Despite the ubiquity of self-reported data in social science and public administration research, widespread concerns persist regarding common method variance (CMV) and its potential to distort observed correlations. In this article, we estimate CMV’s biasing effects through five preregistered studies (including eight survey experiments) with UK and Chinese civil servants (N = 3,159), focusing on the relationship between public service motivation (PSM) and job performance–a proposition of PSM theory often subject to CMV concerns. Our findings indicate that procedures widely advocated by methodological scholars to mitigate CMV did not substantially attenuate the PSM-performance relationship. A single-paper meta-analysis integrating these survey experiments reinforced this result, revealing a negligible overall moderating effect (mean effect size = -0.018, 95% CI [-0.08, 0.04]). Our results offer insights into the quality of self-reported measures, call into question the notion that CMV uniformly biases self-reported correlations, and strengthen the PSM theory by providing evidence for the validity of its core theoretical relationships against the CMV’s biasing effect.

Social equity is politically polarized, with advocates contending that it is a governance mandate and opponents claiming that it promotes reverse discrimination and inefficiencies. When implementing policies and programs, local bureaucrats must maneuver within this legal, ethical, normative, and political battlefield. This polarization can also be seen in budgeting processes when municipalities decide what to prioritize within their budgets. While some are leading their budgeting process with social equity, others may be incorporating equity considerations into budgets directly but calling it something different, indirectly through processes and programming on the back end, or not at all. Through a mixed methods approach, we investigate how Colorado bureaucrats infuse social equity into their 2024 budgets, informing a framework we present that maps types of social equity infusion. By categorizing current social equity budgeting (SEB) practices into Leading with Equity, Equity Considering, Implicit Equity, and No Equity, this study shows that SEB practices vary across municipalities based on context. Overall, we find that equity infusion does not often occur. When it does, most of the work is done through internal training and culture shifts through social equity officer leadership. However, we also find that municipalities are seeking out other ways to support historically marginalized populations, including leveraging external grants and taxes to fund necessary services such as workforce housing and childcare.

This paper examines how populist governments politicize competition policy and the agencies responsible for enforcing it, focusing on the cases of Hungary, Mexico, and Turkey. We argue that competition policy has critical importance for populist governments as its control helps them advance their policy objectives and facilitates their political survival. We propose that populist governments interfere in competition policy through one of three strategies, co‐optation, sabotage, and dismantling, which we argue are adopted contingent upon the degree of populists' legislative majority. Through a structured comparative analysis of the three cases, we find that although populist governments prefer to co‐opt competition agencies, they can do so only if they command large majorities in parliaments, such as in Hungary and Turkey. Those with weaker majorities, such as in Mexico under Andrés Manuel López Obrador, sabotage them, a strategy that may result in agency resistance, and eventually the dismantling of the agency if populists end up gaining a majority in the parliament.

Research shows that interactive and networked governance aiming to co‐create solutions are potent tools for addressing complex problems and that a configurational approach can improve our understanding of how governance conditions combine to produce effective collaboration and innovative results. We argue that the concept of generativity, which refers to social mechanisms that prompt, drive and scaffold co‐creation can complement and improve configurational approaches. To understand how governance factors not only combine but also coalesce into generative social mechanisms spurring co‐creation, we conduct a comparative mixed‐methods case study of local green partnerships in Denmark, South Africa, the U.S., and Vietnam. Based on this analysis, the paper identifies six generic functions of governance generativity: Catalyzing storylines, distributed action models, institutional templates for action, innovation triggers, productive technologies, and leadership creating internal cohesion and public support. Generative mechanisms with these generic functions can be expected to advance the co‐creation of sustainability transitions.

Many authoritarian regimes seek mass support through policy performance – delivering material benefits to citizens. When do citizens respond to these appeals? Standard explanations emphasize national‐level outcomes and individual patronage, along with regimes' messaging “spin.” By contrast, we argue that historical legacies of coalition building have an enduring impact on citizens' attitudes regardless of more recent, objective performance. We test this proposition by examining mass perceptions of the Saudi monarchy's job‐creation efforts, drawing on time‐series polling and an original survey experiment. Saudi citizens from the kingdom's western and southern regions – where narratives of marginalization and exclusion circulate – hold more negative views of regime policy performance compared with individuals from the more‐favored Central regions, regardless of the monarchy's objective jobs performance. Messaging strategies are likewise clearly effective only for Central‐region respondents. Our findings suggest that historical legacies of development substantially affect perceptions of regime performance in the long run.

Transparency is a key concern in global governance scholarship, yet its contribution to good governance remains deeply ambivalent. Scholars are increasingly questioning the idea of transparency as a silver bullet, emphasizing the need to better understand its potential, pitfalls, and regulatory challenges. This article focuses on the field of business and human rights (BHR), and recent regulatory advancements in human rights due diligence (HRDD) in the European Union specifically, to examine the conditions under which transparency supports business responsibilities for human rights. Drawing on expert and policymaker interviews from the negotiations of the EU Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence, complemented by document analysis of related laws, policies, and research, the study identifies four interrelated dimensions that condition transparency as a regulatory pivot in HRDD: the design and audience of disclosure, the operationalization of reporting standards, the balance of accountability mechanisms, and the role of stakeholders and their modes of engagement. The analysis demonstrates that transparency operates within complex tensions—between capacity‐building and control, politics and law, and cooperation and contestation. By tracing how these tensions are addressed in EU‐level policymaking, the article advances understanding of how integrated communicative practices, clear and fair standard‐setting, accountability governance, and a culture of plural and deliberative stakeholder engagement can shape transparency as a means of good governance rather than an impediment to it. The findings extend beyond BHR to broader global governance debates on information disclosure, effectiveness, accountability, and democratization, while underscoring the need to recognize businesses as global governance actors.