and innovation policies. This research project sets out to address issues related to the above-mentioned phenomenon. The project aims at studying the role of public service delivery mechanisms (either in the form of public procurement or public-private partnerships) in economic development through a comparative perspective. The project combines theoretical and methodological perspectives from public administration, innovation systems theory and evolutionary economics. The project first starts with analyzing the case of Estonia and then situates the context of Estonia into the international perspective by comparing Estonia with countries from Europe as well as Asia and America. This allows one to explore the link between the most crucial dependent variables demonstrating the impact of public service delivery on economic development (such as share of public procurement for innovation in overall public procurement, the effect and spillovers from contracting for public services to technology development and innovation in private sector etc.) with possible explaining factors (such as environmental factors, e.g. globalization, ideology, myths etc.; cultural processes/institutional context, e.g. path-dependence, values, national innovation systems; and formal structures, e.g. hierarchical vs negotiational polity, size of country, market structure).
Dr. Erkki Karo was awared a grant on the topic 'Institutions and economic development in East Asia and Central and Eastern Europe'
Description of the project: Probably the most accurate diagnosis of economic development challenges of the Central and Eastern European economies (CEE) is the need for structural economic change towards more value-added economic activities and comparative advantage. The problem is that this diagnosis has not really led to policies supporting structural change in a desired manner (i.e., sustainable catching-up or convergence with the EU). The recent economic crisis and policy responses have spelled this out most explicitly. This project sets out to analyze and explain the reasons for the relative failure of the CEE economies to pursue structural economic change, even in times of apparent opportunities. The project contributes to the research of economic development in the CEE through two new research lenses: a) systemic institutional analysis of the evolution of political and economic institutions of the CEE development models, at both the level of macroeconomic and microeconomic policy; b) comparative analysis and search for explanation of East Asian and the CEE development trajectories and policy change during the 1990s and 2000s. The project draws on the classic institutional analyses of the evolution of East Asian development models (Amsden, Haggard, Johnson, Wade), as similar approaches are lacking in the CEE, and refines these approaches for the context of the CEE, and for taking into account the politico-economic and socio-institutional developments of the 2000s in the CEE and East Asia.
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