Italian economy faces tougher challenges in 2022

Significance This fast growth will more than offset the impact of the pandemic, which pulled down real output by 8.9% in 2020. Nevertheless, there are significant downside risks associated with inflation, monetary policy and political uncertainty. Impacts Italy faces higher borrowing costs in the new year as the ECB gradually tightens its ultra-loose monetary policy. If the winter is cold and Russian energy supplies run short, Italy will have to tap its strategic reserves to slow the growth of prices. Skilled labour shortages, weak productivity and inefficient public bureaucracy will weigh on medium-to-long-term growth.

Remote Working in a Public Bureaucracy: Redeveloping Practices of Managerial Control When Out of Sight

This article examines managerial control practices in a public bureaucracy at the moment of introducing remote work as part with a new ways of working (NWW) project. The qualitative study builds on 38 interviews with supervisors and subordinates conducted before the advent of COVID-19. By interpreting interviewees’ conversations about current and anticipated future work practices in the changing work setting, we reveal tacit and hidden practices of managerial control that are currently prevalent in many organizations introducing remote working. Three constitutive moments of the organization’s transformation to NWW are analytically distinguished: (i) how implicit becomes explicit, (ii) how collective becomes self, and (iii) how personal becomes impersonal. Our findings emphasize that the transition to NWW must take into account prevailing institutional logics and must reconnect to a fundamental and often neglected question: What does doing work mean within the particular organization? Negotiating this fundamental question might help to overcome supervisors’ uncertainties about managerial control and provide clarity to subordinates about what is expected from them while working remotely. Finally, we discuss how the transition to NWW may serve as both an opportunity and a potential threat to established organizational practices while highlighting the challenge supervisors face when the institutional logics conflict with remote working.

The Rise of a New Public Bureaucracy in New Zealand?

One recurrent narrative in the discussion about managerial public sector reforms is the growth in organizational professionals as a response to new accountability regimes. New Zealand has experienced modest growth rates in the general public sector workforce. Less studied, though, is whether the composition of the public sector workforce has changed, with an increase in organizational functions supportive to management. Based on descriptive workforce data, followed by follow-up interviews, this article presents a multifaceted and complex picture of a growing new public bureaucracy with the main task of managing chains of accountability.

Public bureaucracy and sustainable development in nigeria: identifying the normative challenges and the way forward

Sustainable development and sustainability in Nigeria still remain a project far-fetched. Structural disarticulation of public bureaucracy role in sustainable development vitiates the Nigerian project. Sustainable development and sustainability are all encompassing.Within the framework of statism and over-developed state theories, an eclectic approach, the article examined the role of public bureaucracy in sustainable development and sustainability. To address the issues raised, the article utilized qualitative research approach to gain an insight into the nature and character of the Nigerian state towards sustainable development and sustainability.Subsequently, relevant sources of this research were fairly and professionally scrutinised, understood and tested with the available literature for the purpose of the research. Inter alia, it included scan-reading, comprehensive and critical reading and writing down ideas. Authoritative scholarly sources were reviewed, during a desktop study.This article argues that Nigeria is yet to understand the central concerns of sustainable development. Although, development is an ongoing project, marginal improvement being recorded in various areas of the society need to be sustained and consolidated upon over time. For Nigeria to entrench sustainable development and sustainability, government has to champion development, while corruption in both public and private sectors of the economy needs to be cured. The bureaucracy is the channel through which all these ideas and activities can be coordinated and delivered in Nigeria efficiently and effectively.

The Rehn-Meidner Plan and the Swedish development model in the Golden Years

ABSTRACT In general, the literature on the developmental state studies Asia and Latin America, not Scandinavia. This article examines the developmental character of the state in Sweden, distinguishing it as a specific case, because its institutions and policies combine the simultaneous promotion of industrialization and social equity. The paper analyzes the Swedish model of development, centered in Rehn-Meidner Plan (R-M), a political strategy of the national development headed by the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP). It is argued that in Sweden industrialization and the construction of the welfare state were two sides of the same coin. The R-M Plan played a key role in consolidating the Swedish model between 1945 and 1975. It combined and articulated economic development, centered on industrialization, reduction of social inequalities, and fiscal and monetary stability. It increased productive complexity and equality, unified economic policy and social policy, planned industrialization and income redistribution. It was structured through a broad power pact among workers, industry, farmers, political representatives elected by SAP and public bureaucracy. It was institutionalized, above all, by the democratic corporatist arrangement of centralized salary negotiations.

Administrative Traditions

Contemporary public administration reflects its historical roots as well as contemporary ideas about how the public bureaucracy should be organized and function. This book argues that there are administrative traditions that have their roots centuries ago but continue to influence administrative behavior. Further, within Western Europe, North America, and the Antipodes there are four administrative traditions: Anglo-American, Napoleonic, Germanic, and Scandinavian. These are not the only traditions however, and the book also explores administrative traditions in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Islamic world. In addition there is a discussion of how administrative traditions of the colonial powers influenced contemporary administration in Africa. These discussions of tradition and persistence also are discussed in light of the numerous attempts to reform and change public administration.

The Administrative Tradition Approach to Public Bureaucracy

This chapter develops the model of administrative traditions that functions as the framework for the remainder of the book. The argument is that contemporary public bureaucracies are influenced significantly by their historical roots, and that many features of contemporary bureaucracy can be understood through the historically rooted administrative traditions. The model of administrative traditions developed in this chapter has a number of components. First is the nature of the state in which public administration functions. Second is whether there is an emphasis on law or management in defining the role of public servants. The third dimension is the relationship between politics and public administration, followed by the service orientation of public servants. The fifth element of the model is the nature of the career patterns of public servants. Another political dimension concerns the role of social actors in influencing the bureaucracy. Administrative traditions also are concerned with the degree of uniformity in public services throughout the country. The final dimension of the model of administrative traditions is the degree and form of accountability. This model of administrative traditions is based on the experiences of Western Europe, but also has relevance in many other settings.

The Germanic Tradition

Like the Napoleonic tradition, the Germanic tradition of public administration is based on law. In addition it is based on the ideas of Max Weber about the nature of a proper public bureaucracy, including factors such as the bureaucrat acting according to the law and obeying hierarchical superiors, the presence of files, and some form of accountability. In addition to the legal foundation, several other features stand out concerning the Germanic administrative tradition. One is the acceptance of political connections for the upper echelons of the administrative system. Another important feature is the limited concern with uniformity, given the federal structure of government, even given the common administrative law within the country. Also, the German administrative system has some corporatist elements, involving social actors in government decisions. Like the Napoleonic tradition, the Germanic tradition has also been diffused to countries such as Austria and Switzerland.

Public Administration and Democracy: The Virtue and Limit of Participatory Democracy as a Democratic Innovation

The expansion of public bureaucracy has been one of the most significant developments that has marked societies, particularly Western liberal democratic societies. Growing political apathy, citizen disgruntlement and the ensuing decline in electoral participation reflects the political nature of governance failures. Public bureaucracy, which has historically been saddled with derogatory and pejorative connotations, has encountered fierce assaults from multiple fronts. Out of these sharp criticisms of public bureaucracy that have emanated from both sides of the ideological spectrum, attempts have been made to popularize and advance citizen participation in both policy formulation and policy implementation processes as innovations to democratize public administration. Despite their virtue, empowering connotations and spirit-uplifting messages to the public, these proposed practices of democratic innovations not only have their own shortcomings and are conducive to exacerbating the conditions that they are directed to ameliorate but they also have the potential to undermine the traditional administrative and political accountability mechanisms.