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Activities: Working Group on Politico-Administrative Relations

 
Fourth phase 2005-2007

Activities in 2007

Meeting of the Working Group on Politico-Administrative Relations

 

Place: The 15th NISPAcee Conference, Kyiv, Ukraine

Date: May 17-19, 2007

 
Theme: Administering the Summit' in Central and Eastern European Countries

This was the tenth session of the working group on politico-administrative relations which was established in 1998. The work of the group in this past year has focussed on a project entitled 'Administering the Summit', taken from the title of the 1999 publication edited by B.Guy Peters, R. Rhodes and V.Wright. This study investigated the mechanisms that serve the leadership of executive power in a selection of OECD states. The objective of the working group sessions was to explore the roles and functions of actors (elites), structures and processes that serve the 'summit' in CEE states following the first phases of transition. Several country studiesaddressed the interplay of politico-administrative roles at the core executive. In particular the role and specific structures of the Prime Minister's Office (Hungary)and the administration of the President (Russia). One of the sessions focussed on evaluating the role of elites such as political secretaries and special advisers as actors providing advice and political coordination to the summit.

Call for papers 2007

 
Activities in 2006
 
Meeting of the Working Group on Politico-Administrative Relations

Place: The 14th NISPAcee Conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Date: May 11-13, 2006


Theme: Public Administration and Public Policy in Emerging Europe and Eurasia:For Professionalism, Impartiality and Transparency

In Ljubljana the working group extended its focus on the interaction of politicians and bureaucrats to include issues of coordination and policy advice. A great deal of executive work involves attempting to make government policies more coherent and to govern in a coordinated and effective manner. In all, thirteen papers were presented on themes - including the role and functions of the Office of Prime Minister and Office of President in several CEE countries and the role of special advisers in selected East and Western states. In the forthcoming year the working group will work on the presentation of a revised protocol reflecting principally interest in the roles of elites, functions and coordination processes in the "administration of the summit" of government. The coordinators would welcome the participation of new members interested in these issues.
Detailed information about WG meetings with the list of the presented
papers
 
 
Third phase : 2002 - 2005 
 
Activities in 2005
 
Meeting of the Working Group on Politico-Administrative Relations

Place: The 13th NISPAcee Conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Date: May 19-21, 2005


Themes:
· Relations between politicians and civil servants in transition societies: Impact of specific historical-cultural and contextual factors
· Impact of Europeanization on the evolution of (or new configurations of) politico-administrative relations in new member states


The WG on politico-administrative relations met at the NISPAcee annual conference, in Moscow, Russia, May 2005. In total 14 papers were presented in sessions that focused on actors, values and institutions within the context of reforming politico-administrative relations. A principal outcome of the group's discussions was the perception that there is a shift in considering the transition process in CEE away from the "what" outlined within public management reform strategies to the "how" factors i.e. patterns of interaction between politicians and civil servants, movement away from traditional bureaucratic forms of administration to, for example, network governance.

 
  • Ten years ago there was substantive focus on "push" factors to transition whereas the significance of tradition in institution building and public sector reform has become more evident. This was illustrated in papers presented on public administration reform in the Baltic states and the former Yugoslavia. Secondly, the impact of transition on the reassertion of traditional democratic values such as accountability was discussed. It was envisaged that there was further scope to investigate politico-administrative reform within the approaches of new-institutionalism.
  • Outcomes from the presentations indicated that despite the problems of politicization there is a shift in minister-civil servant relations. In earlier stages of transition reforms civil servants were perceived as obstructive whereas several country presentations indicated that there appears to be more evidence of a willingness of civil servants to contribution to policy making and reform initiatives. The Belgian cabinet system was illustrated as an example of attempts to find solutions for the provision of effective policy advice and manage politicization. It was asserted that it would be useful to investigate the utility of the cabinets system for CEE and understand more clearly policy advice role vs. managerial roles.
  • In relation to structural and political reforms participants indicated the necessity to concentrate on researching how reform actually occurs as opposed to the rhetoric associated with it. Presentations focused on the significance of the politician's role and the function of a leading agency as a device to facilitate coordination. Commentary also indicated that EU accession requirements were interpreted as increasing problems and impeding as opposed to facilitating reform.
  • In addition and in building upon the approaches taken in the previous sessions of this working group, attention was allocated to alternative perspectives of policy making beyond the traditional minister-civil service roles to include analysis of the roles of other actors and the significance of network governance. One of the presentations focused on developments in Estonian labour policy.
 
Activities in 2004
 
Meeting of the Working Group on Politico-Administrative Relations

Place: The 12th NISPAcee Conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Date: May 13-15, 2004

 
Theme:Various decision and discourse arenas at different levels and stages of the policy process
 
The WG on politico-administrative relations continued to move into researching the broader political view of Public Administration and papers were aligned to the research protocol 'Bureaucrats and Politicians - Expanding the Analysis' which is posted on the NISPAcee website. Prof. Guy Peters launched the working group discussions with a presentation outlining the core dimensions to investigating state-society relations in public policy and challenged the participants to address these themes.  Papers covered a variety of policy areas from Forestry, Education, Environment to Telecommunications, in a broad number of countries (both East and West) and demonstrated significant variations in patterns of policy and administration. However, despite the breadth of national settings similar types of policy problems also arose e.g. questions regarding the appropriate role of regional government and existing opportunities for civic participation. In some cases, forums (where they did exist) were not exploited and cases whereby the opportunity to participate is hierarchically controlled as opposed to 'bottom up' participation.  Discussions regarding the focus of the group next year resulted in a decision to continue with the current focus of analyzing networks and decision making forums but the politicization of the civil service was an issue that tended to reappear in discussions.  So a second direction of the group will be to return to its original roots and invite papers to investigate the relationship between bureaucrats and politicians in CEE countries.  An additional layer will also be added to the protocol which will emphasize the examination of local administrative traditions in the national case studies.
 
List of the presented papers in Vilnius, Lithuania (with abstracts and links to paper files)
 
 
Activities in 2003
 
Meeting of the Working Group on Politico-Administrative Relations
 

Place: The 11th NISPAcee Conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Date: April 10-12, 2003

 
Theme: Expanding the analysis: the study of involvement of civil society across in the policy process through the development of new decision and discourse arenas

The NISPAcee Working Group on "Politico-Administrative Relations” chaired by Professor Georg Sootla, Tallinn University of Educational Sciences, Estonia and Professor  B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh, USA and  Annika Velthut, Tallinn Pedagogical University, Estonia (Annika replaced Mrs. Bernadette Coaughton who could not come due to her maternity duties) met at the 11th  NISPAcee Annual Conference, Bucharest, Romania.
 
After five years of successful studies of politico-administrative relations, the emphasise of the research of the WG was changed. In summer 2002 the new research protocol "Bureaucrats and Politics: Expanding the Analysis” was prepared. The working group focused on the study of involvement of civil society actors into the policy process and the emergence of new decision - and discourse arenas. Traditional approaches to government was supplemented with the theoretical perspective of modern governance.
 
19 papers were prepared for Bucharest conference and presented in short power-point show that was continued by interesting discussions. The first result of conference was strengthening and widening of our research network. Papers were prepared in four main directions: (a) theoretical and methodological issues, (b) decision making arenas in specific policy sectors, (c) new roles of civil service in the core/periphery of policy networks, (d) decision arenas and channels of impact in intergovernmental dimension. Majority of papers were prepared as case studies. Nevertheless, considerable part of papers were based explicitly on various theoretical schools or perspectives of the policy and institutional analysis. This was one of the most important advancement of the research profile of WG.
WG focused firstly, on the analysis of limitations of traditional politico-administrative dichotomy and other dichotomies in the study of the policy process, like policymaking-implementation dichotomy. Comprehensive survey in 11 CEE countries revealed, that similar general patterns of state-society relations could produce different outcomes in the economic and political development in different countries and vice versa. Conclusion was made that  normative models would be useful analytical tools, but they did not reflect actual practices. Hence the presumption of WG new strategy adopted in 2002 was confirmed in the course the conference. 
 
Theoretically the shift in the analysis of the policy process was demonstrated through discussion between forward vs. backward mapping approaches in the implementation analysis or top down and bottom up approaches in policymaking. It was revealed that those two theoretically opposite views and ways of the policy process complement each other. This theoretical conclusion confirmed the consistence in the development of our WG.
 
Instead of traditional institutional macro-approach, appropriate for conventional politico-administrative analysis, several papers offered rather different perspectives of institutional analysis: rational choice, actor-centred institutionalism, historical institutionalism, recourse dependency etc. It was demonstrated that in the framework of governance paradigm, the micro and meso- level analysis would provide much good explanatory opportunities in understanding new decision-making arenas of policy formation. 
   
The "expansion” does not mean simply that politico-administrative tandem should invite/permit more actors into the decision-making process, and/or that analyst should pay attention also to less important and non-official actors. As was demonstrated, spontaneous enhancement of actors in the policy process would result in their excessive domination, and, as reported from countries with less successful record of democratic reform outcomes, this would, vice versa, lead to the capture of official decision arenas by whatever powerful organised interest (business, oligarchs, clan leaders etc.)
 
New level of analysis and theoretical perspectives enable to focus in the policy analysis on actual interests, recourses or actors , their strategies, interactions between them, i.e. on the new patterns of actors and to consider the policy as institutional choice made in this concrete context. To avoid the capture as well as return to traditional exclusive top down policy, key actors – politicians and top officials -- should redefine their traditional roles in the policy process.
 
The perception of roles by civil servants was focus of several papers. It was revealed, that cevil servants are ferquently committed and are ready to identify with other roles, than traditional neutrality and politicsiation prescribed to them.  Furthermore, it is misleading to consider civil servants in relations to politicians and constituents as homogenous entity, because not only  their status but also their role perceptions differ considerably. Hence, "extension” of the study of politico-administrative relations was achieved also in this, more traditional dimension.
 
In intergovernmental relations – as in traditional dimension of analysis of state society relations – the need for sub-national mobilization on European arena was identified as the high priority . The new policymaking roles of regional and local governments presume their ability not only independently to implement EU policies in myriad of numerous local actors and interests. These authorities should exercise some form of bottom-up influence over the genesis of these policies via ability of cross-broader cooperation and coalition building. Besides, the ability to form and steer policy networks in domestic level will be necessary in the development and implementation of regional projects funded by EU. The analogue of top down policy at the cntral level was during the transition predominantly competive and even adverstarial stance between government units at the local and regional level. Hence, the study and development of local and intergovernmental policy networks would be considered as equally important practical and theorethical problem the WG should focus in next years.
 

 
Second phase: 2001-2002

Activities in 2002
 
Meeting of the Working Group on Politico-Administrative Relations
 

Place: The 10th NISPAcee Conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Date: April 25-27, 2002


The fifth annual meeting of the working group on politico-administrative relations focused on the two main issues: role perceptions of senior officials and politico-administrative relations under coalition Government. The objective of the group was to gain insight into role perceptions of senior officials in transitional countries, as a valuable means for deeper understanding the governance processes in CEECs. The submitted papers followed by the discussion provided a basis for conducting an empirical research on this subject. The second central theme of the meeting was a discussion on the impact of coalition government on politico-administrative relations. Seven country studies, prepared according to the Prof. Vass’s protocol, were presented and analysed by the members of the group. In this way, the group completed the main preparations for its second major academic output, a book on politico-administrative relations under coalition government.
 
The first session of the meeting was devoted to the role perceptions approach in analyzing politico-administrative relations. The objective of this approach was to enable understanding of generic behaviour patterns of senior officials through insight in their perception of roles in the policy process. Although contextual factors often inhibit a direct translation of policy-makers beliefs into behavior, there was an evidenced assumption of consistency between officials’ abstract values and their operational application. The focus upon beliefs therefore provided the broadest view from which the contemporary changing roles of senior bureaucrats in transitional countries can be assessed. In this context equally important was how other strategic actors in the policy process conceive these changing roles and what kind of reassessment of roles in relation of top officials was made.
 
Senior officials are performing number of roles, "political” and managerial often stressed to be the main ones. The session gave a good impetus in terms of the operationalization of the concept of ‘roles and role perceptions’ as well as possible categorization of senior officials’ roles, suitable for research in transition states. Four papers were presented.
 
The paper by Robert Kramer fleshed out a number of issues regarding the managerial and leadership role of senior officials. The author pointed out the lack of leadership skills of senior officials in CEECs, who are still focused on performing their traditionally narrow administrative roles. He therefore called for a development of their leadership role, as a precondition for governance reform in transition countries. The author’s analysis of distinct senior officials roles provided a welcome addition to the Aberbach and Rockman roles classifications, which are not fully applicable in the context of Central and Eastern Europe. Discussion of the paper has helped the group in re-thinking some of the core concepts, in particular the development of the most useful categories of ‘model roles’ for senior officials in transitional context.
 
Maciej Bartkowski’s paper analyses administrative and political roles of Directorship General of the International Labour Organization. The paper explores a peculiarity of the Directorship General’s status, which institutionally embraces two distinct roles: managerial and policy-maker’s. The author demonstrated a high level of convergence of respective roles at the intergovernmental level and their institutionalization into "pure hybrid” image, initially found in national governments. The paper and the discussion on it have further contributed to the groups’ understanding of bureaucrats’ role perceptions at both intergovernmental and national level.
 
The discussion on politico-administrative relations under coalition governments was the second central theme of the meeting. Seven country studies papers (Estonia, Ireland, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia), prepared according to the framework set by Prof. Vass, were presented and discussed. Country experts presented the basic data and made the first analysis and evaluation on their country experiences of coalition government and its impact on the public administration. Various aspects of the development of a better working interface between politicians and civil servants in a coalition government were further discussed by the members of the group.
 
The conclusions of the group were that coalition form of government, due to its strong internal dynamic, may involve serious consequences on administration (confusions or discontinuity in personnel, break in the policy-process, instability, loss in efficiency etc.) The coalition as such can also be a driving force for the politicization of the administrative institutions. Complicated organizational and personal relations in the coalition can further slower decision-making and threaten the effectiveness of the governance. The assumption that majority governments are more unified and have less slowing down obstacles was well illustrated by Romanian case. The discussion also revealed that an Easter-Western comparison was very useful for the better understanding of the politico-administrative relations under coalition Government.
 
Finally, the structure and approach to the development of the book on politico-administrative relations under coalition government was discussed. The authors of the country studies were asked to revise their papers according to the amended protocol, to be produced by Prof. Vass in accordance with work group conclusions from the conference. In addition to discussed country chapters, the group  received several other coalition government country studies contributions, primarily from western Europe, that will  be included in the book.
 
The last session of the meeting was dedicated to summarizing the results of the Working group to date and setting the course for future work. The following phase of the working group activities were passed to a new team, consisting of Prof. George Sootla (Institute of International and Social Studies, Tallinn Pedagogical University, Estonia) ; Bernadette Connaughton (University of Limerick, Ireland) and Prof. Guy Peters  (University of Pittsburgh, USA) who kindly accepted the role of co-ordinators of the Working Group.
 
 
First phase:  1999-2001

 
The Working Group had been supported by a grant from The Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative Open Society Institute, Budapest, Hungary http://lgi.osi.hu