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This study follows the debate in comparative public administration research on the role of advisory arrangements in central governments. The aim of this study is to explain the mechanisms by which these actors gain their alleged role in government decision-making. Hence, it analyses advisory arrangements that are proactively involved in executive decision-making and may compete with the permanent bureaucracy by offering policy advice to political executives. The study argues that these advisory arrangements influence government policy-making by "institutional politics", i.e. by shaping the institutional underpinnings to govern or rather the "rules of the executive game" in order to strengthen their own position or that of their clients. The theoretical argument of this study follows the neo-institutionalist turn in organization theory and defines institutional politics as gradual institutionalization processes between institutions and organizational actors. It applies a broader definition of institutions as sets of regulative, normative and cognitive pillars. Following the "power-distributional approach" such gradual institutionalization processes are influenced by structure-oriented characteristics, i.e. the nature of the objects of institutional politics, in particular the freedom of interpretation in their application, as well as the distinct constraints of the institutional context. In addition, institutional politics are influenced by agency-oriented characteristics, i.e. the ambitions of actors to act as "would-be change agents". These two explanatory dimensions result in four ideal-typical mechanisms of institutional politics: layering, displacement, drift, and conversion, which correspond to four ideal-types of would-be change agents. The study examines the ambitions of advisory arrangements in institutional politics in an exploratory manner, the relevance of the institutional context is analyzed via expectation hypotheses on the effects of four institutional context features that are regarded as relevant in the scholarly debate: (1) the party composition of governments, (2) the structuring principles in cabinet, (3) the administrative tradition, and (4) the formal politicization of the ministerial bureaucracy. The study follows a "most similar systems design" and conducts qualitative case studies on the role of advisory arrangements at the center of German and British governments, i.e. the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Finance, for a longer period (1969/1970-2005). Three time periods are scrutinized per country; the British case studies examine the role of advisory arrangements at the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister's Office, and the Ministry of Finance under Prime Ministers Heath (1970-74), Thatcher (1979-87) and Blair (1997-2005). The German case studies study the role of advisory arrangements at the Federal Chancellery and the Federal Ministry of Finance during the Brandt government (1969-74), the Kohl government (1982-1987) and the Schröder government (1998-2005). For the empirical analysis, the results of a document analysis and the findings of 75 semi-structured expert interviews have been triangulated. The comparative analysis reveals different patterns of institutional politics. The German advisory arrangements engaged initially in displacement but turned soon towards layering and drift, i.e. after an initial displacement of the pre-existing institutional underpinnings to govern they laid increasingly new elements onto existing ones and took the non-deliberative decision to neglect the adaption of existing rules of the executive game towards changing environmental demands. The British advisory arrangements were mostly involved in displacement and conversion, despite occasional layering, i.e. they displaced the pre-existing institutional underpinnings to govern with new rules of the executive game and transformed and realigned them, sometimes also layering new elements onto pre-existing ones. The structure- and agency-oriented characteristics explain these patterns of institutional politics. First, the study shows that the institutional context limits the institutional politics in Germany and facilitates the institutional politics in the UK. Second, the freedom of interpreting the application of institutional targets is relevant and could be observed via the different ambitions of advisory arrangements across countries and over time, confirming, third, that the interests of such would-be change agents are likewise important to understand the patterns of institutional politics. The study concludes that the role of advisory arrangements in government policy-making rests not only upon their policy-related, party-political or media-advisory role for political executives, but especially upon their activities in institutional politics, resulting in distinct institutional constraints on all actors in government policy-making – including their own role in these processes.
Bestehende Forschung hat gezeigt, dass die Reformbereitschaft von Führungskräften eine wichtige Voraussetzung für die erfolgreiche Umsetzung von Veränderungsprojekten ist. Dieser Artikel geht der Frage nach, wie erklärt werden kann, warum einige Führungskräfte in der öffentlichen Verwaltung reformbereiter sind als andere. Er greift dabei auf eine Führungskräftebefragung aus dem Jahr 2010 zurück, die auf den Einschätzungen von 351 Verwaltungsmanagern aus der Ministerialverwaltung von Bund und Ländern basiert. Eine statistische Analyse dieser Daten kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass die typische reformbereite Führungskraft intrinsisch motiviert ist, auf eine aufgabenorientierte Führung setzt sowie Arbeitserfahrung außerhalb der öffentlichen Verwaltung und keine juristische Ausbildung besitzt. Sie arbeitet auf oberer Hierarchieebene, ist jedoch eher mit Fach- als mit Führungsaufgaben beschäftigt. Der Artikel vertieft und erläutert diese Befunde sowie deren Implikationen für die Verwaltungspraxis.
Bestehende Forschung hat gezeigt, dass die Reformbereitschaft von Führungskräften eine wichtige Voraussetzung für die erfolgreiche Umsetzung von Veränderungsprojekten ist. Dieser Artikel geht der Frage nach, wie erklärt werden kann, warum einige Führungskräfte in der öffentlichen Verwaltung reformbereiter sind als andere. Er greift dabei auf eine Führungskräftebefragung aus dem Jahr 2010 zurück, die auf den Einschätzungen von 351 Verwaltungsmanagern aus der Ministerialverwaltung von Bund und Ländern basiert. Eine statistische Analyse dieser Daten kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass die typische reformbereite Führungskraft intrinsisch motiviert ist, auf eine aufgabenorientierte Führung setzt sowie Arbeitserfahrung außerhalb der öffentlichen Verwaltung und keine juristische Ausbildung besitzt. Sie arbeitet auf oberer Hierarchieebene, ist jedoch eher mit Fach- als mit Führungsaufgaben beschäftigt. Der Artikel vertieft und erläutert diese Befunde sowie deren Implikationen für die Verwaltungspraxis.
Switches between political and administrative positions seem to be quite common in today’s politics, or at least not so unusual any longer. Nevertheless, up-to-date empirical studies on this issue are lacking. This paper investigates the presumption, that in recent years top bureaucrats have become more politicised, while at the same time more politicians stem from a bureaucratic background, by looking at the career paths of both. For this purpose, we present new empirical evidence on career patterns of top bureaucrats and executive politicians both at Federal and at Länder level. The data was collected from authorized biographies published at the websites of the Federal and Länder ministries for all Ministers, Parliamentary State Secretaries and Administrative State Secretaries who held office in June 2009.