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

In this paper, we develop a framework for understanding the different spheres of authority of chiefs aiming to widen the perspectives on how government-chief interactions affect the governance process. The framework is applied in our analysis of interviews with government actors involved in area protection in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA). Our results illustrate the variety of approaches and perceptions towards governance with chiefs that exist amongst government actors within the same governance system. Although government actors perceive chiefs in the GLTFCA as a parallel system, chiefs can act as a rival, mediator, adviser, or partner to the government; thus, both enable or hamper government governance.  The informal governance arrangements found in the data between government actors and chiefs moreover underscores the importance of qualitative case studies of hybrid governance systems

The study examines bureaucrats facing administrative architectures that are multiple, overlapping, ambiguous and sometimes incompatible. It makes two main contributions. Firstly, by an organizational approach it derives fine-grained predictions on how bureaucrats maneuver when taking part in integrated multilevel administrative orders. Secondly, benefitting from a large-N data-set (N = 4285) from 16 ministries and 47 government agencies in Norway, the study demonstrates how organizational factors systematically ‘moderate’ and bias behavioral perceptions among government officials. Moreover, to probe the robustness of explanatory models, the study specifies patterns of moderation by outlining multiple interaction models as well as illustrating how interaction effects unfold. The study finds that few moderators make dramatic effects by profoundly weakening relationships. Moderating variables either strengthen or attenuate already apparent effects, thus probing the empirical robustness of the models.

Regulatory agencies care about their reputation, which helps sustain their authority. As innovation can introduce uncertainty in governance, delaying action or overlooking danger can negatively affect agencies' standing. Aware of these reputation risks, agencies rely on a set of methods to govern the unknown. These methods, we argue, are: (1) categorization, if the innovation is considered identical to known regulatory categories; (2) analogy, if the innovation is considered similar to known categories, and; (3) new categorization, when new classifications are deemed necessary to address the innovation. Each method shapes governance by triggering the application of existing regulations (categorization and analogy), calls for either technical and regulatory fixes (analogy), or calls for broader regulatory undertakings (new categorization). Agencies' choice of methods, we argue, is shaped by concerns over performative reputation (i.e., showing the ability to fulfill core tasks), which in turn is affected by agencies' ability to demonstrate technical rigor (i.e., technical reputation).

In multiparty governments, policymaking is a collaborative effort among the different incumbent parties. Often hidden by public debates about broader government policy, the necessary coordination routinely happens at the ministerial level, where ministries of different parties jointly devise viable and equitable policy solutions. However, since coordination involves substantial transaction costs, governments must carefully gauge the potential benefits. We study the political rationales that motivate governments to make this investment. We argue that coordination during the process of ministerial policy design hinges on both a conducive ministerial structure and sufficient authority. Once these conditions are met, cross-party coordination is more likely in policy areas where the implementation of government policy cannot be taken for granted. We investigate these claims, drawing on two new datasets. The first contains information about ministerial collaborations on all legislative projects sponsored by German governments, while the second maps the distribution of policy responsibilities among German ministries from 1976 until 2013, based on data about the policy briefs of all individual working units within the top-level federal executive. Given that ministries imprint their own perspective on legislation, our results are beyond administrative pedantries, but have substantial implications for the type and content of policies coalition governments formulate.

Does the provision of state subsidies to political parties reduce their involvement in corruption? Existing research provides inconclusive evidence on this relationship, perhaps because cross-national studies on public funding and corruption are often limited by regulation-based indexes of political financing and by very general corruption measures. In this study, we use focused measures for both phenomena to investigate whether more generous public funding reduces party corruption. Our independent variable reflects the actual cash amount of budgetary subventions provided to parties in twenty-seven post-communist countries. Our dependent variable of party-centered corruption represents the share of firms considerably affected by the informal payments made by businesses to political parties and parliamentarians to influence their decisions. We find that a higher level of state subsidies is associated with a reduction in corruption; its effect diminishes as funding increases, and its impact on corruption is lagged. However, there is a wide interval of uncertainty around these results. In the context of the existing literature, our contribution reduces the estimate of the size of a public funding effect and increases the level of uncertainty.

Police accountability has long been deemed an essential component of democratizing reform. Reformist administrations in Latin America and other developing regions have consequently created oversight agencies to monitor police misconduct. However, the literature has not yet explored how these institutions operate and the politics that undergird them. This paper examines how police accountability institutions work in developing democracies. I focus on the police of the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, using an untapped database of more than 6400 expelled police officers. I find that the extent to which reformist ministers expel police officers and thus exercise greater control of the police peaks during their first year in office. Contrarily, it is not bolstered by mid-term electoral victories or factors such as scandals or violent crimes. The paper extends our knowledge of the politics of police accountability in developing democracies, outlining the incentives and obstacles for politicians to control the police.

Despite claims of a paradigmatic shift toward the increased role of networks and partnerships as a form of governance—driven and enabled by digital technologies—the relation of “Networked Governance” with the pre-existing paradigms of “Traditional Weberian Public Administration” and “New Public Management” remains relatively unexplored. This research aims at collecting systematic evidence on the dominant paradigms in digitalization reforms in Europe by comparing the doctrines employed in the initial and most recent digitalization strategies across eight European countries: Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom. We challenge the claim that Networked Governance is emerging as the dominant paradigm in the context of the digitalization of the public sector. The findings confirm earlier studies indicating that information and communication technologies tend to reinforce some traditional features of administration and the recentralization of power. Furthermore, we find evidence of the continued importance of key features of “New Public Management” in the digital era.

Are public sector workers more supportive of technocracy than people not employed in the public sector? Public sector workers play an important role in the functioning and safeguarding of democracy. However, because of their training as neutral and competent policy workers and implementers, it is often claimed that they hold relatively strong technocratic attitudes. In this study, we compare the support for technocracy of 35,395 public sector and non-public sector workers across 25 European countries. The results show that on average, public sector workers are not more supportive of technocracy than non-public sector workers, and that the effect of public sector employment on support for technocracy differs across countries. Furthermore, we find that trust in representative institutions and satisfaction with government can reduce support for technocracy.