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The article explores how recent changes in the governance of employment services in three European countries (Denmark, Germany and Norway) have influenced accountability relationships. The overall assumption in the growing literature about accountability is that the number of actors involved in accountability arrangements is rising, that accountability relationships are becoming more numerous and complex, and that these changes may lead to contradictory accountability relationships, and finally to multi accountability disorder'. The article tries to explore these assumptions by analysing the different actors involved and the information requested in the new governance arrangements in all three countries. It concludes that the considerable changes in organizational arrangements and more managerial information demanded and provided have led to more shared forms of accountability. Nevertheless, a clear development towards less political or administrative accountability could not be observed.
The article explores how recent changes in the governance of employment services in three European countries (Denmark, Germany and Norway) have influenced accountability relationships. The overall assumption in the growing literature about accountability is that the number of actors involved in accountability arrangements is rising, that accountability relationships are becoming more numerous and complex, and that these changes may lead to contradictory accountability relationships, and finally to ‘multi accountability disorder’. The article tries to explore these assumptions by analysing the different actors involved and the information requested in the new governance arrangements in all three countries. It concludes that the considerable changes in organizational arrangements and more managerial information demanded and provided have led to more shared forms of accountability. Nevertheless, a clear development towards less political or administrative accountability could not be observed.
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.
Das verbreitete Stereotyp Deutschlands als übermäßig bürokratisierter Staat kann einer nüchternen empirischen Bestandsaufnahme kaum standhalten. Im internationalen Vergleich zeigt sich vielmehr ein unterschiedliches Ausmaß der „Bürokratisierung“ entlang von drei zentralen Dimensionen der häufig undifferenziert betrachteten Bürokratieproblematik. Einer intelligenten Strategie der Entbürokratisierung muss daher eine systematische Analyse der Mechanismen der Bürokratisierung in einzelnen Dimensionen der Bürokratiekritik – zu viel Staat, zu viel Regulierung, zu bürokratische Organisation – zugrunde liegen. Der Beitrag stellt einen zentralen Mechanismus für die Regulierungsproblematik als derzeit besonders intensiv diskutiertes Bürokratieproblem dar: Das relative politische Kräfteverhältnis von „Generalisten“ und „Spezialisten“ wird als entscheidend für den Erfolg von Initiativen zur Deregulierung und „besseren Regulierung“ identifiziert. Diskutiert wird der Beitrag unterschiedlicher theoretischer Perspektiven zur konzeptionellen Begründung dieser Generalisten-Spezialisten-These. Hieraus ergeben sich schließlich handlungsrelevante Hypothesen zur Wirksamkeit von verbreiteten Ansätzen der „besseren Regulierung“.
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.
Brandenburg
(1994)