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The European Union is interested in ensuring that each national administration offers comparable administrative capacity through quality of public services and professionalism from the civil servants. At the same time, the European states are characterised by long and varied institutional histories, with different trajectories in their evolution. That is why, public administration structures and regulations vary among the Member States and a set of common principles can guide them towards administrative convergence and performance. This paper aims to analyze the shared principles of a common European Administrative Space and also to address the link between these principles and the performance of public institutions from a managerial point of view. The study is based on review and analysis of academic research, government documents and personal perspectives, extracting and linking key findings from existing research and practice. The paper argues that managerial theories on performance are compatible with public administration organizations and some of the criteria are common to those promoted by the principles of the European Administrative Space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper argues that the re-emergence of a universal service debate is a political reaction to the deregulation process and an attempt to force the role of the state and public services higher on the agenda at EU level. To this end, the concepts of ‘service public’ and ‘public services’ are explored in light of telecommunication deregulation and public service provision as expressed by the universal service obligation (USO) in France, Great Britain, Belgium and Norway. Attention is paid to the importance of securing general access to telecommunications. Findings suggest the legitimating effect of USO is greater than its practical effects, and that market, competition, and technology have largely addressed problems with universal access, equality, continuity and affordability, rather than regulations. Further, future regulations of universal service provision and ‘service public’ requirements will need to address concerns over citizens’ dislike of some effects of regional and national deregulation and liberalisation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with leadership capacity at national level to mobilise society to take up challenges. It uses empirical analysis to explain how, in a European context, this capacity covaries with the development of strategic state capabilities. The evidence is used to explore the conditions in which strategic state capabilities have a positive effect on the capacity of leadership to mobilise society. These conditions include factors related to the public: social capital, average subjective wellbeing (happiness), and political attitudes relating to government and democracy (having a voice that was listened to, public trust in the government, and the public's satisfaction with the working of democracy). It is suggested that strategically led governments with high levels of coordination in the civil service, with practices and abilities consistent with learning and agility, and with good engagement with, and good support from, the public and the organisations of civil society, tend to have national leadership elites that have a strong capacity for mobilization of society to take up challenges. In the conclusions it is stated that the democratic cultures of Europe may require more 'open government' and more inclusiveness so that their embryonic strategic states can better leverage information and resources of society, so that governments can offer more powerful societal leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2006 and 2011, a number of European public service broadcasting (PSB) organisations offered their website users the opportunity to create their own PSB homepage. The web customisation was conceived by the editors as a response to developments in commercial web services, particularly social networking and content aggregation services, but the customisation projects revealed tensions between the ideals of customer sovereignty and the editorial agenda-setting. This paper presents an overview of the PSB activities as well as reflections on the failure of the customisable PSB homepages. The analysis is based on interviews with the PSB editors involved in the projects and on studies of the interfaces and user comments. Commercial media customisation is discussed along with the PSB projects to identify similarities and differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a game-theoretic approach to analyse the taxation of interest income in Europe in the presence of tax evasion. The model allows tis to assess the success of various reform proposals. We argue that the tax treatment of nonresidents' interest income plays a crucial role. When decisions on discrimination and on withholding tax rates are made non-cooperatively, the outcome is similar to a prisoners' dilemma. All countries discriminate, but in equilibrium internationally mobile portfolio capital evades taxation successfully. In contrast, if all governments did not discriminate, tax competition leads to less tax evasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The financial crisis has once again brought up the question of the 'perfect size' of local governments and revealed a new dimension of the eternal question of financing self-governing local communities. The paper presents a comparative overview of efforts to determine the 'perfect size' of municipalities and recent reforms in different countries aimed at enabling municipalities to ensure both local-level democracy and identity, and economic efficiency in the delivery of public services. One of the most popular ways for achieving this goal is to promote various forms of inter-municipal cooperation. Some forms of inter-municipal cooperation already exist in Slovenia; a considerable breakthrough in this regard occurred in 2007, but such an approach would have been possible much earlier. Analyses show that this change is due to changes in the rules regarding co-financing. Despite the fact that neither literature nor politics in Slovenia sees inter-municipal cooperation as an alternative to merging municipalities, experiences show that practice will proceed in this direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debates about whether the standard full-time working week (35–40 h) can be replaced by a shorter working week have received extensive attention. Using 2015 European Working Conditions Survey data, this study contributes to these debates by exploring the relationships between job quantity, job quality and employees' mental health. Overall, we find that a job's quality matters more than its quantity as measured in hours per week. The results show that actual working hours are hardly related to employees' mental health but job quality, especially intrinsically meaningful work, less intensified work and having a favourable social environment, has positive effects on employee mental health, even in jobs with short working hours. Moreover, although working less than one prefers (under-employment) has negative effects, these negative effects become much smaller in size and non-significant in good quality jobs, especially in jobs with skill discretion and good job prospects. These findings develop the debates about a shorter standard working week by emphasising the continued and crucial importance of job quality in debates on the future of work. These results also suggest that policymakers should pay particular attention to job quality when addressing the dramatic reduction in total hours of employment in Europe following the COVID-19 crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two trends in the practice of modern public administration, the emphasis on ethics and quality, although different as philosophical concepts, influence each other. This paper summarizes what is the Total Quality Management and the Ethics Management, from the Public Service perspective at the European and Romanian level. Public administration reform is a current priority in the context of modernizing the state. At present, there is a growing convergence between the quality and ethical standards regarding the public service provided to citizens. Based on a Total Quality Management tool called Common Assessment Framework - CAF, it is argued the positive influence of this type of management on the ethical conduct of civil servants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses wages and wage labour in the Middle Ages. One form of wage labour that is well-documented is building as well as agricultural work, military service and government employment. The study focused on an employer in Basilicata, Italy. The research for the work labour in the kingdom of Naples attracted only a little attention since much of its archival evidence for the history of the kingdom was destroyed. Drivers for pack animals was also required, in addition to unskilled labourers, in early 1279.