Role Understandings and Political Attitudes of Senior Bureaucrats: Empirical Evidence from German Federal Government Departments

The paper seeks to contribute to the literature in the well-established research tradition of inquiries into political attitudes and work-related role understandings of higher civil servants who have policy-making responsibilities in government departments. In particular, this contribution is geared to investigate the association between aspects of civil servant’s job motivation, their adopted role definitions in policy-making, and perceptions of state-society relations in the modern state. Against this background, the proposed paper seeks to shed light on prevailing attitudinal patterns among Germany’s top civil servants at the federal government level. Based on our empirical findings, the proposed paper also looks more specifically into the perception of the politicization of senior policy-making roles in government bureaucracies. In doing so, we analyze the janus-faced nature of the concept of ‘politicization’ as seen through the eyes of senior civil servants in government departments. The German federal ministries will serve as a case in point to illustrate the various ways in which politicization is perceived by leading administrators as both a major source of job motivation and job satisfaction, but also as a source of concern and a significant stumbling block in their career development. The paper draws on the empirical evidence collected through an online questionnaire survey (N=181) and additional in-depth face-to-face interviews (N=29) targeting the two top ranks of career officials in German government departments at federal government level. In doing so, the research design allows for a comparative perspective across departmental lines and hierarchical levels in government ministries.