External Peer Challenge in Local Government: The Role of Spatial Spillover and Past Performance

Jäkel Tim ()
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Jäkel Tim: School of Politics and Governance, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation

Statistics, Politics and Policy, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 195-215

Abstract: Voluntary assessments by a team of critical friends (external peer challenges) among local governments became established as popular complement to compulsory and centralized audits and inspections. This study empirically investigates the decision of English local authorities to have a voluntary peer challenge or not by taking advantage of an original dataset about participation in the Local Government Association’s Peer Challenge Programme (CPC) 2010–2015. We find that the LGA’s CPC programme does not carry a risk of leaving behind authorities with performance shortcomings. Councils with poor past performance scores and those with excellent ones do not differ in their tendency to invite a team of critical friends. Spatial clusters exist in the case of small district councils but not in the case of larger unitary authorities, London boroughs and metropolitan authorities. This implies that the corporate peer challenge process seems to be more suited to small authorities delivering community based services.

Keywords: local government and administration; England; external performance assessments; event history analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:statpp:v:12:y:2021:i:1:p:195-215:n:9

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DOI: 10.1515/spp-2020-0006

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