Rule growth and government effectiveness: why it takes the capacity to learn and coordinate to constrain rule growth

This paper asks whether strong bureaucracies can effectively constrain the continuously growing stock of rules in modern democracies through organizational coordination and learning. To answer this question, the paper analyzes the growth of rule stocks in the areas of environmental policy and social policy in 23 OECD countries over the period between 1976 and 2005. To do so, it develops a new measure of rule growth based on the content of laws and regulations rather than their length. The analysis highlights that effective bureaucracies are indeed better able to contain rule growth in these areas than weak bureaucracies. Since rules have to be implemented, countries suffering from bureaucratic capacity and quality constraints thus appear to be stuck in an implementation deficit trap. Appropriate implementation is not only inherently more challenging for countries with weak public administrations, but the body of rules to be implemented also tends to grow quicker in these countries.     

Administrative Styles in the OECD: Bureaucratic Policy-Making beyond Formal Rules

As we know from comparative public policy, bureaucracies contribute to a considerable degree to the contents and the ways of policy-making. One important driver of administrative policy-making are their specific “styles” or “cultures”. “Administrative styles” are understood here as the standard operating procedures and routines that characterize the behavior and activities of administrative bodies in initiating, drafting and implementing policy. In this article, we convey the concept of Administrative Styles to the level of International Organizations (IOs) and apply it to the Organization for Economic Development and Co-Operation (OECD). The article proceeds in three steps: First, the concept of administrative styles is introduced and refined. Drawing on expert interviews with OECD staff, we secondly show that consideration of OECD administrative styles significantly advances the literature’s understanding of the organization. Finally, we give an outlook on new research avenues and the relevance of our findings for the study of International Public Administrations (IPAs) more generally.     

Managementreformen in internationalen Organisationen: Eine vergleichende Analyse der Europäischen Kommission und des OECD-Sekretariats

The article comparatively investigates reforms of human resource management in the European Commission and the OECD Secretariat. It analyzes to what extent both organizations have adjusted their respective structures towards the ideal type of the so-called New Public Management (NPM). The empirical findings show that reforms towards NPM are more pronounced in the Commission than in the OECD Secretariat. These findings are surprising for two reasons. First, it seems rather paradoxical that the OECD as central promoter of NPM at the international level lags behind the global trend when it comes to reforming its own structures. Second, this result is in contradiction with theoretical expectations, as they can be derived from theories of institutional isomorphism. To nevertheless account for the surprising results, it is necessary to modify and complement existing theories especially with regard to the scope conditions of their causal mechanisms.     

The national impact of European Union regulatory policy: Three Europeanization mechanisms

Abstract. While much has been written about the impact of European Union (EU) regulatory policy, most of the scholarly work is concerned with developments at the European level. Only recently have attempts been made to fill this gap. Although there is a growing number of studies explicitly concerned with the Europeanization of domestic institutions, we still lack consistent and systematic concepts to account for the varying patterns of institutional adjustment across countries and policy sectors. The aim of this article is to provide a more comprehensive framework for explaining the domestic impact of European policy making. We make an analytical distinction between three mechanisms of Europeanization – institutional compliance, changing domestic opportunity structures, and framing domestic beliefs and expectations – each of which requires a distinctive approach in order to explain its domestic impact. We argue that it is the particular type of Europeanization mechanism involved rather than the policy area itself that is the most important factor to be considered when investigating the domestic impact of varying European policies.     

Path Dependencies in European Integration: A Constructive Response to German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer

There is no doubt about the political necessity of the Eastern enlargement of the European Union and corresponding reforms of its political institutions. By contrast, the shape and content of these reforms is a subject that is highly contested between the member states. In this context, when the German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, presented his vision of future development for Europe his ideas were refreshingly welcome. However, Fischer's ideas imply, in many respects, a turning away from hitherto accepted paths to European integration. The main claim we want to make in this paper is that, against the backdrop of this breach with the present European-level institutional system, the chance that the Fischer initiatives could come to political fruition must be viewed with scepticism. On the basis of this finding, which rests essentially upon a historical-institutionalist analysis, we develop an alternative concept for a European constitution.     

Are Some Citizens More Equal than Others? Evidence from a Field Experiment

The equal treatment of all citizens is one of the fundamental principles of good administrative practice. Nevertheless, there are growing numbers of media and scientific reports on unequal treatment by public administrations. This article examines the unequal treatment of citizens by gender and ethnic origin by means of a survey‐based field experiment in German local government. With the help of two vignettes and randomized assignment of names, responses to fake citizen requests by local governments are analyzed for speed, quality, and service orientation. The results show very limited discrimination effects. While there is no evidence for general ethnic discrimination, a more differentiated analysis indicates patterns of ethnic discrimination conditioned by gender.     

Politikwandel und seine Messung in der vergleichenden Staatstätigkeitsforschung: Konzeptionelle Probleme und mögliche Alternativen

Policy change is an important concept in comparative policy analysis. Despite its central significance, most empirical studies fail to provide clear-cut definitions and measurement of this concept. Against this background, this article evaluates previous scholarship on policy change in the areas of social and environmental policy. We find that most studies use proxies for measuring policy change even though they contradict the basic idea of policy-making activities. Furthermore, studies usually neither capture the complexity of policy change, nor take into the possibility of policy change through dismantling account. Additionally, the empirical focus of most analyses is too narrow, thereby impeding robust statements about causality. In response to these shortcomings, we propose a new conceptual perspective, which captures policy change as a broader empirical phenomenon. We discuss its advantages as well as its disadvantages and show the implications for the research process.     

Mechanismen der Europäisierung: nationale Regulierungsmuster und europäische Integration

Der Schwerpunkt bisheriger Europaforschung konzentriert sich auf die Frage, in welchem Ausmass nationale Bedingungen den Aufbau von Institutionen und die politische Entscheidungsfindung auf der europäischen Ebene beeinflussen. Die Auswirkungen der europäischen Integration auf die Politikgestaltung und institutionelle Strukturen in den Mitgliedstaaten sind hingegen nur wenig erforscht worden. Erst seit kurzem gibt es eine zunehmende Anzahl von Analysen, die sich explizit mit der Europäisierung von nationalen Institutionen beschäftigen. Von besonderem Interesse ist dabei die Frage, in welchem Ausmass die Implementation europäischer Policies mit Veränderungen in bestehenden Regulierungsmustern auf nationaler Ebene einhergeht. Der Beitrag identifiziert drei Mechanismen, um die Wirkungsweise europäischer Policies auf nationale Regulierungsmuster zu charakterisieren. Europäische Politik kann ein konkretes institutionelles Modell für die nationale Umsetzung vorschreiben; sie kann sich auf die Beeinflussung nationaler Opportunity Structures beschränken; oder sie kann primär über die Veränderung nationaler Ideen und Überzeugungen (Framing) wirken.     

Private Actors and the State: Internationalization and Changing Patterns of Governance

This article investigates the implications of political and economic internationalization on patterns of governance from a statecentric perspective. The actual patterns of governance in internationalized environments can be related to the respective governance capacity of public and private actors, which hinges in turn on the strategic constellation underlying the provision of a public good. The specific strategic constellation varies in three dimensions: the congruence between the scope of the underlying problem and the organizational structures of the related actors, the type of problem, and the institutional context, all of which involve a number of factors. With this concept in mind, we identify four ideal-typed patterns of governance, enabled by different configurations of public and private capacities to formally or factually influence in various ways the social, economic, and political processes by which certain goods are provided.     

Rhetoric or Reality? ‘New Governance’ in EU Environmental Policy

Abstract:  When scrutinising the literature on EU environmental policy, it becomes apparent that there has been a comprehensive transition in underlying governance ideas during the last two decades. At the core of these changes is the abolition of traditional patterns of interventionist command-and-control regulation in favour of economic instruments and 'context-oriented' governance. In view of these developments, this article has two objectives: first, it looks into which causes and factors initiated these discussions; second, it analyses the effects these reform ideas had on actual patterns of governance. As will be shown, changes in governance ideas are only partially expressed in changes in policy instruments.