Bureaucracy and Politics

The article analyses the activity of so-called "margouillats", informal go-betweens found arounf the Abidjan court house, who work to "get papers released" for people having filed a request for civil documents - particularly birth certificates and other documents proving citizenship. The article describes their integration into the administrative practices of document production and the interpersonal networks of the court "food chain". Analysis of bureacratic corruption is of secondary importance, in our frame, if compared to the study of moral justifications brought to the commodification of nationality. Focusing on the morally liminal space of the production of a false identity document, the article suggests that these intermediaries do not erase the politicalboundaries of citizenship, but rather, through capillary action, extend the discriminating action of the state into the streets.

This textbook of Economic Policy is made of four parts:
1. Methodological questions;
2. Welfare Economics;
3. Economic models in a closed economy
4. Economic Policy in an open economy.

La Politica Economica è la disciplina che studia il processo decisionale delle istituzioni economiche e finanziarie interne di un paese, come il mercato, lo Stato, la banca centrale, e i comportamenti aggregati degli operatori economici, come le famiglie e le imprese, con riferimento agli effetti delle politiche micro e macroeconomiche destinate a modificare l'andamento del sistema economico per raggiungere obiettivi prestabiliti.
Il corso di Politica Economica, previsto negli ordinamenti didattici delle lauree di primo livello in Economia, Scienze Politiche, Giurisprudenza, Statistica, Ingegneria, risponde all'obiettivo di dotare di una preparazione professionale, oltre che culturale, soggetti destinati a svolgere studi specialistici di economia, compiti di carattere direttivo o ad assumere posizioni di elevata responsabilità nelle istituzioni e nelle amministrazioni pubbliche e private, come pure in organismi imprenditoriali e associativi operanti in settori che implicano relazioni con organismi pubblici o richiedono competenze riguardanti atti e costi della regolamentazione.
Le lezioni contenute in questo volume indicano i filoni principali del pensiero teorico che ha seguito i successi e gli insuccessi dell’azione dei mercati e dei poteri pubblici sui sistemi economici. Il piano dell’esposizione è articolato in tre parti. Alle questioni metodologiche principali della ricerca economica e delle relazioni della politica economica con le altre discipline, segue, nella prima parte, la trattazione dell’economia del benessere, ovvero l'analisi di tipo normativo delle regole che orientano il sistema economico al suo miglioramento. La seconda parte è dedicata ai modelli principali con cui il pensiero economico ha affrontato i problemi posti dal perseguimento degli obiettivi macroeconomici in economia chiusa. La terza parte tratta gli stessi temi, ma nel contesto di un’economia aperta alla internazionalizzazione dei mercati in presenza dei vincoli posti dalla loro progressiva globalizzazione.

Indice generale

Premessa
Indice dei grafici
Indice delle tabelle
Acronimi
Piano delle lezioni

Lezione 1-Introduzione

Questioni di metodo

Lezione 2-I limiti dello studioso e la varianza comportamentale
Lezione 3- Errore e non prescrittività delle proposizioni di politica economica
Lezione 4-Analisi economica e principi di politica

Parte prima: l’economia del benessere

Lezione 5-Paradigmi e modelli di politica economica
Lezione 6-Le preferenze sociali
Lezione 7-Miglioramento e ottimo paretiani
Lezione 8-I limiti dell’economia del benessere paretiana e i tentativi di superarli
Lezione 9-La teoria delle votazioni
Lezione 10-Funzioni del benessere, ottimo sociale e teorie della giustizia
Lezione 11-Il mercato e lo Stato
Lezione 12-I due teoremi fondamentali dell’economia del benessere e quello del second best
Lezione 13-I limiti del mercato per gli obiettivi microeconomici
Lezione 14-Il teorema di Coase e le sue critiche
Lezione 15-I limiti del mercato per gli obiettivi macroeconomici

Parte seconda: i modelli di economia chiusa

Lezione 16-La neutralità della moneta
Lezione 17- La Grande Crisi e l’economia di Keynes
Lezione 18- La sintesi neoclassica
Lezione 19- La Nuova Macroeconomia Classica
Lezione 20- Le rifondazioni keynesiana e neoclassica e le relazioni tra disoccupazione e inflazione
Lezione 21- La programmazione economica
Lezione 22- I limiti dell’intervento pubblico
Lezione 23- Le politiche micro: obiettivi e strumenti
Lezione 24- Le politiche micro: alcune applicazioni
Lezione 25- L’analisi costi benefici: aspetti teprici
Lezione 26- L’analisi costi benefici: le fasi procedurali
Lezione 27-La moneta e l’economia monetaria
Lezione 28-La politica monetaria: obbiettivi e strumenti   
Lezione 29-La politica di bilancio: aspetti storici e teorici
Lezione 30-Le politiche del debito pubblico
Lezione 31-La politica dei redditi

Parte terza: la politica economica in economia aperta

Lezione 32-Le teorie del commercio internazionale
Lezione 33-Le politiche commerciali e le giustificazioni del protezionismo
Lezione 34-Bilancia dei pagamenti, regimi valutari e operazioni finanziarie
Lezione 35-Le politiche di riequilibrio della bilancia dei pagamenti
Lezione 36-Il modello di Mundell-Fleming
Lezione 37-Le politiche di mercato aperto

Bibliografia
Indice dei nomi

The development agenda of a nation cannot be separated from the efficient role of its bureaucracy. The bureaucracy performs such important roles as implementing government policies for social equity and economic development. Essentially, the bureaucracy is the administrative machinery of government which will ensure that the development programs of any government are successfully implemented. Again, the formulation or initiation of such development plans are partly influenced by the bureaucrats who use their experience and technical know-how to advise government on which policies are best suitable for which conditions

This paper reviews the recent decision of the Israeli Supreme Court in the case of Tbeish v. The Attorney General, in light of the 1999 landmark Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI) case, which prohibited torture and ill-treatment of detainees, but acknowledged necessity as a possible criminal defense for interrogators. Tbeish is not framed as a break from the past, or even as a change in the law, but I argue that it provides a new authorization for torture and ill-treatment. The court upheld internal guidelines of the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) that establish a 'necessity procedure' for the application of 'special interrogation means'. The court's specific construction of the guidelines circumvents the unambiguous prohibition in PCATI on general rules setting criteria for using special interrogation means, by turning the process into a supposedly ad hoc decision on each individual case without preexisting rules. Nevertheless, this paper argues, the decision approves a system of prior authorization for the use of violent means of interrogations. Creating a framework for an organizational decision, the guidelines relieve interrogators from personal responsibility for potentially unlawful acts by shifting the meaning and function of necessity from a criminal defense to a principle of governmental action. As such, they provide bureaucratic authorization and justification for acts which violate the prohibition against torture.

BUREAUCRACY: Its Benefits and Failures. Bureaucracy exists in modern States. It is a vital part of the government and, because of its essential expanding function to respond to the needs of the people, bureaucracy has become, in some instances, a state within a state. Scholars agree that inefficiency of bureaucracy is revealed in time of crisis and high emergencies when a human catastrophe occurs and afflicts thousands or millions of innocent lives. Normally, bureaucracy is established to be efficient so as to be beneficial to society. Hence, inefficiency is the exception. However, after counting the human disaters around the world, one wonders if 'inefficiency' has not become the iron rule challenging the governing system and consequently threatening its existence. " Chernobyl " is one of these disasters of the world that made the discussion of this issue as one of the highest priorities of the governance of the people. In the first part of this essay, the description of Chernobyl Nuclear Plant disaster and analysis of the ex-Soviet Republic, at the time of the catastrophe, is necessary to introduce the problem. The second part considers the definition of Bureaucracy, static and dynamic. The third part strengthens, through some examples of human disasters, the dilemma of bureaucratic efficiency.

The last six centuries saw the emergence of major empires that dominated every part of the world. Inevitably then, these imperial formations governed diverse and polyglot peoples. They also developed complex systems of governance that deployed unprecedented numbers of scribes and accountants, often drawn from groups culturally distinct from the military elites. Literati serving Western empires have been much studied of late; but the phenomenon did not originate with them. This article examines one such prominent groupthe Brahmans of peninsular Indiathrough five centuries. It explores little-known aspects of their professional training. It then analyses how they rose to a dominance that persisted well into the colonial era and deeply impacted the contemporary politics of India to the present day.

The re-promulgation of the Constitution in 1908 upturned the late Ottoman political system, which included not just its political structure but also the bureaucratic system. Thousands of bureaucrats were dismissed from state service, regardless of their positions. Having organized the purges with limited political power, the Committee of Union of Progress (CUP) achieved a strong political project that contributed to controlling the actual state apparatus. In fact, the consensus in the literature is that purging the masses has always been an authoritarian practice prevalent in the twentieth century. This, thus, challenges the widely held notion that the CUP’s leadership preferred inspecting the government from backstage before 1913. This study aims to understand the extent of the CUP’s power in action during the early Constitutional Period. Focusing on the process of the enactment of the tensikât law, this study primarily examines the legislative methods adopted by the CUP to define the nature of power relations shared by various actors.

After the Second World War, it slowly became clear that the implementation of violence had been “decentralized”. If during XIX and half of XX century violence vastly took place in the territories of great powers and the central actors of world politics (even inviolable USA and the UK were plagued on their territories), in the 70s of XX century we have witnessed a cardinal shift as violence started to spread more extensively among the third world, underdeveloped and transitional countries. The epicenters of violence had been shifted from the “civilized” world into the “uncivilized” world. Conventionally and commonly, this shift was anticipated as a decline of violence by researchers like Arendt herself. Nevertheless, I am suggesting that through careful examination of the central political events unfolding after the 70s this perspective lacks cogency. For this, I will examine such regions as the post-soviet region and the Middle East.

***

Noam Chomsky’s ontological evaluation of the Cold War is decoding its essence and contradicts with the concept of deterrence which Arendt suggested: “The compact was that the US would be free to carry out violence and terror and atrocities with few limits in its own domains, and the Russians would be able to run their own dungeon without too much US interference. So the Cold War in effect was a war of the US against the Third World, and of Russia against its much smaller domains in Eastern Europe.” The discernible and impregnable fact is that the Cold War was profitable for both main actors of international politics and the ideological antagonism between them was disguising this predicament. The two leading forces of the globalized world installed and maintained the bipolar system that gave them a possibility to control their share of the world. Arendt’s concept of deterrence is not fully encapsulating the current global political crisis. Instead of stressing the role of hegemony in constructing world politics, she is asserting that deterrence can guarantee peace worldwide.

***

In the smart machine age, the central front of resistance are social networks, the revolutions have moved from their traditional spaces such as streets and places of public gatherings and now it is running through the Internet. Mutiny and rebellion are less and less followed by the rivers of blood and armed conflict; revolutions have lost their organic intrinsic structure and became a spectacle and part of the simulation. The contemporary forms of the revolution have nothing to do anymore with a political or socio-economic fracture and became a synonym for shifting the power from one ruler to another. In modern times rebellions are blemished with lurking agreements among various influential groups and the system brutally cuts an entrance to politics for the innocent and uncorrupted forces. The next stage of development of the system can be displayed not only by disappearance and dematerialization of the ruling force but also by fading exploited entities, “The era of hegemony is the era of the cyber system. It governs, it regulates, but it does not dominate”. This is how Baudrillard’s vision of modernity can be theorized: “There are no longer any exploited or dominated. There is something else, something much harder to overtake by surprise. It is harder to critique as well, because critical thought is devitalized in this case”.

Is it possible to be corrupt yet ethical? Or good but unethical? In one of Indonesia’s most corrupt towns, the answers to these questions are far from clear for young elite civil servants, who must navigate the moral-ethical landscape of post-Suharto bureaucracy. For them, anticorruption efforts heighten uncertainty regarding what corruption is and facilitate slippage between various constructions of ethical selfhood. The uncertainty arises at the intersection of local moral economies, national ideologies of state building, the particular global morality of anticorruption, and a conception of the good that inspires neoliberal ideas on governance. Finding themselves at this intersection, young civil servants can find no unambiguous contrast between being “good” and “corrupt.” [corruption, anticorruption, good governance, civil service, morality, ethics, Indonesia]

The end of dominant party rule is a fraught moment for political-bureaucratic relations in developing countries, with critical implications for public service delivery. This article examines political change in the state of West Bengal in eastern India, where a coalition of left-wing parties was deposed from power in 2011 by a populist opposition after 34 years of uninterrupted rule. The "change" party in West Bengal has not only avoided bureaucratic instability, public officials were successfully mobilized to increase the flow of public services. I argue that this anomaly can be explained by incorporating two variables whose effects have been under-theorized in existing research-the nature of the political mandate against the erstwhile dominant party and the organizational structures of the alternation party. More specifically, I argue that the electoral disintegration of the Left and the populist orientation of the new ruling party were crucial in producing a framework for cooperative political-bureaucratic relations. In the long run, however, as the frequently insufficient quality of these services indicate, only a programmatic mode of party politics can deliver lasting citizen satisfaction.

ABSTRACT This dissertation is a study on the political ideology and policies of Mahmud Nedim Pasha (1817-1883), who became grand vizier twice, in 1871-72 and in 1875-76. This study assesses and contests his general image in current historiography as an anti-Tanzimat, totalitarian, and Russophile statesman. The main research materials used in order to determine the grand vizier’s political thinking are his political writings, “Ayine-i Devlet” and “Müdafaaname.” Besides, the assessment of Mahmud Nedim’s political actions is conducted through an analysis of his policies in relation to the political and economic problems of the two terms he served as the grand vizier, by relying on the memoirs of Ottoman and foreign statesmen, as well as archival documents from the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives, Istanbul, and the United Kingdom National Archives, London. This research reveals that Mahmud Nedim in fact appreciated the social and diplomatic achievements gained through the Tanzimat reforms, but at the same time, saw the excessive empowerment and the ethical defects of Tanzimat-era bureaucrats as the main obstacle against further Ottoman state modernization and the definitive establishment of the rule of law. This work supports the view that Mahmud Nedim’s reforms that aimed at streamlining the bureaucracy provoked a strong bureaucratic reaction, which instigated
and used the 1876 Softa Incident as a pretext to remove Mahmud Nedim from power, and to dethrone Sultan Abdülaziz. This dissertation concludes that it is more reasonable to evaluate Mahmud Nedim as a reformist conservative politician instead of an ultraconservative bigoted figure.
ÖZET Bu tez, 1871-72 ve 1875-76 tarihlerinde iki kez sadrazamlık yapmış olan Mahmud Nedim Paşa’nın (1817-1883) siyasi fikirleri ve politikaları üzerine gerçekleştirilmiş bir araştırmadır. Bu inceleme Mahmud Nedim’in güncel tarih yazımındaki Tanzimat karşıtı, despotizm yanlısı ve Rus taraftarı devlet adamı imajını değerlendirerek söz konusu imgeye itiraz etmektedir. Sadrazamın siyasi düşünce dünyasını ortaya koymak için kullanılan ana malzeme, kendisinin siyasi yazılarını içeren iki eseri “Ayine-i Devlet” ve “Müdafaaname”dir. Bunun yanı sıra, Mahmud Nedim’in siyasi fiilleri, sadareti dönemlerindeki siyasi ve ekonomik sorunlara karşı ürettiği politikalar bağlamında değerlendirilmiştir. Bu amaçla Osmanlı ve yabancı devlet adamlarının hatıratlarıyla Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi ve Birleşik Krallık Ulusal Arşivi’ndeki arşiv belgeleri kullanılmıştır. Bu araştırma, Mahmud Nedim’in, Tanzimat’ın toplumsal ve diplomatik kazanımlarına sahip çıkıp onları takdir ederken Osmanlı devlet modernleşmesinin bir sonraki aşamaya geçerek hukukun üstünlüğü ilkesinin ülkede kesin olarak yerleşmesinin karşısındaki en büyük engeli Tanzimat bürokratlarının aşırı güçlenmesi ve ahlaki kusurları olarak gördüğü tezini savunmaktadır. Bu çalışmanın bulgularından biri de Mahmud Nedim’in bürokrasiyi düzene koymak adına yaptığı ıslahat çalışmalarının güçlü bir bürokratik tepki doğurduğu ve söz konusu tepkinin 1876 Softalar Vakasını kışkırtarak bu vakayı Mahmud Nedim’i saf dışı bırakmanın ve Sultan Abdülaziz’i tahttan indirmenin bir bahanesi olarak kullandığıdır. Bu tez, Mahmud Nedim’i aşırı muhafazakâr bir bağnaz yerine ıslahatçı muhafazakâr bir siyasetçi olarak değerlendirmenin daha doğru bir yaklaşım olduğu sonucuna varmaktadır.

A la question posée dans l'Amérique des années 1960 par Robert Dahl, « Qui gouverne ? » 1 , les théories pluralistes d'un côté, les théories élitistes-monistes d'inspiration selon les cas marxiste ou parétienne de l'autre, et les théories néo-corporatistes (quelque part entre les deux) se sont employées pendant plus de vingt ans à donner une réponse. Puis, le développement considérable de l'analyse des politiques publiques comme sous-discipline des sciences sociales a conduit à appréhender d'une façon renouvelée le gouvernement (au sens de governing), la gouverne des sociétés contemporaines. Il est désormais acquis qu'il s'agit d'un processus social complexe fait d'une multiplicité d'interactions non-congruentes entre des acteurs, individuels comme collectifs, dont les propriétés économiques, sociales et politiques, les positionnements et les logiques ordinaires d'action sont hétérogènes, acteurs mis en relation parfois selon une logique événementielle dans le cadre de « conjonctures mobilisées » ou « critiques » 2 et, plus souvent, dans la routine de « réseaux » thématiques ou sectoriels plus ou moins stabilisés et institutionnalisés, acteurs réunis pour prendre en charge des problèmes construits comme collectifs par la mise en place et la gestion de programmes d'action publique. Dès lors, la question de savoir qui gouverne nos sociétés a largement été supplantée par la question de savoir comment sont gouvernées, ou plus exactement produites et mises en oeuvre, les politiques publiques.

The term “deep state” was coined in the 1990s to refer to bureaucratic resistance to government strongmen (ex. Recep Erdogan). Yet, it characterizes an old concept in political science, the career bureaucracy of civil servants working in various governmental institutions at various times and in various places. The term has been used more recently by conspiracy theorists and right-wing hysterics to pejoratively characterize career civil servants as a self-interested, devious, and mysterious secret cabal pursuing an agenda or manipulating the lives of individuals to some nefarious end. This end is speculatively associated with secret societies such as the Illuminati, a global empire or a “New World Order.” However, deep states and secret societies are neither deep nor mysterious. As Brian Hayden observed in his recent book on Secret Societies, they are well-known across cultures, and they are not necessarily nefarious or benevolent. Using Neopalatial Minoan Crete (ca. 1700-1450 BCE) as a case study, I aim to examine the evidence for a deep state based on three categories of evidence: bureaucratic activity as indicated by archives, portrayal of elites as anonymous figures, and architectural evidence for a bureaucratic activity. In doing so, I aim to arrive at more nuanced understanding of the Minoans as an early state society.

Revision of an article of the same author, previously published in Nova Americana (Torino), vol.5, 1972, in the light of new research on colonial bureaucracy, legislation and acceptance of normative regulations from the metropolitan government.

A key feature of policy reform and political development in Britain since the 1980s has been the idea that public services are more responsive, flexible and better managed when citizens engage with them as discriminating users or consumers.  In education, this approach to reform has been criticised for undermining associations and relations that engender citizenship-based commitments to ideas of public welfarism and a democratic citizenry.  This thesis explores diverse sources and types of evidence in order to map the field through which parents are invited to deploy meanings and vocabularies that register a consumerist orientation to school choice, and to illustrate the sets of contrasting and sometimes contradictory discourses enacted by parents in their interpretations and understandings of their role as chooser.  This leads to a consideration of how far the expectations and demands of governmental discourses and rationalities work to shape or limit the intentions of social actors.  Through comparing diverse sources of evidence, the thesis then develops two interrelated lines of argument.  First, it argues that choice connects with ethical injunctions around behaviour and therefore is sometimes mobilised in ways that transcend economic rationality.  Secondly, it argues that choice is negotiated at the intersection of multiple discourses, revealing the cross-cutting impulses that inform parents’ decision-making.  Through a consideration of the relationships in practice between these diverse elements, this study questions the analytic value of distinctions between citizen and consumer, community and individual as framings for understanding the motivations and aspirations shaping parents’ school choices.

Why has the internationally-promoted Weberian-style bureaucracy failed to replace patronage as the dominant principle of state organization in post-war Kosovo? This article explores how international actors’ rule-promotion activities and local actors’ strategies of resistance play out and interact to explain the failure. The empirical analysis focuses on rules of recruitment in the civil service system in the period 2000-2016. The analysis juxtaposes two consecutive stages of the state-building process, which are marked by different degrees and forms of international involvement: the pre-independence period, 1999-2008; and post-independence period, 2008-2016. Evidence from the case suggests that during the pre-independence period, legal inconsistencies embedded in the internationally promulgated legislation enabled local actors’ formal and informal strategies to recruit political cronies in the newly created civil service system. The transfer of authority from international administrators to elected local authorities, especially after Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, did not solve the problem of legal inconsistencies, and instead, served to consolidate governing parties’ strategies of control over recruitment in the state bureaucracy. More often than not, patron-client relationships that thrive at the borderline between formality and informality of political behaviour, continued to undermine external rule transfers.

Bureaucracies as defined under the Weber model are intended to service the implementation needs of political policy decisions resulting from a process of governance. An alternative model arises from the fictional works of Kafka, which is underpinned by a firm conceptual basis of a bureaucracy that seems at loggerheads with the ideas of Weber. This paper explores the nature of bureaucracies, representing them as complex and dynamic, and at some distance from the Weberian model. Cultural agency theory will be used to model bureaucracies, and comparisons will be made between the Weber and Kafka conceptualisation.

Scholars of public administration apply different perspectives to understand bureaucratic institutions. Many excellent studies consider the influence of bureaucracies on one aspect of their environment, like politics, society, culture, or the economy. Alternatively, scholars sometimes analyze the impact of one of these factors on the public administration. However, the recent literature on institutional entanglement shows us that relationships between social institutions are often mutually constitutive, meaning that their interaction is not one-directional. In this chapter, I build upon a large number of previous studies on public administration to create a synthesized perspective of how public bureaucracies interact with their broader environment, including the social, cultural, economic, and political context in which they operate. Through a number of empirical examples, I show how useful this view can be for understanding the characteristics of public bureaucracies.

The advent of Ministerial Advisers of the partisan variety-a third element interposing itself into Westminster's bilateral monopoly-has been acknowledged as a significant development in a number of jurisdictions. While there are commonalities across contexts, the New Zealand experience provides an opportunity to explore the extent to which the advent of Ministerial Advisers is consistent with rational choice accounts of relations between political and administrative actors in executive government. Public administration reform in New Zealand since the mid 1980s-and in particular machinery of government design-was quite explicitly informed by rational choice accounts, and normative Public Choice in particular. This article reflects on the role of Ministerial Advisers in the policymaking process and, on the basis of assessments by a variety of political and policy actors, examines the extent to which the institutional and relational aspects of executive government are indeed consistent with rational choice accounts of the 'politics of policymaking'. The reader is offered a new perspective through which to view the advent, and the contribution of Ministerial Advisers to policymaking in executive government. http://mro.massey.ac.nz/ Massey Documents by Type Journal Articles Ministerial advisers and the politics of policy-making: Bureaucratic permanence and popular control Eichbaum, C 2007-12

In a letter to M. Coray, Thomas Jefferson distinguished two, distinct notions of political authority. The first was that of ancient Greece, which was characterized by “slavery” and the subjection of the population. The second type, referring to governments of “the present age,” rejected that standard in favor of equality and the promotion of the people’s “happiness”. Unexpectedly the dichotomy between hereditary privilege systems, and egalitarian service to the people, maps onto the contrast between “feudal” and “bureaucratic” systems in late imperial Chinese theory. This essay probes the dichotomy in two ways, theoretical and historical. In theory, “feudal” systems, East and West, seem to be informed by a substance metaphor, and so both Aristotle and his early modern followers conflated authority with social status, and imagined the latter as a hereditary, noble substance such as gold. Because authority inheres in the person as a substance, authority is personalistic, and there is no clear, external standard for checking abuses of power. Classical Chinese bureaucratic theory imagined authority as a tally. Historically, these two paradigms clashed in England and Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries when translations of Chinese texts became available. Using translingual analysis, this essay traces the transformation of authority from a substance model to a tally model in the thinking of several Enlightenment writers, culminating in the writings of Thomas Jefferson.

The text intertwines some free thoughts on the study of PA as a group of academic disciplines with a broader reflection on the reality of PA as a set of differentiated and contextualized socio-political phenomena. Firstly, the current state of the art in Europe is explored and, if not a "chaos of disciplines", appears, far from being a unified epistemic community, as a collection of diversified disciplines, with different perspectives, theoretical models, methodologies, styles and intellectual rationales. Nevertheless, these disciplines have in common to cope with the intellectual challenge of rethinking what happens to PA (the thing) in the post-NPM era in which "the Political", with its tragic dimension, makes a strong comeback after the reign of a neo-managerial consensus that deliberately lessened the contentious nature of democratic polities and politics. Our PA disciplines are now confronted with chaotic times, whose massive challenges-such as the climate change, the refugee crisis, Muslim fundamentalism, populism, secessionist movements, the digital revolution, growing inequalities-all target the very foundations of our polities, asking for genuine political answers by a new generation of strong democratic leaders, supporting by strong craftsmen of PA. In such a new era, if PA scholars want to be more relevant for practice, they should avoid the autopoietic risk and engage into a renewal of the interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, based on the sharing with the others of the most robust and recent hypotheses and findings of each of our disciplines.

Does the relationship between politcs and bureaucracy matter for ministerial performance? This dissertation aims to find empirical and theoretical fundaments that different presidential strategies of portfolio allocation produce impact on ministerial performance. Ministerial Performance is conceptualized as execution of Executive goals, and measured by annual proportion of ministeries’ financial execution. My main hypothesis is that Supervised Command - when a bureaucrat executive- secretary is allocated to monitor a partisan ministry - would present better levels of performance when compared to other kinds of Command. The mechanism behind this argument is the president’s control over the ministry through the executive- secretary. I also argue that bureaucracy quality has effect over the ministerial Command’s capacity of influencing that agency’s performance. Empirical tests were enacted on a panel database with ministery/year observations, for all Brazilian Executive ministeries from 2000 to 2014. Results achieved through ANOVA, linear regression with fixed/random effects, and regression on matched data models, show the situation is opposite to the main hypothesis. Supervised Command gives the worst means of ministerial performance, in rebuttal to the Partisan Command, with the best means. Bureaucracy quality, despite not having much effect over performance alone, bears some influence over Command’s effect, but only when low. Education background of the public service, as a proxy for bureaucracy quality, had more effect than statutories proportion. The main conclusion obtained from this dissertation: control, predicted in the theory of delegation and its perils, even though is a political goal to be pursued, not necessarily reflects in administrative efficiency. Monitoring seems to work more as a deadlock than a way to provide better results. However, since I don’t evaluate the quality of the goals execution, it’s not possible to affirm if the financial execution means the policy was actually executed, or if it was the way it should be.

Die qualitative Evaluation von Regierungskommunikation und ihren politischen Kampagnen scheitert häufig nicht nur am knappen Budget der Häuser. Viele unterschiedliche Akteure spielen in die politische Effizienzmessung hinein. Die Meinungen sind dabei hochkonträr und wechseln nicht selten sogar von Kampagne zu Kampagne. Zur Veranschaulichung greift Marco Althaus in diesem Beitrag nicht nur die Sicht der Bundesministerien, sondern auch die der PR-Agenturen auf und erläutert, warum es für Politiker und Berater heikel werden könnte, wenn sie sich an ihren Kampagnen messen ließen. Dass dabei ein geringes Budget nicht als Argument zählen kann, beweist Althaus anhand eines von ihm angepassten Fragenkatalogs.

This article argues that bureaucracy plays politics in Indonesia, not only during the electoral periods, but also in public service. Using the case of environmental evaluation in local government, where natural resources comprise most of the local economy, this article discusses the politics of bureaucracy in undergoing daily governing processes. The environment and natural resource businesses are two opposing fields. Environmental evaluation becomes a contentious area and is usually highly political. This article identifies the bureaucracy’s politicisation in environmental evaluation as occuring in at least in two forms—in measurement and in project implementation. In terms of measurement, bureaucracy tends to use minimum standards, while in project implementation, there are some occasions where bureaucracy tends to sub-contract the work to the third party, usually NGOs, especially in relations to sensitive issues, so that it is politically safer for them, once the result is not as...

This article argues that bureaucracy plays politics in Indonesia, not only during the electoral periods, but also in public service. Using the case of environmental evaluation in local government, where natural resources comprise most of the local economy, this article discusses the politics of bureaucracy in undergoing daily governing processes. The environment and natural resource businesses are two opposing fields. Environmental evaluation becomes a contentious area and is usually highly political. This article identifies the bureaucracy's politicisation in environmental evaluation as occuring in at least in two forms-in measurement and in project implementation. In terms of measurement, bureaucracy tends to use minimum standards, while in project implementation, there are some occasions where bureaucracy tends to subcontract the work to the third party, usually NGOs, especially in relations to sensitive issues, so that it is politically safer for them, once the result is not as pleasing as expected. This article uses some cases in Central Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, Central Java, and Bangka Belitung, and applied case study as research approach.

Um estudo de Antropologia Jurídica, ancorado numa análise extensa e cuidada dos nossos discursos jurídicos nacionais relativos à cooperação portuguesa, sobretudo aquela com os Estados lusófonos, desde a sua incipiência até ao fim da década de 90 do século passado. A análise dos diplomas portugueses exarados e das movimentações administrativas e atribuições e competências que foram tendo lugar, mostram com nitidez que o que esteve sempre em causa para o nosso Estado e, nele, as elites ministeriais do Governo, não se prendeu em boa verdade nem às características políticas dos Estados lusófonos, nem à natureza do relacionamento bilateral entre Portugal e cada um desses Estados, mas antes uma sustida luta burocrática na retaguarda portuguesa entre o Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros e o das Finanças, ao longo dos seus avatares.

This article dissects the role of culture in securing authority relations within a militarized police apparatus. Adding structure and power to the symbolic interactionist approach to organizational culture and interests and positionality to the structural functionalist perspective on militarized organizations, the author examines how, through the preservation and imposition of a sacralized worldview and morality (symbolic violence), police officers -the commanding caste of a twotiered type of police organization -manage to charismatically legitimate the internal distribution of authority and its exercise in the relations between commanding officers and the noncommissioned officers, turning sheer bureaucratic authority into charismatic power (symbolic power). The author draws on ethnographic observations, interview data, and a structuralsemantic analysis to reconstruct the system of beliefs involved and to describe the practices and mechanisms through which intra-bureaucratic domination is charismatically legitimated and made effective. These processes are examined both in everyday relations of command and in the extraordinary event of a police mutiny.

Political advisers are an established third element in a number of Westminster-styled jurisdictions, as they are in New Zealand ' s institution of executive government. In this paper we report the initial fi ndings of a research project focusing on the role and accountabilities of ministerial advisers in New Zealand. We locate these fi ndings in the context of a growing body of international and comparative research on the role and accountabilities of non civil-or public-service advisers within political executives and comment on the extent to which the fi ndings affi rm or refute the view that the ' third element ' constitutes a threat to the continued application of Westminster principles and practices in New Zealand ' s system of government -once described as more Westminster than Westminster. In doing so, we highlight defi ciencies in standard conceptions of politicization and argue that there is a need to more clearly differentiate between its procedural and substantive dimensions.

It's no surprise that the governed seem none too happy with their government. Of course, this attitude is not new given an American brand of democratic angst has historically been woven into our collective DNA. Yet this contemporary rancor runs uncomfortably high. The corners of society are making it abundantly clear of their fragmented, yet almost universal, unhappiness with something more than national politics. Populism notwithstanding, it can be argued that another causation of the national dissatisfaction points to the country's discord with governmental bureaucracy itself. There exists a perception that an untouchable, uncaring, unresponsive, power centered system of government is partially culpable for this very visible anger. Not that the nonelected face of government has not been called out before, it is still disconcerting when elected officials, such as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan state: " We're restoring accountability to the federal government. When we say 'drain the swamp' that means stop giving all this power to unelected people to micromanage our society, our economy and our lives. " It would be naïve for state and local officials to think this attitude ends at the federal level. With a focus on data driven managerial efficiencies and performance-based measurement, governmental agencies are still pressed to meet the oftentimes conflicting expectations of elected officials, let alone the competing interests of a socioeconomic diverse and stratified society. This suggests that bureaucracy's focus on perfecting the rules and methodologies of governance does not address or satisfy the democratic needs of the people.