Comparing Changing Coordination: The Cases of Digitalization and Refugee Policies in German Federal Government

Coordination is an ever-green issue in both government research and practice. Coordination demands and problems arise from the organizational fragmentation of public administrations that, however, have to cope with policy problems that often span departmental boundaries. Thus adequate coordination structures and processes are crucial for policy formulation and implementation. Though extant research on government coordination indicates that the organizational format of coordination arrangements guides bureaucratic behavior and hence, the selection of coordination arrangements is an essentially political task, there is not much research why and how specific coordination arrangements are selected, i.e. on the choice of a ‘coordination design’. This paper wants to contribute to this research gap by analyzing two cases of the establishment of coordination arrangements in the German federal government: refugee and digitalization policies. The political salience of both areas considerably increased which also implied increasing political and public attention on government structures and processes to cope with the problems at hand. Coordination of the refugee crisis was laid down in a system of various coordination bodies mainly located at the Federal Chancellery and the Ministry of Interior. The newly established coordination bodies to cope with the ‘refugee crisis’ were added to the established coordination system in the policy field of migration. In the emerging policy field of digitalization a new coordination arrangement based on shared competences was created with a steering group at the top-bureaucratic level. Hence, while organizational centralization was selected to coordinate the refugee crisis, decentralization feature the coordination of digitalization policies. The paper asks: Under which conditions are new coordination arrangements established? Why are the coordination arrangements designed as they are, i.e. why were the specific designs selected? What are the implications thereof for the coordination process? The paper is based on document analysis and expert interviews. The paper argues that ‘coordination design decisions’ can be explained by strategic choice theory considering the choice situation of organizational decision makers as crucial. Organizational design results from the perception of environmental expectations and shared interests of a ‘dominant coalition’ and organizational design decisions are understood as political processes ultimately serving actors’ own ends.