Management, Media and Mandarins: A Comparative Analysis of Emergent Public Service Bargains in the Context of Mediatization

Although an extensive literature exists on the mediatization of politics and society there are very few studies that examine how the media shapes and frames the processes and relationships within the public sector, in general, or on the higher civil service, in particular. This paper offers the results of a comparative three-year study into the mediatization effects upon the senior civil service in Denmark, the United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden (i.e. the top of the bureaucratic apex, the ‘mandarins’) and how this, in turn, has affected administrative-political relationships with elected ministers. The research reveals the evolution of a more subtle, sophisticated and complex ‘public service bargain’ between mandarins and ministers than has previously been revealed in studies. On the basis of theoretically informed but policy relevant research, three main arguments are developed: first, ministerial bureaucracies are undergoing substantial professionalization and some expansion in a strategically selective manner as a result of increasing mediatization pressures; the role of (secondly) the senior civil service is changing as ministers expect their senior officials, as well as their special advisers to play at least some role in strategic media management; however (and thirdly) to interpret this as evidence of increased partisanship and decreasing neutrality (arguably the dominant interpretive narrative in the existing research base) is far too simplistic and crude to capture the impact of mediatization on the contemporary public service bargain. These three arguments are explored with reference to the collected dataset, national differences and common patterns are identified and the significance of this research is located within broader debates concerning the impact of the media on politics.