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A key claim in bureaucratic reputation literature is that reputation has several dimensions. This presents agencies with a difficult choice concerning which dimension(s) they should emphasize in the management of their reputation. This paper analyzes how regulatory agencies manage their reputation through communicative responses to public judgments, based on a single-case study of the German financial regulator BaFin. Our theoretical argument underscores the importance of different reputational dimensions for regulatory agencies that simultaneously considers their distinct reputation reserves. Our main finding was that BaFin prioritizes responses to public judgments targeting reputational dimensions that are central to its mission and for which the agency has a weak reputation, as opposed to judgments targeting dimensions that are central to its mission and for which it has a strong reputation, or judgments targeting peripheral dimensions. The paper demonstrates the importance of agency missions for reputation management and suggests directions for further research.

Although scholarly interest in populism has increased as populist parties have risen across Europe, the subnational level has been largely overlooked. This article adopts an original subnational focus and explores an unlikely but increasingly prevalent political agenda: the combination of technocracy and populism. We focus on technocratic populism as a political and governance strategy at the municipal level and assess how the interaction of populism and technocracy plays out empirically in relation to administration and public policies and how the tensions and synergies between technocracy and populism are solved at the local level. The article argues that the local level is especially prone to this kind of intersection between technocratic and populist ideology. While the article is mainly an exercise in concept development, two illustrative cases at the city level, namely the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five Star Movement) in Rome and the Akce nespokojených občanů (ANO, Action of Dissatisfied Citizens) in Prague are used to support the argument.

As the world becomes more open, problems, as well as the policies designed to address them, have become more complex. Policy problems are caused and shaped by developments in other domains and by actors who are not part of the problem’s policy space. The mismatch between the allocation of policy capacities (legal authority and resources) and the actual manifestation of policy problems creates interdependence. This chapter introduces various types of problems arising from policy interdependence and proposes ways to coordinate policies as potential solutions. The main types of policy interdependence problems are externalities, policy arbitrage, and free-riding. Coordination of policies is essential for responding to policy interdependence, but it is inherently difficult to achieve in light of power dispersion and fragmented authority. Hierarchical coordination is often unfeasible for addressing transboundary problems, but mechanisms of horizontal coordination, such as bargaining and mutual adjustment, come with their own limitations. Against this background, this chapter discusses options for increasing coordination capacity and their advantages and disadvantages

This introductory chapter gives an overview of the essential components of public policy. Starting from the quest for evidence-based policy-making in twenty-first-century states, the chapter introduces this book’s fundamental understanding of ‘how to do (good) public policy’. The core argument is that doing public policy requires the skills and capacities to understand the policy problem at hand and expertise regarding past and present policies related to this problem—what has been tried and tested, what failed, and what worked. But policy-makers and supporting analysts also need an understanding of the political process of getting to good policies. On the basis of a brief survey of the intellectual foundations of policy analysis, the chapter introduces an ‘interactive’ approach to policy analysis and how it relates to other branches of policy analysis. Finally, the chapter identifies the constituent components of how to do public policy, which structure the book: process, policies, and capacity.

Implementation is what happens ‘after a bill becomes a law’ (Bardach 1977) and encompasses tasks ranging from the specification of programme details (budget, jurisdiction, personnel) to the street-level delivery or enforcement of a policy. Implementation is critical for policy success and failure, and policy research has identified the structure of the implementation field (including, but not limited to, the administrative structure of the engine room) and the motivation and behaviour of the target population as key factors (beyond the design of the policy itself, covered in Chapter 4). Based on these fundamental insights and a short reflection on the changing context for implementation in the twenty-first century, this chapter identifies five recurring problems or challenges impeding successful implementation and discusses solutions to these problems that are voiced in academic publications and in applied policy analysis work. The chapter provides analytical clues for assessing the appropriateness of these strategies in different contexts, based on an understanding of the motivation of the actors involved. We highlight that implementation is a continuation of the political process at a different level, in which the interests and strategies of both superstructure and engine room actors matter.

Policy design—finding the right policy instrument for a given problem—is at the core of policy-making. This chapter not only argues that policy design includes the assessment of costs, benefits, and potentially unintended side-effects of different policy options, but also the consideration of the fit of a new policy to the social, institutional, and policy context to which it will be added. We maintain that policy-makers should critically review whether the programme theory of a particular policy instrument is valid in a given context. The chapter develops a set of guiding questions that policy-makers can use for assessing the fit of a policy instrument to the relevant context. But smart policy design also considers the task’s political aspect, and the chapter points at four ways in which policy choices may affect policy processes in the future and the position of a policy-making organization therein. Again, these four mechanisms can serve as heuristics for policy-makers to take into account when designing policies.

Policy-making takes place in the context of institutions. Institutions consist of rules, norms, and mental maps; they guide the behaviour of individuals and organizations. In the superstructure, political institutions shape the allocation of power and the ability of political actors to veto decisions. In the engine room, policy fields are structured by sectoral institutions. They not only inform the general orientation of experts and the populace but also decisions regarding how a policy field is governed. This chapter focuses on three aspects of institutions in the policy process. We examine how to work with institutions in the superstructure, how to facilitate incremental change in the engine room, and how to build strong institutions.

While the ‘public’ in public policies implies decisions taken by governments, there are many other non-governmental actors in both the superstructure and the engine room. Knowing and understanding these private political actors—stakeholders—and how they interact in the policy process is a key precondition for successful public policy-making. In this chapter, we discuss the role of stakeholders in the policy process and analyse the potential for effective and productive involvement of private actors. We introduce stakeholder mapping as an essential tool in policy analysis. Moreover, we focus on the types of stakeholders and their organizational properties as a way to better understand their role in the policy process. Finally, we show the limits of stakeholder involvement and which red lines should be drawn in order to prevent capture of the policy process by private interests.

As we have seen throughout the previous chapters, public policy is about addressing societal problems by way of targeted interventions, i.e. policies. Having an impact on the perceived social problem—improving education, increasing road safety, reducing poverty, or cutting emissions—is the raison d’être of public policy, and the question ‘did it work’ is therefore key. Evaluation is both the stage of the policy process answering this question and a subfield of policy analysis dealing with the scientific methods and approaches for evaluating public policies. This chapter discusses what good evaluation entails, and which challenges policy-makers face when designing policy evaluations in a context where the demand for evidence is growing but its role is often shaped by political logics.

Public policy is much more than adopting a specific measure. It is a complex process of creating new norms or reinforcing existing ones, liaising with other stakeholders, and securing support and legitimacy for a particular path of action. It aims not only to steer the behaviour of individuals, businesses, and stakeholders, but also of policy-makers themselves. Effective policy-making is based on complementary norms, instruments, and actors that all reinforce each other. Policy-makers aim to align policy instruments with the institutional context and the stakeholders at hand. Because the context and actors vary across policy fields and countries, solutions to wicked problems need to be tailor-made; one-size-fits-all solutions seldom exist. In this final chapter, we first summarize the key messages of the book. We consolidate our general approach to the policy process and combine the key components: process, policies, and capacity. Returning to the Paris Agreement and climate change policies we began with in Chapter 1, we illustrate how our understanding of public policy can be applied to a specific yet wicked policy issue. We discuss how the concept impacts the notion of evidence-based policy-making and propose a broader understanding of the policy process. Finally, we illustrate what kind of skills a policy analyst needs in today’s policy world.

Most public policies are made or conceived not by members of parliaments, elected politicians, or governments, but by dense networks of experts on particular policy fields or issues. These experts prepare and structure the debate about policy problems and potential solutions. Elected politicians and government ministers, on the other hand, battle over power positions in elections and parliaments, as well as the general direction of policy and political change. The distinction between these power politics by politicians—the superstructure—and the work of experts in policy fields—the engine room—is the subject of this chapter. We introduce both spheres and their contribution to the policy process. In addition, we point out how both spheres are interlinked. Finally, we draw conclusions and recommendations for policy-makers on how to deal with the dual structure of policy-making

How to Do Public Policy offers a guide to students and practitioners as to how to improve problem-solving with policies in a political world. It integrates insights from applied policy analysis and studies of the policy process to develop a framework that conceives policy-making as structured by two spheres of action—the ‘engine room’ of specialists and experts in government agencies, NGOs, research organizations, etc., on the one hand, and the political ‘superstructure’ of politicians, key public stakeholders, and the public, on the other hand. Understanding the different logics of the engine room and the superstructure is key for successful policy-making. The dual structure of policy-making provides a perspective on (interactive) policy analysis and policy-making (actor-centred policy-making) that moves from the focus on individual and specific measures, towards understanding and shaping the relation and interaction between policy interventions, the institutional context, and the stakeholders involved or affected. Part I of the book presents the basic analytical concepts needed to understand the policy process and the structures and dynamics involved in it, as well as to understand how and why actors behave the way they do—and how to engage with different types of actors. Part II moves further into the nuts and bolts of policy-making, including policy design, implementation, and evaluation. Part III introduces and explores three key aspects of the capacity to make good policies: engagement with stakeholders, the process of policy coordination in a context of interdependence, and the role of institutions.

At the core of policy-making are decisions taken (or not) by governments or legislatures. These decisions arise because problems emerge, and political actors choose to address them. How do problems find their way onto a government’s to-do list? Governments’ agendas are often driven by events. Conflicts break out, disasters occur, a social problem makes the headlines, and parliamentary or international timetables dominate everyday decision-making. Also, governments are elected on a platform of policies and will aim to implement them. In addition, many actors and stakeholders in the engine room try to influence government agendas. They aim to draw attention to policy problems by providing evidence or organizing campaigns or protests. Sometimes, actors in the engine room seek to avoid broadening attention to ‘their’ issue because they benefit from the status quo. This chapter explores how policy problems catch the attention of policy-makers and who takes on responsibility for their solution. We also analyse how the different modes of agenda-setting have implications for the policy process itself and for problem definition.

Research on smart cities is still at an early stage. The conjecture of this article is that smart city strategies and their impacts will inevitably vary across contexts; however, the debate still l...

This chapter discusses how a classic perspective of public policy and public administration, incrementalism, contributes to questions of the politics of time. It argues that the contribution of incrementalism is not limited to emphasizing the advantages of small-scale and stepwise policy or institutional changes compared to comprehensive reform strategies. Beyond this, the chapter shows how contributions from diverse fields, ranging from comparative politics and behavioral insights to urban planning, develop the concept of incrementalism, and how these approaches can enrich debates on policy and institutional change. In particular, the common image of incrementalism as subservient to existing power structures is challenged. Linking the varieties of incrementalism to questions of politics of time helps to develop these insights.

Administrative capacities are required to give effect to policy instruments. While seemingly obvious, policy research has, as yet, not systematically linked these two perspectives. The policy instrument perspective emerged in the context of implementation research and the wider debate about changing modes of governance. Administrative capacities and resources always played a role in this research, but cumulative empirical exploration or theory building has remained underdeveloped. A stronger integration of administrative capacity perspectives into research on policy instruments is essential so as to progress our understanding regarding the choice, design, and operation of policy instruments. A stronger policy orientation in research on administrative capacities can help to address limitations of indicator-based studies of capacity, which currently dominate empirical research on administrative capacities. The design and choice of policy instruments has an effect on administrative capacities: Capacity-reinforcing policies can be distinguished from capacity-undermining ones. A challenge for future research is under which conditions will politicians invest in administrative capacities, an investment that will only yield (uncertain) positive outcomes in the medium term.

This chapter situates ‘executive styles’ within the wider ‘family of styles’ approaches and discusses some of the challenges for advancing comparative research in this field. To this end, it introduces two key institutional dimensions of executive politics that shape executive styles. Subsequently, it reviews and discusses empirical research on executive styles and elaborates on two analytical dimensions for the comparison of national and sectoral executive styles. In a next step, the chapter moves to comparisons over time and reviews studies that analyse the change of executive styles in individual country cases. While a range of (country) examples are used, the chapter draws in particular on European examples and quite specifically on Germany and the UK. The chapter concludes that exploring the varieties of executive styles requires combining national accounts that engage with the institutional and political complexities of single countries, or families of nations, in detail with focussed comparisons zooming in on specific dimensions.

Despite the growing significance of fiscal rules, there is little research about tools and practices of enforcement at the local level. Addressing this knowledge gap, this chapter makes three contributions: first, we review the literature on regulatory enforcement in the ‘public-to-private’ context and discuss six key insights. Second, we provide an empirical overview of enforcement instruments across 21 European countries and discuss them in light of those key insights. Third, we present findings from an in-depth over-time analysis of enforcement practices in Germany’s largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia. We find that European supervisory bodies have a range of instruments that broadly follow the logic of the ‘enforcement pyramid’ at their disposal, but there is substantial cross-national variation in the instruments used. The case study reveals a ‘back and forth’ enforcement style alternating between strengthening and loosening rules and enforcement measures. We find political logics, regulators’ capacities and economic contexts as key drivers. Finally, we conclude that the idea of enforcement as a rational application of legal norms is unrealistic. In order to increase compliance, regulators should make more of an effort to understand the underlying rationale for compliance and violations; they need to secure political support and a credible strategy for escalating sanctions in case of non-compliance.

This chapter studies decision-making behaviour of independent regulatory agencies. Theoretical accounts of delegation to regulatory agencies emphasise that losses of political accountability of regulators are traded off against potential gains in regulatory efficiency. The theory of credible commitment suggests that independent (non-majoritarian) regulatory agencies are more effective in regulating markets than organisations under direct political control. However, independent regulatory agencies operate in a political context and need to demonstrate their benefit to a diverse set of stakeholders, including elected politicians. We are hence confronted with a ‘paradox of autonomisation’ according to which more autonomous public organisations have to take into consideration external demands to a greater degree than less autonomous organisations. Independent regulatory agencies will thus be subjected to high accountability demands. We use the analytical lens of bureaucratic reputation theory to analyse how different types of external demands affect regulatory agencies’ attention to stakeholders. The chapter argues that reputation-sensitive regulatory agencies will exhibit differential response patterns to negative public judgements, depending on the kind of negative judgements and the type of actor criticising the regulator. In this chapter we use data from a systematic media analysis of public judgements and regulators’ communicative response, with the financial regulator and the utility regulator (electricity, railways, etc.) in Germany as empirical cases . We find that regulatory agencies respond differently to negative public judgements yet are not more (or less) responsive to political actors’ criticism compared to other types of actors. This finding questions independent regulatory agencies’ democratic accountability, yet the chapter also suggests that public criticism and debate is only one channel, among many others, through which regulators are held democratically accountable.

Political executives depend on bureaucrats in the formulation and implementation of public policy. This raises fundamental questions about the balancing of bureaucratic autonomy and political control. The chapter primarily focuses on the relationship between political executives and public officials tasked with policy development (‘policy bureaucrats’). It provides an overview of the main scholarly debates: the recruitment and replacement of public officials; sources of bureaucratic power; and interactions between policy bureaucrats and political executives. We also provide an overview of the main theories on politico-administrative relations, including political economy and Public Service Bargain (PSB) perspectives. The chapter then highlights key developments in current research, including comparative analyses, the study of ministerial advisers, and the politicization of regulatory agencies. We conclude with a research agenda on the impact of increasingly complex problems and political polarization on role understandings and patterns of decision-making, as well as on the motivations and effects of politicization.

Public management reforms in Germany have long been characterized by slow-moving incrementalism and maintenance of its administrative system’s central characteristics. This article reviews recent developments in administrative reforms against the background of the traditional German reform style. More ambitious reform efforts in the field of digitalization raise conceptual puzzles related to the conditions under which incrementalism can generate substantive change – and at what point incremental reforms give way to more rapid patterns of change. The article also discusses the implications of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis on public management reforms.

In discussing some of the core claims of collaborative innovation, this article uses the notion of ‘blind spots’ in a double meaning. On the one hand, it points at some blind spots in the debate on collaborative innovation, i.e. potential weaknesses, risks, and unintended effects of public sector innovation strategies resting on principles of collaborative innovation. Second, the paper considers collaborative innovation as a counter-strategy against blind spots and attention biases of public organizations. Drawing on this perspective helps to critically discuss some of the key assumptions supporting the promise of collaborative innovation to deliver benefits critical for public governance.

Zusammenfassung Die sich seit den spaten 60er-Jahren etablierende politikwissenschaftliche Verwaltungswissenschaft hat eine wichtige Rolle in der Entwicklung der Governance- Perspektive und -Debatte gespielt, vor allem durch das Entmystifizieren uberkommender Vorstellungen hierarchischer Steuerung und in der Durchsetzung eines Verstandnisses von politischer Steuerung als tendenziell horizontale Interaktion von institutionellen Akteuren („kooperativer Staat“, „kooperative Verwaltung“). Die zentrale These dieses Beitrages ist, dass die Verwaltungswissenschaft, und insbesondere die policy-orientierte Verwaltungsforschung, im Ergebnis der Durchsetzung der Governance- Perspektive, zu der sie wesentlich beitrug, an Bedeutung verloren hat – sowohl in anwendungsorientierten Debatten im Kontext von Governance, als auch in Bezug auf die Erforschung von Kernthemen der Teildisziplin. Basierend auf Literatur- und Dokumentenanalysen sowie Interviews zeichnet der Beitrag diese Entwicklung als Zusammenspiel von wissenschaftsinternen Konzeptentwicklungen und reformpolitischen Debatten nach und zeigt, dass der analytische Kern der policy-orientierten Verwaltungsforschung geschwacht aus dieser Entwicklung hervorgegangen ist. Schlagworte: Verwaltungswissenschaft, Governance, Reformkoalitionen, Policy ----- An ironic twist of fate: Public Administration in the age of Governance Abstract The policy-oriented public administration research that has developed since the late 1960s has played a critical role in the development of the governance perspective and debate, mainly by way of demystifying received wisdom concerning hierarchical steering and contributing to an understanding of political governance as a mostly horizontal interaction of institutional actors (“cooperative state”, “cooperative administration”). The key argument of this article is that Public Administration, in particular its policyoriented branch, has lost significance in the wake of the rise of the governance paradigm to which it made a critical contribution – both in practice-oriented debates and in terms of contributions to core themes of Public Administration. Based on a review of the literature, document analysis and interviews, the article explores this development as the result of interaction between scholarly concept development and political reform debates. It shows that the analytical core of policy-oriented Public Administration was weakened as a result of this development. Keywords: Public Administration, Governance, Reform Coalitions, Policy ----- Bibliographie: Wegrich, Kai: Ironie des Schicksals. Verwaltungswissenschaft im Zeitalter von Governance, dms, 1-2017, S. 3-30. https://doi.org/10.3224/dms.v10i1.01

This article analyzes urban governance innovations in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, focusing on the role of these innovations within the wider political management strategy of the executive leader. These innovations, all of which utilize digital information and communication technologies, are important elements within a leadership and management strategy. The article explores the role of digital innovations within the broader strategy of the mayor’s use of managerial tools as means to strengthen control of the city’s governance. Though presented as an apolitical management style of “what works,” this form of management is also deployed to enforce contentious political decisions with substantial implications for the social fabric of the city. This article offers an analysis of the political role and implications of urban governance and public service innovations that are often presented and analyzed in purely instrumental and apolitical ways.

This 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.

Nudge and the wider behavioural 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 paper 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 paper 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.

A key argument in recent theorizing on the drivers of bureaucratic behaviour is that agencies seek to establish and maintain a unique reputation. While recent years have witnessed substantial empirical support for this claim, the field lacks comparative examinations of the dynamics of reputation and its management throughout crisis periods. This article draws on a systematic media content analysis to explore the exposure and communication responses of the German, Belgian and Danish financial regulators to reputational threats before, during, and after the financial crisis. Our results point at the dynamic and context-sensitive nature of reputation management. Ein zentrales Argument der aktuellen Literatur zu bürokratischem Entscheidungsverhalten lautet, dass Behörden danach streben, eine einzigartige Reputation zu erlangen und aufrechtzuerhalten. Diese Aussage wurde in den vergangenen Jahren in zahlreichen empirischen Studien bestätigt. Allerdings liegen bislang keine vergleichenden Analysen vor, die sich mit der Veränderung bürokratischer Reputation und dem Reputationsmanagement in Krisenzeiten auseinandersetzen. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht auf der Grundlage einer systematischen Medienanalyse, welchen reputationsbezogenen Bedrohungen die Finanzmarktbehörden in Deutschland, Belgien und Dänemark vor, während und nach der Finanzkrise ausgesetzt waren und wie diese hierauf mit Hilfe öffentlicher Kommunikation reagiert haben. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Reputationsmanagement zeitlichen Schwankungen unterliegt und kontextabhängig ist.

Bach and Wegrich introduce the key theme of the volume, which revolves around understanding how routine processes of decision-making in public sector organizations potentially lead to problematic outcomes in terms of coordination and problem solving. Instead of viewing those outcomes as the result of organizational or individual pathologies, the chapter traces the origins of non-coordination within and between organizations to intentionally rational organizational behaviour. Conceptualizing blind spots as part of a larger universe of biases in organizational attention, based on established theoretical notions of bounded rationality and institutionalized organizations, the authors show how different types of attention biases provide novel insights into seemingly irrational or uncoordinated administrative behaviour.

This concluding chapter addresses two ‘so what?’ questions raised throughout the volume. First, if attention biases are a pertinent factor in organizational life in political contexts, what can be done about them? Bach and Wegrich discuss three public sector reform approaches (joined-up government, impact assessment, and behavioural insights) in terms of how, and how successfully, they address different attention biases. Second, how can research on organizational attention biases take the role of institutional context systematically into account and explore particular different institutions’ vulnerabilities to organizational attention biases? Two ideal-type institutional modes of coordination—hierarchical and negotiated coordination—are discussed in terms of their susceptibility to attention biases. Taken together, the discussion of these two questions outlines an agenda for future research the volume seeks to stimulate.

The United States and European Union have focused on improving the practices used to develop and implement legal requirements as a way to improve the quality of regulations themselves. Transparency in the regulatory process, from determining regulatory goals, to evaluating alternative means to achieve those goals, to enforcing regulatory requirements, features high on the agenda of cross-cutting government reform programs that address the issue of ‘regulatory quality.’ This article examines the transparency of procedures in the US and the EU related to impact analysis and public comment. It examines the importance of transparency for ensuring the effectiveness of these two regulatory practices, summarizes regulatory procedures in the US and the EU, compares the different approaches, and highlights the relative merits of each.

How can one not applaud the renewed better regulation agenda launched by the First Vice President Timmermans? Finally this fuzzy reform field is in the hands of a strong executive politician with the authority to make substantial progress on an agenda that always appeared good on paper, but somehow did not deliver against the expectations it defined for itself. ‘Better regulation for better results’ not only promises tangible results, but it combines this with the ambition of ‘changing how we work at the European level’. This ambition should provide us – as citizens, stakeholders and scholars – with an opportunity to essentially present a scorecard concerning these results in the near future. And, indeed, experts and other stakeholders in the better regulation game do welcome the initiative.My view on this agenda is that the promise of ‘better results’ will be hard to deliver, whereas the ambition of ‘changing how we work’ is more likely to materialize in one way or another.

Much 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.

Verwaltungswissenschaft ist in Deutschland haufig als Reformwissenschaft bezeichnet worden (vgl. z. B. Jann 2006, S. 122). Gemeint ist damit nicht nur, dass sich Verwaltungsforschung intensiv mit dem Design, der Implementation und den Wirkungen von Verwaltungsreformen auseinandersetzt – das tut sie naturlich auch, und hierin besteht ein besonders ertragreiches Forschungsfeld. Der Begriff Reformwissenschaft meint aber mehr, namlich, dass die akademische Identitat – die Fragestellungen, empirischen Bezugspunkte, die Konzeptentwicklung, die raison d’etre – der Verwaltungswissenschaft in der Auseinandersetzung mit Programmen zur Reform von Staat und Verwaltung entstanden und weiterhin durch diese Auseinandersetzung gepragt ist.

This chapter comments onImplementation, a book by Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky. It traces its roots to the Economic Development Agency’s Oakland project, designed to promote economic development in cities by increasing employment opportunities for minorities. It considers Pressman and Wildavsky’s account of why the Oakland program failed, as well as their central argument with regards to the role of politics and policy-making in implementation. It discusses the decline of implementation studies as the dominating subfield of public policy research and highlights some key concerns raised by Pressman and Wildavsky that continue to be influential. The chapter concludes by looking at debates about the merits of non-hierarchical coordination, informal interaction, and emergent networks.

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.

The term governance has been used in many contexts and meanings. This paper assesses three logics of control widely associated with governance, namely multi-level governance, the regulatory state and performance management. It questions to what extent these logics are present, are reinforcing or are mutually self-destructive in their effects. This paper explores the field of meat inspection as a critical aspect of the Europeanized food safety regime and concentrates on the cases of Denmark and Germany. The paper concludes that the three logics of control's effects are interactive and that, far from being mutually reinforcing, the various logics are mutually self-destructive and destabilizing.

In the study of risk regulation, grid-group cultural theory has attracted considerable interest. There has, however, been a lack of a systematic interest in its claims and in methodological issues. In this article, we present five claims that are drawn from cultural theory and assess them in the light of failure in meat inspections in Germany. These claims are assessed through the analysis of argumentation as recorded in newspapers. In the light of its empirical findings, this article argues that the claims and methodology employed offer a promising avenue for further work to investigate the usefulness of this particular theoretical approach.