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Judicial Reforms and Public Administration: A Street-Level Bureaucrat Perspective

Comparative Politics
Institutions
Policy Analysis
Political Methodology
Public Administration
Public Policy
Political Sociology
Courts
P179
Cécile Vigour
Institut d'Études Politiques de Bordeaux

Building: Maths, Floor: 3, Room: 325

Friday 17:40 - 19:20 BST (05/09/2014)

Abstract

As one of the most important prerogative of the State, the judicial system can be heuristically analysed as a specific public administration in a perspective of public policy analysis, and not only as a matter of preoccupation for lawyers and jurists, even though the independence of the magistracy and the balance of power justify specific way of implementing changes. The aim of this panel is to analyse judicial reforms by concentrating on street-level and mid-level bureaucrats and magistrates, in contrast to well-known case studies of high-ranking officials and judiciary/lawyers elites. Indeed such a perspective allows to carrying out a micro-analysis of state reform from the point of view of its reception among the individuals who contributed to promoting and implementing it. The goal of this panel is then to contribute to fill a gap both from an empirical and a theoretical perspectives. From this second point of view, the aim is to promote the micro-sociological approach within the field of sociology of the state, in order to propose a renewed lecture of bureaucracy, in a departure from the classical Weberian bureaucratic rationality. This panel is then at the crossroads of political science, public administration and sociology of law on the one hand, and sociology of work and occupations on the other hand. Proposals will deal with judicial reforms, either concerning civil or criminal procedures, managerial changes in the context of modernization of the State, etc. But they will focus on their concrete implementation at the level of judiciary employees and magistrates or on the interactions with their hierarchy, on the effects on professional practices and identities. They will also pay attention to their consequences on the way justice is given. In a purpose of comparison we propose studies concerning France, Canada, the United States, Chile and Niger.

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