Re-assessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers

The study of the core executive has been dominated by discussion of the Prime Ministers and Cabinet with only limited serious treatment paid to ministers. However, ministers and departments are crucial actors in the core executive. This article examines the multiple roles and varying impacts of ministers. More particularly, we initially develop a classification of ministerial roles, which builds upon, but develops, work by Headey, James and Norton. Subsequently, we use this classification to pose two key questions. Which roles do particular ministers stress? In what ways has the balance between these roles changed in the last twenty‐five years?     

Ministers in Ulster: The Machinery of Direct Rule

Lord Windlesham Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords, was until recently Minister of State for Northern Ireland. This article is the revised text of a lecture he gave at The New University of Ulster on 26 April 1973. The lecture was delivered as one of a series of six, arranged by the Department of Social Administration at The New University, which have since been published as Occasional Papers. I would like to acknowledge the kindness of Professor H. Griffiths in agreeing so readily to the proposal to reproduce Lord Windlesham's contribution to this series of lectures in 'Public Administration'. (Hon. Editor.)     

行政法律文化建设略论——以行政执法为切入点

行政法律文化影响行政执法,主要是通过作用于参与行政执法的社会主体来实现其促进或消解作用。依据法治原则,良好的行政执法需要至少包括信仰法律、权利本位、服务行政、正当程序等内容的社会主义行政法律文化的支撑。社会主义行政法律文化就必须以合理取舍本土文化、借鉴外来先进文化为思路,以发展社会主义市场经济、完善法律运行机制、发展文化教育事业、调整社会结构为路径来培育。     

Ministers and Top Officials in the Dutch Core Executive: Living Together,Growing Apart?

This paper reports the results of a comprehensive, qualitative (100 interviews; 9 interactive workshops) study among Dutch ministers and top departmental officials. Its key question is how both groups conceive of their respective roles and working relationships. This question became a high‐profile issue in the late 1990s after a series of overt clashes between senior political and bureaucratic executives. To what extent does the old, Weberian set of norms and expectations concerning the interaction between politics and bureaucracy still govern the theories and interaction patterns in use among ministers and top officials within the core executive? What new role conceptions are in evidence, and how can we explain their occurrence and diffusion in the Dutch core executive?     

Political Responsibility for UK Prison Security – Ministers Escape Again

Two very serious prison escapes in 1994–5 prompted the Home Secretary, Michael Howard, to dismiss the Prison Service head, Derek Lewis (a contracted businessman) who successfully sued for full compensation and costs. This sacking and law suit were unprecedented events which highlighted familiar tensions about the 'policy' and 'administrative' ('operational') distinction and what passes for the theory of individual ministerial responsibility to Parliament. This article reviews four serious prison security failures in England and Northern Ireland since 1983 and the standard ministerial posture blaming operational error rather than their own policy framework. Drawing on interviews with relevant senior figures, the exceptionally politically sensitive case of executive agency status for the Prison Service of England and Wales is considered. The 'Lewis vs. Howard' affair is placed in its context of the increasingly managerial ambitions of both 'incomer' and career civil servants which conflict with traditionally comprehensive, but symbolic, ministerial responsibility.     

Consensual or Dominant Relationships with Parliament? A Comparison of Administrations and Ministers in Scotland

The study of administrations and ministers and their relationships with UK Parliaments has tended to focus on the issues of accountability and responsibility, levels of legislative dissent or broad performance indicators supported by anecdotal examples. This paper addresses the lack of systematic analysis of executive/legislative relations in the policy‐making process by examining the dominance of different administrations and ministers in the Scottish Parliament. Two questions are addressed. First, is there any variance in the legislative dominance of different administrations in the parliamentary arena? Second, do individual ministers make a difference to the degree of policy dominance? Controlling for both initial authorship and quality of amendments to Executive policy, we analyse the nature and extent of Executive dominance during the legislative process of the First Session of the Scottish Parliament. We find some evidence to suggest that Executive dominance varies both by administration and by individual minister.     

Transforming Administrative Policy

Administrative policies and practices may evolve and change slowly and incrementally or they may be transformed intentionally. Intentional efforts to change administrative policy by transforming the structure, processes, or personnel of public sector organizations define an active administrative policy. Ideally, an active administrative policy takes as given that the organizational form to be used is open to choice, that administrative goals are clear, that a tight coupling exists between ends and means, that different organizational forms have different effects, and that there are criteria that may be used to assess those effects. This article focuses on the fulfilment of these preconditions in the three national contexts – Norway, Sweden and the United States of America – in order to determine the relevance of a transformative perspective for understanding the process of administrative change. We examine what impact constraints like polity features, historical-institutional traditions and external pressure, particularly through popular international administrative doctrines like New Public Management ideas and financial crises, have on the possibilities to enhance an active national administrative policy.     

Administrative training and modernisation in Zaire

This paper analyses the rise and fall of the Ecole Nationale d’ Administration (ENDA) of Kinshasa from 1961 to 1971 in the context of the modernisation forces of a new country. Alongside the historical peculiarities of the setting, the ENDA experience illustrates strikingly many of the themes surrounding similar institutions in other developing countries [Schaffer, 1974]. These themes include the institution's search for an appropriate role and for security, its struggle for status and survival, its conflict with the university establishment, the competitive bids for influence of technical assistance agencies, and the need to adapt to a rapidly changing environment.     

Administrative Traditions and Policy Change: When Policy Paradigms Matter. The Case of Italian Administrative Reform During the 1990s

In recent years a growing number of scholars have developed cognitive and ideational theoretical frameworks for the analysis of policy-making processes: their underlying belief is that ideas (conceived as beliefs, causal theories and paradigms) really do matter. The concept of policy paradigm has been particularly useful in studying both the contents and dynamics of policy change. The present paper takes this concept, partially reformulates Hall's definition in terms of the distinction between the hegemonic and dominant paradigm, and then uses it to come to terms with the contents and dynamics of the Italian administrative reforms implemented during the 1990s. Mixing the conceptual lenses offered by the ideational and cultural path taken in the field of public policy and by historical neo-institutionalism, this article attempts to explain the Italian trajectory, and to underline how normative and cognitive elements represent an important influence on the 'design' and 'strategy' of policy change. Our analysis of the consistency of the reformers' documents and policy strategy shows that, despite their claims, the contents and strategy of reform do not represent a paradigmatic about-turn, but constitute an evolutionary adaptation to external pressures imposed by the hegemonic administrative paradigm.     

Administrative ethics as justice

This paper presents an ethical framework for decision-making in public administration based on the preeminent value of justice. In discussion of this framework, the paper deals with three major issues. The first of these is the character of the just administrative decision,, the second is the character of of the just public organization, and the third is the impact of a justice-based administrative ethic on the role of the responsible administrator.     

Globalization,governance, and Administrative Culture

ABSTRACT

Globalization forces are colliding with international and national systems of governance, giving rise to a limited sovereignty of the nation-state. Globalization has also negatively affected poor countries and, in its wake, contributed to violence, hunger, and deprivation despite its powerful technological innovations and new economic, cultural, administrative, and political initiatives. This study conceives globalization, good governance, and the culture of governing as inextricably connected. After reviewing positions by proponents and opponents, the authors conclude that the dysfunctions of globalization are threatening the very foundation of developing nations’ systems of effective governance. Based on a review of developments in countries of the Middle East and South Asia, the authors believe that to serve the transformative process, leading to good governance and democratic development, globalization has to take account of important indigenous value systems.     

On the Relationship between Political Science and Administrative Science in Germany

The theoretical and empirical analysis of administrative activities has been an important area of research since the establishment of political science as an academic discipline in Germany at the end of the 1960s. But is administrative science still a significant part of political science in Germany today? I argue here that in Germany a political science oriented administrative science has developed from a science focused on public administration, that is, on organizational questions, to one focused on public policies and thus on questions concerning the conditions and consequences of political problem solving and control (Steuerung). The question of the internal organization of government is increasingly regarded as an irrelevant one; in addition, the institutional promotion and funding of political science administration research has dramatically decreased since the 1970s. Today's new challenges (economization and internationalization) for both government and public administration seem to exceed the capability of political science administrative research. These challenges open up new opportunities, however, since, in the search for solutions beyond the dichotomy of market/managerialism on the one hand and traditional bureaucracy and state government on the other, political science in particular regains more importance. As will be shown, there are now tendencies which indicate that political science administrative research might encounter a stronger political demand. If the consequent research is able to find a new mixture of theory and practice, this in turn could help revitalize political science administrative research in Germany.