A CASE OF PARTIAL CONVERGENCE: THE EUROPEANIZATION OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

This article compares the Europeanization of central government in four Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs): Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and Slovakia. Using a large N survey of ministerial civil servants, it finds that the Europeanization of central government is characterized by partial convergence. The scope of Europeanization is large and similar among CEECs, reaching widely and deeply into government ministries. Moreover, patterns of Europeanization are similar among CEECs: the same ministries form the ‘inner core’ and ‘outer circle’ of Europeanized ministries; only a small proportion of civil servants work full‐time on EU issues and routinely engage in activities that ‘project’ national policies at EU level. Compared to old member states, patterns of Europeanization show signs of convergence, while the scope of Europeanization is larger in CEECs.     

TIME FOR EU MATTERS: THE EUROPEANIZATION OF DUTCH CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

To what extent does the European Union (EU) affect national governments? This article seeks to answer this question by assessing the Europeanization of Dutch central government. Using data from a large‐scale survey among civil servants, we assess to what extent the EU affects the structure and culture of governmental organizations, as well as the activities of individual civil servants. On the basis of this analysis, we conclude that the impact of the EU both on individual civil servants and on organizations in Dutch central government is two‐sided: a small core of civil servants and organizations are deeply involved in EU‐related activities and this exists alongside a much broader base of civil servants and organizations that are less affected by the EU. These differences appear more clearly on the level of daily working practices than on the level of formal organizational structures. Nevertheless, the impact of European integration on government organizations remains limited to particular organizations and particular civil servants within central government.     

T. H. GREEN AND THE ETHICS OF SENIOR OFFICIALS IN BRITISH CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

This article is an attempt to move away from microeconomics in the study of administration and to concentrate on British administrative ethics from a philosophical perspective. Thus, ethics is used here not in the sense of the ethics of managers dealing with accounts but as the ‘science’ of ranking moral values. The intention of the article is to examine how political theory can be used to help illustrate the dilemmas of public servants working in a climate which is distinctly hostile to disinterested ideals. The ideas of T. H. Green, the English Idealist philosopher who contributed so much to our understanding of public service, form the basis of the theoretical discussion, and the work of senior officials in Whitehall is the material used for illustrative purposes. Where do the loyalties of civil servants lie? What are their duties and responsibilities to ministers? To whom, for what, and how are civil servants accountable?     

EUROPEANIZATION AND BUREAUCRATIC AUTONOMY IN THE NEW MEMBER STATES: A CASE STUDY OF THE AGRICULTURAL PAYING AGENCY IN SLOVAKIA

The paper explores the impact of Europeanization on bureaucratic autonomy in the new EU member states using as a case study the Agricultural Paying Agency in Slovakia. The paper shows that Europeanization had limited sustained impact on the personal autonomy of senior officials; however, it requires and sustains the personal autonomy of an extensive cadre of mid‐level and junior civil servants. At the same time, it necessitates and continues to sustain significant change in the way agricultural subsidies are distributed, with a high level of autonomy in implementation and a lower, but still significant, measure of autonomy in policy‐making. These conclusions can also generally be supported by evidence from Lithuania and Poland. In addition, the coercive elements of Europeanization interacted with the temporarily high bureaucratic autonomy in Slovakia to ‘open’ non‐coercive channels of Europeanization of agricultural subsidies and beyond.     

NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC EDUCATION: A CATALYST FOR THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF SWEDISH SCHOOL PRINCIPALS

New Public Management (NPM) is one of the most significant reforms in public welfare in recent times. Making individual civil servants more dependent on the directions of the local manager than on common professional standards, previous sociological research argues that NPM results in a ‘deprofessionalization’ of civil servants. Taking a somewhat different approach, recent public administration research indicates that NPM may, at the same time, enhance the professional status of welfare managers. By integrating the literature on the sociology of professions and public administration, this article develops a theoretical framework for understanding the influence of NPM using the example of a professional project for school principals in Sweden. Taking a process‐oriented methodological approach, the result shows that Swedish school principals gained increased support for their professional project by the introduction of NPM. The article argues that NPM can function as a catalyst for welfare managers' professional projects.     

BRITISH GOVERNANCE IN TRANSITION: A CASE STUDY OF THE NORTHERN IRELAND CIVIL SERVICE

ABSTRACT

In comparisons of the internal governmental arrangements within states, the United Kingdom (UK) is ordinarily categorised as a unitary state conforming to the ‘Westminster model’. However, this article contends that the changing nature of British governance over the last two decades means that the UK is better viewed as a ‘union state’ that conforms more readily to a ‘differentiated polity model’. Nowhere is the reality of differentiation more clearly exemplif ied than in respect of the British civil service. To illustrate the extent of differentiation, the article presents a case study of the characteristics and trends in the civil service of Northern Ireland for, while the politics of the Province have received great attention, its system of public administr ation has been chronically under-reported. The article considers the changing structures, policy process and impact of public management reforms as well as the restoration of devolved government. Finally, it summarises how the evidence from Northern Ireland informs theoretical understanding as well as its implications for the rest of the UK and beyond.     

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM IN THE UK, 1999–2005: REVOLUTIONARY FAILURE OR EVOLUTIONARY SUCCESS?

In December 1999, the UK Civil Service Management Board agreed an internal reform programme, complementing the more externally‐oriented ‘modernizing government’ programme, to bring about major changes in the functioning of the civil service –‘step change’ rather than continuous improvement. This paper suggests that the aims of the reform programme were only partially achieved. While some step changes did indeed occur, even such central elements of reform as ‘joined‐up’ working with other public organizations were still only at an initial stage some three years later and others – for example, business planning and performance management systems – have taken 20 years to achieve acceptance within the civil service. It appears that examples of meteoric change are rare in the civil service – the reality of the changes are better characterized as ‘evolution’ and ‘continuous improvement’ than ‘revolution’ and ‘step change’.     

Devolution and Local Government: Evidence from Scotland

Devolution in Scotland has had a major impact upon local government. Local government, at both political and managerial levels, perceives central government in the shape of the Scottish Executive to be closer (geographically and politically) and more open to local government in terms of access to ministers and civil servants. However, Scottish central–local relations continues to be characterised by a sense of mistrust of local government, especially among civil servants and a continuing desire for central control of key policy agendas. Equally, the policy process continues to display features of fragmentation across major policy areas. Moreover, Westminster has not yet departed the scene of Scottish politics in both financial and policy terms but also in the enduring presence of a Westminster ‘political culture’     

THE IMPACT OF FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ON WHITEHALL

This article examines whether the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 has changed Whitehall. Based on a two‐year, ESRC‐funded study, it evaluates the impact of FOI on five characteristics of the Whitehall model: the culture of secrecy, ministerial accountability to Parliament, civil service neutrality, the Cabinet system, and effective government. Proponents of FOI hoped that government would be less secretive, more accountable and more effective; critics feared that civil servants would lose their anonymity, and collective Cabinet responsibility would be undermined. Drawing on interviews, media analysis, case law and official documents, the article finds that the impact of FOI is modest at most. It is not powerful enough to do much good or much ill, and the feared ‘chilling effect' on candour and record‐keeping has not materialized. Leaks do more damage than FOI disclosures. But ministers remain apprehensive about the effect of FOI on Cabinet records and discussions.     

‘TO BE,BUT NOT TO BE SEEN’: EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF INTERNATIONAL CIVIL SERVANTS

International civil servants (ICS) are largely excluded from the analysis of International Organizations (IOs) because states are assumed to be the determining force in shaping their behaviour. Even principal‐agent and constructivist analyses often treat an IO’s staff as a unit and are concerned primarily with states’ capacities to control IOs. Examining the opportunities of ICS, rather than the choices of states, provides a better means of understanding the capacities of ICS to contribute to the operation of IOs, and especially when they participate in multilateral negotiations. We suggest that structure, competence, legitimacy and culture provide a framework for analysing ICS variable capacity. We use the Secretariat of the WTO, known as a ‘member‐driven organization’, to illustrate how ICS can play a critical role in achieving the IO’s objectives. A word on our title. It comes from Esse, non videri in the original, as quoted by a director at the WTO in an interview in April 2003.     

POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND PERFORMANCE AUDIT: THE CASE OF THE AUDITOR GENERAL IN NORWAY

Performance audit is widely used in public administration, but, at present, little empirical evidence exists on its usefulness and contribution to accountability. Based on survey data from 353 civil servants in Norway, this article analyzes the auditees' perceptions of the audit. Performance audit was seen as useful by a majority of the auditees. If auditees agreed to audit criteria and assessments, were allowed to influence the process, had favourable opinions of the reports, and believed that the State Audit Institution contributed to accountability and improvement, then they regarded it as useful. Reports used for accountability purposes were not perceived as less useful. The auditees' administrative level, the use of the report to further interests, and attention from politicians, the media, and the Parliament impacted on the accountability dimension. These results indicate that performance audit can influence civil servants, but the influence is contingent on how the audited civil servants perceive the performance audit.     

NOT SO ‘ARM'S LENGTH’: REINTERPRETING AGENCIES IN UK CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

Administrative decentralization to government agencies (so‐called ‘agencification’) has attracted much attention in recent years, increasingly for its longevity or evolution after the ‘high’ managerialism of the 1980s, and largely through a neo‐positivist epistemology. Drawing on techniques of narrative and discourse analysis, and a model of incremental ideational change, this article identifies the necessity of supplementing those existing large‐N analyses of agencification's expansion and decline with qualitative attention to the endurance of policy meaning. It demonstrates how the original foundations of managerialism, civil service empowerment and decentralization from the UK's seminal ‘Next Steps’ agency programme are eschewed in contemporary reform discourse, where agencification is instead advocated as centralized, politically proximate and departmentalized governance. This substantial reinterpretation of the arm's‐length concept not only challenges existing claims of continuity in UK administrative policy, but also demonstrates the utility of interpretive methods for exploring longevity in public management more widely.     

TRUTH IN GOVERNMENT AND THE POLITICIZATION OF PUBLIC SERVICE ADVICE

Recent controversies over intelligence in Iraq, to give one example, have raised problems about the politicization of official advice from government, particularly what we are led to believe is factual or ‘objective’ advice. Objectivity is a contested value and the lines are often hard to draw between fact, spin and misrepresentation. Public servants are held to higher standards of objectivity than politicians, a fact on which politicians trade when they seek to attribute assessments of evidence to their officials. The growing openness of government documentation is placing pressure on departmental officials who wish to be both loyal to their political masters and honest in their factual assessments. These issues are discussed with reference to recent Australian experience (and also with reference to the UK Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly.     

Navigating the dichotomy: The top public servant's craft

How in their day‐to‐day practices do top public servants straddle the politics–administration dichotomy (PAD), which tells them to serve and yet influence their ministers at the same time? To examine this, we discuss how three informal ‘rules of the game’ govern day‐to‐day political–administrative interactions in the Dutch core executive: mutual respect, discretionary space, and reciprocal loyalty. Drawing from 31 hours of elite‐interviews with one particular (authoritative) top public servant, who served multiple prime ministers, and supplementary interviews with his (former) ministers and co‐workers, we illustrate the top public servants’ craft of responsively and yet astutely straddling the ambiguous boundaries between ‘politics’ and ‘administration’. We argue that if PAD‐driven scholarship on elite administrative work is to remain relevant, it has to come to terms with the boundary‐blurring impacts of temporal interactions, the emergence of ‘hybrid’ ministerial advisers, and the ‘thickening’ of accountability regimes that affects both politicians and public servants.     

WEBER AND KAFKA: THE RATIONAL AND THE ENIGMATIC BUREAUCRACY

Max Weber's and Franz Kafka's respective understandings of bureaucracy are as different as night and day. Yet, Kafka's novel The Castle is best read with Max Weber at hand. In fact, Kafka relates systematically to all the dimensions in Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy and give us a much‐contemplated parody, almost a counter‐punctual ideal type, based on four key observations: bureaucratic excesses unfold in time and space; a ‘no error’ ideology generates inescapable dilemmas; inscrutability is a life condition in bureaucracy; civil servants end up walking on the spot, just like the figures in Escher's painting: Ascending and Descending. Nevertheless, Weber and Kafka can both be right. While Kafka looks at the bureaucratic phenomenon through persons who are marginalized, Weber's perspective is historic‐comparative and top‐down. Are the observations of the one more correct than the other? The question is meaningless. As two opposite poles, Weber and Kafka ‘magnetize’ each other.     

RESIGNED BUT SATISFIED: THE NEGATIVE IMPACT OF PUBLIC SERVICE MOTIVATION AND RED TAPE ON WORK SATISFACTION

This article examines the relationship between red tape, Public Service Motivation (PSM) and a particular work outcome labelled ‘resigned satisfaction’. Using data from a national survey of over 3754 public servants working at the municipal level in Switzerland, this study shows the importance of looking more closely at the concept of work satisfaction and, furthermore, of thoroughly investigating the impact of the different PSM dimensions on work outcomes. Unsurprisingly, research findings show that red tape is the most important predictor of resignation. Nevertheless, when PSM dimensions are analysed separately, results demonstrate that ‘commitment to public interest/civic duty’ and, to a lesser extent, ‘attraction to policy‐making’ decrease resignation, whereas ‘compassion’ and ‘self‐sacrifice’ increase it. This study thus highlights some of the negative (or undesirable) effects of PSM that have not been previously addressed in PSM literature.     

REFLECTIONS ON THE TRUE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SCOTT REPORT FOR GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY

The immediate impact of the Scott report was slight because it had no conclusion and led to no ministerial or other resignations. Reasons for this inconclusiveness were examined, including conventions of the judicial process, the difficulty Scott had in defining the offences he was examining, the slipperiness of those offences as constitutional conventions and Scott's lack of grasp of administrative processes.
Yet his report is a mine of information on problems of accountability in the area of government defence sales. It was atypical in that three departments pursuing four policies between them and with another department as policeman had a locus in the process. Given the nearly 100,000 licences being processed at one time, it was a large, complex and fragmented administrative activity which might easily have resulted in more mishaps than it did.
Despite its special features the author argues that it does provide evidence of six areas of difficulty in government accountability which are also of (growing) relevance outside the area Scott surveyed: how one finds who is responsible for policy and policy change; how accountability is secured where confidentiality is justified for national security or other reasons; how one gets operational accountability for executive operations within departments; the accountability of junior to departmental ministers; of junior to more senior civil servants; and of civil servants to ministers.     

CHANGE IN THE CIVIL SERVICE: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECTS

The type of civil service modelled on the principles of the Victorian reformers survived virtually unscathed into the post-1945 era of the welfare state and managed economy. Criticism of its qualities and performance resulted in a programme of changes associated principally with the Fulton Report (1968). This initial reform phase identified a shift to more active management of personnel, resources and policies as the primary need, but its practical effects were muted by optimistic assumptions relating to the rate of economic growth and the benefits to be derived from continued extension of governmental responsibilities. Since 1979 the context of civil service reform has changed, imposing much stronger pressure in favour of a managerialist view of civil service functions, of a career in the civil service, and of the ethos of the profession. Despite ambiguities of purpose and constraints within the political system the course of change is likely to continue in the direction, pointing towards a civil service substantially different at the end of the century from that which has been familiar in British thinking about the character and status of officials.     

SERVANT LEADERSHIP,TRUST, AND THE ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT OF PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYEES IN CHINA

So‐called servant leaders strive selflessly and altruistically to assist others before themselves, work to develop their followers' greatest potential, and seek to benefit the wider community. This article examines the trust‐based mechanisms by which servant leadership influences organizational commitment in the Chinese public sector, using data from a survey of civil servants. Quantitative analysis shows that servant leadership strongly influences affective and normative commitment, while having no impact on continuance commitment. Furthermore, we find that affective trust rather than cognitive trust is the mechanism by which servant leadership induces higher levels of commitment. Our findings suggest that in a time of decreasing confidence levels in public leaders, servant leadership behaviour may be used to re‐establish trust and create legitimacy for the Chinese civil service.     

APPOINTMENTS TO THE HIGHEST GRADES IN THE CIVIL SERVICE – DRAWING THE CURTAIN OPEN

The appointments process to the higher civil service is important but little information about it is in the public domain. This article provides such information, using material gathered from a series of interviews with senior civil servants. Part one offers an authorized account of the procedures for senior appointments. The second part makes use of information I gathered from officials closely involved in the procedures, to piece together what actually occurs, in a still highly secretive area of Whitehall proceedings and highlights the disparity between'official theory'and actual practice. The article concludes by suggesting that a dominant Prime Minister has the potential to use a system, originally fashioned by Whitehall, for Whitehall, for political purposes.