Bureaucratic Perceptions to the Politics–Bureaucracy Relations in Bangladesh: A Moral Dilemma in between Political Neutrality and Responsiveness

Irrespective of the systems of government, a major question is: what are the views and perceptions of the bureaucrats about politics–bureaucracy relations? Aiming to address this problem, in this article an attempt has been made to undertake an empirical study of bureaucracy in Bangladesh. The study reveals that as a post-colonial structure, government bureaucracy is an essential and integral part of the administration in Bangladesh but the bureaucracies are always in a dilemma regarding their relationship with the political leaderships. The relationship between politicians and bureaucrats is neither normatively dichotomous with political neutrality nor abundantly cohesive or responsive to the political leaderships according to the perceptions of bureaucracy. Moreover, bureaucracy in Bangladesh is suffering from a moral puzzle between political neutrality and political responsiveness even though the bureaucrats are still in a dominant position in some cases.     

Bureaucratization in a Changing Society: Administrative Reforms in Late Nineteenth Century Chile

During the 1880s, a significant number of Chilean administrative services were reformed following the characteristics of the Weberian bureaucracy. From the analysis of two cases of administrative reform (the so-called Prussianization of the Chilean Army and the creation of institutions in the field of public health), this article seeks to understand why bureaucracy gained ground in nineteenth century Chile. Specifically, the article discusses how social conditions led policy makers to choose bureaucracy as a model for administrative organization. Through this analysis, the article aims to contribute to the theoretical discussion on the causes of bureaucratization.     

Normalizing Masculinities in Water Bureaucracy in Thailand

This article addresses the question of whether the culture of masculinity, which is dominant in the water bureaucracy of Thailand, has been changing since the country officially adopted the international paradigm shift towards an integrated approach that emphasizes, among other things, gender equality and women's participation in water resources management. Despite official rhetoric, masculinities have held sway in organizational structure and behavior. Women in both traditional and new water agencies, and those under their mandates, continue to be disadvantaged and excluded. More potent change measures, such as strong gender-sensitive capacity building, are needed. To succeed, such measures may also require broader reforms in state bureaucracy.     

Representative bureaucracy,international organizations and public service bargains

Academic interest in the administrative aspects of international organizations is on the rise. Yet, an issue that has received little attention is bureaucratic representation—the extent to which international bureaucracies are representative of the polity that they serve. The article theorizes the rationales for and forms of representative bureaucracy in international organizations by combining insights from the representative bureaucracy literature with the ‘public service bargains’ framework. It argues that bureaucratic representation is highly relevant in international organizations, given the diverse polity these organizations serve and their precarious legitimacy. It distinguishes three types of representational ‘bargains’ between international organizations and those they serve, centred on power, equal opportunities and diversity, and discusses under which conditions each type of bargain is likely to be struck. The argument contributes to discussions about representative bureaucracy in international organizations and to broader theoretical debates about international public administration.     

NEGOTIATING BUREAUCRATS

This article will present the argument that frontline bureaucrats fulfilling their duties within an infrastructure bureaucracy can be understood as negotiating bureaucrats, policymakers, and cousins to street‐level bureaucrats. Empirically, the argument is based on data from an exploratory case study of a major road construction project in Sweden collected through passive participatory observation, interviews, and documents; the main source of theoretical inspiration is implementation theory and the theory of street‐level bureaucracy. Working conditions, both similar to and different from street‐level bureaucrats, are discussed, and patterns of negotiating practices are identified and analyzed. The analysis indicates that a fragmented implementation structure has effects on when and how negotiating practices are applied, and on policy outcomes, bureaucratic legitimacy, and political efficacy.     

Toward a Pragmatic Model of Public Responsiveness: Implications for Enhancing Public Administrators’ Responsiveness to Citizen Demands

Public responsiveness, or bureaucratic responsiveness to citizen demands, is central to public administration theories. It is a key concept regarding the appropriate role of bureaucracy and professional administrators in a democratic political system. By exploring the complexity of the concept, this article proposes a pragmatic model as an alternative to the two mainstream models of understanding public responsiveness. The theoretical implication of the pragmatic model is also discussed. Future research should address administrators’ instrumental concerns in fostering public responsiveness.     

Aid and state-building,Part I: South Korea and Taiwan

Under what conditions does foreign aid in the aftermath of war foster state-building? This article argues that institutional legacy and continuity and the politics of aid may matter. In the aftermath of war, for an aid regime to reinforce state-building, it may need to ensure continuity in the strength of the state and to use recipient mechanisms and finance policies that generate a greater state capacity. The existence and continuity of a Weberian state may increase the likelihood of effective state-building. If the state is relatively strong, with a Weberian bureaucracy, aid can further reinforce it when aid is spent through national systems or is aligned with local priorities, with efforts to ensure that the recipient leaders reinforce state effectiveness by implementing policies that may require greater state capacity. Evidence for this argument is provided through pairwise comparison of state-building patterns between South Korea and Taiwan.     

Democratization and bureaucratic restructuring in Taiwan

Taiwan has been moving toward democracy, with a dramatic transition taking place in the past decade. Critical to this transition is a restructuring of the relationship between the state bureaucracy and society. This study focuses on democratization's effect on Taiwan's bureaucracy. In particular, it seeks to examine such aspects of bureaucratic transformation as bureaucratic decisionmaking, legislative-bureaucratic politics, interest group-bureaucratic relations, the expansion of local autonomy, and civil service reform. This study finds that the bureaucratic state is facing a great challenge from political, legislative, and societal forces. The old type of insulated bureaucratic planning and decision making is no longer possible, the bureaucracy is losing its KMT patrons, and bureaucrats are finding themselves answerable to political pressure, legislative oversight, and interest group lobbying. While the bureaucracy has lost its previous level of discretion in terms of macro-management and the formulation of developmental policies, the bureaucratic state has not withered away. Qingshan Tan is Associate Professor of Chinese and East Asian politics and Director of the International Relations Program in the Department of Political Science at Cleveland State University. His recent publications are on issues of democratization in Taiwan and China.     

Representative Bureaucracy in the Public Service? A Critical Analysis of the Challenges Confronting Women in the Civil Service of Ghana

In the public administration literature, the debate concerning the representation of minorities in the public bureaucracy continues to attract attention. The idea is that passive representation may lead to active representation with the later helping to develop policies and programs that will benefit minorities. Consequently, a number of governments have been implementing policies to enhance the involvement of minorities in public services. The Ghana government has not been left out in this endeavor. Since 1957, it has continued to institute measures to ensure a fair gender representation in the bureaucracy. This notwithstanding, the upper echelons of the bureaucracy continue to be dominated by males despite the over representation of women at the lower levels. What are the challenges confronting women in the public sector that make it difficult to achieve active representation? In this article, we examine the challenges confronting women to achieve active representation from a representative bureaucracy perspective.     

The Governance Narrative: Key Findings and Lessons from the Erc's Whitehall Programme

This article provides a personal interpretation of the key findings of the Economic and Social Research Council's Whitehall Programme. I tell the distinctive story of 'governance'— of fragmentation, networks, unintended consequences and diplomacy — challenging the dominant, managerial account of change in British govern-ment since 1979. I present a view of the world in which networks rival markets and bureaucracy as ways of allocating resources and co-ordinating policy and its implementation.     

State Capitalism in Time: Russian Natural Gas at the Service of Foreign Policy

This article explores the phenomenon of the enduring state control over the Russian natural gas sector. We suggest that explanations of the underlying motives can be classified under two broad theoretical categories: idealism and utilitarianism. Thus, we argue that state capitalism in the Russian natural gas industry can be understood through the idealistic claims of state power and of serving the national interest, which underpin the dominant perception of natural gas resources as a foreign policy tool. Moreover, we contend that although this perception is often considered as a product of the last decade, in fact it is rooted in history, as a legacy of the Soviet era.     

The White Gold: The Role of Government and State in Rehabilitating the Sugar Industry in Mozambique

This article examines the rehabilitation of the sugar industry in Mozambique after the General Peace Accord in 1992, engaging primarily and critically with certain aspects of the business-state literature. It explains why the sugar sector was rehabilitated from the perspectives of Mozambican state, government and industry actors. The article argues that support for the industry cannot be identified in singular and one-dimensional terms, but must include a variety of attributes of support that emerged from a post-independence fusion of industry, state and government officials' historical experiences of success and failure in the industry, and pragmatic as well as longer-term ideological stances. This, it is argued, created a ‘mediating bureaucracy’ that could broker between the diverse interests and aspirations of state/government and industry.     

Demolition and Dispossession: Toward an Understanding of State Violence in Millennial Mumbai

Slum clearance campaigns and demolition drives have been understood as an integral part of the governance of the Indian city, but little effort has been made to analyze why the Indian state periodically invokes its monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force in this manner. To answer this question, this article analyzes three periods of heightened demolitions in post-independence Mumbai: the mid-1950s, amidst independent state formation; the mid-1970s, during the period of authoritarian rule referred to as the Emergency; and the mid-2000s, when Maharashtra’s Chief Minister initiated a campaign to “transform Mumbai into a world class city.” In each of these periods—as well as during the smaller-scale demolitions that are a consistent feature of life in the city—this article argues that slum evictions cannot be explained solely by what David Harvey and others have referred to as “accumulation by dispossession,” whereby the urban poor is dispossessed to initiate potentially lucrative urban development. Rather, it demonstrates that demolitions are embedded in contestations over authority and sovereignty in the governance of the Indian city. Furthermore, it demonstrates that despite a heightened awareness about this type of state violence, the explanations for demolition drives remain fairly consistent in the current globalizing or neoliberal era.     

The Autopoiesis of Administrative Systems: Niklas Luhmann on Public Administration and Public Policy

This article offers an introduction to Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems as it pertains to public administration and policy, as a first step towards both a critique and its empirical application to empirical reality. It reconstructs Luhmann's early writings on bureaucracy and policy-making and shows how this early, more empirical work grounded his abstract theory of social systems in general and the political system in particular. The article also introduces some central concepts of Luhmann's more recent work on the autopoietic nature of social systems and considers the latter's consequences for bureaucratic adaptiveness and governmental steering in the welfare state. One of the main benefits of applying Luhmann's theory to public administration, the article concludes, is that it conceptualizes the central concerns of public administration within a complex picture of society as a whole, in which both the agency that issues decisions and the realm affected by these decisions are included.     

IMPLEMENTING PERFORMANCE‐BASED FUNDING FOR HEALTH RESEARCH: WHEN GOVERNANCE AND PROCEDURAL FAIRNESS MATTER

The article examines the implementation by the Italian Ministry of Health of performance‐based funding to allocate resources for research to IRCCS (Istituti di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico) hospitals. The analysis provides evidence that ten years from its introduction the performance‐based funding system has persisted, but it has been implemented rather differently from what had been imagined by its proponents. By drawing on the theoretical frameworks of policy implementation, agency, and relational contracting, the study establishes that the overall design of the system has contributed to this final outcome only to a limited extent. Rather, the lack of procedural fairness, as well as of political leadership in linking the system to national research priorities, has undermined the basis for trust between hospitals and the Ministry of Health. The article discusses how, in this, the governance of performance‐based funding and its strong ownership by the ministerial bureaucracy has been determinant.     

Constructing a social safety net in Africa: An institutionalist analysis of colonial rule and state social policies in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire

This article attempts to explain why, despite nearly identical cultural and economic landscapes and the potentially homogenizing pressures of globalization, social policies differ in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, two neighboring countries in West Africa. In Ghana, the government has generally attempted to strengthen the informal social welfare systems of the extended family and community through a more decentralized social policy, whereas the government in Côte d'Ivoire has tried to replace these informal social networks with the centralized arm of the bureaucracy. The article shows how different legacies of colonial rule produce these divergent social policies in a complex and iterative process over time. While domestic institutions do mediate the effects of globalization, the domestic factors highlighted in this article are not the formal political institutions cited in most studies. Rather, the analysis reveals the critical role of informal institutions, or normative frameworks, that existed under colonial rule and continue to endure in the post-colonial state. The article also contributes to current theories of institutions by showing how formal and informal institutions dynamically interact in the construction of the state and the African family.     

Governance in Whitehall

Governance theory raises conceptual and theoretical questions about the coordination of complex social systems and the evolving role of the state within that process. A central aspect of the governance debate focuses on the ability of national governments to address salient social issues. This article examines the British Labour governments' attempts to facilitate cross-departmental inter-organizational collaboration within Whitehall in an attempt to develop innovative responses to seemingly intractable social problems. The government's desire and strategy to increase its capacity to orchestrate 'joined-up' government can be interpreted as both an acceptance and a response to the challenges of modern governance. The article locates the structural, procedural and cultural responses to this challenge within the theoretical and analytical framework of governance theory. It concludes by suggesting that meaningful change in the way public policy is designed and implemented may well demand a more deep seated reappraisal of the structure of Whitehall and the dominant values of the British political elite than is currently anticipated.     

Indian politics in the 1990s: Trends and transformations

This article examines significant transformations that have occurred in Indian politics in the last decade, particularly after the eclipse of the one‐party dominant system. India is said to have entered the era of coalition politics with all its attendant consequences. The advent of coalition politics has induced pronounced political changes but coalition politics itself can be seen as a consequence of these changes. Cause and effect is therefore hard to separate but transformations can be identified with respect to India's electoral politics; stability of governments and the party system; federal‐regional equations; and, participation and empowerment. This article discusses these themes to provide an understanding of the noticeable mutations that the Indian political system has undergone.     

Reconciling public administration and democracy: the role of the responsible administrator

This article considers whether the individual responsibilities of bureaucratic officials provide a useful means for reconciling the tension between democracy and bureaucracy. Three questions central to the proper definition of bureaucratic responsibility are examined: (1) What is the relation of bureaucratic responsibility to the view that proper bureaucratic conduct is essentially a matter of ethics and morality? (2) If the appeal to moral values does not ordinarily offer an acceptable guide to proper bureaucratic conduct, upon what principles does a theory of bureaucratic responsibility rest? (3) What issues arise in putting responsibility into practice within a complex organizational setting? The article concludes that a democratic, process-based conception offers the most useful way of thinking about the responsibilities of bureaucratic officials.

The tension between democracy and bureaucracy has bedeviled public administration. However one defines democracy, its core demand for responsiveness (to higher political authorities, the public, client groups, or whatever the presumed agent of democratic rule) does not neatly square with notions of effective organization of the policy process and efficient delivery of goods and services, which are central to the definition of bureaucracy. Responsiveness need not guarantee efficiency, while bureaucratic effectiveness and efficiency often belie democratic control.

This tension between democracy and bureaucracy persists, but that it is the individual administrator who directly experiences the tension is especially important as a guide toward a resolution of this conflict. Since divergence is central to this tension between democracy and bureaucracy, speculation about the responsibilities of bureaucratic officials—their individual places within the bureaucracy, particularly the administrator's thoughts, choices, and actions—provides fruitful terrain for resolving the question of bureaucracy's place within a democratic system of rule.

Three questions need to be addressed if one accepts the premise that individual responsibility is central to locating the place of bureaucracy in a democratic order. First, what is unique about bureaucratic responsibility, especially in contrast to the view that these are largely ethical problems that can be resolved by appeal to moral values? Second, if dilemmas of bureaucratic conduct are by and large not resolvable through appeal to moral values, upon what other principles does a theory of bureaucratic responsibility rest? Third, what issues arise in putting responsibility into practice, especially within a complex organizational setting? This list of questions is not meant to be exhaustive but only a starting point for discussion.     

The political economy of the cycles of violence and non-violence in the Sikh struggle for identity and political power: implications for Indian federalism

This paper presents a critique of the essentialist notions of any community as a pacifist or militant community by examining the long history of the cycles of violence and non-violence in the evolution of the Sikh community in the Indian subcontinent. The theoretical premise of the paper is that communities' resort to violence and non-violence is determined by their strategic perspectives to achieve their politico-economic goals and not from any doctrinal adherence to violence or non-violence. The paper attempts a panoramic view of over 500 years of Sikh history (1469 – 2006) and offers a reinterpretation of that history by locating cycles of violence and non-violence in their historical context. It then provides a politico-economic perspective on violence and non-violence in their struggle for identity and political power. It focuses more on an analysis of the recent political conflict between Sikh militants and the Indian state, and concludes by drawing out the policy implications of that analysis for the politics of the modern Indian state regarding the Sikhs of Punjab. It identifies federal arrangements and human rights as issues of key importance in the political economy of this relationship.