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AbstractPublic libraries promote inclusivity and creativity yet struggle to activate and maintain the spaces required for inclusive creative practice due to institutional norms and processes. This mismatch creates impediments to user engagement. Using a “design institutioning” framework, this article investigates whether creativity and bureaucracy can coexist in public library workplaces. In the context of a regional public library in Australia, this article explores (i) understanding and activating appropriate organizational cultures, structures, and systems to suit the diverse purposes of the contemporary public library, and (ii) recruiting and protecting designers as intermediaries to navigate conflicting ideologies and facilitate mutually beneficial outcomes in public library institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles Lamb was the author of whimsical "familiar essays" but famously also an East India Company clerk, and the relationship between these two aspects of what might broadly be called his "writing career" is sometimes framed as directly antagonistic, as merely irritating, or even as mutually reinforcing. I argue however that Lamb's own shifting sense of both "engrossing" and "penning" for a living, expressed in his essays and correspondence, was more complex than these dualisms, and that this condition informed deeper tensions that he creatively explored and adapted throughout his career. It is via analyses of Lamb's works within the historical and theoretical context of his office milieu, an approach informed by readings of Jacques Lacan and Bruno Latour, that I argue his creative engagement with inchoate bureaucratic structures provides a concrete basis for considering the aesthetic motifs and philosophical preoccupations typical of Romanticism more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present inquiry addresses the nexus between the development of electronic government and corruption in the provision of public sector services in developing and transition economies. The study analyzes the potential contribution of electronic government in combating petty corruption within the framework of two superimposed principal-agent model and show that electronic government could potentially limit bureaucratic corruption. To address the research question empirically, the study applies random tobit and linear random effects panel estimators to a dataset made of 121 countries, which covers the time period between 2008 and 2018. Estimations reveal that the adoption of electronic government in the delivery of public sector services has been the central factor that contributed to the reduction of petty corruption in developing and transition economies. The level of per capita income, political rights, civil liberties and share of natural resources in gross exports also correspond with less bribery in the public sector service delivery. Furthermore, the study finds that a lower level of socio-economic development corresponds with a greater level of petty corruption. Hence, e-government presents one of the utmost opportunities for socio-economic development and offers solutions for the improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of public administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A burgeoning literature firmly establishes that democratic backsliding leaves negative imprints in various domains. However, this empirical regularity has not been extended to the realm of culture despite ample anecdotes pointing to the detrimental effect of democratic decays on the very backbone of cultural dynamism, the freedom of expression. To fill this lacuna, the article documents the case of deliberate infringement on freedom of expression in South Korea during its backsliding period (2008-2017). Using a difference-in-difference model on an original individual-level panel dataset, I report that the Blacklist project significantly damaged the careers of Korean movie workers, particularly those invisible from the public. The article suggests that the consequence of a backsliding government's attempt to control public discourse can be surprisingly comprehensive because it instills self-censorship in the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing interest in the policy work and analytical capacities of bureaucracies, these dimensions have not been treated as central to characterizing and understanding the role of senior civil servants in policymaking, which is usually conceptualized in terms of their relationship with policymakers or other organizational and societal factors. This article fills this gap by proposing an analytical framework that allows the empirical classification of high‐level civil servants according to the “triangle of bureaucratic policy analysis”, which consists of possible links between their policy work, their policy analytical capacities, and the types of information they use. We apply this analytical lens to the results of a large survey of approximately 1000 senior civil servants in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Our findings consist of three empirical professional types of top bureaucrats, the “political generalist”, the “manager”, and the “legal advisor”, each characterized by a particular combination of specific policy analytical capacities, sources and types of information used, and policy work. The proposed framework thus offers a promising conceptual lens for comparative research and demonstrates how a focus on the policy dimensions of high‐level officials' activities can provide a novel perspective on their roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The editorial in the PoLAR journal reflects on the concept of "thick solidarity" in political and legal anthropology, emphasizing empathy without glossing over differences. The editors discuss their challenges and successes in navigating various responsibilities and collaborations within the field. The article highlights the importance of maintaining political and legal anthropology amidst global crises and transitions leadership to Dr. Deepa Das Acevedo. The issue features articles on security, citizenship, and language in legal contexts, offering new perspectives on classic topics in the field. [Extracted from the article]

ABSTRACT Public sector digitalisation is often described as a help to frontline workers, who must deal with a high workload, too few resources, and complex professional dilemmas. Digitalisation nevertheless, also creates new challenges that become intertwined with the already existing challenges in street‐level bureaucracies. Based on 25 interviews and more than 80 h of observations conducted in the Danish employment services, this study examines how frontline workers make using automatically generated representations of the clients manageable and meaningful. Drawing on coping theory and abductive analysis three distinct digital coping strategies are identified: automatic (simplification); extended (complication); and in situ (flexibility) preparation. The contribution of the study is twofold. First, it expands the current understanding of coping strategies as simplifying or complicating the work of frontline workers with a third flexibility strategy. This strategy shows how frontline workers cope by minimizing time spent on preparation and instead flexibly search out information during meetings with clients, relying on their skills to lithely manoeuvre in both digital and bureaucratic systems. Second, it provides insight into understanding how digital efficiency initiatives in the public sector often end up playing a different role than intended. Finally, I compare and discuss the consequences of these ambiguous digital coping strategies and point to future avenues of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The delivery of housing is a recognised challenge in many Global South countries due to various institutional logjams within formal systems. This paper delves into formal processes and informal practices in Benin City to investigate how policy systems and corruption constrain the delivery of housing. As Benin City increasingly relies on informal mechanisms, bureaucratic bottlenecks impede progress, and corruption has emerged as a major global issue that hinders housing provision. A qualitative method was adopted, using interviews. The findings illustrate how corrupt practices typify housing delivery in Benin City, leading to inadequate and insufficient houses for residents. Among other recommendations, the paper advocates for adequate and effective supervision and monitoring of official processes geared towards housing production. It also suggests the need for increased transparency and accountability in allocating resources for housing projects. These measures would curb corruption and ensure that residents have access to decent and affordable housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on fieldwork in maternity wards in Tanzania, I argue that the partograph – a graphical representation of a pregnant woman’s labor – far exceeds its intended role as tracking and surveillance of labor progress. Through surveillance and its concomitant documentation, nurses, especially, also utilize this document to co-create care for themselves and their colleagues. These forms of care proliferate largely unseen by global health systems but are vital for understanding the meeting point of bureaucracy, surveillance, and care and the dynamics of maternity care in this and other lower resource settings. Nurses use the partograph to generate novel forms of surveillance-care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In this paper, we examine the discretionary uses of documentation in the implementation of naturalisation through a comparative perspective focusing on Belgium, France and the United Kingdom. We investigate the organisational and professional factors that are likely to impact variation in the uses of discretion based on documentation. Belgium, France and the United Kingdom represent three interesting case studies involving different actors with different mandates. In Belgium, municipal agents are responsible for a mandatory check of applicants' documents before transferring the naturalisation application to public prosecutors. While only the latter have the mandate to check that the legal requirements are met, most municipal agents are involved in the examination of the requirements. In France, before the digitisation of nationality acquisition in 2023, the initial acceptance of an application involved prefectural agents who had the power to refuse application registration if the documentation was deemed insufficient or ‘non‐compliant’. In the United Kingdom, ‘Nationality Checking Services’ (NCS) were available until 2019 in local register offices for an optional check of the application before the transfer to the Home Office, which remains the decision‐making body on nationality applications. As United Kingdom law regulates strictly immigration advice, NCSs were often unwilling to express themselves on the chances of an application. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork consisting of interviews with implementation agents in the three countries and observations of their interactions with applicants, this paper contributes to shedding light on what drives variations in the governance of access to nationality through paperwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Interrogating the tension between care and control in the work of social services staff in Belgian immigration detention centres, this article sheds light on the uses of discretion from the perspective of Bourdieu's concept of illusio. I argue that social services staff's use of discretionary power must be understood at the crossroads of their belief in their professional ethos and the power relations within these centres, which enabled them to frame the element of control as something they had to deal with professionally, rather than something to which they contributed. This sheds light on both the uses of discretion as well as on the articulation of care and control in border humanitarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains ethnic minorities' attachment to the state? Our current understanding has primarily considered structural factors, particularly access to political power and modernization. Diverging from existing explanations, I theorize that mundane experiences with the state, in street-level bureaucracy, can inform ethnic minorities' attitudes toward the state. What they see and experience in street-level bureaucracy signals to ethnic minorities what their prospects might be in a country that is politically dominated by another ethnic group. Leveraging extensive fieldwork in Myanmar, I show that ethnic minorities who have had positive encounters with street-level bureaucrats express stronger attachment to the state. This is the case even when an ethnic group is in direct conflict with the state. I also find that service experiences are more relevant in explaining ethnic minorities' attachment to the state compared to factors highlighted in existing research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, we introduce recent debates on both concepts of organization and organization's future. Since Max Weber's ideas gained acceptance, there has been a strong link between social theory (rationalized modernity) and a concept of organization (bureaucracy) in organization theory as well as organizational sociology. Today, organizational scholarship challenges, but at the same time defends, this classical link. We argue that both positions can be substantiated empirically. This situation motivates a debate on updating and revitalizing the link between organizational concepts and social theories that we aim to put forward with this special issue of Critical Sociology. We discuss the assembled contributions in relation to this fundamental conceptual debate of organization research and conclude that the richness of social theories can still serve as an inspiration to explain recent organizational phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Robodebt' scheme was an initiative pursued by the Australian Department of Human Services between 2016 and 2019 to increase the amount of money recovered from supposed 'overpayments' to recipients of welfare benefits. Drawing on the rich body of empirical material generated by the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme as well as journalists and academic observers, this paper develops an understanding of the affair from the perspective of the sociology of organizations. Particular use is made of a growing body of research in the organizational sociology of ignorance. Following an outline of the main features of Robodebt, the paper explains the significance of the conception of ignorance as more complex than the mere absence of knowledge in organizational life. It then examines the specifics of the way in which Robodebt casts light on the role played by systemic, wilful ignorance in the relationship between law, bureaucracy and politics. The paper concludes with some reflections on the senses in which Robodebt was a manifestation not only of a crisis, fiasco or scandal, but also of the normal operation of the 'will to ignorance' (Nietzsche) in organizational life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations and societies have changed. Bureaucracy, as modernity's form of organization, has transformed into a reflexive organization, coordinating the conditions of system reproduction in time–space with increased reflexivity. Simultaneously, modernity with capitalism, industrialization, and rationalization as its institutional dimensions radicalized; reflexive organizations as one of its driving forces and the reflexive organization as the new organization model. Today, reflexive organizations are the most ubiquitous and powerful agents in our societies, separating and integrating activities, practices, and occurrences in new time–space arrangements and sets of social systems together with others, fueling modernity's dynamism and global scope and letting our societies resemble an engine without a driver, erratically running in directions we cannot foresee. To identify and understand these changes and their impact on our current world, we develop a research framework informed by Anthony Giddens' structuration theory that upgrades social systems to the core of structuration theory and adds the reflexive mode of organization and a strategic perspective to Giddens' theory of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous scholars have investigated the determinants of university innovation efficiency. However, the internal governance aspects of universities and their interactions with the external environment are frequently neglected. Therefore, this study, grounded in the framework of embeddedness theory, employed the Stochastic Frontier Analysis method to empirically analyze innovation efficiency in Chinese universities. The results indicated that competitive threats significantly improved university innovation efficiency, whereas bureaucracy and international openness exhibited adverse effects, which were alleviated in regions with greater marketization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dominant explanations for variation in performance between state organizations focus on macro-level factors, such as political support, and meso-level factors, such as civil service capacity. However, these factors cannot account for why different groups within the same state organization perform better than others. I leverage a comparative analysis of state officials working under particularly challenging circumstances—task forces of prosecutors investigating high-level corruption in Brazil—to develop a framework to explain how small-group communication and decision-making processes affect performance. Drawing on document analysis and 124 original interviews with federal investigators, I argue that, even when we account for macro- and meso-level factors, prosecutors performed better when they cultivated frequent communication and collective decision-making. This study shows the mechanisms through which these processes affect performance: while frequent communication enables group members to generate knowledge connections that help them make unforeseen discoveries, collective decision-making helps build defensive alignment , which allows members to protect the group from external pressures and manage internal tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the determinants of corruption in Russia based on an original survey of 1,376 businesspeople in 39 regions. Regression analysis reveals economically and statistically significant correlations between bribes, development, and state intervention in the economy. Using the instrumental variable of geographical location, this paper provides supportive evidence for a causal (negative) relationship between prosperity and bribes. It finds a positive correlation between regional corruption and state ownership and a negative one between corruption and the size of the bureaucracy. These results hold for both perceived and experiential corruption. This paper contributes to the investigation of corruption in Russia and post-communist countries. It illustrates the importance of economic development, effective bureaucracy, and the reduction of state property for mitigating corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new, developing bureaucratic procedures in the nineteenth century had wide-ranging influence over the Ottoman ulema in such areas as professionalization, performance evaluations, examinations for graduation, appointments, and promotions. The central government by increasing its direct control over the Ilmiye members incorporated them into the centralized state system and they became more and more intertwined with state service. During this period, they adapted to the new rules of the current bureaucratized system of the centralized state with their official identities in the education, judicial, and religious affairs of the state bureaucracy. In this respect, this article aims to show that the institutionalization of the Şeyhülislam Office through the Tanzimat process introduced the appointment mechanism of the ulema to the Ilmiye posts in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Centre‐periphery relations have constituted a paradox for the English National Health Service (NHS) since its creation in 1948. Is it a top‐down national service organised locally, or a bottom‐up arrangement of local health systems managed nationally? North West England provides a regional case study which traces the changing organisational, relational and spatial dimensions of the intermediate tier. These reposition centre‐periphery tensions. In foregrounding, situating and conceptualising region in these terms, I offer new insight into existing narratives and centre‐periphery relations in the NHS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of the "personal vote" assumes that constituent service, or the process by which members of Congress help their constituents navigate the federal bureaucracy, is a component of representation that transcends partisanship. However, recent research suggests that affective polarization and negative partisanship may discourage constituents from reaching out to ask for help from cross-partisan legislators. Using a conjoint experiment, I show that shared partisanship has a strong effect on constituents' decisions about which of their legislators to contact for assistance. However, positive in-party affect is unrelated to these preferences, suggesting that negative partisanship is responsible for this result. Gender and seniority also matter for constituents' preferences even when accounting for shared partisanship. The results suggest that legislators' ability to build a "personal vote" by performing constituent service may be weakened in an era of strong partisanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the establishment of a task force inside the European Commission at the height of the Greek crisis, known as the ‘task force for Greece’. By adopting a perspective centred on the professionals employed in this ad hoc body, I investigate its symbolic and political significance within the broader framework of European emergency governance. Through a detailed analysis of the ethos and profiles of its personnel, the article argues that the task force represented a shift in crisis management, representing both a gesture of support and a counterbalance to the costs of austerity. The findings are grounded in extensive sociological fieldwork, including interviews, sociographic data and the analysis of documents, offering a comprehensive understanding of how EU staff shaped the task force’s mandate and operations under conditions of limited material resources and considerable political pressure. This research contributes to the study of crises and of European bureaucracy by elucidating the dynamic relationship between emergency politics and bureaucratic practices within the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn these comments, I engage with Ulrike Bialas’s book, Forever 17: Coming of Age in the German Asylum System, to highlight some of its most significant contributions to the scholarship on immigration and categorization. Bialas advances this scholarship in critical ways, with generative potential far beyond this case study. Based on rich and deep ethnographic knowledge, Bialas integrates analytically and theoretically the experiences of young asylum seekers in Berlin as they navigate the asylum bureaucracies with the professional work of the state agents who meticulously assess and determine minority age. We learn about the bureaucracies, the creation of the categories into which asylum seekers are placed, and the crafting of new, formal identities among asylum seekers. This remarkable book, written with humanity and candor, inspires and invites questions that will guide research in this area for years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With emphasis on naming conventions, this article examines on‐the‐ground bureaucracy and its impacts on the lives of undocumented migrant children who attend state schools in Thailand. Names of migrants from Myanmar do not typically include a family name. As a result, when their children are placed in the Thai documentary system, which was designed for individuals with a first name and a last name, schools add Thai phrases literally meaning “without a surname” after each child's proper name. This study demonstrates that a particular form of liminal subjectivity is forged through school‐based socialization into bureaucratic culture and institutional routines of official naming. While the anthropological concept of “liminality” is typically understood as temporary phases of transition, school practices give rise to a prolonged state of in‐betweenness and constitute the children's political being in a negative form. The name “Without‐A‐Surname” denotes via negation, pointing to the quality of stateless state‐belonging. This label becomes indexical of the ambivalent state of migrancy, which marks migrant schoolchildren as state subjects whose pending status lies between that of insider and outsider. School‐level bureaucracy, therefore, defers a postliminal state—namely, the children's full incorporation into the Thai state and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe practices surrounding pregnancy ends and pregnancy remains shift and change depending on the cultural and historical context. Based on ethnographic research in one group NHS Hospital organisation in England, the paper explores what practices around pregnancy remains reveal about the values afforded the material in different contexts by different actors and the moments when these intersect. It argues that framing miscarriage as bereavement helps to structure caregiving in clinical settings and that clinical practices produce foetal personhood in ways that may not be in keeping with women’s notions of their pregnancy material. It illustrates that hospital practices contain notions of value which become legitimated as the appropriate approach with consequences for normativity. This may lead to women feeling isolated and abnormal when their approach is at odds with that of the clinic. Through an exploration of how women encounter and negotiate disposal practices, the paper argues that current practice requires revision to flexibly respond to diversity but also shifting meaning and values attributed to these experiences and materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where once relationships with service users was considered the bedrock of practice, social work has been shaped by bureaucracy and managerialism, with increased focused on risk management, control, fragmentation of services, standardisation and accountability. Employing reflexive thematic analysis, qualitative data from 16 interviews with frontline social workers in Northern Ireland was analysed through the four expressions of power framework to assess strategies used to subvert, challenge, and work within bureaucratic systems and managerialist forces to uphold the foundational principles of relationship-based practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite long‐standing recognition in collective memory scholarship that commemorative sites are places of deep cultural meaning, fieldwork evidence collected at the National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington, DC, suggests that visitors primarily engaged with mnemonic resources in a superficial fashion. This paper explores how interpretive park rangers, who are tasked with engaging the public to discuss the nation's history, nevertheless strived to deliver informational, interpretive services to the visiting public. Findings show that rangers, conceptualized in this paper as street‐level bureaucrats, developed roles and routine lines of action that hinged on how they imagined and constructed their audiences. This paper demonstrates how street‐level bureaucrats variably conceive of their clients at the pre‐interactional stage, thus identifying an underexplored dimension of discretion in frontline service work. Additionally, this paper contributes to collective memory research by contextualizing mnemonic deliberation within contexts of mnemonic agents' workplace dynamics, showing how organizational expectations shape discourses of difficult, contentious histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Afterword I engage with each article in this special issue by highlighting some of their main points and placing them in conversation with scholarship in my substantive interests. In doing so, I signal the expansive potential of each contribution as I see it from my scholarly corner. I elucidate the generative potential of this collection and underscore the fruitfulness of adopting the critical lens to state-created categorization that threads the articles for the field of immigration studies in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies assess how politicians control and shape bureaucracy. Yet, how politicians' behavior affects the norms and behaviors of bureaucrats through role modeling has not been studied. This is a curious omission, in light of evidence that social norms shape bureaucratic behavior. Through a lab experiment with over 900 bureaucrats in Bangladesh, we explore whether political corruption affects bureaucrats' pro‐social behavior and whether this effect is particularly pronounced for corruption of the current government, as a particularly relevant social norm referent. Using a political corruption prime, we present evidence that those bureaucrats who recall episodes of the current government's political corruption when prompted to think about political corruption donate significantly lower real monetary amounts to charity. By contrast, we do not find clear effects of political corruption by other actors. Our findings underscore the importance of political leaders as role models for bureaucrats and the damage that political corruption may inflict on pro‐social behavior in bureaucracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the use of Manhattan's grid in Colson Whitehead's "Zone One" as a symbol of control and governance. Topics include the grid's role in reinforcing social and political systems, its connection to the architectural structure of the city. The article also explores the grid's function as a mechanism of bureaucratic control, and the ethical implications of its use in governance, particularly in relation to the novel's depiction of zombie extermination.

The study of immigration institutions has mainly focused on the effects these entities have on migrants and refugees' lives. Much less research has been produced from the unique perspective of the people who comprise these institutions. Drawing from work experiences and ethnographic research on the operation of detention centers for migrant and refugee children in southern Mexico, this article reflects on the daily work in these centers and on the personnel who reproduce the government and execute immigration policy. The article builds on feminist postcolonial perspective by focusing on the uniqueness of the bureaucrat-ethnographer viewpoint. Keypoints of this article are how axes of race, gender, and nationality hinder and/or favor access to these institutions either for work or study, and how this contributes to global inequalities in knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indonesia’s involvement in peacekeeping missions has long been a key part of its foreign policy, contributing to world peace as outlined in Republic of Indonesia Law Number 37 of 1999 concerning Foreign Relations. This study aims to analyze the government's policy implementation regarding troop preparation for world peace missions, particularly in relation to Indonesia's role as a Troops Contributing Country (TCC) to the United Nations (UN). The research utilizes a qualitative descriptive approach to understand the intricacies of the troop preparation process through George Edward III's policy implementation model, which emphasizes the importance of disposition, communication, resources, and bureaucracy. Data were collected through document analysis, interviews, and observation of relevant practices in Indonesian military operations. The findings highlight that the personnel selection process for peacekeeping missions is highly structured, requiring compliance with rigorous standards set by both the Indonesian government and the UN. The pre-deployment training, supervised by the TNI (Indonesian National Army) Headquarters, ensures that selected personnel are adequately prepared for their assignments. This comprehensive preparation includes mental and physical readiness, as well as the necessary technical and language skills. The results also emphasize the importance of strong inter-agency coordination, particularly between the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to ensure the success of these missions. Furthermore, the study reveals that budgetary and resource constraints remain significant challenges in sustaining peacekeeping operations. In conclusion, Indonesia's contribution to global peacekeeping missions underscores the nation's commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frontline workers who are confronted with crises need enormous resilience and the ability to deal with stress from crisis‐related increases in demands and risks. Simultaneously, populist governments with an illiberal agenda may undermine the work of street‐level bureaucracies for political reasons. Little is known about how deconstruction of the administrative state by populist government—through lacking government support when it is needed the most—affects frontline work. Thus, this article asks: how does lacking support by a populist government affect frontline workers' self‐efficacy when they face a crisis? Based on unique data from an online survey of 3229 Brazilian frontline workers during the early COVID‐19 pandemic, when the Bolsonaro government denied the existence of the pandemic, we test the relationship between government support, demands, and resources on frontline workers' perceived self‐efficacy. Results show that lacking government support from the federal and local government are negatively associated with frontline workers' self‐efficacy. At the same time, resources and managerial support exhibit positive associations—but they cannot always compensate for a lack of government assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of limited state capacity and a politicized public administration, democratic backsliding tends to exploit preexisting deficiencies in the functioning of the public sector. Whereas staffing managerial positions with regime supporters is well‐documented, less attention has been paid to the structuring and staffing of street‐level bureaucracies under a spoils system. In this article, we use document analysis and in‐depth interviews to analyze the case of Mexico's "Servants of the Nation" —a group of more than 19,000 former party members and sympathizers hired by the government to perform street‐level tasks— as an example of "parabureaucracy": an auxiliary street‐level organization designed to perform a wide variety of tasks directly related to the executive's political agenda. We argue that parabureaucracies are designed to sideline formal administrative command structures for the benefit of the government in power but may also serve as a means to bypass stifled and dysfunctional traditional bureaucracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sheds new light on the drivers of bureaucratic resilience in the face of presidential attacks, an understudied but politically salient topic. Scholars have long shown how political advocacy can protect bureaucracies from presidential attacks on policy regulation. We argue, however, that advocacy is insufficient to defend bureaucracies against attacks on policy implementation, which occurs largely outside the formal political arena. Through a case study of Brazil's successful Covid-19 vaccination campaign, we call attention to two additional forms of support for agencies under attack--resource provision and social activism--that come into play during the implementation phase of policy. In conjunction with political advocacy, resource provision and social activism bolster bureaucracies under attack by filling in where other forms of support fall short. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When is the public more likely to defer to elites on foreign policy? Existing research suggests the public takes its cues from co-partisans, but what happens when co-partisans disagree? We argue that the public defers to elites whose prior experiences signal expertise and favorable intentions. Elites with backgrounds in socially esteemed institutions are thus especially powerful cue-givers, even when the core competencies of those institutions are not directly related to the issue at hand. Using two conjoint experiments, we find that the American public defers to more experienced elites generally, but is especially deferential toward elites with experience in trusted institutions: the public defers more to elites with military backgrounds, even when considering non-military issues. The theory and findings suggest that where elites sat in the past shapes how much power they wield once standing in office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have drawn attention to the large housing programme at play in the late Soviet period. However, this programme did not solve the housing shortage, and the housing order (zhilishchnyi order) remained an object of desire for Soviet citizens. This document was an official guarantee of accommodation in the USSR, where there was no housing market. Based on archival sources and interviews, this article focuses on the history of the housing order and people's strategies for obtaining it. It reveals the specifics of the public housing delivery system and the means through which ordinary Soviet citizens navigated its bureaucracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the diversity of organizing institutions in the Early Bronze II period in the Upper Euphrates region of Eastern Turkey. It discusses how villages in the region experimented with different ways of organizing community life after the destruction of central institutions. The author emphasizes the agency of individual actors and households in creating new organizing institutions and suggests that these institutions held power over members of other households. The article also highlights the importance of symbolic power and violence in the construction of the Arslantepe Palace complex and the subsequent decline of Mesopotamian-style central institutions. It discusses various archaeological sites in the region and the presence of unique objects and visually elaborate spaces within households. The text concludes by discussing the concentration of power and production activities in domestic spaces during the Early Bronze Age II period and the eventual rise of centralized power in the later EB III period. [Extracted from the article]

Freedom of information (FOI) laws are known to expose governmental weaknesses, but do they improve the structural workings of public administration, professionalizing governance? This study examines FOI's effect on a cornerstone of effective governance—bureaucratic hiring. Using coarsened matching methods to compare over 5400 municipalities in Brazil—approximately half possessing FOI regulations and half without—we identify significant reductions in discretionary patronage‐based appointments. Municipalities with FOI regulations reduce both higher level "political control" and lower‐level "electoral rewards" hires. Our explanation, tentatively supported by a comparison of early versus late FOI adopters, centers on sequencing: in the short term, leaders view FOI as a supplement to administrative control and thus reduce higher‐level hires. As FOI becomes more institutionalized and exposures more probable, leaders reduce lower‐level hires. Contributing to scholarship on transparency and bureaucracies, our results enjoin policymakers to double‐down on commitments to FOI policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the World Summit on the Information Society and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, states translated the global vision of digital inclusion into local policies at the national and regional levels. This article examines how state agencies in China, a technologically advanced country with a large disabled population, have leveraged the agenda of web accessibility over the course of the last two decades. By carrying out an analysis of 93 national policies and 21 technical guidelines issued between 2001 and 2021, this article critically examines how and why the Chinese state's embrace of the term 'barrier-free information' (信息无障碍) does not result in a coherent policy paradigm but might instead engender new barriers which in fact have the potential to disorient disabled people. Points of interests: Using the case of contemporary China, this article illustrates the problems of implementing the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in a particular national context. We provide an overview of the Chinese state's use of the term 'barrier-free information' (信息无障碍) as used in 114 national policies. While 'barrier-free information' has become a new buzzword in China, we show that its legal definitions are unclear, and its related policies are often in conflict with each other. We argue that more research is needed to understand the negative effects of incoherent accessibility policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since COVID-19 pandemic started, schools had to face environmental changes, one was shifting from a face-to-face educational approach to online learning. It represented an unfavourable learning environment, especially for children with Specific Learning Disabilities (SpLD). Following the Self Determination Theory (SDT) framework, the current study investigated the differences in cognitive, emotional, and motivational domains between students with SpLD and undiagnosed peers, and the relations between executive functioning, emotional distress, and academic motivation. Participants included 97 Italian students, 47 with SpLD (average age of 10.9 years, SD = 1.35), and 50 undiagnosed peers (average age of 10.7 years, SD = 1.58) attending OL lectures during COVID-19. Results displayed lower executive functions (EFs), higher levels of emotional distress in students with SpLD. Furthermore, students with SpLD showed lower levels of identified and intrinsic motivation but higher levels of introjected motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we aimed to determine the quality indicators in separate special education schools that only educate individuals with special needs from the perspectives of teachers. We collected data from 82 special education teachers included by maximum diversity sampling using a semi-structured interview form. We conducted a content analysis using the MAXQDA qualitative data analysis program. As a result of the study, we identified six main themes as quality indicators in separate special education schools. These were teacher and administrator qualifications, school environment (social and physical), curriculum and educational process, family interest and attitude, policies and practices, and child-related factors. Moreover, several factors such as teachers with degrees in special education, materials, social perspective, evidence-based practices, family support, and individualised education programs were found to play an important role as quality indicators in separate special education schools. Improvements in quality indicators in separate special education schools can contribute to student outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This systematic literature review explores professors' role in implementing inclusive education for students with disabilities in higher education. Findings from 22 articles reveal diverse barriers, including attitudinal challenges, physical accessibility issues, and bureaucratic hurdles. While professors express positive intentions, practical implementation often falters, hence indicating a need for comprehensive training programmes. The review highlights the transformative potential of such training programmes, fostering a shift from the medical model to a more inclusive framework. This paper underscores the need for universities to invest in faculty development and take a collective approach involving all the stakeholders in order to dismantle barriers. The call to action also includes sustained conversation and research undertakings in the Latin American context, to enhance inclusive practices and support students with disabilities in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral accountability is fundamental to representative democracy. Yet, it can also be costly for governance because it generates turnover among bureaucrats (not just politicians) and disrupts the delivery of public services. Previous studies on the connection between political and bureaucratic turnover emphasize how incoming governments reshape the bureaucracy. This article argues that election losers also engage in bureaucratic shuffling before leaving office and that this can depress public service delivery. I employ a close-races regression discontinuity design to demonstrate these turnover dynamics, using administrative data on the universe of government employees and health care services in Brazilian municipalities. The results show that the incumbent's electoral defeat causes dismissals of temporary employees, the hiring of more civil servants, and declines in health care service delivery before the winner takes office. These findings highlight the political strategies of lame-duck politicians and the consequential bureaucratic politics that follow elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars consider the bargaining power between ruler and society to be one of the most important determinants of a country's political regime and institutions. The relative bargaining power, in turn, is shaped by arms technology and societal modernization: arms tend to strengthen rulers, and modernization tends to strengthen society. We document that rulers outside of Western Europe were strengthened by advanced arms technology at a time when societies were weakly modernized and political demands limited. We dub this the "coercive imbalance" and argue that it has shaped the state-society bargain outside Western Europe since at least 1850. We show that the coercive imbalance arose because arms diffuse faster than civilian technology. We then use ordinary least squares, system GMM, and two-stage least squares to document that the adoption of advanced arms technology at an early stage of societal modernization is strongly associated with limited democracy, poor bureaucracy, and corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers working across a variety of contexts have documented a common phenomenon: the tendency for one legal liability or entanglement in people's lives to beget another. In this article, I label such phenomena liability chains and provide a framework for analyzing them as an access to justice issue. To do so, I draw on my original research on welfare fraud investigation, which included a review of documentary evidence and interviews with fraud workers in five politically and socioeconomically diverse U.S. states. Building on previous research, these data reveal three primary ways that liability chains contribute to the access to justice crisis. First, liability chains facilitate the origination of new legal problems, often in ways that are biased and systematically unequal. Second, liability chains involve processes that allow authorities to sidestep procedural protections when building criminal cases. Third, and most importantly from the access to justice perspective, liability chains produce outcomes that are unfair, with likelihoods of new legal liabilities contingent on the presence of existing liabilities and entanglements. Moving forward, this framework offers researchers a resource to test and refine in considering the access to justice implications of liability chains in various sociolegal settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since it establishes differentiated socio-legal eligibility categories among different migrant groups, family reunification constitutes a prime example of the internal border. In my article, I investigate how the border is produced and negotiated in the context of family reunification of refugee children and parents by focusing on discretionary practices of German immigration bureaucracy through the lens of counselling actors in the city. Taking the city of Frankfurt am Main as my research site, I identify ignorance, verification, and temporalization as three administrative control mechanisms over descent-based refugee families. I argue that family reunification constitutes a highly selective and culturalized field of border control, in which refugee families are filtered according to their conformity to a certain family norm and European bureaucratic standards. By examining how counselling actors understand administrative practice, I also discuss how they respond to it, including their own participation in de- and (re-)bordering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey, as the largest refugee-hosting country, provides insights into the externalization of European borders and the internalization of its own borders. Oscillating between open-door and strict-border policies, alongside the political inactiveness of public authorities and CSOs governing Syrian mobility, Turkey reveals crucial dynamics. Focusing on Syrian refugees' housing in a refugee hub of Izmir, this study unravels internal bordering and explores its rationales and the involvement of non-state actors. Syrian refugees encounter three internal bordering mechanisms affecting their housing inclusion: selective overpricing, ethnic filtering and arbitrary interrogations. These differential inclusion practices, led by market actors (landlords and realtors), ethnic networks, and street-level bureaucrats (mukhtars and municipal officers), are driven by the prevalence of anti-refugee sentiment in Turkey, where Syrians are perceived as unwanted or undeserving. The internal bordering mechanisms are rooted in ethnic, economic, cultural, and security-based rationales, influenced by the personal interests and socio-economic backgrounds of the involved actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]