Comparing the autonomy of international public administrations: An ideal‐type approach

International Public Administrations (IPAs), that is, the secretariats of international organizations, are important actors in global governance. This article develops a new typology of IPAs that captures the potential influence of these bureaucratic bodies on international policy‐making. The main argument is that when conceptualizing the varying roles and potential policy impact of IPAs, it is useful to distinguish between their ability to develop autonomous preferences (autonomy of will) on the one hand, and their capacity to transform these preferences into action (autonomy of action) on the other. Based on this premise, the article introduces four distinct ideal‐types of international bureaucracies and suggests indicators to locate a diverse sample of 20 administrations within the four‐fold typology. The results reveal the empirical diversity of IPA autonomy and allow for a first empirical assessment of the factors behind this pattern.     

State effects and the effects of state building: institution building and the formation of state-centred societies

This article discusses the assumptions underlying state-building efforts and the effects of these efforts. It addresses two main questions: why has state building not led to the establishment of effective states? And what are the effects of statebuilding? It is argued that these efforts have been based on an institutionalist model of the state derived from a Weberian framework, and that the basic reason why state building has failed is that the creation of effective states requires the creation of state-centred societies, where both material and symbolic resources are concentrated in the state. This is very difficult to achieve for external actors. But, although state building has not achieved the kinds of effects associated with effective states, it has nevertheless had significant effects. These include, first, accentuating the patrimonialism which has led to state weakness in the first place; second, reductions in national sovereignty as external actors’ substantial influence on policy agendas renders the state itself subject to control and regulation by actors external to it; and, third, perpetuating the idea of the state, while undermining the possibility of creating actual states which conform to this idea.     

Territorial upscaling of local governments: a variable-oriented approach to explaining variance among Western European countries

Local government systems change at varying speeds. While some countries have dramatically reduced the number of local governments during a short period of time, other countries have seen only incremental change or relative inertia. A number of explanations for structural change have been put forward in the comparative local government literature, but these explanations have to a small extent been tested empirically. This article uses statistical indicators to analyse changes in the local government systems in 17 Western European countries between 2004 and 2014. Some often-cited explanations for what drives structural change receive little support. Still, the article demonstrates that changes tend to occur in situations marked by different combinations of decentralisation, urbanisation, fiscal stress and a recent history of territorial upscaling.     

Eggs on Ice: Imaginaries of Eggs and Cryopreservation in Denmark

While Denmark is widely known as a global exporter of cryopreserved sperm, Danish women’s eggs face a very different fate. This paper combines legal and rhetorical analyses with the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. In establishing the genealogy of the sociotechnical imaginaries that shaped Danish regulation of the cryopreservation of eggs, we analyse the relevant Acts, Bills, preparatory work, and readings in Parliament, along with the concurrent public and ethical debates that over time relaxed the legal limit for the cryopreservation of eggs to the current five years and today continue to ignite discussions on elective egg freezing. We rely on welfare-state perspectives to discuss why reproduction, in the Danish context, is seen as a legitimate and appropriate sphere to regulate, and we turn to feminist theorizing to discuss the gendered implications captured in the sociotechnical imaginaries of the “Moral State”, “technologies to be tamed”, “the nuclear family”, and “technology as equality and hope”. We end by discussing how an interdisciplinary approach enriches our understanding of the legal, cultural, and political entanglements related to putting eggs on ice.     

The Personal Is Political Yet Again: Bringing Struggles between Gender Equality and Gendered Next of Kin onto the Feminist Agenda

In spite of feminist criticism of the welfare state, Norwegian society is frequently perceived as gender-equal. As a truism of public discourse, gender equality affirms a neoliberal understanding of individuals as able to act independently and to freely choose their course in life. This article disrupts that truism with an analysis of a transitional process that occurred to a seemingly free and gender-equal married woman whose everyday life took an unexpected turn at the age of 50 when her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Using an abductive method, we construct a narrative with this woman as the main character. We then use the narrative as an optical device for scrutinizing encounters between the notions “free and gender-equal woman” and “gendered next of kin”, analysing the situated becoming of gender and understanding the encounters’ potential for agency and resistance. The inquiry brings a pattern of gendered encounters into being, demonstrating how a seemingly free and gender-equal woman’s strength and independence become subordinating weaknesses in encounters with the welfare state. This paradox raises questions about the politics of everyday life in a presumably gender-equal society, brings new struggles onto the feminist agenda, and demands that the personal becomes political yet again.     

How Should We Estimate the Performance Effect of Management? Comparing Impacts of Public Managers’ and Frontline Employees’ Perceptions of Management

Many areas of public management research are dominated by a top-focused perspective in which emphasis is placed on the notion that managers themselves are usually the best sources of information about managerial behavior. Outside of the leadership literature, managers are also the typical survey respondents in public management studies. An alternative perspective on management can be provided by subordinates’ perceptions of what management is doing. Surveys of subordinates and of managers each pose potential advantages and potential disadvantages when it comes to measuring management, and each approach is likely to prove more fruitful for measuring certain management functions. Using a unique data set of parallel surveys on management with managers and their subordinates as respondents, we examine the differences and relationships between Danish school managers’ and teachers’ perceptions of management functions and the implications of such relationships for organizational performance. We find a surprisingly low correlation between manager and teacher responses regarding the same management functions. Teacher responses are better predictors of student performance for management aspects that are visible to and mediated by teachers. However, manager responses better predict performance for manager expectations that are less visible to employees.     

Building Support? The Importance of Verbal Rewards for Employee Perceptions of Governance Initiatives

The relationship between managers’ use of rewards and employees’ motivation is controversial, but recent research suggests that employee perceptions of governance initiatives can help us understand the association. Experimental evidence further emphasizes the difference between verbal and material rewards, and this study therefore analyzes real-world public managers’ use of these different rewards and their employees’ perceptions of a governance initiative. This enables us to shed light on a mechanism through which rewards can be connected to motivation. Can rewards contribute to a supportive perception of governance initiatives and potentially crowd-in motivation? This is analyzed in a multi-level dataset with 82 Danish school principals and their 1,273 employees. Managers’ use of contingent verbal rewards is positively associated with employees’ perceptions of the relevant governance initiative, while the corresponding association between material rewards and employee perceptions is weak and statistically insignificant when controlling for other types of managerial behavior. Although the findings need to be tested in an experimental design, they suggest that verbal rewards are a promising tool for public managers.     

Drivers and barriers of inter-municipal cooperation in health services – the Norwegian case

Inter-municipal cooperation in service delivery is widespread, as is the notion that this type of cooperation is primarily driven by economies of scale. However, the empirical results appear to be inconclusive, suggesting that additional explanatory factors are needed to explain why municipalities cooperate. This study aimed to identify the factors and conditions that influence the level of inter-municipal cooperation in health services by exploring a broad set of explanatory factors that go beyond simple economic concerns. In addition to confirming that a small population-size and fiscal stress constitute important drivers of inter-municipal cooperation, the results from this study also demonstrates the need to consider geographical location and heterogeneity relative to neighbouring municipalities as potential barriers to such cooperation.     

‘Western Balkans’ as the New Balkans: Regional Names as Tools for Stigmatisation and Exclusion

The word ‘Balkans’ often functions as a stigma. Several authors have discussed the bloodbath during the wars in the former Yugoslavia with references to an alleged Balkan culture. Towards the end of the 1990s the term ‘Balkans’ entered the official vocabulary of the European Union, now with the prefix ‘Western’. ‘The Western Balkans’ became a common denominator for non-member states in south eastern Europe. A survey in 2011 in the ‘Western Balkans’ showed that those who live there to a large extent share this view: membership in Western organisations like the EU determines whether a country is ‘European’ or ‘Balkan’.