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In many countries, attempts to suppress scientists as public experts have become more prevalent. In democratic countries, environmental scientists have been a particular focus of control. This article looks at structures and mechanisms of suppression of government researchers. It is based on a qualitative analysis of ten in-depth interviews with environmental researchers being employed or engaged in government science. The analysis is influenced by a power-theoretical perspective on the suppression of science. By analyzing the interviewees' accounts, it scrutinizes the different ways in which political and economic control can trickle down in research organizations such as state research institutes and come to affect individual researchers. The focus is especially on the interlinking of political and economic influence of external actors with different forms and practices of control at the organizational level. Three forms of such trickle-down are identified and discussed: internalization of political and economic control, external influencing and bureaucratic control, and economic/interest group influence in research organizations. We argue that these forms of control function as a filtering layer of suppression between political and economic control and individual scientists out of the public eye regarding government science.

This paper examines the political embeddedness of public-sector primary care in urban India. The low quality of urban healthcare in many low- and middle-income countries is well documented. But there is relatively little analysis showing how the politics of urban healthcare delivery contribute to quality shortfalls. This study integrates urban and political theory and draws on ethnographic fieldwork in municipal government-run primary care clinics in Pune, India. I conceptualize Pune's municipal doctors as street-level bureaucrats: frontline state agents charged with delivering public services, who regularly confront conflicts between their mandate and its realization in practice. I observe how the municipal doctors experience and respond to these conflicts; delineate the historical design of the municipal institutions in which they operate; and interview doctors, nurses, nonclinical staff, administrators, and elected officials, who collectively shape primary care delivery in municipal clinics. My findings show how the doctors' work is characterized by routine departures from public service ideals. The departures stem from local electoral politics (politicians' patronage and clientelistic relations with municipal employees and patients) and weak administrative capacity (misuse and incompetent planning of public resources). The doctors are compelled to follow extra-policy directives, meaning instructions that have little to do with healthcare goals and that emphasize the political utility rather than medical purpose of their work. In response, the doctors circumscribe their clinical practice. They aim, as one doctor put it, only to "ensure the ordinary," or to sustain a deficient status quo. In these conditions, improving quality of care requires not just behavioral interventions targeted at doctors. It requires normative, social, and organizational shifts in public service planning and delivery so that doctors are positioned - materially and affectively - to meet urban healthcare challenges in low-resource contexts., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

It is well established that encounters between welfare bureaucracies and their clients have been reconfigured under neoliberalism to address the problem of "welfare dependency." Contemporary bureaucratic encounters therefore entail measures to activate clients' entrepreneurial/self-governing capacities, and conditionality/sanctioning practices to deal with clients who behave "irresponsibly." Despite the dominance of the neoliberal model, recent research has identified a counter-trend in the practices of housing services away from entrepreneurializing and punitive strategies and towards a more supportive approach. This paper examines this counter-trend and its implications for neoliberal welfare governance. To do this, it presents findings from research into social housing governance in Queensland, Australia, where the neoliberal focus on welfare independence, conditionality and sanctioning has been tempered by a new supportive approach focused on assisting vulnerable clients to maintain and benefit from access to welfare/housing support. Following Larner, we argue that this shift signals the emergence of an "after neoliberal" governmental formation, wherein key features of neoliberal governmentality are replaced by, or redeployed in the service of, progressive initiatives that address neoliberalism's failings at the street level, but leave broader neoliberal policy settings undisturbed. We also challenge recent sociological accounts that construe supportive welfare practices as a function of an all-encompassing neoliberal project, arguing instead for appreciation of the contingency of these developments and the progressive political affordances that they entail., (© 2020 London School of Economics and Political Science.)

Like most goods-producing sectors in the West, modern health-care systems have been profoundly changed by globalization and the neoliberal policies that attend it. Since the 1970s, the role of the welfare state has been considerably reduced; funding and management of health systems have been subjected to wave upon wave of reorganization and assimilated to the private sector. At the same time, neoliberal policy has imposed the notion of patient empowerment, thus turning patients into consumers of health. The literature on nursing has accordingly reported on the significant repercussions on all aspects of the profession, from delivery of care and treatment, through training for new nurses, to legislated policy reforms regarding the role and responsibilities of modern nurses. In light of these developments, this paper analyses and theorizes about the way the injection of neoliberal policy is linked to and affects the practice of nursing. Drawing on a number of Nietzschean arguments, we begin with an exploration of the complex effects of neoliberalism, bureaucratization, and technocratization on the health system and the practice of nursing. Our main theoretical point here is that neoliberal policy engenders and promotes a neoliberal tide, which results in the conversion of the values that drive modern nursing practice. We then examine this tide in the light of Nietzsche's concepts. Starting with an analysis based on the ontology of the will to power, we show that nurses are dominated by neoliberal values embedded in technocratic and bureaucratic ideologies. Finally, we argue that the application of neoliberal policy constitutes a form of domestication from which one might potentially be freed through the Nietzschean concept of transvaluation of values. This transvaluation, as its freeing from some of the neoliberal tide, may be accomplished in accordance with a hierarchy of specific life-affirming values for nursing culture and practice., (© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

After a decade of operations, the Global Fund is an institutional form in flux. Forced to cancel its eleventh round of funding due to a shortfall in donor pledges, the Fund is currently in firefighting mode, overhauling its leadership, governance structures, and operations. Drawing on a case study of Uganda, we look at how the original Global Fund vision to be a simple financial instrument has played out at the country level. Even prior to the cancellation of round 11, the proliferation of partners required to sustain the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria experiment led to increasing bureaucratization and an undermining of the Fund's own intentions to award life-saving grants according to need. Understanding these effects through the ethnographic material presented here may be one way of reflecting on the Fund's structure and practices as it struggles to reinvent itself in the face of criticism that it has impeded resource distribution.

How fiction is used in a college-level political science seminar to teach about democratic decision making and U.S. politics is described. The fiction used is clustered around the following topics: community-level decisions, limits to consensus, group values and politics, acquiring elected offices and trying to keep them, and public bureaucracies. (RM)

Education, by any definition, is an intensely political matter. Key issues in educational planning that are closely related to premises and controversies fundamentally political in nature--e.g., resource allocation and utilization, international dependencies, bureaucracies--are discussed. (RM)

Behavioral science strategies offer an alternative to bureaucratic and political strategies. The weakness of a bureaucratic or political approach, the professor as social learner and as problem-solving adult, strategies for increasing faculty productivity, and ways for creating a learning institution are discussed. (MLW)

The literature on reform indicates that most proposed reforms are not implemented. Some causes of this are explored and it is suggested that many causes are located at the interfaces between politicians, planners, bureaucrats, and educators. The key persons capable of ameliorating the problems are professional planners and senior bureaucrats. (Author/MLW)

Examined the relationship between instructional workload and budgeting of personnel positions and how this relationship changes as personnel positions become scarce. Longitudinal data suggest a direct relationship between the bureaucratic model and personnel allocations; tendencies to use the bureaucratic model increase as personnel positions become more scarce. (Author)

The lack of satisfaction with the political process as the means of reaching informed public policy judgments about higher education is seen to be manifested in the intermediate agencies created by every state. Important choices remain between the concentration of authority in centralized governance systems and the decentralization of authority. (MLW)

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]

This article is the second part of a two-part series. Part one outlined how viewing bureaucracy as a domain of warfare can assist policy professionals in navigating its processes and procedures and then described the first three fundamentals (Politics, Personalities, and Pressure), which are externally imposed and must be navigated carefully. Part Two describes the last seven fundamentals (Principles, Perspective, Prediction, Persuasion, Privacy, Programming, and Permanence), which are internally influenced and controlled and can be developed and deployed as a foundation for enhancing success. Mapping the fundamentals for success in the bureaucratic domain will enable policy professionals to address and balance the complexities of the policy-making process to the benefit of US national security [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the state and informal land development in Global South metropolises has yet not received much attention in urban studies. Concerning that knowledge gap, this paper investigates how the state regulates and inspects irregular and clandestine land subdivisions in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte (MRBH). A mixed-methods approach, focused on the inner workings of the land development control policy led by the MRBH Agency between 2009 and 2018, provides new evidence of the relationships between inspectors, developers, and prosecutors, among other actors. By delving deep into the intricate nexus between a changing regulatory landscape and the bureaucratic, street-level, and everyday enforcement practices by officials, the paper reveals how land development control, directly and indirectly, shapes informal land development in the MRBH. Particularly, it sheds light on how land development control unrolls through a contradictory combination of overregulation on one side and tolerance on the other. In light of this, I argue that, as land development control evolves without effectively tackling the land question and the structural drivers of informality, the state becomes paradoxically entangled in the production of the same forms of informality it is expected to curb. Therefore, land development control is better understood as a fragile and ambivalent state compromise between the need to regulate urban expansion and market-driven informal urbanisation. By creating opportunities for rent extraction and capital accumulation which are explored by informal land developers, the state has been crucial for property-led informal urbanisation in metropolitan Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policymakers in the defense community should approach bureaucracy as a sixth domain of warfare because, in doing so, they can successfully handle its processes and procedures. Part one of this two-part article discusses the first three (of 10) fundamentals these professionals must develop to navigate the bureaucratic domain and address and balance the complexities of the policy-making process for the overall benefit of US national security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'smart city' has received growing attention as a concept that could play an essential role in the sustainability of the Arctic. Today, the idea is associated with information and communication technology (ICT) when used in urban areas to improve quality of life, offer more efficient and effective use of cities' infrastructures, foster social inclusion, and mitigate environmental harm. However, the relationship between smart cities and Arctic sustainability remains ambiguous, especially from perspectives beyond those of techno-optimism. Our aim in this paper is to critically discuss the value of smart city concept for Arctic cities, from an urban dynamic perspective. To this end, this paper reflects on how the sustainability of Arctic cities can be challenged by urban dynamics in metrics for (1) smart city development, (2) politics and bureaucratization, and (3) the role of citizens. The paper has several implications for academia, practitioners, and policymakers: for the former, it advances an alternative debate to explore the complex relations between smart city development and Arctic sustainability; for practitioners and policymakers, it indicates the problematic but often hidden side of smart city development, stressing the need to carefully translate the concept and its promises to fit the unique Arctic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: One of the challenging topics among public administration theorists is the relationship between the two concepts of politics and administration. Various theories have been proposed regarding these two concepts; however, no consensus has been reached, and political science and public administration theorists still struggle to define the boundaries between administration and politics. Today, the concept of the state encompasses both bureaucracy and politics. However, understanding the nature of politics and bureaucracy and their interrelationship is difficult, as each can influence the other. This paper aims to separate the concept of politics from bureaucracy to better understand the extent of their influence. This influence can have positive or negative consequences, depending on the conditions and contexts of different societies. In practice, however, distinguishing between administration and politics is very difficult, and some theorists believe that separating these two concepts is not feasible in practice. Furthermore, this relationship may differ in developed and developing countries, taking on a distinct form. The aim of this paper is to examine and study the relationship between politics and bureaucracy in the public administration of Iran. Design/methodology/approach: The current research adopts a qualitative approach. To achieve the defined objectives, research data were collected through purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews with 11 executive experts from the Ministry of Energy. An inductive thematic analysis method was used to analyze the data and address the research question. Research Findings: After collecting and analyzing the data, 95 initial codes were identified. These were categorized and re-examined to extract 24 basic themes, ultimately leading to the identification of 7 organizing themes and a network of themes. The organizing themes include the dependency of decisions on personal opinions, consideration of political power in decisions, nepotism in selecting bureaucrats, the short-term nature of bureaucrats' service, the presence of formalism in selecting bureaucrats, the weakness in utilizing scientific findings and experts, and the weak connection between experts and decision-makers. The findings indicate that the public administration and bureaucracy in Iran have deviated from Weber's ideal bureaucracy. Previous research has shown that most developed countries have closer alignment with Weber's ideal bureaucracy in their public administration, implementing structural features such as administrative hierarchy, specialization, and meritocracy. Studies have shown that better results in public administration can be achieved if politicians' decisions and policies can be separated from the execution and administration of public affairs. Limitations & Consequences: The final model presented by the researcher may not be generalizable to all public sector organizations. Practical Consequences: The findings of the current research are based solely on one ministry due to the broad scope of the topic, which may pose limitations in terms of generalizability. Innovation or value of the Article: Most studies and research conducted to date on the relationship between politics and administration have been focused on developed countries, and the existing literature is predominantly related to developed countries and modern states. Therefore, the results of studies conducted in developing countries can offer both theoretical and practical innovation. The current research examines the relationship between politics and administration in the public administration of Iran, which, as a developing country, allows for deeper and more precise studies. Ultimately, the results can be used to reform the administrative and political systems. Additionally, this research can help address existing challenges in the country's public administration from a comparative studies perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of COVID-19 unleashed a severe crisis in society. The suddenness and speed with which the disease spread into a global pandemic makes it an outstanding case for showing how bureaucracy acts in response to a crisis marked by uncertainty and urgency. This article focuses on the role played by the central government bureaucracy in preparing and enacting the Danish government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. It is based on full access to internal government files related to crisis management during the winter and spring of 2020. These files include memos, e-mails, decision notes, and draft decisions from key civil servants. The article demonstrates the strength of the theory of bounded rationality when it comes to analyzing the interaction between top civil servants and political executives. Moreover, it shows how administrative and political executives can mold a governmental organization to overcome the inertia inherent in bureaucratic organization and procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing consensus among academics and development practitioners about the need to do development differently, one that emphasizes the importance of knowing the context in which reform policies and institutions are to be introduced and implemented. Designing appropriate public sector reforms, it is increasingly recognised, should not be based merely on what external actors deem desirable, but more on what is likely to be feasible within particular political and historical contexts. Yet, there remain important challenges in the ability of donors to move beyond merely thinking politically to actually designing and implementing reforms in ways that put politics at the centre, not least because development practitioners have little in the way of operational guidance on how 'best-fit' solutions are to be identified. Drawing insights from public financial management reforms in Ghana, this article argues that thinking of countries in terms of their political settlements dynamics can enable development practitioners to distinguish meaningfully between different country contexts by identifying potential priority areas, programming approaches, and potential partners with whom they are likely to have traction. The article concludes by highlighting how the Ghanaian experience can help us think and work differently in reforming public agencies from a political settlements approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Economics, Business, Politics, & International Relations (JEBPIR) / Ekonomi Işletme Siyaset ve Uluslararsi Ilişkiler Dergisi (JEBPIR) is the property of Ekonomi Isletme Siyaset ve Uluslararsi Iliskiler Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We have heard many times expressions such as: “empty words”, “empty talk”, “hot air”, but is there really an empty “phraseology”, one that does not mean anything, i.e., that does not have a clear referent (the idea it refers to)? Showing the possibilities of such phraseology without meaning, the paper examines its use in politics, focusing on bureaucratic language that shapes our political reality, and can be found in many constitutional documents of the EU, US, or even UN. Namely, we will try to show that between general and particular meaning, there is a huge gap, an emptiness, which is used by a certain type of speech, in order to absorb every other language and its performative powers. Our criticism will move in two directions: the first has the task of showing the meaning(less) character of political bureaucratic phraseology as such, and its passivizing or non-affirmative effects. The other one comes down to examining the ideological background of Eurocentrism, detecting the hegemonic character of the idea of Europe (and Western civilizations) embedded in its political language. Starting from Ernesto Laclau’s understanding of the “empty signifier” and the necessary function it has in the foundation of the system (especially a hegemonic one), through the history of the discourse of the idea of Europe, we will show the possibility and use of “emptiness” in meaning, especially when it comes to core values that are set for the foundation of one’s politics.

In the late eighteenth century, European administrations saw the emergence of the Curriculum Vitae (CV) as a medium for job applications. These developments led civil servants who applied for employment to write about the merits of their careers. Focusing on Prussia and drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concept of 'micropolitics', I argue that the 'meritocratisation' of the civil service produced a competitive climate that prompted micropolitical coping strategies. Applicants used diverging 'lines of writing' to question the prevailing bureaucratic value system. In doing so, candidates tried to soften meritocratic rules to the maximum and shifted them in their favour. By recounting family hardships, strokes of fate, or undue career advancements of competitors, applicants legitimised the failing of their own careers and demanded professional re-compensation. The life writing exhibited in application letters and CVs was less about constructing an identity or producing meaning rather than strategically affecting the politics of advancement and career progression. The lives that are preserved in personnel files today were brought to writing only because applicants had a material interest in their integration into the bureaucratic apparatus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Enfances, Familles, Generations is the property of Enfances, Familles, Generations and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)