| 1. |
- Alamaa, Linda, Universitetslektor, biträdande, 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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Why are organisational professionals expanding in the Swedish public sector? The role of accountability
- 2024
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Ingår i: Public Policy and Administration. - London : Sage Publications. - 0952-0767 .- 1749-4192.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent research shows that new types of high-skilled administrators, what we in this article label organisational professionals, have amplified their presence in public sector organisations in relation to other types of public sector employees. Our purpose is to analyse how organisational accountability can be seen as a driver behind the expansion of organisational professionals. Intensified political and administrative pressures seem to be driving this process, but there also seems to be internal turfs in which the different parts of the government administration seek to hold each other accountable, a process possibly amplified by professionalising ambitions of the organisational professionals. The article concludes that the bureaucratising effect of accountability demands ought to be highlighted more in critical research of accountability. The study is based on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with public sector professionals in Sweden from different policy sectors and government levels.
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| 2. |
- Bergman, Mats, 1964-, et al.
(författare)
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Collegiality and efficiency in bureaucracy
- 2022
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Ingår i: Public Policy and Administration. - : Sage Publications. - 0952-0767 .- 1749-4192. ; 38:4, s. 492-511
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article addresses the relation between the design of regulatory agencies and efficiency, arguing that authority concentrated to a single individual outperforms more collegial decision-making when the regulated firms' interests are aligned. The tentative explanation is that concentrated leadership reduces the risk for capture. This argument is developed from an empirical case on the markets for mobile and fixed broadband. In the mobile market, the regulated firms are similarly positioned, whereas in the fixed broadband market, the firms typically have adversarial positions, with an incumbent being challenged by entrants. A statistical analysis of regulatory agencies in 33 European countries lends support to the argument that regulation of mobile broadband benefits from having a single decision-maker whereas a bureaucratic regulation with more collegiality functions as well for the fixed broadband.
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| 3. |
- Hanberger, Anders, 1953-, et al.
(författare)
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Local safety policy : The approach of two Swedish cities to urgent safety problems
- 2013
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Ingår i: Public Policy and Administration. - : Sage Publications. - 0952-0767 .- 1749-4192. ; 28:4, s. 383-403
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article explores local safety policy (LSP) developed to resolve urgent safety problemsin two Swedish municipalities. It shows that local safety actors conceive and constructsafety problems in ways that make them manageable, and that LSP evolves as aweb of interactions between safety actors in the public and private sectors. The actorsuse established safety solutions and routines while exploring new ways of managing theproblems. The municipalities’ problem-solving structures differ mainly in that differentactors and institutions are involved. The policy process and features of LSP correspondwell to how policy is portrayed in other cross-sectoral policy domains. Local safetypolicy development cannot easily be separated from policy implementation, nor cansafety policy be separated from safety work, for they evolve together. The implication ofthis study for governance is that policy workers at different levels and from differentorganisations create LSP. Although LSP is partly initiated and legitimised at the political–administrative level, it is not from this level that it evolves.
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| 4. |
- Jensen, Christian, 1963, et al.
(författare)
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Policy implementation in the era of accelerating projectification: Synthesizing Matland's conflict-ambiguity model and research on temporary organizations
- 2018
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Ingår i: Public Policy and Administration. - : SAGE Publications. - 0952-0767 .- 1749-4192. ; 33:4, s. 447-465
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It has become increasingly common to use the project as a form of organization when implementing public policies. Previous research has identified political, administrative and organizational motives behind this trend towards more project-based organizations within the public administration. The problem is that project-based organization carries inherent problems and special challenges when these projects are supposed to be implemented in permanent agencies and organizations. The purpose of this paper is to identify problems and challenges that public administrations face when ‘the project organization’ is used as a structural form of organization in implementing different kinds of public policies. The article takes its starting point in the policy implementation research and especially in Matland’s conflict-ambiguity model. This research tradition is complemented by a review of research on temporary organizations, which draws attention to some inherent and significant characteristics of project organizations, that is the concepts of entity, relationship and time. Our analysis shows that the use of project organization puts special demands on the players involved, and if these are not taken into account, there is a high risk that projects designed to bring about social change will not produce the effects that policymakers and citizens expect.
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| 5. |
- Lindqvist, Katja
(författare)
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Making sense of financial incentive as a policy tool for the independent arts sector
- 2013
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Ingår i: Public Policy and Administration. - : SAGE Publications. - 1749-4192 .- 0952-0767. ; 28:4, s. 404-422
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The local government of Stockholm in 2008 introduced a growth scheme including a financial incentive for the independent arts sector. As financial incentives are virtually non-existent in the cultural sphere, this must be seen as a rather extreme development in cultural policy. The article explores both the rationale behind the new growth scheme as policy tool as well as its reception by the sector through three complementary perspectives: historical institutionalism, ideology analysis and policy values analysis. Contributing to the empirically under-researched area of cultural policy, the combined approach offers a broader understanding of policy development and implementation than would a single perspective interpretation, and acknowledges the complexities of policy making and policy change. The institutional perspective shows that marketisation policy is layered on a previous Folkhem policy with an extended budget facilitating its introduction. An ideology perspective shows how the new growth scheme follows neoliberal ideas of the role of the state as facilitator of market growth in the arts. A values perspective, finally, shows that the economic values of the new cultural policy are not shared by the independent arts sector, but new policy instruments are accepted as they expand resources available for the sector.
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| 6. |
- Suzuki, Kohei, 1976
(författare)
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Government retrenchment and citizen participation in volunteering: A cross-national analysis of OECD countries
- 2020
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Ingår i: Public Policy and Administration. - : SAGE Publications. - 0952-0767 .- 1749-4192. ; 39:4, s. 258-275
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In most industrialized countries, politicians and policy makers face unprecedented levels of fiscal pressure. Such pressure has compelled governments to conduct substantial cuts in government spending and services. While policy makers have attempted to build a strong civil society to compensate for the declining government role, previous studies have not examined the link between government retrenchment and citizen involvement in volunteering. This study examines such a relationship by conducting a cross-national study of OECD countries. After controlling for individual- and country-level factors, the findings show that government retrenchment is positively associated with citizen volunteering.
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| 7. |
- Carlsson, Vanja, 1985
(författare)
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Legal certainty in automated decision-making in welfare services
- 2023
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Ingår i: Public Policy and Administration. - 0952-0767.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Within the context of digital automation and profiling in the public sector, the rule of law and its inherent principle of legal certainty are highly debated concepts in relation to the desirable values and norms of equal treatment, transparency, and impartiality. However, scholars and policymakers disagree over whether automated decision-making (ADM) is beneficial for legal certainty. This debate highlights the ambiguity embedded in the substantive meaning of legal certainty. This article aims to analyze how the principle of legal certainty is interpreted and defined during the practical application of ADM in welfare services and to discuss the theoretical prerequisites for these definitions to be realized in ADM processes. The empirical case is the Swedish Public Employment Service, which makes extensive use of a statistical ADM tool for decision-making about whether or not to provide support to jobseekers. While the implementation of ADM by welfare institutions has been encouraged due to the assumption that it strengthens public and democratic principles, the study shows that, in practice, ADM processes are perceived as non-transparent and generate a relatively large proportion of incorrect decisions. This may be specifically disadvantageous for vulnerable individuals, who run the risk of being incorrectly denied the right kind of support while at the same time having a greater need for welfare support. The widespread future use of ADM in welfare services may affect how welfare rights and obligations and public principles are met in a new technological era.
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| 8. |
- Ribbhagen, Christina, 1975
(författare)
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What Makes a Technocrat? Explaining Variation in Technocratic Thinking among Elite Bureaucrats
- 2011
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Ingår i: Public Policy and Administration. - 0952-0767. ; 26:1, s. 21-44
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article challenges the assertion that civil servants with technical training can be assumed to be technocrats. Contrary to previous findings, the article argues that type of higher education is not a key determinant of variations in technocratic mentality among elite bureaucrats; instead, post-socialization provides a better explanation. One suggested post-socialization mechanism is politicisation, so the more politicized a ministry is, the less technocratic the mentality of the bureaucrats working in it. These suggestions are tested empirically by both re-analysing Putnam’s data from the late 1970s and analysing data from a total survey of elite bureaucrats working in the Government Offices of Sweden. As well as demonstrating that the ‘type of training hypothesis’ is poorly supported, the empirical analysis demonstrates that the technocratic mentality of bureaucrats varies depending on ministerial affiliation. Furthermore, the level of politicisation is connected to the degree of technocratic mentality among the bureaucrats, though not exactly as hypothesized: more politicisation indeed leads to higher ‘tolerance for politics’ among bureaucrats but, counter intuitively, also makes bureaucrats more likely to advocate neutrality rather than political advocacy among civil servants.
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