Governance-An International Journal of Policy Administration and Institutions最新文献

In recent years, an increasing body of research has examined the influence of populism on public bureaucracies and their responses to this phenomenon. This study seeks to add to this literature by examining how high-level Israeli bureaucrats navigate populist pressures. Based on 32 in-depth interviews with current and former senior officials, our findings reveal that bureaucrats are very aware of populist leaders' attempts to exploit bureaucratic institutions to consolidate power, thereby weakening both the effectiveness of the professionals in these institutions and their autonomy. We also find that bureaucrats employ a mix of strategies including resistance, compliance, and strategic adaptation to cope with these challenges. We propose a classification of these bureaucratic coping strategies, ranging from aggressive resistance to passive compliance, with intermediate strategies balancing adaptation and institutional survival. The Israeli case represents a rather “soft” bureaucratic response to populism compared to other contexts. Nevertheless, this study contributes to the growing discourse on populism and public administration, offering insights into the complex interactions between populist leadership and bureaucratic institutions.

This Special Issue Introduction aims to unpack current dynamics of migration politics and governance research and to put forward a holistic and integrative theoretical approach, that accounts for the bi-directionality and reciprocal influence between “the political” and “the governance” in both policymaking and policy practice on migration-related issues. We show how the articles in this Special Issue contribute to bridge two analytical tendencies in migration research - one foregrounding the political underpinnings of governing practices, and the other focusing on the collaborative dynamics of governance networks. While often treated separately, these perspectives intersect in important ways. Building on these contributions, an integrative research agenda is proposed. Theoretically, we suggest building the relevance of geographic context, scale and migration dynamics into our theorization of migration politics and governance. Methodologically, we suggest expanding beyond the common qualitative versus quantitative divide in the field, and deepening our analysis of politics-governance interactions through mixed-methods approaches.

Powerful business interests threaten to capture policy design. From a quiet politics perspective, businesses are especially influential in policy design under conditions of low political salience. From a bureaucratic politics perspective, bureaucratic power based on specialist expertise is also strongest in low-salience contexts and enables them to withstand business influence. Under what conditions does bureaucratic power or business power prevail in policy design under low political salience? This article argues that policy bureaucracies can restrict business power by mobilizing expertise for a different policy design than that advocated by business if they have a strong and competing organizational interest in the policy design. This argument is illustrated in a case study on the design of Extended Producer Responsibility for single-use plastics in Germany as a deviant case of high business influence under quiet politics. This article contributes to understanding business-bureaucracy interaction outside business home turf and below the political radar. It enhances quiet politics by introducing the role of bureaucratic responsiveness based on organizational interests and expertise.

Thailand's Rural Doctor Movement (RDM) is a “civic movement” organized by rural doctors who are officials in the Ministry of Public Health (MOPH). RDM's political consciousness and ideologies for social justice were cultivated by their exposures to student activism and repression in October 1973 and 1976 and fostered by the exposure to poverty and ill-health in rural communities while doing compulsory medical service in rural hospitals in the 1970s–1980s, following graduation from medical school. This perspective highlights two major contributions by RDM. First, it fought against the 1998 Drug Scandal and 2009 potential corruption in the MOPH through whistle-blowing role. Second, RDM advocated for legislation from various statutory bodies that support and fill the gap of MOPH. These bodies include the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, the National Health Security Office, and the National Health Commission Office. The legal mandates of these statutory bodies create conflicts with tobacco, alcohol and beverage industries, pharmaceutical industries and MOPH, which led to consistent efforts to roll back the influence of these para-statal health organizations formed and led by RDM advocates. RDM's role as whistle-blowers and advocates for the legislation of statutory bodies provides key lessons for practitioners and policymakers in developing countries. However, they need to adapt to their own policy contexts and policy actors and be agile to grasp the window of opportunity.

While pursuing a professional delivery of public services, street-level bureaucrats increasingly face intense political-ideological pressure. Yet, preceding scholars have barely explored how they manage to resist it. Addressing this gap, the paper presents a concept of the coping mechanisms street-level bureaucrats employ to shield their discretionary practices from becoming politicized. It is derived from an exploratory interview study with 33 case managers at German local jobcentres. Drawing on an abductive conceptualization, it identifies four distinct mechanisms which may serve either the function of moving against ideological demands (professional superiority, disenchanting) or of moving away from them (externalizing responsibility, segmentation). The paper offers novel insights into street-level bureaucrats' professional position and its relationship with political ideologies. It thereby contributes to a better understanding of how street-level bureaucracies preserve a competent execution of state acting in times when ideological conflict lines have become highly polarized.

Experts play a central role in national and international policy-making. Despite their expanding influence, there is little systematic information about who gives expert advice and their demographic composition. This study contributes to addressing this empirical gap by applying a benchmark-based approach developed for studying political representation to examine the descriptive representation of experts formally involved in Swedish policy processes. Using detailed administrative data on the entire adult population in Sweden (including information on their parentage), I identify academic experts appointed to governmental policy investigations and compare their demographic composition to multiple reference groups. The findings show that academic experts are demographically unrepresentative not only of the general population, but also of parliamentarians, government ministry staff, and the already socially homogeneous academic community from which they are appointed. Regression analyses with fixed effects show that the underrepresentation of academics with working-class backgrounds and first-generation immigrants is not explained by differences in year, age group, fields or university affiliations. In contrast, these structural factors do account for the observed gender disparities, suggesting a different mechanism of exclusion for women.

Partisanship may play a part in shaping gender equality within public organizations, especially in local governments, which are often subject to direct political control. Using a Regression Discontinuity (RD) Design, we examine the influence of partisanship on gender equality within government by analyzing whether right-wing party control is related to the gender pay gap among all employees in English local governments. We also investigate whether it is related to gender representation among the senior managers in those governments. Our RD estimates reveal that right-wing controlled local governments have a larger gender pay gap and fewer women in senior management than in governments controlled by other political parties.

Policy engagement procedures now demand more from interest groups and require them to adopt more collaborative-minded behaviors when interacting with policymakers. While existing scholarship largely conceptualizes policy engagement as policy access, commonly measured by frequency or type of engagement, studies examining the precise nature and dynamics of policy access remain rare. We examine how interest groups experience their engagement with policymakers, and whether this impacts their overall level of satisfaction in consultation processes. We unpack the nature of what this engagement entails by considering enabling and restricting procedural aspects covered by the collaborative governance literature to complement the focus on policy access by the interest group literature. Analyzing EU interest group survey data, we find engagement processes feature both enabling and restricting elements, and vary across group types. Furthermore, we clarify the relation between enabling features, and levels of satisfaction with the consultation process, as well as the role of political contestation and prior involvement.