The Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) has been used by the UK government to induce improvements in English local government performance. In one of a group of papers commissioned for OPI's `institutions, incentives and public sector performance' conference, Dirk Haubrich and colleagues from Nuffield College, Oxford explore the extent to which deprivation constrains the performance of local governments and whether local managers can be held to account for performance in the face of factors beyond their control. See also Peter John Clive Grace & Steve Martin Barry Quirk Fiona Murray

Status: in progress

Mega-cities pose new challenges for the financing, organisation and delivery of municipal public services. Using the health sector as an example, OPI is working with the China Executive Leadership Academy, Pudong (CELAP) to investigate the conditions necessary for municipal governments to innovate.

Status: ready for funding

Many large corporations operate in countries that lack the capabilities to deliver high-quality public services. The large pool of expertise and resources held by multinational corporations combined with the demands faced by many governments in developing countries creates a significant opportunity for a growth in the transfer of knowledge and improvement in key public sector capabilities. OPI is facilitating the development of a practitioner research community (PRC) on corporate investments in public sector performance composed of senior corporate managers and academic researchers. 

Status: ready for funding

This meeting series explored a range of issues confronted by corporations operating in areas with varied levels of institutional arrangements.  It considered whether and to what effect disclosure could improve the behaviour of firms and governments, the varied nature of corruption and how firms can manage their business in a corrupt environment, the legitimacy that firms have to support the development of public sector management systems and how the relationships underpinning extractive industry contracts could be managed best.  This series was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Status: completed

A commissioned paper exploring the `common sense' of government performance.

Matt Andrews of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government revisits the notion of `good government’.  Although a great deal of attention has been given recently to the measurement of government and governance quality, large questions stand regarding the theoretical concepts embodied in measures. Andrews' work examines the theoretical issues underlying aspects of these good government concepts and argues that some governments perform better than their levels of income suggest they should.

Status: completed