Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 15th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview I. Working Group on Politico-Administrative Relations Author(s) Markku Temmes University of Helsinki Helsinki Finland Title The role of the top civil servants - a comparison among the Nordic countries File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract The main idea of the paper will be to study the roles of the top civil servants in the national level strategic procedures. The position of the civil servants will be compared with the roles of the politicians, especially the roles of the ministers (we have from Finland an empiric study marerial concerning the roles of the ministers in the strategic procedues in the minitries, Minna Tiili 2000 and 2001). The top civil servants are operating as the gate keepers both in the vertical (sectoral) strategy procedures and in the horizontal procedures. The latter are normally more problematic because of the unwillingness into co-operation between the ministerial sectors. Both will be tackled in the paper as well the impacts of the NPM-type reforms in these activities. The specific focus of the paper will be the centralised coordination systems in the national level as planning systems, budgetary procedures and committee-type preparatory activities etc.
