The Politics of Bureaucratic Structures

Abstract

Government organizations are the venues where policies are formulated and translated into laws and where important rules and decisions are made that affect the daily lives of citizens. Moreover, some administrative designs limit decision-making to experts, strengthening certain interests and excluding others, whereas others allow for the participation of affected stakeholders in the policymaking process. Also, some organizational structures enable politicians to micromanage and monitor bureaucratic decisions while other designs insulate the organization and its decision-making process from political interferences. In other words, the study of the bureaucratic structure of central government is crucial to understand "who gets what, when, and how". Recent scholarship assesses and explains the causes and effects of the empirical variation in bureaucratic structures across European governments. These studies show the relevance of party politics or rather political executives and the relevance of electoral cycles and electoral outcomes for the 'structural whim' of governments. However, alternative explanations taking bureaucratic actors into account are also verified, revealing the path dependencies, the importance of structural fashions that e.g. are disseminated under the notions of NPM or post-NPM, or the significance of policy sectors and their distinct issue networks and their requests for the structural set-up and volatility of the government organization. This panel aims to bring together scholars interested in the politics of bureaucratic structures, applying and discussing various theoretical perspectives and conducting different methods. We include comparative analyses across countries or over time. Likewise, we are particularly interested in empirical research beyond European governments, including also bureaucratic structures at the supranational level.