TY - JOUR A1 - Ringeling, Arthur A1 - Reichard, Christoph T1 - Some Reflections on the Development of Educaton for Public Administration in Europe JF - Public Administration in Europe : The Contribution of EGPA Y1 - 2019 SN - 978-3-319-92855-5 SP - 203 EP - 212 PB - Springer CY - Cham ER - 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 - Scianna, Bastian Matteo T1 - A predisposition to brutality? BT - german practices against civilians and francs-tireurs during the Franco-Prussian war 1870–1871 and their relevance for the German ‘military Sonderweg’ debate T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Philosophische Reihe N2 - The German Sonderweg thesis has been discarded in most research fields. Yet in regards to the military, things differ: all conflicts before the Second World War are interpreted as prelude to the war of extermination between 1939–1945. This article specifically looks at the Franco-Prussian War 1870–71 and German behaviour vis-à-vis regular combatants, civilians and irregular guerrilla fighters, the so-called francs-tireurs. The author argues that the counter-measures were not exceptional for nineteenth century warfare and also shows how selective reading of the existing secondary literature has distorted our view on the war. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Philosophische Reihe - 165 KW - francs-tireurs KW - levee en masse KW - myth of Franktireurkrieg KW - Franco-Prussian War KW - Geneva convention of 1864 KW - Landwehr KW - siege of Paris 1870 Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-434218 SN - 1866-8380 IS - 165 SP - 968 EP - 993 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 - THES A1 - von Kaphengst, Dragana T1 - Project’s management quality in development cooperation T1 - Managementqualität von Projekten in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit N2 - In light of the debate on the consequences of competitive contracting out of traditionally public services, this research compares two mechanisms used to allocate funds in development cooperation—direct awarding and competitive contracting out—aiming to identify their potential advantages and disadvantages. The agency theory is applied within the framework of rational-choice institutionalism to study the institutional arrangements that surround two different money allocation mechanisms, identify the incentives they create for the behavior of individual actors in the field, and examine how these then transfer into measurable differences in managerial quality of development aid projects. In this work, project management quality is seen as an important determinant of the overall project success. For data-gathering purposes, the German development agency, the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), is used due to its unique way of work. Whereas the majority of projects receive funds via direct-award mechanism, there is a commercial department, GIZ International Services (GIZ IS) that has to compete for project funds. The data concerning project management practices on the GIZ and GIZ IS projects was gathered via a web-based, self-administered survey of project team leaders. Principal component analysis was applied to reduce the dimensionality of the independent variable to total of five components of project management. Furthermore, multiple regression analysis identified the differences between the separate components on these two project types. Enriched by qualitative data gathered via interviews, this thesis offers insights into everyday managerial practices in development cooperation and identifies the advantages and disadvantages of the two allocation mechanisms. The thesis first reiterates the responsibility of donors and implementers for overall aid effectiveness. It shows that the mechanism of competitive contracting out leads to better oversight and control of implementers, fosters deeper cooperation between the implementers and beneficiaries, and has a potential to strengthen ownership of recipient countries. On the other hand, it shows that the evaluation quality does not tremendously benefit from the competitive allocation mechanism and that the quality of the component knowledge management and learning is better when direct-award mechanisms are used. This raises questions about the lacking possibilities of actors in the field to learn about past mistakes and incorporate the finings into the future interventions, which is one of the fundamental issues of aid effectiveness. Finally, the findings show immense deficiencies in regard to oversight and control of individual projects in German development cooperation. KW - development cooperation KW - project management quality KW - evaluation KW - GIZ KW - knowledge management KW - Entwicklungszusammenarbeit KW - Qualität des Projektmanagements KW - Evaluierung KW - GIZ KW - Wissensmanagement Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-430992 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wegmann, Simone A1 - Evequoz, Aurelien T1 - Legislative functions in newly democratised countries: the use of parliamentary questions in Kenya and Zambia JF - The Journal of Legislative Studies N2 - A large literature exists examining the functions of legislatures and the behaviour of MPs in established democracies. But little efforts have been made to observe how MPs behave in new democratic assemblies. This article seeks to address this shortcoming through an exploration of the use of parliamentary questions in two new democracies: Kenya and Zambia. Analysing an innovative dataset we offer one of the few attempts to directly measure legislative behaviour in new democracies. We examine how the factors found in the literature on parliamentary questions in liberal democracies react to this shift of context and to what degree legislatures in these countries fulfil their core functions. Results show that opposition MPs are not necessarily among the most active but that electoral incentives such as the margin by which MPs have won their seats or the number of voters they represent explain the use and content of parliamentary questions. KW - Parliamentary questions KW - new democracies KW - opposition KW - Sub-Sahara Africa Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13572334.2019.1697057 SN - 1357-2334 SN - 1743-9337 VL - 25 IS - 4 SP - 443 EP - 465 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - BOOK ED - Hickmann, Thomas ED - Partzsch, Lena ED - Pattberg, Philipp H. ED - Weiland, Sabine T1 - The anthropocene debate and political science T3 - Routledge research in global environmental governance N2 - Anthropocene has become an environmental buzzword. It denotes a new geological epoch that is human?dominated. As mounting scientific evidence reveals, humankind has fundamentally altered atmospheric, geological, hydrological, biospheric, and other Earth system processes to an extent that the risk of an irreversible system change emerges. Human societies must therefore change direction and navigate away from critical tipping points in the various ecosystems of our planet. This hypothesis has kicked off a debate not only on the geoscientific definition of the Anthropocene era, but increasingly also in the social sciences. However, the specific contribution of the social sciences disciplines and in particular that of political science still needs to be fully established. This edited volume analyzes, from a political science perspective, the wider social dynamics underlying the ecological and geological changes, as well as their implications for governance and politics in the Anthropocene. The focus is on two questions: (1) What is the contribution of political science to the Anthropocene debate, e.g. in terms of identified problems, answers, and solutions? (2) What are the conceptual and practical implications of the Anthropocene debate for the discipline of political science? Overall, this book contributes to the Anthropocene debate by providing novel theoretical and conceptual accounts of the Anthropocene, engaging with contemporary politics and policy-making in the Anthropocene, and offering a critical reflection on the Anthropocene debate as such. The volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of political science, global environmental politics and governance, and sustainable development. Y1 - 2019 SN - 978-0-8153-8614-8 SN - 978-1-351-17412-1 PB - Routledge CY - London ER -