Government performance and accountability have grown to be predominant areas within public administration literature over the last forty years. The research presented in this dissertation examines the relationship between citizen satisfaction and local government performance. Citizen review of service delivery provides vital feedback that facilitates better resource management within local government. Using data from a single jurisdiction, two aspects of citizen satisfaction are reviewed. This includes citizen review of overall city performance, and citizen satisfaction with individual service delivery. Logit regression analysis is used to test several factors that affect citizen evaluation of service delivery in local government, while ordinary least squares regression is used to test the relationship between personal factors and citizen evaluation of specific local services. The results generated four major findings that contribute to the scholarly body of knowledge and local government knowledge application. First, citizens who are predisposed to supporting the local jurisdiction are more likely to rate service delivery high. Second, customer service is important. Third, those who experience government services similarly will collectively react similarly to the service experience. Finally, the length of residency has an impact on satisfaction levels with specific services. Implications for the literature as well as for practice are discussed.

This book is about citizen participation and its effects on local planning and local accountability, showing how participation can improve local government performance. It addresses the rhetoric of citizen participation and its negative effects such as discrimination, exclusions, elite captures, clientelism, and shallow participation. Applying mixed-methods of analysis, the book argues that local government performance depends substantially on circumstances, especially the degree of citizen participation, level of socioeconomic development, and the achieved state of social mobilization. As participation takes place in diverse socioeconomic and cultural settings, merely reforming institutions to make participation more inclusive and democratic alone is not sufficient.

This collection of fifteen original essays examines methods of policy evaluation, performance measurement, fiscal cutback effects, and strategies of economic development in American local government. Each essay addresses, not only techniques of analysis, but also the application of those techniques to actual local government policy problems in areas such as urban development, policing, economic development, citizen satisfaction with services, personnel, and licensing, among others.

First published in 1998, this volume responds to the increase in performance review driven by government policies and examines the performance environment and processes for local government. Rob Ball explores the political and managerial environment before moving onto service planning, performance indicators and the Citizen’s Charter along with case studies. It is hoped to be of particular interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of public administration or public management.

The development literature is replete with failed attempts to reform public sector governance in developing countries. This book, written by Matthew Andrews and Anwar Shah, argues that technocratic approaches to public sector reform are unlikely to succeed in the future as well. Instead citizen empowerment through a rights-based approach to demand accountability from their governments and a results-based culture of governance holds significant potential for success. The authors present a comprehensive framework to accomplish these goals through institutional reforms, and they highlight examples from international practices in which elements of such approaches have been implemented. This important new series represents a response to several independent evaluations in recent years that have argued that development practitioners and policy makers dealing with public sector reforms in developing countries and, indeed, anyone with a concern for effective public governance could benefit from a synthesis of newer perspectives on public sector reforms. This series distills current wisdom and presents tools of analysis for improving the efficiency, equity, and efficacy of the public sector. Leading public policy experts and practitioners have contributed to the series.

Managing Local Government: Cases in Effectiveness: Policy Implementation, Productivity, and Program Evaluation: Performance Measurement Sea Change focuses on the challenges associated with implementing a performance measurement initiative in a culture resistant to the notion of collaborating to improve performance. This e-book portrays the strategies needed to get buy-in from all stakeholders.