ADMINISTRATIVE TRADITION AND REFORMS IN SPAIN: ADAPTATION VERSUS INNOVATION

The main purpose of this paper is understanding public administration formation and change in Spain. Its development before and since the years of Franco from 1939 to 1975, is noticeably path dependent in nature. As this paper will show, the foundations were laid before the Franco regime. Then came a period of political domination of the bureaucracy and the emergence of a key structural element of Spanish administration, the special corps. The paper covers the period of political transition, democratic consolidation, and the many processes of administrative reforms. These include the reforms of the Spanish civil service as well as the deep processes of reform.     

ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM – GENERAL PRINCIPLES AND THE AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCE

Failure to understand the political nature of administrative reform and to develop a political strategy to overcome resistance lies behind the failure of many reform attempts. The prerequisites of reform include political will, time, resources, an ongoing institution promoting change, and a strategy which concentrates on the implementation stage when resistance is strongest. Such a strategy must use the principal levers of change, including legislation, which directly affect administrative behaviour. In Australia in the 1970s administrative reform proceeded only slowly with the exception of changes in some States and the introduction of a new body of Federal administrative law. A better reform strategy in the past two years has resulted in extensive legislative change at the Federal level including greater ministerial control over certain senior appointments, open public competition for the top one per cent of civil service jobs, affirmative action and industrial democracy. There has thus been a further shift towards a unique Australian model of public administration.     

DISTINCTIVENESS OF ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM IN GREECE,ITALY, PORTUGAL AND SPAIN. COMMON CHARACTERISTICS OF CONTEXT,ADMINISTRATIONS AND REFORMS

This article, the final part of the symposium, concentrates on the common characteristics of Southern European states and administrations that can explain the distinctiveness of the reforms there. First, we briefly consider the theoretical aspect of the country papers, that is, historical institutionalism. We then briefly review some common features of contextual factors such as welfare state, economy and civic culture. This is followed by a discussion of some typical characteristics of Southern European administrations: legalism, politicization and clientelism. Finally, we discuss some common features of reform in Southern Europe. Reform in the region encompasses not only new public management; other reforms have also occurred. However, political polarization means these countries lack the stability necessary to implement and carry out reform effectively. In terms of improvement in quality, efficiency and client orientation of public service provision, the far‐reaching politicization of the civil service gives a distinctive twist to any such claims.     

THE ROLE OF POLITICS AND INSTITUTIONS IN THE ITALIAN ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM TRAJECTORY

This article applies broad conceptual categories of comparative politics to the explanation of administrative reforms in Italy. It takes as its argument some lines of influence on public sector reform of the features of the party system in Italy, the executive‐legislative balance, the politician‐bureaucrat relationship, and the role of administrative law. In the search for explanations for the trajectory of administrative reform, pre‐existing political and institutional factors also have to be interpreted through the lens of negotiated change occurring via processes of conversion and layering involving new and old institutions that has taken place in Italy since the ‘political crisis' began in 1992.     

THE ODYSSEY OF ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMS IN GREECE, 1981–2009: A TALE OF TWO REFORM PATHS

In Greece, two distinct reform paths led to institutional building and economic managerial types of reform. These two reforms, with the exception of the period 1996–2004, when both institutional and economic reforms were attempted, did not attract the same degree of attention. Institutional reforms were more successful than attempts at managerial reforms; reform implementation on the other hand varies. Economic and managerial reforms can be observed with regard to economic competition, the opening up of the market, and reducing the size of public sector, all areas where pressure from the EU has been stronger. Decentralization reforms were more important politically than administratively. Citizens' rights and service delivery were conceived as reforms of democratization and modernization rather than as managerial reforms. ‘Agencification’ amounted to circumventing existing ministerial structures. Change was incremental, and reforms were minimally guided by the New Public Management paradigm, because of little emphasis on changes imbued by managerial and economic values. Reform dynamics benefited not only from outside pressures but also from the operation of internal, ‘modernizing’ forces.     

THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORMS ON STUDENT PERFORMANCE IN DANISH SCHOOLS

Many resources have been invested in reforming the public sectors of most countries in the world during the last 20 years. Greater focus on evaluation and performance is one of the most central aspects of these reforms, but despite much academic research virtually no systematic evaluations of the outcome of the reforms themselves are found. This paper presents a study of the effect of performance management reforms of Danish public schools on the achievements of more than 80,000 lower secondary students. The study finds no or very small effects on performance measured as average exam scores, but highly significant effects on inequity in the sense that students with low socioeconomic status perform worse at reforming schools than at similar non‐reforming schools. These results, as well as the methodological challenges involved in estimating reform impact, emphasize the need for more empirical scrutiny of what effects the reforms have.     

INTRODUCTION: ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM IN GREECE,ITALY, PORTUGAL AND SPAIN

This symposium presents an overview of the state and administrative reforms in Southern Europe. The papers are written by scholars who are not only celebrated in their field, but also native to the country they write about. The report on Greece is by Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos and Calliope Spanou of Athens University. Edoardo Ongaro of Bocconi University Milan reports on Italy. In the case of Portugal, the reporter is José Magone, himself Portuguese and now working at the Berlin School of Economics. Reform in Spain is covered by Carlos Alba and Carmen Navarro of the Autonomous University Madrid.     

HYBRIDS AND PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITIES: COMPARING UK REFORMS IN HEALTHCARE,BROADCASTING AND POSTAL SERVICES

Many countries use state‐owned, for‐profit, and third sector organizations to provide public services, generating ‘hybrid’ organizational forms. This article examines how the hybridization of organizations in the public sector is influenced by interaction between regulatory change and professional communities. It presents qualitative data on three areas of the UK public sector that have undergone marketization: healthcare, broadcasting, and postal services. Implementation of market‐based reform in public sector organizations is shaped by sector‐specific differences in professional communities, as these groups interact with reform processes. Sectoral differences in communities include their power to influence reform, their persistence despite reform, and their alignment with the direction of change or innovation. Equally, the dynamics of professional communities can be affected by reform. Policymakers need to take account of the ways that implementation of hybrid forms interacts with professional communities, including risk of disrupting existing relationships based on communities that contribute to learning.     

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE: REFORMS,REGIMES, AND REALITY IN BANGLADESH

Bangladesh, a relatively young country, emerged with expectations of charting a new course in departing from its traditional and rigid system of public administration that prevailed during its existence as a part of British India and later as a province of Pakistan. The evolution of public administration in Bangladesh was profoundly influenced by the legacy of Pakistani rule, and subsequent efforts at reform hardly had any impact in breaking up the domination of the bureaucracy, which thrived under a pseudo-democratic and military-led government. Several factors contributed to the breakdown of administrative governance and the problem was reflected in poor performance, high incidence of corruption, and a lack of direction in the administrative system. A number of internal and external factors have exerted pressure for improving the system, but all efforts have yielded little result. Consequently, the achievement of good governance remains a distant dream in the absence of a vital and effective tool of public management.     

SITUATING ADMINISTRATIVE RESPONSIBILITY: A COMPARISON OF MEDIEVAL CHRISTIAN AND MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC ADMINISTRATIVE THOUGHT

Contemporary studies of administrative thought allow only a limited range of viability for medieval and non‐Western thought on the subject of public administration. This tendency belies the wealth of thought embedded within this broad literature. This paper investigates the matter of administrative accountability and responsibility through the lens of a comparative theorist of historical administrative thought. In order to assess the explanatory potential of early and non‐Western administrative studies, two texts have been chosen, both previously unanalysed in conjunction (to the best of my knowledge) from the perspective of the administrative theorist – John of Salisbury’s Policraticus and Abu al‐Hassan Al‐Mawardi’s Al‐Akham al‐Sultaniyya w’al‐Wilayat al Diniyya (The Ordinances of Government). Through an analysis of ideas of delegation and responsibility within these texts, the paper seeks to develop a critique of the place of revealed religious authority in the solution to the questions ‘who are administrators responsible to?’ and ‘what are administrators responsible for?’     

GENDER,GREEDY INSTITUTIONS,AND THE DEPARTMENTAL COURT

This article seeks to identify, map and understand the ways in which the everyday beliefs and practices of British central government departments embed social constructions of masculinity and femininity. It draws on observational fieldwork and repeat interviews conducted between 2002 and 2004 to analyse the everyday practices of departmental courts. We argue these courts have gendered practices and are ‘greedy institutions’. We unpack their practices of hierarchy, civility, rationality, gendered division of work, and long hours. We argue that these practices have significant gender consequence most notably women have few institutional options but to ‘manage like men’.     

TASK COMPLEXITY,ORGANIZATION SIZE,AND ADMINISTRATIVE INTENSITY: THE CASE OF UK UNIVERSITIES

The task complexity and size of public service organizations are arguably key determinants of the proportion of resources devoted to administration. Moreover, the combined effect of these two variables is also likely to have important implications for the scale of the administrative function. To explore the separate and combined effects of task complexity and size on administrative intensity in public service organizations, we examine the determinants of the relative proportion of resources allocated to central administration rather than academic departments in UK universities between 2003 and 2008. The results suggest that there is a non‐linear U‐shaped impact of both task complexity and size on administrative intensity, and that in combination these characteristics lead to a bigger central administrative component in universities. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

THE CHALLENGES TO TEACHERS,TEACHING, AND POST-SECONDARY TEACHING INSTITUTIONS: ASSUMPTIONS,PREDILECTIONS, PROCESSES,AND PROJECTIONS

ABSTRACT

The contemporary forces impacting teachers and teaching are capable of becoming an overwhelming, uncontrollable wave of disaster or an opportunity for proactively redesigning teaching at a higher level of commitment, performance, and relevance to make and shape critically important intellectual and societal contributions for the future. This symposium aims to galvanize the teachers in post-secondary education to reject the deadly viruses of reactive fear, credentialed complacency, and intellectual rigidity in their current stages and replace them with proactive options, alternatives, and designs.

More specifically, this Introduction clarifies why the respective articles were commissioned to appear in this symposium based on the reasons, concerns, and observations that stimulated the Editor to pursue and design a symposium on teaching in the social sciences.

The concluding contention of this Introduction is that all teachers can, and must, influence the events in both their personal and professional lives by actively immersing themselves in the values, visions, and cultural anchors of their profession, discipline, craft, society, and belief systems. There is no doubt in the Editor's mind that the symposium presentations will add much substance that will help make all of us great teachers.

“What in context beguiles, out of context mortifies.”

David Wayne     

NEW FORMS OF ADMINISTRATIVE LAW IN THE AGE OF THIRD‐PARTY GOVERNMENT

This article explores the democratic values underlying public services when they are outsourced. Building on Rosenbloom and Piotrowski's (2005a, 2005b) framework, we examine whether and how administrative law norms – that serve as central democratic governance and accountability mechanisms in the administrative state – are extended to the new (private) frontline service providers. Through a study of the regulation of the privatized welfare‐to‐work programme in Wisconsin, we find that new forms of administrative law are evolving in third‐party government. These forms differ from administrative law as it usually applies to public agencies in several important aspects. The findings highlight the active role of legislative and administrative mechanisms in the promotion of these new forms of administrative law; and they shed light on the transformations that administrative law norms undergo in the age of third‐party government.     

ADMINISTRATIVE LAW AND JUDICIAL REVIEW – THE PRACTICAL EFFECTS QF DEVELOPMENTS OVER THE LAST 25 YEARS ON ADMINISTRATION IN CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

The writer of this article served in the legal civil service from 1951–1984, mainly in the Board of Trade and its successor departments but from 1980–1984 as Treasury Solicitor. The article reflects his personal views based on this experience. Its theme is that, although access to the courts has been made easier for the citizen aggrieved by an administrative decision, and court procedure has been greatly improved, the course of administration has been less dramatically affected – in fact little, if at all, by some important earlier cases. Nevertheless the spirit of administrative law is now becoming more widely diffused, the areas which are not subject to review are becoming less and a number of specific doctrines have been developed which affect administration. The following are particularly emphasized: (1) the courts’restrictive view of the ‘Wednesbury’ doctrine and their tendency to find other grounds to overide decisions which they find objectionable or unreasonable – a tendency which causes real administrative difficulty; (2) the recently enunciated doctrine of legitimate expectation whose limits are uncertain but which may have considerable effect on administration in future; and (3) the requirement that a person affected by a policy should be given an opportunity to show that he is a special case. Finally the writer has to emphasize that his personal experience ended in August 1984 when he retired. In a large organization such as the civil service a change of ethos is slow. He is assured by some, particularly Mr John Bailey cb , his successor as Treasury Solicitor, who has read this article in draft, that he understates the degree to which concepts of administrative law are infusing the whole spirit of administration, and even more directly, the short-term effects in individual departments such as the Department of the Environment which has been the subject of long-running campaigns directed by other bodies against it through the courts.     

THE IMPACT OF FORMAL ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE ON POLITICO‐ADMINISTRATIVE INTERACTION: EVIDENCE FROM A NATURAL EXPERIMENT

The effects of different organizational structures are often assumed, expected or promised but seldom well documented through systematic studies ( Christensen et al. 2007, p. 144 ). Using evidence from a natural experiment including organizational data from 65 Danish municipalities and survey responses from 1014 politicians and 403 administrators, the article analyses whether and how two different organizational leadership models affect the interaction between politicians and administrators. The analyses show the expected differences in the patterns of interaction between politicians and administrators when comparing municipalities using a traditional sector‐based model and municipalities using a more recent executive board approach. Compared to the sector‐based model, the new model has the intended effects of cutting ties between politicians sitting on specialized committees and administrative leaders of single service departments, and strengthening the relations between the political and administrative leadership.     

FRAGMENTED BUT FORCEFUL: DUTCH ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES AND THEIR INSTITUTIONAL EVOLUTION

This article is an attempt by three (relatively) young scholars to make sense of the broad field of public administration (PA), in The Netherlands, with particular emphasis on Dutch administrative sciences. The one essential fact about the Dutch administrative sciences is that they lack a real essence, both in institutional and in paradigmatic terms. They are fragmented – yet forceful. Nevertheless, we will argue, they must recast their position in relation to practitioners and other academics if they are to maintain their strength. We start by highlighting the development of The Netherlands itself, moving on to Dutch public administration and Dutch administrative sciences. We explore the historical Dutch emphasis on ‘pragmatic morality’. After this rough historical overview, we move on to contemporary features of Dutch administrative sciences, features which explain why these sciences have become fragmented, yet forceful – as well as why this force is threatened. We conclude with a perspective on the future of the field and will argue in favour of a renewed emphasis on ‘pragmatic morality’ within scholarly circles.