List of SOG IPSA Panels 2016 under preparation

IPSA World Congress 2016 for Research Committee 27 “Structure and Organisation of Government”

 

PANEL 1

Representative Bureaucracy in Comparative Perspective: Where and How Does it Work?

Chair / Convener: Eckhard Schroeter, Professor of Comparative Public Administration, Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen, Germany

Contact : eckhard.schroeter@zu.de

Representative bureaucracy raises questions about the link between the composition of the public sector workforce, administrative accountability and performance. More fundamentally, the proposed workshop topic brings society back into the comparative study of public administration. As issues of ethnicity, multi-culturalism, gender or social equity have become increasingly salient to political discourses, representative bureaucracy also has become more significant to the study of the public sector.

The study of representative bureaucracy is concerned with the multi-faceted relationships between the make-up of public sector workforces and the socio-demographic characteristics of the societies they serve. It directs the attention to the socio-demographic, -linguistic and –ethnic cleavages of modern societies and to the extent to which the staff of public sector organizations mirror the diversity of the communities in which they operate. What are the consequences of ‘representativeness’ – or the lack of it – for the quality of service delivery, for relations to clients and citizens, and for the management of human resources within public organizations? And what are the wider implications for the levels of public trust, the accountability and legitimacy of government, and for power-sharing arrangements in state and society?

This proposed workshop seeks to advance the comparative study of representative bureaucracy. The concern with representativeness within the public sector is interpreted differently in different settings. Individual country studies can illustrate why and how the issue of ‘representativeness’ and ‘diversity’ matters in public sector employment, and what driving forces propel the debate forward. In addition to national and institutional contexts, the answers to questions of ‘how representative bureaucracy works’ also seem to be contingent on the specific aspect of administrative performance and the type of public sector organization under investigation.

 

PANEL 2

Title: Public administration and the digital turn

Organiser: Julia Fleischer (University of Bergen)

Discussant: Al Roberts (Missouri)

Contact julia.fleischer@uib.no

This panel aims to bring together scholars interested in (a) the use of digital means for executive decision-making and coordination in central governments and their effects on legitimacy, accountability, and efficiency, (b) the nature and application of different forms of digital governance such as bureaucracy-driven online platforms for blame management, civic participation or the provision of government information (open data) but also non-state actors¹ initiatives for e.g. facilitating FOI requests or leaking internal documents, and (c) the implications of these rather novel (internal and external) digital means to govern for empirical research, e.g. the alleged limitations due to the increase of (non-durable and non-archived) electronic communication within executives, the (mis)use of open data or the virtues and pitfalls of using other "cheap data from the internet". We welcome qualitative and quantitative papers as much as single case studies and cross-country analyses.

 

PANEL 3

Regulation in Crisis? Governance, governability and the contemporary state

 

Co-organisers: Eva Heims (LSE) and Martin Lodge (LSE)

Discussant: Philippe Bezes

 

Contact : M.Lodge@lse.ac.uk; E.M.Heims@lse.ac.uk

 

The aftermath of the financial crisis has highlighted the fragile nature of contemporary governance. This panel explores how the the financial and other crises have challenged the ways in which regulation and other governance devices have been exercised, understood and theorised. This paper therefore considers the implications for regulation in particular, and governance more broadly, by exploring regulation (i) in sectors of crisis, (ii) as approach in crisis and (iii) as a field of study that is in intellectual crisis.

 

 

PANEL 4

Output democracy? Bureaucracy as locus for public participation

Panel Chair: Jacob Aars

Department of administration and organization theory, University of Bergen

Contact : Jacob.Aars@uib.no

 

A number of authors have argued that an increasing share of public engagement is directed toward the output side of government. According to Peters (2010: 211), “democracy have shifted significantly toward the output side of the public sector” and “The bureaucracy has become an important locus for public involvement and for democracy.” At the same time, public sector offers opportunities for influencing one’s everyday life in the capacity of user or consumer of public services. In addition, citizens seem to care more about the effectiveness of government than about representative democracy (Dahlberg and Holmberg 2014). Hence, the legitimacy of government rests on output as well as on input factors (Rothstein 2009). Moreover, it is argued that people are more often in touch with members of the public bureaucracy than with their elected officials.

 

The aim of this panel is to explore various aspects of “output democracy”, i.e. participatory acts that aim at influencing public administration rather than elected officials. One set of questions relates to the normative aspects of output-directed participation: Can output democracy be regarded as an extension of democratic citizenship, and if so, in what respect? Another set of questions considers output democracy empirically, from the perspective of the participants: What characterizes the participants of output democracy? First, to what degree does efforts at influencing public services directly constitute a distinct form of participation, different from traditional input participation, i.e. to what degree is participation within the different channels differentiated or cumulative (Pettersen & Rose 1996)? Second, since public sector is frequently is inciting participation directed at government’s output side, is the threshold lower for this kind of participation, i.e. is the socio-demographic profile of output participation different from input participation? A third set of questions pertain to public authorities. First, to what degree and in what ways do public authorities facilitate participation directed towards the output side of government (Gilliat, Fenwick & Alford 2000)? Second, in what ways are various public agencies responding to citizens’/users’/consumers’ initiatives to influence bureaucratic decisions?

 

We invite conceptual as well as empirical papers. Papers should preferably be comparative, but we also welcome single-country studies although efforts at drawing comparative conclusions are encouraged. Moreover, contributors may concentrate on different levels of government: national, regional and local as well as supra national.

 

REFERENCES

Dahlberg, S., & Holmberg, S. (2014). Democracy and bureaucracy: How their quality matters for popular satisfaction. West European Politics, 37(3), 515-537.

Gilliatt, S., J. Fenwick and D. Alford. (2000). Public Services and the Consumer: Empowerment or Control? Social Policy & Administration, 34, 3, 333–49.

Peters, B. G. (2010). Bureaucracy and democracy. Public Organization Review, 10(3), 209-222.

Pettersen, P. A., & Rose, L. E. (1996). Participation in local politics in Norway: Some do, some don't; some will, some won't. Political Behavior, 18(1), 51-97.

Rothstein, B. (2009). Creating political legitimacy electoral democracy versus quality of government. American Behavioral Scientist, 53(3), 311-330.

 

PANEL 5

 

Organizing for societal security and crisis management: Governance capacity and legitimacy

Chair: Professor Per Lægreid, University of Bergen

Contact : Per.Lagreid@uib.no

Issues of internal security and crisis management present policymakers and politicians with ‘wicked’ challenges. The contemporary crisis crosses geographical borders and policy areas with ease, requiring administrative levels to cooperate in real time. There are no obvious or easy solutions, as the “transboundary crisis” defies existing patterns of organization and management. These crises expose the mismatch between problem characteristics and organizational structures. The long-standing specializations of the public sector apparatus are rarely fit to handle complex societal challenges that transboundary crises bring to crisis managers. These crises require increased emphasis on inter-organizational coordination, whole-of-government and joint-up-government solutions involving transboundary collaboration in a multi-level governance context.

 
This panel will examine both the required and available governance capacity to respond to large-scale, complex and increasingly transboundary crises. We invite papers that study and compare existing, emerging and innovative organizational arrangements to handle issues of internal security and crisis management. Papers on policy development, organizational principles, coordination practices, and administrative reforms in this area are welcomed as well as case studies of effective crisis management. Other relevant topics might include crisis communication, societal resilience, and the politics of crisis management, accountability and learning. Relevant questions are: What kind of coordinating practices exists or have emerged in different countries? What constraining and enabling factors influence the functioning of the organizational arrangements? What are the perceived effects and implications of the different arrangements? How can we understand the emergence, practice and effects of different arrangements?

 
We are also interested in papers that discuss the legitimacy of emerging crisis management arrangements. Individual rights, such as freedom of expression, religion, mobility, assembly and privacy are among the most important political values in a democratic society. However, these rights may well conflict situational imperatives of security, especially during times of national threat and crisis. How responsive are public authorities to citizen demands in this area? Do citizens trust government in general, and crisis management authorities in particular, when it comes to preventing and handling crisis? Does it matter if one starts from a high trust or a low trust context when a crisis happens? What are the relationship between governance capacity and governance legitimacy?

 

Papers can be descriptive or explanatory, but they should have a clear conceptual and theoretical basis and meet the methodological standards for academic research. Comparative papers (across time, countries, government levels or policy sectors) are particularly welcomed.

PANEL 6

 “Between (micro) economic sociology and (macro) political economy: studying the role of the state in the government of economic activity”

Chair: Andy Smith (Centre Emile Durkheim, Sciences-po Bordeaux)

Co-chair(s): Matthieu Ansaloni (Centre Emile Durkheim, Sciences-po Bordeaux), Antoine Roger (Centre Emile Durkheim, Sciences-po Bordeaux)

Contact: matthieuansaloni@yahoo.fr, a.smith@sciencespobordeaux.fr; a.roger@sciencespobordeaux.fr

 

This panel addresses the role played by the state in governing of economic activity. Although in sociology and political science the state is often seen as playing a key role, this has generally been understudied. On the one hand, (micro) economic sociology has proved its analytical purchase by studying market-making (e.g. price setting) with finesse, but also by approaching markets in isolation from the rest of society. On the other, (macro) political economy has shown how polities possess national economic development paths, without however studying in precise ways the industrial policies that structure markets. Consequently, state action remains a black-box.

To tackle this challenge, four main questions will be raised. The first tackles the way actors engage within the state to intervene in the economy. The second is focused on the effects of public policies upon market actors, be they firms or social movements. The third concerns the instruments through which states intervene in the economy. The last deals with the willingness and capacity of states to govern the economy.

The panel is organized around two lines of questioning: the first aims to assess the analytical purchase of existing approaches aimed at studying the role of the state in governing the economy. The second will more directly shed lights upon state action through the presentation and comparison of empirical studies. Overall, we hypothesize that studying the role of the state in governing the economy can provide a fruitful mediating path between (micro) economic sociology and (macro) political economy.

PANEL 7

Vertical and Horizontal Administrative Interplay in the EU – Convergence, yes or no?

Jun. Prof. Dr. Eva Heidbreder, University of Düsseldorf (eva.heidbreder@hhu.de)

Dr. Eva Ruffing, University of Hannover (e.ruffing@ipw.uni-hannover.de)

 

During the past years, empirical research has provided an increasing amount of evidence for the EU exerting an impact on national public administrative systems. While it appears evident that change is triggered mostly by actual policymaking, the actual change patterns remain blurry. As early as in 2003, Olsen discussed the hypotheses that Europeanisation leads to increasing convergence – if not a single administrative space – whilst also paying tribute to possible the opposed outcome, i.e. nonconvergence.

 

After more than ten years of research on this question, it is time to take stock of the evidence collected since, not least because it regularly builds on Olsen’s basic hypotheses. As a matter of fact, scanning through the empirical results suggests rather mixed results. The panel therefore aims at bringing together the scattered results in order to trigger a debate between the diverging findings to, eventually, clarify the question: convergence yes or no? We invite papers that

provide empirical research providing evidence for either side. The results should be discussed bearing in mind explanatory attempts to link the single papers, especially scope conditions and variables promoting/impeding convergence on different administrative dimensions such as internal functioning, organization  and staffing of public administrations as well as the role of public administrations in the political system and the policy process.

 

PANEL 8

Proportionality in Public Policy

Moshe Maor (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Contact : moshe.maor@mail.huji.ac.il

 

The punctuated equilibrium theory suggests that policy responses will oscillate between periods of underreaction to the flow of information coming from the environment into the system and overreaction to it due to disproportionate information processing (Jones and Baumgartner 2005). The aim of this panel is to take this promising research agenda further by focusing on the dynamics of overreaction and underreaction in enacting policy solutions, and on the varieties of policy over- and underreaction. We are seeking both conceptual and empirical papers that revolve around questions, such as the following: How do cognitive, emotional, organizational, and institutional factors interact to explain non-proportionate policy responses? How does the state of emotion towards a particular policy change over time, and what is the extent to which such changes impact upon the supply of the policy? What is the role of the media in the emergence of non-proportionate policy responses? What are the differences between processes of ideational and emotional contagion that generate non-proportionate policy response and those that do not? Could non-proportionate policy responses be policy successes? The panel also revolves around the life-cycles of longer-term over- and undereaction which are propelled by self-reinforcing processes, as well as around the analytical reach of concepts which aim at capturing these phenomena, namely, (positive) policy bubbles (Jones et al. 2014; Maor 2014) and negative policy bubbles (Maor 2015).

 

PANEL 9

Regulating Public-Private Partnerships

Chairs:

Salvador Parrado, Spanish Distance Learning University (UNED), Madrid, Spain

Anne-Marie Reynaers, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

 

Contacts : sparrado@poli.uned.es, a.reynaers@uva.nl

 

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are a fashionable mean through which governments realize public infrastructure and public services such as highways, bridges, schools, detention centers and hospitals. It is often assumed that PPPs promise efficiency and effectiveness gains for governments. PPPs have attracted scholarly attention regarding strategic and performance issues, efficiency gains, transparency, and public values. Surprisingly the regulation of partnerships has not been a priority among the academic community which is surprising given their importance for public policy.

This panel brings together knowledge on the challenging task of regulating PPPs and invites empirical as well as theoretical papers that deal with: formal and informal regulation; internal and external regulation; the formulation of contracts and output specifications; the role of trust in regulating PPPs; the implementation of regulation instruments; performance and contract management; the use of sanctions in cases of non-compliance; and other related issues. 

 

PANEL 10

Panel Title: The Consequences of Public-Sector Personnel Management Systems

Chairs: Jan Meyer-Sahling and Sharon Gilad; Discussant: Kutasl Yesilkagit

Contact: J.Meyer-Sahling@nottingham.ac.uk;sharon.gilad@mail.huji.ac.il

 

The personnel-management systems that regulate the recruitment, promotion and remuneration of senior civil servants are key institutional components of administrative systems. These systems vary among countries and public organizations. Moreover, they have changed over time, resulting in hybrid combinations of career civil servants, political appointees, public managers and a myriad of advisers at the top of public organizations.  This variation and change in senior civil servants’ career structures have been extensively studied and documented, especially in relation to Western Europe. Moreover, studies have demonstrated and sought to explain the variations in the (in-)congruence between formal, meritocratic, personnel management systems and informal, often politicized, career structures. Compared with this relative abundance of research on the institutional configurations of personnel management systems, only recently have scholars sought to gauge the consequences of this variation. Specifically, a number of recent studies assess the consequences of meritocratic versus political appointments for the performance of American public organizations, finding that political patronage hampers management performance. Others have analyzed the impact of personnel management systems for corruption. Still, our understanding of the effect of personnel management systems and/or of bureaucrats’ individual career structures outside the US and in relation to values other than performance is extremely limited.  This panel will address the outcomes of bureaucracies’ personnel management systems and civil servants’ individual career structures, and the mechanisms that underlie these outcomes. It will do so in relation to diverse outcomes, such as bureaucracies’ performance and its association with civil servants’ motivation and satisfaction, corruption, equity and responsiveness vis-à-vis politicians and the public.

 

 

PANEL 11

The administrative dimension of financial market regulation

Chair: Kai Wegrich, Co-Chair: Tobias Bach, Discussant: Sharon Gilad

Contact: wegrich@hertie-school.org; bach@hertie-school.org

The idea of the panel is to study the administrative dimension of financial market regulation through the lens of “bureaucratic politics”, i.e. exploring behaviour of regulators (central banks and financial supervisory agencies) as the result of the pursuit of institutional interests. The panel seeks to explore the explanatory potential of the “administrative dimension” for explaining regulatory behaviour in the area of financial market regulation. Various theoretical perspective fall under this broad framework:  First, bureaucratic organisations are known to defend their specific turf against external intrusions or against taking on tasks which do not fit with their mission. This aspect is most likely to play an important role under the conditions of looming institutional reform. Second, bureaucratic organizations develop a selective perception of the world which is conditional upon their formal mandate, but also depends upon their organizational structure and internal self-image (or sense of mission). Selective perception, in turn, results in prioritizing some (regulatory) tasks over others. Third, a growing body of literature emphasizes that bureaucratic decision making is mediated by agencies’ unique reputation for the performance of their tasks among multiple stakeholders. This implies that agencies have to weigh the importance of potentially conflicting external demands upon their activities. Finally, an institutionalist perspective suggests that present behaviour, worldviews and priorities reflect past decisions, and that this type of “organizational heritage” cannot be easily done away with. These elements tend to become part of the mission of organizations and hence are expected to shape decision making and priority setting under potentially changing external conditions. The panel aims at bringing together empirical papers which focus on whether and how a bureaucratic politics perspective may contribute to a better understanding of financial crises, including, but not limited to, the most recent crisis.

 

 

 

PANEL 12

The Structure and Organisation of Government (SOG-PRO Project): Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Evidence

Chair: Kutsal Yesilkagit

Contact: a.k.yesilkagit@cdh.leidenuniv.nl

This panel aims to examine the inertia and dynamics in the structure and organization of Western European governments. It seeks to discuss the key theoretical perspectives in the scholarly debate, ranging from structural choice to path dependency or coalition governance and to apply those perspectives empirically to Western parliamentary systems. We intend to discuss the explanatory relevance of the various scholarly perspectives but also related issues such as the applicability, promises and pitfalls of various methods to measure the structure and organization of governments.

 

PANEL 13  Mapping the State: Old and New Explanatory Perspectives

Chair : Philippe Bezes

Contact: bezes@hotmail.com

 

This panel aims to study formal changes in central government organizations such as ministries and agencies. It seeks to bring together papers with (i) a theoretical objective to explain the inertia and dynamics in such formal changes and/or (ii) with a methodological contribution regarding how to map the state, assess and measure inertia and change in the context of central government organizations etc. and/or (iii) an empirical objective to analyze these formal changes for single countries, across countries, and over time. We welcome papers on single case studies as much as quantitative analyses or mixed-method designs.

 

 

PANEL 14 New-Dem: Do Flexible Institutions Enhance Democracy? 

 

Chair/convenor: José Veríssimo, Romão Netto

Joint panel with the RC 34 (Quality of Democracy)

Contact : ze_verissimo@yahoo.com.br

The problem proposed to be investigated can be assumed as a paradox for democratic performance: the accountability mechanisms of representative democracy usually relate elected politicians and members of the executive branch to the formulation and implementation of public policies and their results; but the management of various public policy arrangements follow delegating political and administrative responsibilities for new institutional arrangements of governance, involving hybrid structures in opaque relationships, which may call into question the role of traditional institutions of representative democracy. The panel looks for papers which integrate a critical theoretical perspective to an innovative methodological approach to investigate empirical structures of governments and its impacts on democratic performance. The papers must connect to a broader debate about the relationship between citizens, politicians, and the institutions through which public policy is framed, decided and delivered. At the heart of the debate is the question of how government and citizens can design innovative institutions that will improve the performance of different democracies in public policy making. This involves forms of interaction with citizens and publics, board composition, and structures for transparency and accountability. Innovative methodology of enquiry will be considered as a plus, especially mixed methods.

 

 

Panel 15:  “State transformation in old and new democracies: analyzing trends in state politicization and public good provision”

Convenor: Nisida Gjoksi, nisida.gjoksi@eui.eu

Contact: nisida.gjoksi@eui.eu

 

Abstract

What explains variation in state politicization and in the performance of public good provision across different state agencies, countries and time? The literatures on development and comparative politics have increasingly appreciated the importance of state institutions in accounting for different economic, political and social outcomes. Macro-level explanations such as democratization, socio-economic development and historical legacies cannot explain differences among new and old democracies while recent trends question their predictions. Specifically, politicization of state administrations is increasing in old democracies, while in new democracies state institutions have remained a tool of party patronage. 

This panel contributes to this discussion by focusing on the role of ‘politics’ in the state transformation process, by particularly analyzing the conditions under which state have become more politicized in older democracies, under what conditions does democratization lead to more professional and de-politicized states in new democracies and how does that impact public good provision. The panel will thus try to investigate more in depth the micro-politics that shape politicians' interests and preferences behind the process of state politicization and the structure of constrains and incentives at work in different spatial, temporal and sectoral context, by finally also looking at the performance of the state administration in public good and services provision. Studying both new and established democracies provides a great opportunity to test different hypotheses of ‘politics’ as well as permits to reach conclusions on their relative similarities and differences.