Five challenges for public administrations in Europe

This article examines five ‘challenges’ facing most administrative systems across Europe. The first challenge stems from the increasingly asymmetric nature of European multilevel governance; the second challenge arises from the missed opportunity of reforming in the absence of a dominant administrative paradigm; the third challenge lies in rescuing and transforming the welfare state; the fourth challenge is concerned with making the most of the knowledge generated in the field of strategic management for strategically managing public services; the fifth challenge lies in staff (de)motivation. These challenges are pitched at very different levels: some are related to issues of public governance, some to issues of scholarly and practitioners’ collective understandings of public administration in Europe, and some to trends in the global economy, and notably the financial, economic and fiscal ‘crises’

Philosophy and Public Administration: An Introduction (Second Edition)

This book provides a systematic introduction to the philosophical foundations of the study and the practice of public administration. It reviews all the main philosophical streams, from ancient Greek philosophy to the contemporary strands, and discusses their significance for public governance and public management. Ontological and epistemological issues are brought to the fore in discussing contemporary conceptions of the nature of public administration. The quest for justification and legitimacy of public governance is examined, and ‘Common Good’, ‘Social contract’ and ‘Personalism’ arguments vetted. The works of thinkers like Thomas More and Niccolò Machiavelli are revisited and the implications for contemporary public administration are drawn. The second edition of this book further expands on the links between philosophical foundations and research agendas and public administration theory; it also develops on the teaching of philosophy in public administration programme

Multi-Level Governance and Public Administration

The literature on Multi-Level Governance (MLG) and the field of the administrative sciences and public administration (PA) can be fruitfully integrated in order to generate knowledge about ‘the administrative dimension of MLG’. MLG may be defined as ‘the simultaneous activation of governmental and non-governmental actors at various jurisdictional levels’ and perspectives derived from MLG may be applied to a wide set of issues spanning from political mobilization (politics), to policy-making (policy), to state restructuring (polity). It is along each of these sets of issues that it is possible to delineate the contribution that the field of PA can provide to the development of MLG. To MLG as political mobilization, the PA literature brings insights about participatory approaches and collaborative governance. To MLG as policy in multi-level settings, the PA literature brings insights about the functioning of multi-level administration and the role of a multi-level bureaucracy in policy-making processes occurring in compound political systems; the PA literature also contributes insights on public accountability in systems where decision responsibility is blurred, and issues of legitimacy arise. To MLG as polity restructuring, the PA literature offers insights on the administrative dimension of polity restructuring processes, as well as on the dynamics of systemic change and the change management of public governance arrangements. The study of MLG may benefit from drawing from a range of conceptual tools and models developed in the field of PA. Complementarily, also PA as an interdisciplinary field of scholarship may benefit from the perspective of MLG, which provides it with a platform to expand the application of concepts like those of collaborative governance; bureaucratic influence on policy-making; public accountability in multi-actor, multi-level settings; or systemic-level change management. In this sense, the generation of knowledge about the administrative dimension of MLG is an addition to both MLG studies and to the field of PA

Policy, performance and management in governance and intergovernmental relations: transatlantic perspectives

By examining both analytical and empirical differences and similarities between the European Union and the United States, this comprehensive book provides a better understanding of (inter) governmental systems, settings and actors operating in the post New Public Management Era. The expert contributors consider processes of policy formulation and implementation from an intergovernmental point of view, examine issues of performance and accountability that rise in IGR settings and zoom in on the importance and implications of IGR for welfare. Taken together, these insights provide an important next step into the world of transatlantic research and comparison

EU-driven public sector reforms

This paper is the introduction article to the special issue on EU-driven public sector reforms. European Union (EU) governance has dramatically changed since the outburst of the financial, economic and fiscal crises in 2007–2008. The dramatically changed circumstances have led to heightened EU influence in the field of the organization of the public sector of Member States, leading to major reforms of the public sector of Member States under conditions of radical fiscal consolidation. We call these ‘EU-driven public sector reforms’. The Greek, Hungarian, Irish and Italian cases of reform of the public sector in recent years accounted for in special issue: EU-driven public sector reforms are different instances, with diverse outcomes, of this phenomenon. This article reviews the theoretical perspectives that can be employed for the study of EU-driven public sector reforms – these include notably the policy of conditionality; Europeanization; and a combination of learning, leadership and multiple streams theories – and the evidence about the features, doctrinal contents and effects of such reforms arising from the four case studies in the special issue

Strategic Management in Public Organizations: Profiling the Public Entrepreneur as Strategist

Our core argument is that the entrepreneurial school of thought in strategic management as conceptualized by Mintzberg and colleagues holds explanatory value for advancing knowledge about the behavior of public sector organizations, as it does for private firms, albeit with important qualifications when applied to public services: chiefly, the temporal limitation in post for the office-holder of a public organization. After describing our methods, we present qualitative data from a longitudinal case study of strategy making in an European Union (EU) agency, the European Aviation Safety Agency, which has become a key actor globally in civil aviation. Our interpretation of the case suggests the additional usefulness of the entrepreneurial school of strategy, suitably adapted for public agency settings, as an explanatory prism to enlarge the repertoire of conceptual tools for the study of public agencies. Our broader argument is that the field of strategic management may provide theoretical resources for the study of public agencies, provided its theoretical lenses are properly selected and adapted

Influence of the EU (and the IMF) on domestic cutback management: a nine-countries comparative analysis.

The influence of the EU (and the IMF) on domestic cutback management were studied in nine European countries. In this concluding article, a cross-country comparative analysis is presented. The influence of the EU and the IMF being most evident in bailed-out countries, we first take a closer look at the loan programmes in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, plus the hardly-known earlier bailouts in Hungary and Latvia. We then turn to two factors that influence cutbacks and reforms: economics and politics. Finally, the concept of the influence of the EU (and the IMF) is differentiated into degrees and types of influence

Adapting public sector organisations to devolution: Innovation and collaboration in the Italian region of Lombardy (1998-2002).

The devolution of authority from central to regional and local governments is a widespread trend in many countries. Differences in the outcomes of devolution reforms are often significant, between countries as well as within a country. The work assumes that an important part of the explanation of such differentiation derives from the dynamics of the implementation process; the first research question is addressed to explaining the substantial differentiation of outcomes that in many instances can be observed at the local level in the implementation of the same institutional design of devolution (what is the process dynamics of the organisational transformations occurring in public entities in the implementation phase of a cycle of a devolution policy.). Italy has gone through a deep transformation of a strongly centralised state into a "regional" one, occurred in subsequent waves of devolution. Alternative courses of events seem to have characterised the implementation of devolution in different localities and policy sectors: in this scenario, the case of devolution in agriculture in Lombardy over the period 1998-2002 is striking for the magnitude and rapidity of change, as well as for the way the reallocation of workforce to the lower levels of government occurred. The study of the Lombardy experience provides the basis for some tentative theorisations about the dynamics of devolution processes. Drawing on these results, the question of how top executives should lead an intervention of devolution is addressed (second research question). Practices for the management of devolution processes are designed on the basis of the study of the Lombardy experience. The protocol of organisational analysis for the design of practices is drawn from the literature on "smart practices analysis", a stream of literature in public policy and public management quite critical about current research conventions as regards the identification of "best" practices to be used for managing public sector organisations. Lessons for public managers about how to lead an intervention of devolution are proposed

The long and winding road towards the EU policy of support to Member States public administration reform: History (2000–2021) and prospects

This paper provides an account of how the European Union (EU), and notably the European Commission (EC), has become an actor in its own right in the field of the reform of administration and public services management in Europe, by developing an approach to support Member States in their initiatives to improve public administration and public services. We qualify this process – occurred over the period 2000-2021, with a tremendous acceleration in the second decade – as a twofold paradigmatic change: because (i) this is a novel field of action for the EU itself; and because (ii) the very logic driving the EU role shifted dramatically from a logic of conditionality (or compliance with aspects of the acquis) in the early phase to a radically different logic of enabling and facilitating administrative reforms, on the ground, in a later phase and prospectively. We interpret the paradigmatic shift that has occurred through a combination of theoretical perspectives: policy learning; policy entrepreneurship within the Commission; the opening of an opportunity window for policy change to occur; and the consolidation of a new policy sub-system in the field. We deem this change to constitute a step forward in the process of European integration

Toward Multi-Level Governance in China? Coping with complex public affairs across jurisdictions and organizations

This special issue argues for the applicability of the conceptual framework of Multi-Level Governance to the political–administrative regime of China, provided significant adaptations and qualifications are developed. The application of Multi-Level Governance to China enables to account for global influences as well as for the involvement of non-governmental actors in public policy making. More radically, we suggest in this introductory article that the development of Multi-Level Governance may be interpreted as a way of enhancing the societal legitimacy of the political regime under the conditions of new authoritarianism. We conclude this article by drawing a fascinating yet possibly hazardous and overstretched parallel; that is, the development of Multi-Level Governance may be part and parcel of a process of building political legitimacy in China, just as it may be a way of exploring paths for the renewal of beleaguered traditional liberal democracy in Europe. Albeit along profoundly different trajectories, China and Europe might adopt Multi-Level Governance arrangements for a very purposive course of action: enhancing the legitimacy of the respective and very diverse political systems and buttressing their very foundations. This suggests a strongly normative and purposive application of Multi-Level Governance