The “Trilemma” of Public Bodies: Bureaucratic Structures Versus Agencies Under Policy Conditionality

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (9) ◽  
pp. 1299-1332
Author(s):  
Manto Lampropoulou ◽  
Giorgio Oikonomou
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Organizational Transformation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Tax Administration ◽  
Economic Adjustment ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Delegation Of Powers

The aim of this article is to explore the implications of the delegation of powers from central bureaucracies to semi-autonomous agencies for public administration under policy conditionality. Focusing on Greece, we argue that agencification reforms that were introduced during the economic adjustment programs (2010–2018) have changed the role of the administrative apparatus in policy-making and implementation. Based on two exemplary case studies, tax administration and state assets management, the empirical findings illustrate the political dynamics that induced organizational transformation and show how policy conditionality has changed the domestic agencification pattern and has rebalanced the institutional, functional, and democratic dimensions of agencies.

Legislators, Bureaucrats, and Canadian Democracy: The Long and the Short of It

1977 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 615-624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Sigelman ◽  
William G. Vanderbok
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Substantial Proportion ◽  
The Political ◽  
Annual Average ◽  
Canadian Politics ◽  
Strategic Role

The bureaucratization of the political process that characterizes twentieth century politics in many countries has not bypassed Canada—as evidenced by skyrocketing rates of government employment and expenditure and, even more dramatically, by the ever-expanding policy-making power of Canadian bureaucracy. One observer sees the civil service as occupying an increasingly strategic role in Canadian politics, a condition thatreflects in part the expanding role of modern government into highly technical areas, which tends to augment the discretion of permanent officials because legislators are obliged to delegate to them the administration of complex affairs, including the responsibility for drafting and adjudicating great amounts of sub-legislation required to “fill in the details” of the necessarily broad, organic statutes passed by Parliament. Some indication of the scale of such discretion is found in the fact that, during the period 1963–8, an annual average of 4,130 Orders-in-Council were passed in Ottawa, a substantial proportion of which provided for delegating authority to prescribe rules and regulations to ministers and their permanent advisers. By contrast, the number of laws passed annually by Canadian federal parliaments is rarely over one hundred.

scholarly journals Can Indicators Bridge the Gap between Science and Policy? An Exploration into the (Non)Use and (Non)Influence of Indicators in EU and UK Policy Making

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 316-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Léa Sébastien ◽  
Tom Bauler ◽  
Markku Lehtonen
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Science And Policy ◽  
Development Indicators ◽  
Energy Indicators ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Evidence For Policy ◽  
The Eu

This article examines the various roles that indicators, as boundary objects, can play as a science-based evidence for policy processes. It presents two case studies from the EU-funded POINT project that analyzed the use and influence of two highly different types of indicators: composite indicators of sustainable development at the EU level and energy indicators in the UK. In both cases indicators failed as direct input to policy making, yet they generated various types of conceptual and political use and influence. The composite sustainable development indicators served as “framework indicators”, helping to advocate a specific vision of sustainable development, whereas the energy indicators produced various types of indirect influence, including through the process of indicator elaboration. Our case studies demonstrate the relatively limited importance of the characteristics and quality of indicators in determining the role of indicators, as compared with the crucial importance of “user factors” (characteristics of policy actors) and “policy factors” (policy context).

The Origins and Dynamics of Inequality

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon D. Wisman
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human History ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Role

Whereas President Barack Obama identified inequality as “the defining challenge of our time,” this book claims more: it is the defining issue of all human history. The struggle over inequality has been the underlying force driving human history’s unfolding. Drawing on the dynamics of inequality, this book reinterprets history and society. Beyond according inequality the central role in human history, this book is novel in two other respects. First, transcending the general failure of social scientists and historians to anchor their work in explicit theories of human behavior, this book grounds the origins and dynamics of inequality in evolutionary psychology, or, more specifically, Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. Second, this book is novel in according central importance to the critical historical role of ideology in legitimating inequality, a role typically ignored or given little attention by social scientists and historians. Because of the central role of inequality in history, inequality’s explosion over the past 45 years has not been an anomaly. It is a return to the political dynamics by which elites have, since the rise of the state, taken practically everything for themselves, leaving all others with little more than the means with which to survive. Due to elites’ persuasive ideology, even after workers in advanced capitalist countries gained the franchise to become the overwhelming majority of voters, inequality continued to increase. The anomaly is that the only intentional politically driven decline in inequality occurred between the 1930s and 1970s following the Great Depression’s partial delegitimation (this should remain delegitimation globally) of elites’ ideology.

The Violence of Inequality: Race and Lobbying in the Politics of Crime and Criminal Justice in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 68-93
Author(s):  
Sappho Xenakis ◽  
Leonidas K. Cheliotis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Criminal Justice Policy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Us

There is no shortage of scholarly and other research on the reciprocal relationship that inequality bears to crime, victimisation and contact with the criminal justice system, both in the specific United States context and beyond. Often, however, inequality has been studied in conjunction with only one of the three phenomena at issue, despite the intersections that arguably obtain between them–and, indeed, between their respective connections with inequality itself. There are, moreover, forms of inequality that have received far less attention in pertinent research than their prevalence and broader significance would appear to merit. The purpose of this chapter is dual: first, to identify ways in which inequality’s linkages to crime, victimisation and criminal justice may relate to one another; and second, to highlight the need for a greater focus than has been placed heretofore on the role of institutionalised inequality of access to the political process, particularly as this works to bias criminal justice policy-making towards the preferences of financially motivated state lobbying groups at the expense of disadvantaged racial minorities. In so doing, the chapter singles out for analysis the US case and, more specifically, engages with key extant explanations of the staggering rise in the use of imprisonment in the country since the 1970s.

22. NGOs in world politics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jutta Joachim
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
International Level ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Transnational Ngos

This chapter examines the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in world politics. It considers what distinguishes NGOs from other actors in international politics, what types of influence NGOs exert in international relations, and whether NGOs contribute to more democratic policy-making at the international level. The chapter also discusses the growing importance of NGOs and presents two case studies that illustrate how they have contributed to the emergence of new norms through their engagement with international governmental organizations (IGOs): the first is about campaigns run by transnational NGOs to end violence against women and the second is about their climate justice activism. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether transnational NGOs contribute to more democracy at the international level.

The Political Dynamics of Organizational Culture in an Institutionalized Environment

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 537-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzana Braga Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Culture ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Organizational Culture Change ◽  
Telecommunications Company

This paper addresses organizational culture change from a longitudinal perspective. It analyses how the organizational culture of a major Brazilian telecommunications company changed during its 27-year history from a condition of integration to one of fragmentation and then differentiation. The paper identifies the sources of these changes, paying particular attention to the role of institutional and political factors. Based on the empirical data, a framework for analysing the dynamics of culture change in organizations is proposed.

Archives, Documents, and Legal Practices in the Greek Polis

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Faraguna
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Judicial Procedures ◽  
Land Transactions ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores the importance of writing in the legal practices of the Greek poleis. After discussing writing materials and kinds of documents, illustrating the different functions documents on the same media could have and the problems in tracing ancient archives and reconstructing the role they played in the mechanisms of public administration, it concentrates on two case studies: written records concerning land transactions (in particular registers of sales) and the role of written documents in Athenian judicial procedures. It argues that the impact of written documents on the legal sphere and in establishing fair social relations within the polis was much more significant than is generally recognized.

The Neglected Tradition? – The Genesis of the EU Seal Products Trade Ban and Commercial Sealing

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 417-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolas Sellheim
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The Eu

Abstract The European Union’s ban on the placing on the market of seal products stemming from commercially hunted seals has triggered much controversy due to its negative impacts on Arctic livelihoods. This article looks at the different documents and steps that constitute the crafting process which has led to the adoption of Regulation 1007/2009 on trade in seal products. It puts special emphasis on the degree of recognition of commercial sealing as a livelihood and asks if it is a tradition that may have been neglected by the political discourse in the EU. Also the role of antisealing groups is considered that may have contributed to a pre-determined stance on the commercial seal hunt during the policy-making process.

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