TY - JOUR A1 - Schulze-Gabrechten, Lena T1 - An organizational approach to public governance BT - understanding and design JF - Public administration N2 - In this volume, Egeberg and Trondal put forward an ‘organizational approach to public governance’ (p. 1) that, in their view, complements existing explanations for organizational change and behaviour in governance processes (‘Understanding’) and produces relevant advice for practitioners, specifically anyone involved in reorganizing public administration (‘Design’). Following the authors’ introduction of the theoretical reasoning behind their approach (chapter 1), they present supporting findings that are based on new material (chapters 2 and 9), but mainly draw on six previously published research articles (chapters 3–8). Egeberg and Trondal conclude with possible ‘design implications’ of said findings (chapter 9). Their ‘organizational approach’ focuses on the impact of selected organizational characteristics on decision‐making in and on behalf of government organizations in policy‐making generally (‘public governance’) and administrative politics more specifically (‘meta‐governance’). The authors concentrate on three sets of ‘classical’ organizational characteristics: structure (mainly vertical and horizontal specialization), demography (personnel composition), and locus (geographical location). The conceptual part of the volume convincingly summarizes ‘formal organization matters’—arguments from the literature for each of the individual organizational factors. Their main, already well‐established argument is that the way an organization is formally set up makes some (reform) decisions more likely than others—a line of reasoning that the authors present as neglected in governance literature. In the following five empirical chapters, the authors show that aspects of horizontal and vertical specialization—mainly operationalized by Gulicks’ principles of horizontal specialization and the idea of primary versus secondary affiliation of staff—affect organizational behaviour. Readers learn that whether government levels are organized according to a territorial or non‐territorial principle impacts the power relationship between levels: non‐territorial organization at the supranational level tends to empower the centre against lower levels of government. There are two chapters on the decision‐making behaviour of commissioners and officials in the European Commission, both showing that organizational affiliation trumps demographic background factors such as nationality, even with temporary staff. Chapter 5 addresses coordination dynamics in the European multi‐level system and finds that coordination at the territorially organized national level thwarts non‐territorially organized coordination at the supranational level, resulting in the phenomenon of ‘direct’ national administration bypassing their national executives. Further, the authors show that vertical specialization—while controlling for other factors such as issue salience—has an effect on officials’ behaviour at the national level: agency officials in Norway report significantly less sensitivity towards political signals from the political executive than their colleagues in ministries. Chapter 7 discusses the relevance of geographical location for the relationship between subordinated organizations and their political executive. The authors find that the site of Norwegian agencies does not significantly affect their autonomy, influence, or inter‐institutional coordination with the superior ministry. The last empirical chapter focuses on the effect of formal organization on meta‐governance, that is, administrative politics. Based on a qualitative case study of a reorganization process in Norway in 2003 involving the synchronized relocation of several agencies after many failed attempts, the authors conclude that administrative reforms can be politically steered and controlled through the organization of the reform process. They argue that amongst other factors the strategic exclusion of opposing actors from the reform process as well as the deliberate increase in situations demanding quick decisions (‘action rationality’, p. 119) by political leaders helps explain the reform's unexpected success. The last chapter is dedicated to the synthesis of the results and to design implications. Supported by new data from a 2016 survey among Norwegian public officials, the authors conclude that organizational position is the most important influencer of decision‐making behaviour, with educational background and previous job experience also playing a large role (p. 135). Consequently, their suggestions for practitioners involved in meta‐governance processes concentrate on aspects of the deliberate crafting of organizational specialization to shape organizational positions, and spend less time discussing location and employee demographics. The authors illustrate and contextualize their recommendations with the help of three empirical examples: organizing good governance by balancing political control and independence in the case of agencification, organizing for coping with boundary‐spanning challenges such as climate change through inter‐organizational structural arrangements, and designing permanent organizational structures for innovative reforms in the public sector (pp. 137 ff.). This volume is an excellent compilation of theoretically informed applications of the all too often undefined ‘organization matters’ argument. It juxtaposes—particularly in the theory chapter and in the last chapter on design implications—organizational arguments against other explanations of organizational change like historical institutionalism or the garbage can model of decision‐making. However, two major aspects of the book's approach are less convincing. First, supplementary explanations such as the garbage can model that are discussed in the reflections on meta‐governance are neither argumentatively nor empirically applied to public governance; why should, for example, the ‘solutions in search of a problem’ idea only be applicable to decisions on reform policy, but not to decisions in all other policy areas? Similarly, it would have been nice to read more on the authors’ idea on the interaction between organizational factors and between them and other explanations in the empirical cases on public governance—this would have allowed the reader to get a better idea about how much formal organization matters. The view on bureaucrats’ demographic background is slightly confusing: it is presented as a competing approach (p. 7), but also as one of the main organizational factors (p. 12). Second, as the authors themselves state, the concept of governance is about ‘steering through collective action’ (p. 3) and focuses on interactive processes, and explicitly includes non‐governmental actors in the policy‐making equation. Against this background it seems unfortunate that most of the work presented in the book takes an exclusively governmental perspective and the justification for it remains rather superficial. It would be preferable and even necessary to see the organizational arguments—at least theoretically or through discussing appropriate literature—applied to interactive governance processes involving other actors and/or to non‐bureaucratic organizations. Regarding its methodology, the specifics of the proposed approach deserve to be addressed more systematically and critically in the book. Except for chapters 2, 3 and 5 (literature‐based studies) as well as chapter 8 (single case study), the empirical studies follow a quantitative logic and are informed by data on self‐reported behaviour through large‐N panel surveys with public officials. In terms of analysis, descriptive statistics or basic inferential statistics (linear regression) are employed. Certainly, the authors are aware of the limitations of their data sources, such as the results being possibly affected by social desirability, and they discuss and justify them in the chapters individually (e.g., on pp. 47, 89). Still, their approach could be strengthened with a more cautious account on the extent to which their choice of data and methods is able to uncover the ‘causal impact of organizational factors in public governance processes’ (p. 131, emphasis added) and with some suggestions for widening their methodological toolbox in the future. On this note, the survey method presented as new on p. 135 is not a particularly convincing choice. The authors do not lay out a research agenda; a surprising omission. This is, however, somewhat made up for by the concluding chapter's stimulating discussion of the possible real‐world implications of their findings and perspective, skilfully using organization theory as a ‘craft’ (p. 29). Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12590 SN - 0033-3298 SN - 1467-9299 VL - 97 IS - 2 SP - 483 EP - 485 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - GEN A1 - Heucher, Angela T1 - Reconsidering overlap in global food security governance T2 - Food security : the science, sociology and economics of food production and access to food Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-019-00916-z SN - 1876-4517 SN - 1876-4525 VL - 11 IS - 3 SP - 555 EP - 558 PB - Springer Netherlands CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lewis, Simon A1 - Waligorska, Magdalena T1 - Introduction: Poland’s Wars of Symbols JF - East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures N2 - This introduction to the special section on Poland’s wars of symbols analyzes the symbolic contestation that has characterized the country in recent years, studying a range of phenomena including nation, gender, memory, and religious symbolism within the overall framework of political conflict. In doing so, it offers a multidisciplinary view on political fractures that have resonated throughout Europe and the “West.” Overall, the four case studies in this section study ways in which national symbols, topoi, and narratives have been deployed as tools in drawing and redrawing boundaries within society, polarizing and mobilizing the political camps as well as contesting and resisting power. These studies enable us to situate recent political events in a historical perspective, mapping the rise of populism in Poland against the background of legacies specific to the East-Central European region. KW - Poland KW - nationalism KW - political symbols KW - culture KW - populism Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0888325418821418 SN - 0888-3254 SN - 1533-8371 VL - 33 IS - 2 SP - 423 EP - 434 PB - Sage Publ. CY - Thousand Oaks ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hickmann, Thomas T1 - Rezension zu: Andonova, Liliana B: Governance Entrepreneurs: International Organizations and the Rise of Global Public-Private Partnerships. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. - XI,275 S. - ISBN 978-1-107-16566-3 JF - Global environmental politics Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_r_00510 SN - 1526-3800 SN - 1536-0091 VL - 19 IS - 2 SP - 175 EP - 177 PB - MIT Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jann, Werner A1 - Wegrich, Kai T1 - Generalists and specialists in executive politics: Why ambitious meta-policies so often fail JF - Public administration N2 - This article contributes to the politics of policy‐making in executive government. It introduces the analytical distinction between generalists and specialists as antagonistic players in executive politics and develops the claim that policy specialists are in a structurally advantaged position to succeed in executive politics and to fend off attempts by generalists to influence policy choices through cross‐cutting reform measures. Contrary to traditional textbook public administration, we explain the views of generalists and specialists not through their training but their positions within an organization. We combine established approaches from public policy and organization theory to substantiate this claim and to define the dilemma that generalists face when developing government‐wide reform policies (‘meta‐policies’) as well as strategies to address this problem. The article suggests that the conceptual distinction between generalists and specialists allows for a more precise analysis of the challenges for policy‐making across government organizations than established approaches. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12614 SN - 0033-3298 SN - 1467-9299 VL - 97 IS - 4 SP - 845 EP - 860 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kaya, Muzaffer T1 - The potentials and challenges of left populism in Turkey BT - the case of the peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) JF - British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies N2 - In spring 2015, Turkey witnessed the unexpected rise of the HDP, founded by the Kurdish Liberation Movement together with the Turkish radical left, against President Erdoğan’s authoritarian rule. In this article, I will employ contemporary literature on left populism to explain the HDP’s rise as an alternative left hegemonic project against the neoliberal authoritarianism that Erdoğan represents. After discussing the historical context from which the HDP emerged and grew, I will evaluate its discourse and strategies based on a conceptualization of left-wing populism. Lastly, I will discuss the challenges that the HDP confronted after the June 2015 elections and the differences between the Turkish and Western European contexts for a left-wing populist strategy. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2019.1634398 SN - 1353-0194 SN - 1469-3542 VL - 46 IS - 5 SP - 797 EP - 812 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Seyfried, Markus A1 - Reith, Florian T1 - The seven deadly sins of quality management: trade-offs and implications for further research JF - Quality in higher education N2 - Quality management in higher education is generally discussed with reference to commendable outcomes such as success, best practice, improvement or control. This paper, though, focuses on the problems of organising quality management. It follows the narrative of the seven deadly sins, with each ‘sin’ illustrating an inherent trade-off or paradox in the implementation of internal quality management in teaching and learning in higher education institutions. Identifying the trade-offs behind these sins is essential for a better understanding of quality management as an organisational problem. KW - Quality management KW - higher education KW - governance KW - trade-offs KW - teaching KW - research Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13538322.2019.1683943 SN - 1353-8322 SN - 1470-1081 VL - 25 IS - 3 SP - 289 EP - 303 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bach, Stefan A1 - Thiemann, Andreas A1 - Zucco, Aline T1 - Looking for the missing rich: tracing the top tail of the wealth distribution JF - International Tax and Public Finance N2 - We analyse the top tail of the wealth distribution in France, Germany, and Spain using the first and second waves of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). Since top wealth is likely to be under-represented in household surveys, we integrate big fortunes from rich lists, estimate a Pareto distribution, and impute the missing rich. In addition to the Forbes list, we rely on national rich lists since they represent a broader base of the big fortunes in those countries. As a result, the top 1% wealth share increases notably for the three selected countries after imputing the top wealth. We find that national rich lists can improve the estimation of the Pareto coefficient in particular when the list of national USD billionaires is short. KW - Wealth distribution KW - Missing rich KW - Pareto distribution KW - HFCS Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10797-019-09578-1 SN - 0927-5940 SN - 1573-6970 VL - 26 IS - 6 SP - 1234 EP - 1258 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - GEN A1 - Fitzi, Gregor A1 - Turner, Bryan S. T1 - Introduction: From politics as a vocation to politics as a profession T2 - Journal of Classical Sociology Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X19851341 SN - 1468-795X SN - 1741-2897 VL - 19 IS - 4 SP - 311 EP - 315 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - März, Moses Alexander T1 - Imagining a politics of relation BT - Glissant’s border thought and the German border JF - Tydskrif vir letterkunde N2 - This study explores the theoretical and political potentials of Édouard Glissant’s philosophy of relation and its approach to the issues of borders, migration, and the setup of political communities as proposed by his pensée nouvelle de la frontière (new border thought), against the background of the German migration crisis of 2015. The main argument of this article is that Glissant’s work offers an alternative epistemological and normative framework through which the contemporary political issues arising around the phenomenon of repressive border regimes can be studied. To demonstrate this point, this article works with Glissant’s border thought as an analytical lens and proposes a pathway for studying the contemporary German border regime. Particular emphasis is placed on the identification of potential areas where a Glissantian politics of relation could intervene with the goal of transforming borders from impermeable walls into points of passage. By exploring the political implications of his border thought, as well as the larger philosophical context from which it emerges, while using a transdisciplinary approach that borrows from literary and political studies, this work contributes to ongoing debates in postcolonial studies on borders and borderlessness, as well as Glissant’s political legacy in the twenty-first century. KW - Edouard Glissant KW - politics of relation KW - Germany KW - border regime Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.17159/2309-9070/tvl.v.56i1.6271 SN - 0041-476X VL - 56 IS - 1 SP - 49 EP - 61 PB - University of Pretoria CY - Pretoria ER -