Executive Politics

This chapter explains the historical origins of strong bureaucratic power in South Korea and recent changes in which the concentration of bureaucratic power has weakened. In the 1960s and 1970s, economic growth was South Korea’s top priority, and economic policy agencies such as the Economic Planning Board (EPB) led the nation’s overall policy decisions under the protection of the powerful president, Park Chung-hee. As the economy grew, however, various social demands, such as welfare, labour rights, and environmental protection, were expressed by the public, and many institutions that could reflect these demands grew within the bureaucracy in the 1980s and 1990s. As a consequence, the influence of the EPB was relatively reduced. Since the 2000s, democratization has matured and the ability of the National Assembly to make policy decisions and keep the administration in check has been strengthened. As a result, the bureaucrats’ influence on policy further diminished.

The heart of bureaucratic power: Explaining international bureaucracies’ expert authority

Expert authority is regarded as the heart of international bureaucracies’ power. To measure whether international bureaucracies’ expert authority is indeed recognised and deferred to, we draw on novel data from a survey of a key audience: officials in the policy units of national ministries in 121 countries. Respondents were asked to what extent they recognised the expert authority of nine international bureaucracies in various thematic areas of agricultural and financial policy. The results show wide variance. To explain this variation, we test well-established assumptions on the sources of de facto expert authority. Specifically, we look at ministry officials’ perceptions of these sources and, thus, focus on a less-studied aspect of the authority relationship. We examine the role of international bureaucracies’ perceived impartiality, objectivity, global impact, and the role of knowledge asymmetries. Contrary to common assumptions, we find that de facto expert authority does not rest on impartiality perceptions, and that perceived objectivity plays the smallest role of all factors considered. We find some indications that knowledge asymmetries are associated with more expert authority. Still, and robust to various alternative specifications, the perception that international bureaucracies are effectively addressing global challenges is the most important factor.

Determinants of Public Service Career Choice in Developing Countries

This study examines factors influencing public service career choice in developing countries through case studies and a survey. Based on the results of these case studies and survey, I conclude that job security, public service motivation, social recognition and status, and the opportunity for career development are important determinants in why individuals in developing countries choose a public service career. Bureaucratic power and family-related factors also play a role and reflect the high power distance and collectivist culture of developing countries.

Temporal Experiences of Confinement: Exploring Young People’s Experiences in Danish Secure Institutions

This article explores temporality in young peoples’ narratives of confinement on welfare grounds in Danish secure institutions. The analysis draws on data from two qualitative studies on young people’s experiences of confinement. Drawing on Michael Flaherty’s conceptualization of ‘making time’ (Flaherty, M. G., 2002, Symbolic Interaction, 25, 3, 379–388), we explore the unsteady passing of time, the agentic practices of manipulating and obliterating time and how bureaucratic power is exercised by depriving young people control of their time and subjecting them to slow or even ‘dead’ time in isolation or waiting for release. While secure institutions are closed institutions, this article explores the permeability of closed institutions by looking at temporality as a dimension that links the inside and outside while also contributing to create specific experiences of temporal and spatial divisions. This perspective on young people’s temporal experiences contributes empirically to scholarship on the confinement of young people and it has practical implications for the service provision for troubled and troublesome young people.

Politicians and Bureaucrats in Executive Government

Political executives depend on bureaucrats in the formulation and implementation of public policy. This raises fundamental questions about the balancing of bureaucratic autonomy and political control. The chapter primarily focuses on the relationship between political executives and public officials tasked with policy development (‘policy bureaucrats’). It provides an overview of the main scholarly debates: the recruitment and replacement of public officials; sources of bureaucratic power; and interactions between policy bureaucrats and political executives. We also provide an overview of the main theories on politico-administrative relations, including political economy and Public Service Bargain (PSB) perspectives. The chapter then highlights key developments in current research, including comparative analyses, the study of ministerial advisers, and the politicization of regulatory agencies. We conclude with a research agenda on the impact of increasingly complex problems and political polarization on role understandings and patterns of decision-making, as well as on the motivations and effects of politicization.

Emotional Labor and the Power of International Bureaucrats

This article advances a theory on the power of international bureaucrats and bureaucracies in world politics. It argues that bureaucrats become powerful when they stage emotionally calibrated performances as “servants” before state principals and carve out space for action through “whispering,” “propagating,” cultivating patrons, and building coalitions in the backstage of official interaction. These “servant” performances involve what sociologist Arlie Hochschild calls “emotional labor”—the management of feelings in work performances. I develop a theory of emotional labor that suggests why international bureaucrats manage emotions as they perform as servants and why some bureaucrats with prized sociological profiles are empowered on the back of “confident” servant performances. In contrast to principal–agent, constructivist, and psychological accounts, this is a micro-sociological explanation for bureaucratic power. I evaluate this theory with an ethnography of the Secretariat of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)—a “least likely” case for bureaucratic power under prevailing theorizations. I also demonstrate how the ASEAN case is a sharper instance of a more general phenomenon. This article advances the study of emotions and emotional labor, the role of social class in shaping competent practice, and the debate on the power of bureaucrats and international organizations in international relations.

Silver hair, silver tongues, silver screen: recollection, reflection and representation through digital storytelling with older people

This chapter discusses the use of Digital Storytelling (DS) with older people. It looks at the benefits of participation in the DS process before considering how these self-representations — organised, selected and told by individuals and shared on their terms — can break down traditional bureaucratic power structures represented by the notion of ‘archive’. The chapter presents two case studies. The first is from Patient Voices, which curates and archives digital stories made under its auspices with the intention of transforming health and social care by conveying the voices of those not usually heard to a worldwide audience. The second is from DigiTales's work with older people through the transnational action research project Silver Stories, which generated an archive of over 160 stories by older people and those who care for them, from five European countries. It shows how DS creates new possibilities for participatory and collaborative approaches to discovering and developing new knowledge, re-positioning participants as co-producers of knowledge and, potentially, as co-researchers.

Land rights and the rule of law

Recent years have seen a proliferation of land laws in Kenya, but these efforts have failed to confront the material consequence of unequal access to land. The legal focus has been on the redistribution of bureaucratic power and institutional change. This can be explained by the dominance of a rule-of-law approach that relies on technocratic solutions to land problems, and which obscures more difficult questions of how to address growing inequality in access to land in the context of long-standing vested interests of powerful political and economic elites. At the same time, the courts have shown a marked reluctance to mediate on the institutional architecture of land administration. As a result, despite new legal frameworks, the prospects for land justice in modern Kenya remain poor.