Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Theories of Urban Politics

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Urban Affairs Review
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
1078087408328050v1
44/6/807    most recent
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Bresler-Gonen, R.
Right arrow Articles by Dowding, K.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Shifting and Shirking

Political Appointments for Contracting Out Services in Israeli Local Government

Rotem Bresler-Gonen

The University of Haifa, Israel

Keith Dowding

Australian National University, Canberra

Principal—agent models in public administration concentrate upon policy drift—when agencies allow policy to drift away from the bliss point of executive politicians. We distinguish two types of policy drift: policy shifting and agent shirking. The first occurs when agents' political bliss points are located differently from those of their principals. The second occurs when agents do not competently carry out their principals' wishes. One response to policy shift is to appoint agents who share the bliss point of the principal, allowing the reduction of costly monitoring. Through 10 cases in three Israeli cities where political appointments were made to push through structural changes to contract out services, we show that political appointees are less effective than career bureaucrats, so that solving shifting often increases shirking, especially when monitoring is reduced. The agency problems thus created were only solved by increasing monitoring and returning to career civil servants.

Key Words: political appointments • agency problems • principal—agent • Israel • sanitation • policy drift • shirking

This version was published on July 1, 2009

Urban Affairs Review, Vol. 44, No. 6, 807-831 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1078087408328050
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?