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The methodology of experiments has been slow to garner a following in public administration (PA), a scientific discipline that exhibits a high degree of methodological conservatism over time (Perry 2012). Our re-view takes stock of the experimental research agenda so far. Examining all articles that appeared between 1990 and 2013 in the fifteen most cited journals in the field of ‘Public Administration’, we analyze the range of experimental PA research with regards to their coverage of ex-perimental methods and research designs applied, but also with a view to their contribution to the development of an experimental research agenda. Based on the finding that PA not only experiences a general dearth of experimental research, but also a limited scope with regard to the variety of experimental designs and research questions tackled, we assess the potential benefits from that methodological advancement and outline approaches for prospective research.
The study of the processes and effects of internationalization has become a major field of inquiry in the social sciences. This article takes stock of corresponding research efforts in the field of public administration (PA) to understand the internationalization phenomenon by analyzing studies that were systematically sampled from major PA journals over recent decades. After 10 delineating, sampling, categorizing, and subsequently examining the scholarly production of PA regarding what can be understood as the internationalization of domestic PA, three major themes of PA-related debates are identified: diffusion, resistance, and the transformation of bureaucratic power. The article concludes that PA has developed neither genuine research questions nor a coherent theoretical framework able to come to grips with the internationalization challenge. It 15 ends with an appeal for PA to become aware of this deficit and recommends PA scholars liaise Q3 more intensively with other social sciences to overcome the current state of affairs.
Globally, there are challenges and threats that cannot be targeted by a single actor, even if it may be a national state, legitimized and willing to act. Hence, new collaboration regimes were created: international organizations, but also – formal or informal – cooperations with the private sector. Our paper discusses organization forms of these cooperations or ‘global public private partnerships’ (GPPP) theoretically and outlines framework conditions for the use of these global partnerships. Additionally, the health sector will be tackled exemplarily to delineate in how far GPPP are largely depending on the nature of the good provided.
While traditionally the provision of public services was monopolized by the gov-ernment, lately service delivery has been challenged, resulting in more coopera-tions between private enterprises and the public sector. We discuss theoretically and based on empirical evidence the role of trust in these arrangements and under which conditions information can help to overcome a “trust gap”, contributing to the success of these cooperation. Additionally, we develop and test an experimental design that allows us to show which factors influence the public opinion in favor of these service arrangements and public-private cooperations. Therewith our paper does not only contribute to the investigation of information and trust in PA, but provides some implication for policy makers and the public administration.
National innovativeness is one key driver of economic development. The relation of national innovativeness and national culture has been firmly established by research. Cultural factors, however, influence national innovativeness via different mechanisms on the macro-, meso-, and micro-level of a country. In our paper, we build on existing research on the link between cultural dimensions and national innovativeness to develop a new model that classifies different cultural dimensions in groups according to their mechanism: political, social, or individual (PSI-model). Using a newly-established data set composed of world data, we test and find support for this model using a variety of regression models. The PSI-model provides a more structured theoretical background of the impact of different cultural dimensions on national innovativeness, especially with regard to social practices and social values. It can be used to generate policy recommendations on national innovativeness and offers further applications in fields related to the various impacts of national culture.
It is an open question what impact public governance reforms have had in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, which is challenged by domestic transformative societal developments as well as by transformational pressures from abroad. To assess their differential impact, the article first revisits the legacies that characterize the public administrative systems of the MENA region. Then, using data from the newly-developed Arab Administrative Elites Survey, it taps into the images and aspirations of public governance insiders as regards crucial public sector values. According to this data, the reforms aim to increase efficiency and to bring public administrations closer to the people. Arguably, reforms in MENA public governance converge, though from a relatively low level, with the direction of global standards of public management.
The insight that politics and administration should be treated as separated spheres is not new, as already Wilson portrayed administration as the apolitical execution of law. Consequently, even if the spheres are distinct, there is no politics thinkable without administration to execute. However, as argued by Peters (2018: 164), “this presumed separation of administration and politics allows them [bureaucrats] to engage in politics.”
While the consequences and causes of revolutions for political systems and the economy are at the forefront of debates in the respective disciplines, scholars have paid scant attention to the role of bureaucracies in revolutions. Against this background, this entry maps the efforts of public administration theory to come to grips with what is understood as revolution. As public administration is of utmost relevance in the context of revolutions, and the scope of the role of administrations in revolutions can be manifold: they may be the passive recipient of change, may influence developments actively, or be more or less unaffected by a change of the political system.
This entry conceptualizes which potential positions in revolutions can be taken by the public administration and which consequences revolutions have for the bureaucracy from a theoretical viewpoint, and provides humble empirical evidence of administrative behavior in revolutions worldwide.
The analysis of forms and effects of what is usually conceived of as globalization or internationalization has become a major topic of political speeches and academic research, especially in the social sciences. While the consequences of globalization for Western economies and societies are often at the forefront of debates, their effects on public administrations are focused on relatively sparsely yet.
This entry aims at identifying the different manifestations and effects of internationalization in the context of bureaucracies. The subsequent sections provide an introduction and delineate the main mechanisms of internationalization. The next section identifies the topics discussed in the context of globalization, internationalization and transnationalization, and distils the main characteristics of international public administrations, as well as the effects and ramifications of internationalization on domestic public administration.
The Covid-19 pandemic affects societies worldwide, challenging not only health sectors but also public administration systems in general. Understanding why public administrations perform well in the current situation—and in times of crisis more generally—is theoretically of great importance; and identifying concrete factors driving successful administrative performance under today‘s extraordinary circumstances could still improve current crisis responses.
This article studies patterns of sound administrative performance with a focus on networks and knowledge management within and between crises. Subsequently, it draws on empirical evidence from two recent public administration surveys conducted in Germany in order to test derived hypotheses. The results of tests for group differences and regression analyses demonstrate that administrations that were structurally prepared, learned during preceding crises, and that displayed a high quality in their network cooperation with other administrations and with the civil society, on average, performed significantly better in the respective crises.
The number of public–private partnerships (PPP) is on the rise. The authors analyse empirical evidence (including outcomes from interviews and a survey of civil servants in Germany), about the importance of transaction costs and trust in PPP implementation and perfor-mance. The paper makes an important contribution to the literature by reflecting on trust relations in PPPs, as well as providing empirical evidence for higher transaction costs in PPPs, compared to entirely public sector provision.
This article conceptualizes the vulnerability of the different stages of Public-Private Partner-ship (PPP) models for corruption against the backdrop of contract theory, principal-agent theory and transaction cost economics, and discusses potential control mechanisms.
The article’s contribution to the debate on PPPs is twofold: first, an issue widely neglected by the pertinent literature is conceptualized. Second, as these PPPs are used not only in de-veloped countries whose legal order may shield them sufficiently, but also in developing countries, carving out the vulnerable points in PPP arrangements may enable decision mak-ers to install appropriate control mechanisms, if need be on project level.
The Covid-19 pandemic constitutes a veritable capacity test for local administrations in Germany and Austria. Based on a survey among systematically sampled Austrian (n=130) and German (n=517) employees of local public administrations, the article taps into the perceptions of how the bureaucracies in the two federal states coped with the challenges emerging at the early stage of the crisis. As it turns out, in the administratively well-equipped and—in comparison to disastrous situations elsewhere—mildly hit countries, local administrations did fine—even growing beyond themselves. Key to a higher probability of coping well with Covid-19 appears to be an intelligent administrative networking strategy. Five tentative lessons are drawn on what—at this early stage—can only constitute an incomplete picture taken from a fluid context.
Each crisis is dreadful in its own special way, and so is the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond its lethal nature and truly global spread, one of its characteristics lies within the detachment of cause and effect. The cause, i.e. SARS-CoV-2, can clearly be attributed to health issues, though the COVID-19 pandemic challenges entire public administration (PA) systems well beyond the health sector. Both the lockdown as executed and the first careful exit-steps in their entire complexity increase scope and scale of PA’s tasks and responsibilities, challenging not only health authorities, but all parts of the administrative system, from security administration to public service delivery, with the entire world remaining in very turbulent water. Thus, the question arises how the PA should react to ensure high performance in times of crisis. Our findings underpin the relevance of trust in public administration (or “the government” in general), notably in times of crisis: the higher trust levels are, the more likely compliance of citizens and successful networking with non-state actors is. Even in the absence of many trust generating factors, trust levels are increasing in the current COVID-19 pandemic.
The article discusses how COVID-19 could reinforce corruption, cronyism and mistrust in the politico-administrative system of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
The Covid-19 pandemic is a multi-faceted crisis that challenges not only the health systems and other policy sub-systems in the single Member States, but also the European Union’s ability to provide policy responses that address the transnational nature of pandemic control as a union-wide ‘public good’ that affects health and social policies, border control and security as well as topics related to the single market. Thus, the pandemic constitutes a veritable capacity test for the EU integration project.
This article attempts to take stock of the Union’s early reaction to the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak. After an introduction and a short note on the scope and methodology of the analysis a theoretical framework is developed. Scrutinising the pertinent literature on crisis management, we reflect the traditional hypothesis that in times of crisis the centre becomes more relevant against the background of the EU crisis management system, and discuss the role of informality in particular during the time of crisis. Against this backdrop, empirical evidence from interviews with EU officials and documents in selected policy fields (health and emergency management, digitalisation, and economic recovery) are analysed, before a discussion and conclusion complete the study.
The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 and its consequences constitute a veritable capacity test for the European Union, challenging not only the single Member States, but also the European Union’s ability to provide policy responses that address pandemic control as a union-wide “public good” in different dimensions related to inter alia public health, but also the freedom of movement or the single market.
Against this backdrop, this article attempts to take stock of the Union’s early reactions to the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak. After a brief introduction, we reflect on crisis manage-ment theories, power distribution in the EU, and the EU’s institutionalised crisis reaction capacity. Subsequently, crisis reaction in selected policy areas in the European Union is analysed, before we finish with a concluding section. We find some evidence for the pace-making function of the Franco-German tandem in the form of informal, decentralised action, as well as for a relative weak performance of institutionalised crisis management mecha-nisms on the EU level, but instead a centralisation towards the centre in the form of the European Commission.
PURPOSE: The management of cross-border natural resources has been the focus of re-search in different disciplines. Nonetheless, beyond theoretical insights, empirical evidence of successful cross-border management or governance of natural resources is still limited, even in the European Union (EU), where a range of instruments are provided to foster cross-border cooperation between its Member States. This is where our paper departs, providing evidence from an example of cross-border cooperation between two Member States of the EU, Austria, and Slovenia, adding to the analytical framework to identify the drivers of successful cross-border cooperation.
METHODOLOGY: Drawing from the example of the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) Geopark Karawanken we evaluate the success factors and limits for transboundary cooperation encompassing different forms of cooperation. Furthermore, based on empirical evidence of workshops with local, regional, and national stakeholders, we investigate the potential of the EGTC organizational framework to provide for the successful cross-border management of water resources within the Geopark area.
The links between innovativeness as a driver of economic performance, and the determi-nants of innovativeness have been investigated by management scholars and economists
for decades, focusing mostly on “hard factors” as investment in research and development, or education. Focusing on a relatively neglected, but in times of globalization even more important aspect, the influence of cultural characteristics on innovativeness, we apply different econometric models to test for links between cultural tightness and looseness on the one hand, and national innovativeness on the other hand. We find that cultural tightness — in the sense of homogenous and intolerant societies — has a negative link to national innovativeness, while cultural looseness — in the sense of tolerant and diverse societies — displays a positive link to national innovativeness.
The purpose of this chapter is to delineate and analyse current adjustments of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) in Germany in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on current data and official material, road infrastructure PPP was analysed, as demand for transporta-tion services is highly sensitive to fluctuations of overall economic activity. Accordingly, they do not only offer a good illustration of the challenges encountered by PPP operators in gene-ral but also – as road infrastructure PPP in Germany exist in different designs – important lessons may be learned with respect to their respective resilience in extraordinarily adverse economic conditions. One finding from the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany is that the case for public–private partnerships (PPP) become more compelling, also as an integral element of a large-scale reform package to massively improve the resilience of public service delivery to citizens and companies alike. Another important insight from the pandemic and the politico-administrative countermeasures is that massive pressure – both financial and in terms of the workload on the human resources employed – has been placed upon existing PPP, especially in critical infrastructures. The principal reasons are unforeseen or unexpected changes in user behaviour, affecting demand, and more difficult access to funding. These new insights demonstrate the relevance of anticipation of such events in the PPP contract, and the role of preparation for practitioners on both the private as well as the public side. Moreover, the findings provide leeway for further research on how the public administration, in particular in a federal multilevel system, can strengthen knowledge management and information exchange between single entities and stakeholders, and the role of PPP units as potential gatekeeper within this system.
This book explores how migrants and refugees can revitalise peripheral regions and commu-nities economically. The extent to which migrants stimulate the economic activities of these regions through labour market participation, entrepreneurship, innovation and consumption is examined theoretically and empirically for the EU as a whole, as well as through empirical case studies that highlight the impact of migration at macro, company, and individual levels. A particular focus is given to the economic consequences of Third Country Nationals to places beyond the cities, i.e. the peripheral and remote regions of Europe. This book aims to provide insight into the role of migrations in low productive and labour-intensive regions. The authors provide innovative policy recommendations to stimulate the positive economic con-sequences of immigration to places beyond the cities. It will be of interest to students, re-searchers, and policymakers working within labour economics and migration and integration policies.