La satisfaction des ministres envers leurs hauts fonctionnaires: le cas du gouvernement du Québec 1976–1985

Sommaire: Malgré I'abondance des écrits sur la haute fonction publique, une question aussi simple que le taux de satisfaction des ministres envers leurs hauts fonctionnaires n'a guère été traitke. Afin de contribuer à combler cette lacune, une série dentrevues auprès de 20 ministres de I'ancien gouvernement du Parti qutéebAcois a été conduite. Il a été demandéà ces anciens ministres s'ils avaient été satisfaits de leurs sous-ministres, et pourquoi. Au total, ils se sont déclarés satisfaits dans 43 cas et insatisfaits dans 10 cas, ce qui donne un taux de satisfaction de 81%. L'objectif du texte est dexpliquer ce taux de satisfaction. Il met en lumière les qualités que les ministres recherchent chez leurs hauts fonctionnaires, les causes des con flits et les raisons pour lesquelles la grande majorité des relations se vivent dans I'harmonie. La conclusion dégage les enseignements généraux pour une meilleure comprèhension de la relation entre le ministre et son haut fonctionnaire. Abstract: In spite of the abundance of literature dealing with the senior civil service, an issue as simple as the ministers' satisfaction rate regarding their senior civil servants has not been dealt with at all. A series of interviews with twenty ministers of the former Parti Québécois government was conducted in order to fill this gap. These former ministers were asked whether they had been satisfied with their deputy ministers and why. Overall, they said they had been satisfied in forty-three cases and dissatisfied in ten cases, which yields a satisfaction rate of 81 per cent. The purpose of the paper is tb explain this satisfaction rate. It highlights the qualities the ministers are looking for in their senior civil servants, the causes of conflict, and the reasons why the overwhelming majority of relationships are harmonious. The conclusion states the general principles for a better understanding of the relationship between the minister and his senior civil servant.     

Cognitive Biases in Governing: Technology Preferences in Election Administration

Cognitive biases are heuristics that shape individual preferences and decisions in a way that is at odds with means‐end rationality. The effects of cognitive biases on governing are underexplored. The authors study how election administrators’ cognitive biases shape their preferences for e‐voting technology using data from a national survey of local election officials. The technology acceptance model, which employs a rational, means‐end perspective, suggests that the perceived benefits of e‐voting machines explain their popularity. But findings indicate that cognitive biases also play a role, even after controlling for the perceived benefits and costs of the technology. The findings point to a novel cognitive bias that is of particular interest to research on e‐government: officials who have a general faith in technology are attracted to more innovative alternatives. The authors also find that local election officials who prefer e‐voting machines do so in part because they overvalue the technology they already possess and because they are overly confident in their own judgment.     

We All Need Help: “Big Data” and the Mismeasure of Public Administration

Rapid advances in our ability to collect, analyze, and disseminate information are transforming public administration. This “big data” revolution presents opportunities for improving the management of public programs, but it also entails some risks. In addition to potentially magnifying well‐known problems with public sector performance management—particularly the problem of goal displacement—the widespread dissemination of administrative data and performance information increasingly enables external political actors to peer into and evaluate the administration of public programs. The latter trend is consequential because external actors may have little sense of the validity of performance metrics and little understanding of the policy priorities they capture. The author illustrates these potential problems using recent research on U.S. primary and secondary education and suggests that public administration scholars could help improve governance in the data‐rich future by informing the development and dissemination of organizational report cards that better capture the value that public agencies deliver.     

Performance Federalism and Local Democracy: Theory and Evidence from School Tax Referenda

Federal governments are increasingly employing empirical measures of lower‐level government performance to ensure that provincial and local jurisdictions pursue national policy goals. We call this burgeoning phenomenon “performance federalism” and argue that it can distort democratic accountability in lower‐level elections. We estimate the impact of a widely publicized federal indicator of local school district performance—one that we show does not allow voters to draw valid inferences about the quality of local educational institutions—on voter support for school tax levies in a U.S. state uniquely appropriate for this analysis. The results indicate that a signal of poor district performance increases the probability of levy failure, a substantively large and robust effect that disproportionately affects impoverished communities. The analysis employs a number of identification strategies and tests for multiple behavioral mechanisms to support the causal interpretation of these findings.     

The Communist Ideological Legacy and Serb–Albanian Relations in Kosovo∗

This article uses Central Asian examples to challenge theories of ethnic nationalism that locate its origins in intellectual activism (Hroch), state modernization processes (Gellner), or the rise of mass media (Anderson). Modern Uyghur cultural politics and traditional Central Asian dynastic genealogies reveal related processes used in constructing modern nationalist symbols and pre-modern ideologies of descent. Modern territorial states with ideals of social unification and bureaucratic organization rely upon nationalist discourses to elaborate and rework cultural forms into evidence for the ethnic nation. The state links citizens to institutions through nationalist content used in political discourse, schooling, and public performances. Because such content is presented as authentic but used instrumentally, its contingency and fabrication have to be concealed from view: the culturally intimate spaces of bureaucratic production of culture and narratives are separated from public performances. The creation of genealogies used to legitimate pre-modern states are similar: compositional processes and goals are kept offstage, and little is disclosed in the public historical narratives and performances.