Who governs 4.0? Varieties of smart cities
In: Public management review, Band 22, Heft 5, S. 668-686
ISSN: 1471-9045
In: Public management review, Band 22, Heft 5, S. 668-686
ISSN: 1471-9045
In: European political science review: EPSR, Band 11, Heft 4, S. 415-431
ISSN: 1755-7747
AbstractThe article analyses the public attribution of blame and the use of presentational strategies of blame avoidance in complex delegation structures. We theorize and empirically demonstrate that complex delegation structures result in the diffusion of blame to multiple actors so that a clear allocation of responsibility becomes more difficult. The article shows that public attribution of blame follows a distinct temporal pattern in which politicians only gradually move into the centre of the blame storm. We also find that blame-takers deploy sequential patterns of presentational management and use blame shifting to other actors as a dominant strategy. However, the analysis suggests that complex delegation structures impose limitations on blame-takers' use of blame avoidance strategies, and that sequential presentational management becomes less useful over time. The article uses media content analysis to study blame games during a major crisis of the public transport system in Berlin, Germany.
In: Public administration: an international journal, Band 97, Heft 4, S. 845-860
ISSN: 1467-9299
AbstractThis article contributes to the politics of policy‐making in executive government. It introduces the analytical distinction between generalists and specialists as antagonistic players in executive politics and develops the claim that policy specialists are in a structurally advantaged position to succeed in executive politics and to fend off attempts by generalists to influence policy choices through cross‐cutting reform measures. Contrary to traditional textbook public administration, we explain the views of generalists and specialists not through their training but their positions within an organization. We combine established approaches from public policy and organization theory to substantiate this claim and to define the dilemma that generalists face when developing government‐wide reform policies ('meta‐policies') as well as strategies to address this problem. The article suggests that the conceptual distinction between generalists and specialists allows for a more precise analysis of the challenges for policy‐making across government organizations than established approaches.
In: The Governance of Infrastructure, S. 21-42
In: Law & Policy, Band 38, Heft 3, S. 250-267
SSRN
In: Law & policy, Band 38, Heft 3, S. 250-267
ISSN: 1467-9930
Nudge and the wider behavioral economics approach has become increasingly dominant in contemporary political and policy discourse. While much attention has been paid to the attractions and criticisms of nudge (such as liberal paternalism), this article argues that nudge is based on a rationality paradox in that it represents an approach that despite its emphasis on bounded rationality, does not reflect on its own limits to rationality. The article considers the implications of this paradox by considering mechanisms that influence government decision making and mechanisms that lead to unintended consequences in the context of policy interventions.
In: Lehrbuch der Politikfeldanalyse, S. 97-132
In: Regulation & governance, Band 9, Heft 1, S. 30-46
ISSN: 1748-5991
AbstractMuch has been said about the appeal of digital government devices to enhance consultation on rulemaking. This paper explores the most ambitious attempt by the UK central government so far to draw on "crowdsourcing" to consult and act on regulatory reform, the "Red Tape Challenge." We find that the results of this exercise do not represent any major change to traditional challenges to consultation processes. Instead, we suggest that the extensive institutional arrangements for crowdsourcing were hardly significant in informing actual policy responses: neither the tone of the crowdsourced comments, the direction of the majority views, nor specific comments were seen to matter. Instead, it was processes within the executive that shaped the overall governmental responses to this initiative. The findings, therefore, provoke wider debates about the use of social media in rulemaking and consultation exercises.
In: Public policy and administration: PPA, Band 27, Heft 3, S. 212-229
ISSN: 1749-4192
The fields of political science and public administration are said to be drifting apart. This article argues that a focus on executive politics – the politics of the executive and of the execution of policies – offers a key avenue to maintain a useful conversation that focuses on perennial questions that are shared across research traditions. This conversation should concentrate on the 'administrative factor' in political life and the 'political factor' in administrative life. This article develops this argument in three steps. First, it defines the field of executive politics. Second, it considers the rationale why a focus on executive politics is pertinent at this particular time. Third, it discusses the challenges that a turn towards executive politics faces. This article concludes by considering the position of British public administration in the field of executive politics.
In: Managing Regulation, S. 120-136