The Bureaucracy and Its Masters: The New Madisonian System in the US

The bureaucracy's masters have redesigned the American political system over the past 20 years. As before, checks and balances play a critical role. This time, however, relations between one branch of government (the bureaucracy) and the rest are decidedly and deliberately asymmetrical. While acknowledging the need for bureaucratic accountability, the author raises questions about a growing emphasis on highly coercive controls from above. Instead he recommends greater reliance on catalytic controls from below, which energize the bureaucracy without stifling bureaucratic creativity and eroding bureaucratic integrity.     

Coordinating the Government Bureaucracy in Hong Kong: An Institutional Analysis

The change in sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997 has brought about an interesting puzzle: despite a high degree of institutional continuity, the Hong Kong bureaucracy that was considered highly efficient during the colonial era has appeared to turn into an inept administrative structure generating blunder after blunder. The bureaucracy seems to face greater difficulties in horizontal coordination under the new governance, and has lost the ability to produce coherent policy actions.
Drawing upon a literature of institutional analysis, this article examines the institutional design for coordination in the Hong Kong government. The article argues that the bureaucracy in Hong Kong is designed upon a logic of colonial rule. Like any institutional arrangements, the colonial administrative system has inherent coordination limitations. During the colonial era, some smoothing mechanisms were developed as the lubricant for the bureaucracy's operation, but the new governance has inevitably impinged upon some of these—making the bureaucracy more prone to coordination problems.     

Parkinson's Law and the New Public Management? Contracting Determinants and Service‐Quality Consequences in Public Education

Why is contracting used more frequently under some circumstances than others? What is its impact on spending for core mission and on service quality? These questions are explored with data from more than 1,000 Texas school districts. The evidence for a recent three‐year period shows that contracting is negatively related to spending on school districts' central task and is not positively associated with district performance. Why, then, do districts contract? While several variables are associated with the degree of contracting, the most interesting is the relative size of a district's bureaucratic staff. Furthermore, the relationship between contracting and bureaucracy is reciprocal: Each is associated with subsequent growth in the other. The dynamic suggests an updated version of Parkinson's law. These findings indicate the need for researchers to probe the causes and consequences of contracting more thoroughly to help public managers assess this important option.     

Contracting Revisited: Determinants and Consequences of Contracting Out for Public Education Services

The determinants and consequences of contracting are examined in more than 1,000 Texas school districts for 1997–2008. The results largely replicate prior research by O'Toole and Meier, showing that contracting is negatively related to spending on school districts’ core instructional functions and that the relationship between contracting and bureaucracy is reciprocal. The present findings, based on data from a longer period, indicate that contracting is positively related to school district performance. This article also finds support for an extended model of contracting determinants involving two environmental shocks: negative budget shocks and enrollment shocks.     

The Priming Effect of Corruption and Bureaucracy Bashing on Citizens’ Perceptions of an Agency’s Performance

Priming theories suggest that negative stories or events can affect how citizens feel about public organizations. However, research concerning the priming impact of both corruption and bureaucracy bashing—two relevant topics today—on how citizens perceive the performance of agencies is lacking. To close this lacuna in the literature, an experimental survey was conducted where respondents in the United States were randomly assigned to one of five performance vignettes. The results demonstrate that when participants were assigned to the vignettes containing the corruption and bureaucracy bashing cues, perceptions of performance were lower. This finding is consistent with priming theories. Moreover, differences within the corruption and bureaucracy bashing vignettes as well as between the corruption and bureaucracy bashing vignettes were not found. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the article.     

School Bureaucracy and Student Performance at the Local Level

A major debate in American education centers on the role bureaucracy plays in shaping educational performance. Proponents of school choice argue hat large educational bureaucracies have contributed to dramatic performance shortfalls in America's public schools. Other scholars view educational bureaucracies as beneficial because they manage a wide range of problems and thus make it easier for teachers to focus on the core task of teaching. This study examines these competing claims about the impact of bureaucracy on student performance using district level data from Texas public schools. The findings from several regression models reveal negative relationships between bureaucracy (measured both at the central and campus administration levels)and student performance across several different grade levels.     

Do Managers Face a Performance Trade-Off? Correlations Between Production and Process Performance

The existence of multiple goals in public organizations inevitably raises the concern that managers face performance trade-offs. In particular, scholars have expressed the fear that public managers, in order to secure high production performance, are forced to sacrifice performance on goals like equity, accountability, and procedural justice. However, our knowledge of whether such trade-offs exist is scarce. Using an administrative 10-year panel data set of Danish public schools and principals, this article analyzes trade-offs between production performance (measured by student performance and student pass rate) and process performance (measured by equity, accountability, and procedural justice). Results show no evidence of trade-offs. In contrast, principals who succeed in raising student performance generally also succeed in securing high pass rates, high equity, high accountability, and high procedural justice. These results suggest that managers who are able to secure high performance on one dimension of performance will likely also be high-performing on other performance dimensions.     

Emotions in Management and the Management of Emotions: The Impact of Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Politics on Public Sector Employees

Readers are invited to a rendezvous with the meaning of the heart and emotions in public administration. Despite the growing interest in recent years in emotional intelligence within the managerial literature, too little has been written about emotional intelligence within the public sector. This is surprising in light of New Public Management voices that stress flexibility, responsiveness, and a focus on the needs and demands of citizens. The functionality of the heart in a mind‐oriented bureaucracy is analyzed, and a model is suggested for exploring the relationship between emotional intelligence, organizational politics, and employees' performance in public agencies. This model is empirically tested in two Israeli municipalities. The results support a moderating role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between organizational politics and emotional commitment, as well as between organizational politics and employees' absenteeism. Other direct mediating effects of political perceptions and skills are noted. Implications for theory development, future empirical studies, as well as practical recommendations are suggested.     

Race, Region, and Representative Bureaucracy

Scholars of representative bureaucracy have long been interested in the linkage between passive representation in public agencies and the pursuit of specific policies designed to benefit minority groups. Research in this area suggests that the structural characteristics of those organizations, the external political environment, and the perceptions of individual bureaucrats each help to facilitate that relationship. Work to date has not, however, sufficiently investigated the impact of region on representation behavior, which is surprising given the emphasis that it receives in the broader literature on race and politics. Drawing on that literature, this study argues that, for black bureaucrats, region of residence is an important moderator of active representation because it helps to determine the salience of race as an issue and the degree of identification with racial group interests. It tests hypotheses related to that general argument in a nationally representative sample of more than 3,000 public schools. The results suggest that black teachers produce greater benefits for black students in the South, relative to other regions. A supplementary analysis also confirms the theoretical supposition that race is a more salient issue for Southern black bureaucrats, when compared with their non-Southern counterparts.     

DANGER ZONES OF CORRUPTION: HOW MANAGEMENT OF THE MINISTERIAL BUREAUCRACY AFFECTS CORRUPTION RISKS IN POLAND

This article examines the relationship between management of the ministerial bureaucracy and the risk of high‐level corruption in Poland. Four danger zones of corruption in the ministerial bureaucracy are distinguished, comprising the personalisation of appointments, the emergence of multiple dependencies, the screening capacity of the personnel system and the incentive of bureaucrats to develop a reputation of honesty and competence. Empirically, the article investigates the case of Poland from 1997 until 2007 and sets the findings in a comparative East Central European perspective. The article shows that corruption risks in the ministerial bureaucracy increased in most but not all danger zones after 2001 and, in particular, during the period of the centre‐right governments that were in office between 2005 and 2007. The increase in corruption risks is reflected in Poland's deteriorating corruption record during the same period. The conclusion discusses the findings with regard to alternative causes of corruption and the relationship between civil service professionalisation and corruption in other East Central European countries. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Establishing the link between representative bureaucracy and performance: The South African case

Representative bureaucracy is a critical element of modern public administration and governance. Since the advent of nonracial democracy, the South African government has transformed the apartheid bureaucracy into a new public service that closely mirrors the country's diverse population. Questions remain, however, about how this demographic transformation has impacted the public service. Grounded in the theory of representative bureaucracy, we use a mixed methods approach to examine the relationship between representation of historically disadvantaged groups and performance of national departments in South Africa. Analyses of panel data indicate that as national departments become more representative by employing a greater percentage of Blacks, they become more effective at achieving their goals. Interviews with officials in national departments corroborate this and reveal a range of underlying pathways linking representation of historically disadvantaged groups to performance.     

The Role of the Public Manager: Loyalty,Autonomy or Advocacy?

It is argued that the role of the public bureaucracy must be analysed along at least two dimensions. One dimension concerns the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats, i.e. the possible conflict between political loyalty and autonomy. The other dimension concerns the relationship between citizens and bureaucracy, i.e. the possible conflict between openness towards citizens and bureaucratic closedness. With the aid of data from a survey of 407 agency heads in Norwegian municipalities, it was possible to group different bureaucrats along the two dimensions. Four categories emerged from the analysis; a political bureaucrat, an autonomous bureaucrat, the "classic" administrator and the "linking pin". An attempt to predict group membership was made using variables on the societal, organizational as well as individual levels. This attempt was only partially successful, indicating that there is a need for other independent variables to explain group membership.     

The Role of Management and Representation in Improving Performance of Disadvantaged Students: An Application of Bum Phillips's “Don Shula Rule”1

Scholars and practitioners within the U.S. education system have focused considerable attention on developing new programs aimed at raising educational achievement for disadvantaged students. New programs are only one way to improve student performance, however; recent work in public administration suggests that public management and implementation practices might also have a large impact on student performance. Existing research shows that managerial networking, managerial quality, and effective personnel management can significantly improve the quality of the education received by disadvantaged students. Additional work highlights the contribution of representative bureaucracy. Because these research agendas have targeted the public administration literature rather than the education policy literature, this article seeks to bring this research back to education policy. Using data from several hundred Texas public school districts, spanning 1995 to 2002, and focusing on disadvantaged student performance (Latinos, blacks, and low‐income students), this article illustrates how both management and processes to enhance the representativeness of teaching faculty produce benefits for disadvantaged students.     

When Politics Matters: The Impact of Politicians' and Bureaucrats' Preferences on Salient and Nonsalient Policy Areas

For three decades, the “politics matters” literature has found that political ideology is an important explanation of public policy. However, this literature systematically fails to include the influence of the bureaucracy. In fact, it is almost impossible to identify a single study in this literature that controls for the influence of the permanent bureaucracy. In this article, we investigate whether politics still matters when bureaucratic preferences are taken into account. We do this in a simultaneous test of political and bureaucratic influences on public budgets, a policy measure often studied in the “politics matters” literature. We find that political preferences trump bureaucratic ones in policy areas salient to the public but not in less salient areas. This might be comforting news from a democratic perspective. However, as public budgets represent an easy case for political influence, it is food for thought that political preferences do not always prevail.     

Bureaucratic Posture: On the Need for a Composite Theory of Bureaucratic Behavior

This article examines the underlying assumptions and main findings of four streams of research on bureaucratic postures. It explores the utility of each school of thought for understanding how perspectives on bureaucratic postures are associated with the advancement of the public interest and bureaucratic performance. A main conclusion is that, although limited in scope of application, each stream has merit. Nonetheless, the existing research is too narrow: The field needs to consider a more complex model of bureaucratic behavior that draws from these four fields to offer a framework that is widely applicable to the range of motives for work found in the public bureaucracy and the variety of behaviors that individuals exhibit. Some attributes that may characterize such a model are sketched out.     

The Glass Ceiling Revisited: Determinants of Federal Job Advancement

Using the results of a recent survey of federal employees and focus groups of the same population, this article extends previous research on the existence of a glass ceiling in the federal bureaucracy. Even when controlling for differences between the sexes in human capital factors, work habits, work opportunities, and personal circumstances, women who have been in the federal bureaucracy from zero to 10 years and from 20 to 30 years have not advanced in their professions as successfully as have men. In contrast to and departing from previous research, there is little evidence that a glass ceiling has been experienced among women who have worked in the bureaucracy between 10 and 20 years. Additional findings consistent with past literature include the fact that among women who have faced gender-based barriers, those who chose to have children during their careers have been especially disadvantaged. We conclude that the glass ceiling on the federal level, where apparent, has been multidimensional and quite subtle.     

Devine intervention? Lessons in systemic retrenchment from Canada’s most generous welfare state

This article tackles the importance of systemic retrenchment in welfare state research by focusing on two core elements neglected in the literature: the civil service and governmental revenues. Saskatchewan has possessed key ingredients associated with generous welfare states: a dominant left-wing party, a supportive bureaucracy and important non-visible fiscal revenues. According to the comparative welfare state literature, this is also an excellent recipe for maintaining a generous welfare state amid attempts, primarily by right-wing governments, to scale it back. Yet, most social indicators in the post-Devine years demonstrate that Saskatchewan can no longer be considered a leading welfare state in Canada. Reforms to the bureaucracy and a host of financial measures resulting in a near default explain why the Devine government was successful in its efforts to disrupt the CCF/NDP social legacy despite the fact that the NDP regained power for 16 years afterwards.     

The effects of boundary spanners on trust and performance of urban governance networks: findings from survey research on urban development projects in the Netherlands

Previous research has extensively analyzed the role, and indicated the importance, of network management for the functioning and performance of public or governance networks. In this article, we focus on the influence of boundary spanning actors in such networks—an aspect less examined in the governance network literature. Boundary spanners are considered to be important for governance network performance. Building on the literature, we expect a mediating role of trust in this relationship. To empirically test these relationships, we conducted survey research (N = 141) among project managers involved in urban governance networks: networks around complex urban projects that include the organizations involved in the governance process (the formulation of policies, decision making, and implementation) in these complex projects. We found a strong positive relationship between the presence of boundary spanners and trust and governance network performance. The results indicate a partially mediating role of trust in this relationship. Furthermore, we found that these boundary spanners originated mainly from private and societal organizations, and less from governmental organizations.     

Mapping the black box of intraministerial organization: An analytical approach to explore structural diversity below the portfolio level

This article explores the structural diversity of intraministerial organization over time. Based on organization theory, it proposes a generic typology for intraministerial units applicable to any hierarchically structured government organization. We empirically investigate the critical case of the German federal bureaucracy. By classifying its subunits, we analyze the longitudinal development of structural differentiation and its correspondence to denominational variety. The data stem from a novel international dataset, covering all ministries between 1980 and 2015. We find that intraministerial structure differentiates over time, across and within ministries. A stable core of traditional Weberian structure is complemented by structurally innovative intraministerial units. We conclude that the German federal bureaucracy is more diverse than suggested in previous literature. Our findings indicate that less Weberian bureaucracies are at least as structurally diverse and that more reform‐driven bureaucracies will have experienced at least as many changes in structural diversity.     

Are bigger governments better providers of public goods? Evidence from air pollution

Theories explaining government size and its consequences are of two varieties. The first portrays government as a provider of public goods and a corrector of externalities. The second associates larger governments with bureaucratic inefficiency and special-interest-group influence. What distinguishes these alternatives is that only in the former is governmental expansion generally associated with an increase in social welfare. In the latter, the link between government size and public goods provision (or social welfare) is negative. We study the empirical significance of these competing claims by examining the relationship between government size and a particular public good, namely environmental quality (notably, air quality measured by SO₂ concentrations), for 42 countries over the period 1971–1996. We find that the relationship is negative, even after accounting for the quality of government (quality of bureaucracy and the level of corruption). This result may not prove conclusively that the growth of government has been driven by factors other than concern for the public good, but it creates a presumption against the theory of government size that emphasizes public good provision.