@article{FleischerBezesYesilkagit2023, author = {Fleischer, Julia and Bezes, Philippe and Yesilkagit, Kutsal}, title = {Political time in public bureaucracies}, series = {Public administration review}, volume = {83}, journal = {Public administration review}, number = {6}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0033-3352}, doi = {10.1111/puar.13740}, pages = {1813 -- 1832}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Structural duration conveys stability but also resilience in central government and is therefore a key issue in the debate on the structure and organization of government. This paper discusses three core variants of structural duration to study the explanatory relevance of politics. We compare these durations across ministerialunits in four European democracies (Germany, France, The Netherlands, and Norway) from 1980 to 2013, totaling over 17,000 units. Our empirical analyses show that cabinets' ideological turnover and extremism are the most significant predictors of all variants of duration, whereas polarization in parliament as well as new prime ministers without office experience yield the predicted significant negative effects for most models. We discuss these findings and avenues for futureresearch that acknowledge the definition and measures for structural change as well as temporal aspects of the empirical phenomenon more explicitly.}, language = {en} } @article{YesilkagitBezesFleischer2022, author = {Yesilkagit, Kutsal and Bezes, Philippe and Fleischer, Julia}, title = {What's in a name? The politics of name changes inside bureaucracy}, series = {Public administration}, volume = {100}, journal = {Public administration}, number = {4}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0033-3298}, doi = {10.1111/padm.12827}, pages = {1091 -- 1106}, year = {2022}, abstract = {In this article, we examine the effects of political change on name changes of units within central government ministries. We expect that changes regarding the policy position of a government will cause changes in the names of ministerial units. To this end we formulate hypotheses combining the politics of structural choice and theories of portfolio allocation to examine the effects of political changes at the cabinet level on the names of intra-ministerial units. We constructed a dataset containing more than 17,000 observations on name changes of ministerial units between 1980 and 2013 from the central governments of Germany, the Netherlands, and France. We regress a series of generalized estimating equations (GEE) with population averaging models for binary outcomes. Finding variations across the three political-bureaucratic systems, we overall report positive effects of governmental change and ideological positions on name changes within ministries.}, language = {en} } @article{FleischerWanckel2023, author = {Fleischer, Julia and Wanckel, Camilla}, title = {Creativity in policy capacity}, series = {Public administration review}, journal = {Public administration review}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0033-3352}, doi = {10.1111/puar.13676}, pages = {15}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Creativity is a crucial part of policy capacity in governments. Existing studies on creative behavior in the public sector assess employees' openness to new ideas and creative solutions, and they confirm the relevance of organizational and individual determinants for pro-creativity attitudes. Yet we lack systemic evidence on the explicit level of work-related creativity among policy officials in government organizations. At the same time, novel technologies and particularly social networking services change the working environment of policy officials radically, alter organizational features, and may also yield crucial individual effects. Our study analyses "policy creativity" of policy officials in three European governments. We demonstrate the importance of organizational and individual features, including the stress triggered by using social networking services. Our study captures officials' creativity explicitly and adds to debates on creativity and innovation in the public sector as well as the micro-level foundations of the digital transformation in the public sector.}, language = {en} } @article{FleischerWanckel2023, author = {Fleischer, Julia and Wanckel, Camilla}, title = {Job satisfaction and the digital transformation of the public sector}, series = {Review of Public Personnel Administration}, journal = {Review of Public Personnel Administration}, publisher = {Sage}, address = {London}, issn = {0734-371X}, doi = {10.1177/0734371X221148403}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Worldwide, governments have introduced novel information and communication technologies (ICTs) for policy formulation and service delivery, radically changing the working environment of government employees. Following the debate on work stress and particularly on technostress, we argue that the use of ICTs triggers "digital overload" that decreases government employees' job satisfaction via inhibiting their job autonomy. Contrary to prior research, we consider job autonomy as a consequence rather than a determinant of digital overload, because ICT-use accelerates work routines and interruptions and eventually diminishes employees' freedom to decide how to work. Based on novel survey data from government employees in Germany, Italy, and Norway, our structural equation modeling (SEM) confirms a significant negative effect of digital overload on job autonomy. More importantly, job autonomy partially mediates the negative relationship between digital overload and job satisfaction, pointing to the importance of studying the micro-foundations of ICT-use in the public sector.}, language = {en} } @article{FleischerBezesJamesetal.2022, author = {Fleischer, Julia and Bezes, Philippe and James, Oliver and Yesilkagit, Kutsal}, title = {The politics of government reorganization in Western Europe}, series = {Governance : an international journal of policy and administration and institutions}, volume = {36}, journal = {Governance : an international journal of policy and administration and institutions}, number = {1}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {0952-1895}, doi = {10.1111/gove.12670}, pages = {255 -- 274}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The reorganization of governments is crucial for parties to express their policy preferences once they reach office. Yet these activities are not confined to the direct aftermath of general elections or to wide-ranging structural reforms. Instead, governments reorganize and adjust their machinery of government all the time. This paper aims to assess these structural choices with a particular focus at the core of the state, comparing four Western European democracies (Germany, France, the Netherlands, and United Kingdom) from 1980 to 2013. Our empirical analysis shows that stronger shifts in cabinets' ideological profiles in the short- and long-term as well as the units' proximity to political executives yield significant effects. In contrast, Conservative governments, commonly regarded as key promoters of reorganizing governments, are not significant for the likelihood of structural change. We discuss the effects of this politics of government reorganization for different research debates assessing the inner workings of governments.}, language = {en} } @article{FleischerPruin2023, author = {Fleischer, Julia and Pruin, Andree}, title = {Organizational reputation in executive politics}, series = {International review of administrative sciences}, journal = {International review of administrative sciences}, publisher = {Sage}, address = {Los Angeles, Calif.}, issn = {0020-8523}, doi = {10.1177/00208523221132228}, pages = {16}, year = {2023}, abstract = {In recent years, governments have increased their efforts to strengthen the citizen-orientation in policy design. They have established temporary arenas as well as permanent units inside the machinery of government to integrate citizens into policy formulation, leading to a "laboratorization" of central government organizations. We argue that the evolution and role of these units herald new dynamics in the importance of organizational reputation for executive politics. These actors deviate from the classic palette of organizational units inside the machinery of government and thus require their own reputation vis-{\`a}-vis various audiences within and outside their parent organization. Based on a comparative case study of two of these units inside the German federal bureaucracy, we show how ambiguous expectations of their audiences challenge their organizational reputation. Both units resolve these tensions by balancing their weaker professional and procedural reputation with a stronger performative and moral reputation. We conclude that government units aiming to improve citizen orientation in policy design may benefit from engaging with citizens as their external audience to compensate for a weaker reputation in the eyes of their audiences inside the government organization. Points for practitioners: many governments have introduced novel means to strengthen citizen-centered policy design, which has led to an emergence of novel units inside central government that differ from traditional bureaucratic structures and procedures ; this study analyzes how these new units may build their organizational reputation vis-{\`a}-vis internal and external actors in government policymaking. ; we show that such units assert themselves primarily based on their performative and moral reputation.}, language = {en} } @article{FleischerBuzogany2023, author = {Fleischer, Julia and Buzog{\´a}ny, Aron}, title = {Unboxing international public administrations}, series = {The American review of public administration}, volume = {53}, journal = {The American review of public administration}, number = {1}, publisher = {Sage}, address = {Thousand Oaks, Calif.}, issn = {0275-0740}, doi = {10.1177/02750740221136488}, pages = {23 -- 35}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Recent debates in international relations increasingly focus on bureaucratic apparatuses of international organizations and highlight their role, influence, and autonomy in global public policy. In this contribution we follow the recent call made by Moloney and Rosenbloom in this journal to make use of "public administrative theory and empirically based knowledge in analyzing the behavior of international and regional organizations" and offer a systematic analysis of the inner structures of these administrative bodies. Changes in these structures can reflect both the (re-)assignment of responsibilities, competencies, and expertise, but also the (re)allocation of resources, staff, and corresponding signalling of priorities. Based on organizational charts, we study structural changes within 46 international bureaucracies in the UN system. Tracing formal changes to all internal units over two decades, this contribution provides the first longitudinal assessment of structural change at the international level. We demonstrate that the inner structures of international bureaucracies in the UN system became more fragmented over time but also experienced considerable volatility with periods of structural growth and retrenchment. The analysis also suggests that IO's political features yield stronger explanatory power for explaining these structural changes than bureaucratic determinants. We conclude that the politics of structural change in international bureaucracies is a missing piece in the current debate on international public administrations that complements existing research perspectives by reiterating the importance of the political context of international bureaucracies as actors in global governance.}, language = {en} } @article{DanielsenFleischer2022, author = {Danielsen, Ole Andreas and Fleischer, Julia}, title = {The effects of political design and organizational dynamics on structural disaggregation and integration in Norway 1947-2019}, series = {Governance : an international journal of policy and administration}, volume = {36}, journal = {Governance : an international journal of policy and administration}, number = {1}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {1468-0491}, doi = {10.1111/gove.12669}, pages = {299 -- 320}, year = {2022}, abstract = {In countries with long-standing agency traditions, the creation of new agencies rarely comes as a large-scale reform but rather as one structural choice of many possible, most notably a ministerial division. In order to make sense of these choices, the article discusses the role of political design-focusing on the role of political motivations, such as ideological turnover, replacement risks and ideological stands toward administrative efficiency-and organizational dynamics-focusing on the role of administrative legacies and existing organizational palettes. The article utilizes data on organizational creations in the Norwegian central state between 1947 and 2019, in order to explore how political design and organizational dynamics help us understand the creation of agencies relative to ministry divisions over time. We find that political motives matter a great deal for the structural choices made by consecutive Norwegian governments, but that structural path dependencies may also be at play.}, language = {en} } @article{FleischerReiners2021, author = {Fleischer, Julia and Reiners, Nina}, title = {Connecting international relations and public administration}, series = {International studies review}, volume = {23}, journal = {International studies review}, number = {4}, publisher = {Oxford Univ. Press}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {1521-9488}, doi = {10.1093/isr/viaa097}, pages = {1230 -- 1247}, year = {2021}, abstract = {The recent debate on administrative bodies in international organizations has brought forward multiple theoretical perspectives, analytical frameworks, and methodological approaches. Despite these efforts to advance knowledge on these actors, the research program on international public administrations (IPAs) has missed out on two important opportunities: reflection on scholarship in international relations (IR) and public administration and synergies between these disciplinary perspectives. Against this backdrop, the essay is a discussion of the literature on IPAs in IR and public administration. We found influence, authority, and autonomy of international bureaucracies have been widely addressed and helped to better understand the agency of such non-state actors in global policy-making. Less attention has been given to the crucial macro-level context of politics for administrative bodies, despite the importance in IR and public administration scholarship. We propose a focus on agency and politics as future avenues for a comprehensive, joint research agenda for international bureaucracies.}, language = {en} } @article{FleischerCarstens2021, author = {Fleischer, Julia and Carstens, Nora}, title = {Policy labs as arenas for boundary spanning}, series = {Public Management Review}, volume = {24}, journal = {Public Management Review}, number = {8}, publisher = {Routledge}, address = {London}, issn = {1470-1065}, doi = {10.1080/14719037.2021.1893803}, pages = {1208 -- 1225}, year = {2021}, abstract = {The recently adopted German Online Access Act triggered the creation of digitalization labs for designing digital services, bringing together federal, state, and local authorities; end-users; and private-sector actors. These labs provide opportunities for boundary spanning due to organizational field and lab features. Our comparative case studies on three digitalization labs show variations in boundary spanning and reveal lab members de-coupling from their parent organizations to a varying extent. We have concluded labs offer boundary spanning that supports safeguarding the legitimacy of innovative policy designs but also raise concerns over public accountability.}, language = {en} }