General: East and West: Twenty Years of Development: Fiscal Policy and Public Finance.

Specialized: Contracting and outsourcing in the public sector

1. Call for Papers – for the 20th NISPAcee Annual Conference

The WG on Fiscal Policy plans again to meet at the 20^th NISPAcee conference in 2012 at Ohrid Lake and invites papers dealing with fiscal policy, public finance and public financial management.

We would like to announce two tracks:

· General track: East and West: Twenty Years of Development: Fiscal Policy and Public Finance.

· Specialised track: Contracting and outsourcing in the public sector.

The authors are invited to submit original research papers, i.e. papers presenting the results of their own research. We welcome high quality theoretical studies, but especially empirical papers, providing concrete data and their analysis. The form is quite open, e.g. single or multiple case studies, comparative papers, and survey results or papers applying some statistical analysis. Detailed research protocols for both of the announced tracks are attached.

The paper selection will be based on the submitted abstracts, which have to clearly define objectives and research questions (i.e. what the researcher wants to find) and to carefully describe the research design and methods (i.e. what the researcher will actually do). Thus, there is no need for a literature review in the abstract.

The abstracts, which will not contain this basic information, will be accepted conditionally and the authors will be asked to complete the abstract.

General track:

In the last twenty years, all countries from the NISPAcee region undertook numerous reforms or reform steps in the area of fiscal policy, public finance and public financial management. Many of these reforms were inspired by western examples, by international organisations, or took place during the pre-accession process to the EU.

The main objective of this track is to collect cases/papers which critically evaluate the outcomes of such reforms, comparing either the original intent or expectations with the final outcomes, or comparing the implementation of the same reform or process in two countries. Thus, there is room for both longitudinal and comparative research papers.

The standard structure of the paper should be as follows:

- Introduction, which clearly states the objectives of the paper and in detail describes the applied methodology

- Description of the problem studied, showing a good knowledge of the relevant literature in both the local language and in English

- Short introduction of the country or countries, i.e. present all information necessary (and relevant) to understand your paper

- Analysis of the problem

- Evaluation, conclusions and recommendations (this part needs to result from the previous parts of the paper)

Specialised track: Contracting and outsourcing in the public sector

Contracting and outsourcing are one of the most prevalent types of semi-privatisation in the public sector. For the purposes of this research protocol, we assume that under contracting out and outsourcing own activities of a public economic subject are delegated to an external supplier. In order to use the terminology in the same manner, under contracting out, this means delegation of services and functions, and under outsourcing, we mean delegation of individual complementary services.

Two main levels should be distinguished:

- Delegating the production of external functions and services when government retains the responsibility for their provision but hires private firms to produce the service or to deliver the function.

- Outsourcing internal services and functions of the public organisation to the external supplier.

Contracting/outsourcing should begin with the organisational decision to make or buy a good or service. As such, it is a fundamental decision faced by both public and private sector organisations. "To make or to buy?” is a question faced by public organisations when considering how public services should be delivered to the citizens. Public organisations must decide whether to produce goods and services internally or to acquire them from external sources—contract out a public service.

The authors are invited to submit papers (country studies or comparative papers) focusing on experience with contracting/outsourcing. There are no limitations on the cases regarding the government function or level. The focus is on evidence-based papers and high quality theoretical studies may also be accepted.

The standard structure of the empirical paper should be as follows:

- Introduction, which clearly states the objectives of the paper and in detail describes the applied methodology

- introducing the country (stage of PA reforms, NPM or Weberian based, economic development, etc.)

- overview of the relevant theory (if appropriate, simple case studies can be accepted)

- introducing the case

- analytical data about the case (own research or secondary data)

- evaluation (of results, problems, factors, purposes for results…)

- proposals (if possible),

- conclusions from the case (if relevantly linked to the presented overview of the theory)