A Research Protocol for
the NISPAcee Working Group of Politico-Administrative Relations
1. INTRODUCTION
NISPAcee Working Group of
Politico-Administrative Relations has since its existence concentrated on the
relationships between career public servants and elected politicians, and has
analysed the meaning of the career public service during rapid political
transition. The Working Group has made significant progress in understanding
these relationships in Central and Eastern European countries, published
several books on these issues, and developed the on-going research agenda for
empirical research on these topics. We
have had well-attended and successful
sessions at each of the NISPAcee meetings, and also have established a
functioning network of scholars concerned with these issues. That network links scholars in Central and
2. RESEARCH FOCUS OF THE
WORKING GROUP
While not abandoning in
any way the concern for the interactions of politicians and bureaucrats, the
study group is now moving on to look at other dimensions of political
interaction for the public bureaucracy. In particular, we are interested in the
relationship between bureaucrats (both individually, and collectively through
their ministries and other public sector organizations) --and actors in the
civil society. As well as responding
upward to their ministers, civil servants must also be responsive to their
clients, and to the public in general.
The job of the civil servant therefore often becomes one of balancing a
number of political pressures, and finding his or her own way among those
pressures. The style of governing, often described as governance, in many
societies has become one of involving networks based on civil society
organizations in the process of governing (Pierre and Peters, 2000; Torfing, 2003). Therefore, it is necessary to understand
better how these interactions work, and how they interact with civil servants
and the remainder of government in governing.
As the civil society in
Central and Eastern European countries has gradually developed, the
relationships between bureaucracy and societal actors have become an essential
part of political bargaining and its importance in shaping policy has been
increasing. Particularly, societal
organizations are becoming become much more important for the implementation of
public policies, as vanities of partnership and cooperative arrangements for
implementation are developed. The
development of civil society actors has been slow in many countries in Central
and
Similarly to the
relationships between political leaders and top civil servants, the interaction
between societal actors and bureaucrats tends to be political. The political
dimension of these relationships s less often about the virtues or fortunes of
one political party or another, but is more likely to be concerned with the
characteristics of a particular policy that may benefit or harm the group in
question. The political contacts between the state and the society thus provide
means for expressing and pushing demands into the government sphere of
activity.
These relationships
between government and civil society actors can also be used for legitimating
policy programs, especially when the political parties are not as
institutionalized as they would need to be in order to function as effective
links between the state and the society.
To be effective in a democracy public policies must be legitimated by some connection with the
“people”. When political parties are
poorly organized or so numerous in a coalition that the connection to the
public is tenuous then groups can become an important source of
legitimacy. That having been said,
however, there is the danger that segments of the public sector may be captured
by particular private interests, so that connections with groups in society
must be seen as one of several alternative mans of legitimation.
Additionally, interest
groups and other societal actors can function as a source of necessary expert
information and advice, supplementing the knowledge which is available inside
the bureaucracy. Many government,
whether in Central or
Finally, these
relationships can be tools for engaging private sector into policy implementation
process. For instance, the involvement of the groups is often essential in the
areas of economic/business regulation.
Government may be able to regulate but would do so at a much greater
cost than if the relevant groups performed some of the activities on behalf of
the State. This pattern is also found
for agriculture in many countries. Not
only is it important for legitimating, but also for achieving and promoting effectiveness
in policy-making process. In other words, relationships between the
governmental and societal organizations can fulfill a number of important
political functions.
Importance of Networks
Another important feature
of the political interactions between state and society is that rather than
there being individual organizations involved the common pattern is becoming
one of multiple groups relating to one another as well as to government in a
network, or community, structure. While
the exact meaning of terms such as network and community is debated (see ) it
is clear that there are increasing numbers of groups involved in all policy
areas and that they interact with each other as well as with government. Especially in countries with a history of a
dominant public sector the tendency is for government organizations to serve as
the core of these network, but the individual organizations in civil society
can and do play crucial roles in these increasingly formalized structures of
interaction.
Politically networks can
be crucial because they may involve a range of actors and hence a range of
opinions and interests within each policy area.
We have noted above that an important political problem arising from the
involvement of civil society groups in the policy process is that of “capture”
of the process by those interests. This
may be especially the case because the countries of Central and
The absence of an
extensive experience in coping with group politics and with networks may make
the management of networks all the more difficult. One critique of networks as a participant in
the political process is that they tend to be indeterminate, and if they are
inclusive of a range of interests then actually making decisions may be
difficult. Therefore, we will need to
understand how any networks that are associated with policy making in these
countries manage to make decisions and what the explicit or implicit rules for
arriving at decisions may be.
Further, we will expect
differences in the nature and behavior of networks as a function of the nature
of the policy areas in question. For
example, policy areas that are highly technical may be expected to have fewer
groups involved, but those groups may be able to influence the final decisions
more than could larger networks of more conflicting interests. Likewise, policy areas that are more central
to the role of the state in society, e.g. taxation or justice, may have less
capacity for influence by social interests than will those policies in which
the State plays a less dominant role.
Importance of civil servants
As the evidence from
Western Europe, North America, and other long-standing democratic systems
indicates, there are a number of possible patterns of relationship between
bureaucracy and societal organizations, including political parties as well as
what would conventionally be considered to be interest groups. For example, some of them can be
characterized as clientela relationships[1]
involving close symbiotic connections between the limited number of
organizations and the governmental organization (or perhaps even a single
powerful bureaucrat). This pattern of relationship tends not to be partisan or
ideological so much as it is a product of close working relationships and
general agreement on policy. Such a
relationship would not permit much room for the networks mentioned above, given
that a network would break the virtual monopoly that the client organization
would have invested a great deal of energy in developing. In Central and
In other cases the
relationships can be based on the common allegiances of bureaucrats and
interest group leaders associated with political parties; also described as parantela
relationships. This is most common in
the case of labor and social democratic parties that have strong links with
unions and other employee organizations.
The same sort of linkage may be found for some agrarian parties with
farming and rural organizations. The parntela linkages are perhaps even more
important for linking state and society that are clientala given that they may provide a direct linkage with parties
and therefore a direct connection with the political system.
Alternatively, the
relationships between the interest groups and the bureaucracy may be broadly
legitimate, where a wide range of interest groups have access to the government
and can influence policy. These
legitimate interactions may, in turn, may be conducted through policy networks
or corporatist structures discussed above, or through other officially sanctioned
forms of involvement. In any case these
linkages, by virtue of their being open and having some degree of
countervailing power, will present relatively less challenge to conventional
democratic control over policy than can the more exclusive forms of linkage
described above.
There has yet been little
comparative, systematic and focused research on the relationships of interest
groups, non-governmental organizations, labor unions, and the host of other
civil society organizations with the public bureaucracy in the CEE countries.
In many post-communist countries, there has been a substantial interest in the
development of civil society and its connections with political and
representative institutions (such as parties, parliaments), but much less
attention has been paid to links with the bureaucracy. Further, little work has been done on the
nature of policy networks in these countries.
We know little about the way in which these networks are formed and the
ways in which they function. We know
perhaps even less about the role that the civil service has played in the
formation of these structures (as well as some of the organizations that may be
involved), and the impact that this will have on the performance and legitimacy
of the structures.
In all the above patterns
of relationship between the state and society we would, however, hypothesize
that civil servants would play crucial roles as linkages between the state and
the society. Here, as well as in their
linkages with clients of their programs, civil servants are generally at the
interface between the world of official decision-making and the society. Further, as we have argued above, it is often
in the interest of civil servants and their organizations to have these close
linkages to social actors. Finally,
civil servants may have to be the animateurs
of networks and other linkages; in
societies in which autonomous action within society was blocked for generations
it may be too much to expect a great deal of spontaneous formation of groups,
and given that the groups are important for administrative as well as
democratic reasons the civil service may become a major actor in this field.
3. COUNTRY STUDIES
The focus of the Working
Group for the 11th NISPAcee Annual conference in 2003, and for
several subsequent meetings of the working group, will be the description and
the analysis of these patterns of relationships in Central and Eastern European
countries. While there are a number of
possible points of departure for the analysis, we are particularly interested
in research that will describe, in analytic terms, the patterns of interactions
between socio-economic interest groups and the public bureaucracy in these
countries. The general purpose of this
research will be to map the most important political
relationships that exist around the government organizations, and to examine
the influence of those relationships on the formation and the implementation of
public policies.
The papers prepared for
each of the countries should be a careful case study of concrete process of the
policy formation or reform, preferably a comparison of different periods in
1990s. Country studies may also compare two cases to demonstrate the variety of
state-society interactions existing in different policy sectors. In the latter
case the papers should analyze policies during the same period, or perhaps
periods. The analysis can be based on public discourse in the media, interviews
with the participants, official records of government and parliamentary
sessions or meetings of commissions, seminars etc. In general we are open to any research method
that is capable of illuminating the emerging patterns of interaction between
state and society in these countries. If
faced with a relative absence of empirical data in the short run do not
hesitate to prepare preliminary investigations making us of the data that may
be available, and using that preliminary data to make hypotheses that may be
testable if and when more complete data becomes available.
The papers should consist
of the following six substantial parts. (If necessary for achieving logical
consistency of the text, these sections can be reordered or combined, but all
the substantial topics should be included).
These sections are:
1.
Brief description of background events and actors that caused the
necessity to initiate the new policy or the reform. Description of conceptual core and context of
the policy formation processes within the country in general (4-5 pages).
Description of formal legal and structural arrangement should be kept as short
as possible, and should focus on the factors that make the individual case
distinctive
2.
Analysis of stakeholders. (4+ pages) Stakeholders could be
divided into several groups that a priori
were more or less involved into the policy process:
(a) politicians, who
might act primarily as members of the party, members of the government / the
parliament commission (also through the other channels);
(b) top civil servants (including when possible any evidence about their
political affiliations and their
expertise and/or involvement in the policy area;
(c) rank-and-file civil
servants as specialists in the relevant area (there could be other specific
groups of civil servants, for instance, from local government)—how does
information and advice flow within the organization, and are there close links
between lower echelon civil servants and their clients;
(d) professionals (for instance university professors, researchers,
consulting companies)---how open is the political process to influence from
these experts or does the State attempt to remain more autonomous, and how is
the role of expertise structured in the process;
(e) interest groups (with
different intentions and interest),
(f) target groups of the
policy—are the clients organized (especially relevant for social policies in
which the clients may be difficult to organize,
(g) interest or pressures from
foreign stakeholders—this should include the role of donors and NGOs that may
be attempting to organize civil society organizations and which may have their
own particular visions of the desirable future of the country in question;
(i) media—are the media
autonomous from government and from political parties, or do they all have a
stake of some sort in the outcomes of the process
(j) others.
Each of these stakeholders
has its own interests and goals within the policy areas that concern it. But
the interests of some categories of actors may also converge; for instance interest groups might well also
be the target groups of the policy. We intend to focus on the policy process at
the stage where politicians and /or civil servants play key roles in shaping
decisions. I.e. the interest and specific goals of the civil society
stakeholders involved in the process should be clearly related to the interests
and roles of politicians and civil servants (with various its subgroups in the
policy area). In addition, attention
should also be paid on the existence of networks of interest groups and other
civil society organizations that may interact among themselves in shaping policies. More specifically, the aims of this portion
of the research are to:
ü Identification of
participating actors and groups inside the public sector and in the civil
society; in other words – mapping the policy network around the policy.
ü Understanding the
interests and aims of the stakeholders.
ü Analysis of the
historical and social background of these interests and aims, and the emergence
of more democratic and “modern” forms of interaction between state and society
in these countries.
3.
Analysis of the organization and the external as well as
internal identity of the stakeholders. (3-4 pages). Presumably the ways in which these groups are
organized will vary across policy areas as well as across countries. One sector
of the groups and their networks could be well institutionalized and have some
kind of official organization, membership, lobbying strategies etc. Another part of the universe of stakeholders
may be loosely organized (for instance having no official organization, they
may come together in some sort of loosely structured meetings or
workgroups—especially true for networks). Alternatively, loosely organized
actors might be represented as a coherent group of core actors; professionals
who can act as equal partners at the sufficient professional level in
comparison of well organized and financed groups. Some groups and interests
could not be organized and might be represented by other groups of
stakeholders, i.e. civil servants themselves. How can the stakeholders publicly
assert their interest and identity? Especially interesting could be the
analysis of interrelations between these groups, if they form permanent
networks, policy communities, corporatist structures etc. Many of the same questions asked of
individual groups could be applied to the collections of groups.
Topics
to be includedwill be:
1)
Types of Actors
2)
Degree of Organization (membership, funds, etc.)
3)
Formalization of Network structures (as in(2))
4)
Other measures of activity (newsletters, media campaigns,
etc.)
4.
Channels of involvement (3-4 pages) of civil society groups
in the political process may also be highly varied, again across policy areas
as well as across countries. The
principal differences will be expected
to exist between official channels of influence (commissions, think-tanks,
conferences etc.) and unofficial meetings (lunches, back-door meetings etc).
The
other important characteristic could be openness (free access) or closeness of
these channels to various stakeholders. Open channels presume free
participation of the groups in the political process, often without special
invitation or through broad permanent advisory bodies that may change their
membership and even activities, dependent upon interest of various
stakeholders. For instance, educational
forum for the development of education policy or roundtable of national
minorities at the President of Estonia has this degree of openness, but in
other cases education remains dominated by official actors. The relevant forum could also be the
roundtable in the media, ministerial meetings in the regions etc. Closed
channels of participation presume intentional restriction of members either
because of reasons of rationality of policymaking locus (government
commissions) or because of necessity of confidentiality (unofficial meetings of
the cabinet) or with the aim intentionally to restrict access. Between these
two ends of the continuum we could see a tremendous variety of involvement of
stakeholders in the policy process.
This section of the
national paper should be an attempt to identify and assess how social actors become involved in the policy process, as well as
the extent of that involvement. It
should contain elements such as:
1)
The degree of formalization of access
2)
Type of access structure, e.g. committees, corporatism, etc.
3)
Individual group or collective access
4)
Openness of deliberations to media and to the public
5)
Criteria for participation
5.
Style of participation and decision-making (3-4 pages). Different
channels could be used as means of attaining the various goals of the
participants in the process, and with varying degrees of effectiveness. Intensive consultation processes could be
launched to obtain better feedback from the political, as well as the
professional, viewpoints on the policy area.
The method of consultation could be used most frequently by politicians
or by civil servants seeking to avoid substantial revision of policy in the
cabinet or even parliamentary stage. Involvement of stakeholders could be aimed
in real consultations with them, but actually also in "pacification"
or cooptation of certain groups or actors that have the potential to produce
subsequent difficulties for the officials actors involved in the policy. The
involvement of the social actors could be permanent, with written records and
certain assignments of stakeholders, or it is functioning on the ad hoc
basis as an arena for more or less informal deliberations. In various stages of
the policy process, there could be dominant actors and less influential
players, whereas the latter have minor impacts on the process, even if they may
have formally powerful positions. The decision process itself could be more or
less consensual, with a broad set of bilateral consultations; but it could also
be competitive, aiming to win a majority, and in this case, the coalition
building could be one of the most striking features of the process.
Therefore,
in this part of the paper the authors should attempt to:
1)
Detail the styles of involvement of social actors
2)
Detail the role that civil servants play in shaping the
participation of the social actors.
3)
Detail any changing roles of the actors at different stages
of the policy process, especially as these affect the role of civil servants.
6.
Summary of findings and conclusions (2-3 pages). In this part
of the authors are expected to give an estimation of the consequences of this
kind of participation pattern, and generalize the possible reasons why the
power of the various types of stakeholders, available channels of involvement
in policy making, decision-making styles and logic of influence differed. The
comparison of participation and interaction patterns across the time and/or
policy sectors could reveal important emerging aspects of policy-making in the
CEE countries. This analysis can also reveal important differences among these
countries. We expect that the authors
will evaluate the effectiveness of these relationships in both programmatic and
political terms. For the political
dimension of the analysis the principal issue is the effects of these
interactions on public policies and also their relationships with political
parties as they attempt to influence public policies.
The
conclusion of the paper therefore should provide some preliminary conclusions
about the politics of involving social actors in the policy process in the
country. This conclusion should take
into account the difference among policy areas, or differences across time, and
attempt to provide an analysis that focuses attention on the central features
of the policy process in the country and the involvement of social actors, and
especially the involvement of networks to the extent that they exist.
Comparative Analysis
In order to make the
country studies more comparable, the authors are suggested to focus on these
relationships in a limited number of policy areas. Potentially, the most
interesting and controversial cases could be found from the following
areas: environmental policy, regulatory
policy for the economy, social/welfare
policy, defense policy (in the context of integrating with the NATO), European
Union affairs, taxation policy. As well
as attempting to deal with the policy areas as nominal fields, we will also
attempt to develop more analytic versions of policy fields, focusing on the
underlying features of the issues involved rather than just the title. This may reveal some variance within the
nominal policy areas.
This is actually the
first attempt to develop more or less coherent research framework for analyzing
these complex problems within the CEE countries. At current stage this
presentation should make possible to
develop some beginning analyses of these complex problems and the politics that
are associated with them.
Please send suggestions
for papers to:
Prof. Georg Sootla,
Tallinn University of Educational Sciences), e-mail:gsootla@tpu.ee
Bernadette Connaughton
(University of Limerick), e-mail:Bernadette.Connaughton@ul.ie
[1]These terms come from B. Guy Peters, The Politics of Bureaucracy, 5th edition. (London: Routledge, 2000).