Micromanagement or Effective Steering? Exploring Administrative and Political Prioritization in Overloaded Public Administrations

The number and complexity of public administration tasks are constantly growing and increasingly exceed available administrative capacities. This overload necessitates prioritization, a pivotal factor shaping policy outcomes. Surprisingly, the mechanisms and logics of prioritization within public administrations have not yet received sufficient attention in empirical studies. Consequently, this study explores the intersection of political and administrative prioritization in overloaded administrations and seeks to uncover the circumstances and effects of political interference in regular public administration affairs. To address these questions, the study employs a mixed-methods approach, drawing on a dataset of over 100 semi-structured interviews across environmental and social policy administrations in five European countries. Contrary to the conventional assumption that policymakers tend to neglect policy implementation, our findings show that political prioritization is more commonplace than exceptional. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates that the interplay between administrative and political prioritization is crucial for the productivity of prioritization in managing overload and achieving policy goals.