ARE FORMAL CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS THE MOST MERITOCRATIC WAY TO RECRUIT CIVIL SERVANTS? NOT IN ALL COUNTRIES

Recruitment to the civil service is, in order to prevent patronage, often centralized and based on performance in competitive examinations. This approach, albeit slow and occasionally cumbersome, is generally assumed to be the most meritocratic method of recruitment. However, while some applicants may have skills suited for a specific position, they may not perform best in a general examination. As long as the system is not abused, a more flexible recruitment process based on, for example, interviews and CV screening, may be more meritocratic. It is therefore necessary to weigh the risk of abuse against the potential gains from more flexibility. Formal civil service examinations are hypothesized in this article to be the most meritocratic way to recruit civil servants only in countries where the risk for patronage is high. Analysis of a dataset describing the structures and characteristics of bureaucracies worldwide lends support to the hypothesis.     

“MORE COLONIAL AGAIN?”—THE POST-1997 CULTURE OF HONG KONG'S GOVERNING ELITE[1]

The remarkable smoothness of Hong Kong's handover from liberal democratic Britain to communist China was not forecast because commentators underestimated the role of Administrative Officers (AOs) as the governing elite under both sovereigns. This article is based on a survey of post-1997 AO culture by an ex-insider and finds subtle changes under the stable surface: a reinforced paternalism, more “Confucian” but also “more colonial again;” less accountability downwards (“just as dedicated to our jobs, but forgetting what they are for”); more caution and conformity upwards. Unexpectedly, the new sovereign sems to interfere less than the old, but benefits from lower expectations and favourably double standards, whereas Hong Kong's government feels hypercriticised. Against the embarrassing reality of postcolonial governance elsewhere, the success of Hong Kong's continuing colonial system should not be ignored just because it does not fit Western democratic models.     

LOCAL AUTHORITY BUREAUCRACIES: RESPONSIBLE,REPRESENTATIVE, OR DIVERGENT? EVIDENCE FROM SMALL POLITICAL SYSTEMS IN NORWAY

The political power of modern bureaucracies may be viewed as a democratic challenge. In fact, many reforms in the public sector aim to strengthen control over these bureaucracies, either by politicians or by citizens. This article argues that the need for control will depend on the degree of interest divergence between bureaucracy on the one hand, and politicians and citizens on the other. Still, attitudes in the three groups are seldom compared directly. Here, the attitudes towards different issues in the three groups are compared, within four small Norwegian municipalities. The results indicate that attitudes of local bureaucrats only to a limited degree diverge from those of politicians and the public, with one exception: attitudes towards so‐called ‘New Public Management' reforms. Implications for control over bureaucracies are discussed.     

THE DIFFUSION OF PRIVATIZATION IN EUROPE: POLITICAL AFFINITY OR ECONOMIC COMPETITION?

Privatization has spread around the globe. While a number of studies find empirical evidence for the diffusion of privatization, it remains unclear what the relevant linkages between states are. This article analyses whether it is economic competition or political affinity that influences the diffusion of privatizing public utilities. The sample includes telecommunications, postal, and railway providers as the main network‐based utilities operating at the national level in 15 European countries from 1980 until 2007. The results of the spatial regressions clearly show that governments follow each other for economic reasons. Trading partners strategically interact when privatizing their national public‐utility providers to form strategic cross‐border company alliances and to avoid competitive disadvantages in the global market. This applies particularly to economies that are highly integrated in the international market. Surprisingly, political and ideological similarities do not seem to matter for the diffusion of privatization.     

ONLINE SERVICE PROVISION: ARE MUNICIPALITIES REALLY INNOVATIVE? THE CASE OF LARGER MUNICIPALITIES IN ITALY

The employment of information and communication technologies for the delivery of information and services has been considered a major objective of the modernization agenda of municipalities. This article contributes to the advances in the e‐government literature by assessing the current status of ICT adoption among larger Italian municipalities and investigating whether the municipalities at a more mature stage of e‐government adoption share any distinctive characteristics. The results show that some organizational factors, rather than environmental ones, show a positive association. However, the analysis also shows that most of the Italian municipalities involved have undertaken a non‐linear e‐government adoption process, which currently results in low diffusion of more mature stages of ICT adoption for the delivery of services to citizens and businesses.     

BETWEEN STATE AND SERVICE INDUSTRY: GROUP AND COLLECTIVE WEDDINGS IN COMMUNIST SHANGHAI, 1949–1956

Abstract

Group weddings have commonly been associated with Republican China under Guomindang rule. Wedding ceremonies involving multiple couples, however, continued to be held in the People’s Republic of China throughout the 1950s and after. During the early 1950s, Shanghai’s commercial group wedding agencies marketed their services to local couples, and district governments organized what they termed “collective weddings,” hoping that couples would be more amenable to state marriage registration if they could participate in a ceremony. In 1956, the municipal government considered instituting a unified collective ceremony across Shanghai. By examining meeting minutes, letter exchanges, and records of internal government and business discussions, this article explores entrepreneurial and governmental attempts to standardize Shanghai’s group and collective weddings. Although commercial group weddings and state collective ceremonies served different purposes, their proponents faced similar organizational difficulties in the search for a standardized, economical wedding ceremony befitting “New China.”     

NATIONAL AGENCIES IN THE EUROPEAN ADMINISTRATIVE SPACE: GOVERNMENT DRIVEN,COMMISSION DRIVEN OR NETWORKED?

In terms of national agencies in the European administrative space, case studies indicate that national governments may be partly split so that national (regulatory) agencies operate in a ‘double‐hatted’ manner when practising EU legislation, serving both ministerial departments and the European Commission. Applying large‐N questionnaire data, this article follows up these studies by investigating how important various institutions are with respect to influencing national agencies when they are practising EU legislation. How discretion is exercised at this stage of the policy process is not trivial; we demonstrate that, in addition, this activity is highly contested. Our main conclusion is that implementation of EU policies at the national level is neither solely indirect via national governments (as the standard portrayal says), nor solely direct (through Commission‐driven national agencies), nor solely networked (through transnational agency clusters). Implementation is instead compound with several sources of power represented more or less simultaneously.