Limited policy capacity is commonly expected to constrain the expansion of social policy. Yet, across Latin America, several subnational governments have expanded Comprehensive Care Systems despite persistent fiscal, organizational, and institutional constraints. How do implementing agencies expand social policy under such conditions? This paper argues that policy capacity shapes implementation through the organizational coping strategies agencies adopt when implementation demands exceed available capacities. I examine this mechanism through a comparative analysis of three subnational Comprehensive Care Systems in Bogotá (Colombia), San Pedro Garza García (Mexico), and Iztapalapa (Mexico). Drawing on more than 55 semi-structured interviews with policymakers, mid-level managers, and frontline workers, complemented by documentary evidence and field observations, the study compares how implementing agencies addressed capacity deficits while carrying out two core implementation tasks: targeting and integrated service delivery. The findings show that agencies expanded social policy through different combinations of organizational coping strategies—developing internal capacities, borrowing external capacities, and thinning-out policy mandates—which produced systematically different outcomes in terms of access, generosity and quality, and equity. Implementing agencies that primarily developed missing capacities achieved more sustainable and equitable forms of policy expansion, whereas those relying more heavily on borrowing or thinning-out were able to implement Comprehensive Care Systems under severe constraints but often at the expense of service quality, equity, or long-term sustainability. By identifying organizational coping strategies as the organizational mechanism linking policy capacity to implementation outcomes, the paper contributes to the literature on policy capacity, policy implementation, and comparative social policy.
Digital transformation is widely seen as a key dimension of public sector innovation, expected to reshape and improve service delivery. Yet, empirical developments often fall short of these expectations, particularly in local and decentralised public administrations. We employ a mixed methods design to investigate the state of digitalisation and implementation dynamics in selected areas of German public administration and to identify key drivers shaping substantive digital transformation. Specifically, we employ qualitative interview data ( n = 64) and quantitative survey data ( n = 1751) from three digitally mature administrative domains: vehicle registration; building permitting; and tax administration. The findings show that despite high ambitions, digital transformation remains fragmented, with persistent deficits such as the parallelism of paper-based and digital procedures and limited back-office digitalisation. Internal drivers, such as leadership, dedicated personnel and employee involvement, prove crucial for achieving substantive digital transformation. Points to practitioners This study highlights the central role of internal drivers in shaping meaningful public sector digitalisation. Local administrators should: ‐ prioritise back-office digitalisation; ‐ establish dedicated organisational structures for digitalisation within departments, such as a digitalisation unit; and ‐ actively involve staff through training and change management initiatives.
This study examines the interdependencies among good governance components using data from the Sustainable Governance Indicators project. Employing expectation-maximization clustering, Bayesian network-tree augmented naive Bayes classification and Bayesian structural equation modeling, the analysis reveals key governance drivers, including parties and interest associations, adaptability, and interministerial coordination. Additionally, evidence-based instruments and societal consultation amplify systemic interactions, reinforcing governance effectiveness. The findings challenge the assumption of independent governance components, highlighting synergistic and cascading effects. This study extends the application of governance theory and resource dependence theory, demonstrating the necessity of integrated governance strategies. By offering a nuanced understanding of governance dynamics, this research provides policymakers with actionable insights to enhance resilience, inclusivity, and adaptability in OECD and EU governance frameworks. Points to practitioners: Policymakers should strengthen interministerial coordination, adaptability, and societal consultation to leverage governance synergies and enhance policy coherence and implementation. Investing in data-driven policymaking—through impact assessments and policy evaluations—improves transparency, accountability, and public trust. Fostering institutional adaptability, political participation, and citizen engagement is essential for inclusive and sustainable governance in dynamic policy environments.
Local governments, and here especially large cities, are the epicentres of the twin transition of sustainability and digitalization, as these challenges particularly manifest in the urban context. Emphasizing their interdependent character, the nascent scholarly theme of ‘digital sustainability’ suggests that innovative digital technologies help governments address sustainability issues. Digitalization and sustainability can reinforce each other but also clash, as unintended rebound effects resulting from digital technologies are often overlooked. Therefore, this commentary aims to stimulate critical reflection and advance a conceptual agenda on the possibility of ‘sustainable digitalization’ in cities. We suggest further developing the concept of ‘digital humanism’ as a heuristic device for the development and analysis of ‘smart’ solutions. This can help also to consider the unsustainable effects of digitalization that take shape in distant locations (e.g. affecting the far end of supply chains) and/or with a delay (e.g. affecting future generations). We thus offer a perspective that accounts for the global sustainability effects of local digital technologies and that avoids the pitfalls of presentism and solutionism by local decision-makers. Points to Practitioners 1. Digital technologies introduced to advance sustainability goals can generate unintended ecological and social rebound effects. Municipal administrations should therefore institutionalize procedures to assess lifecycle impacts, energy and resource use, and social externalities before and during deployment. 2. Sustainable digitalization requires structured reflexivity. Cities can embed review mechanisms, impact assessments, and cross-departmental coordination processes that systematically examine tensions between digital efficiency gains and ecological or social costs. 3. Local governments should integrate a spatiotemporal perspective into routine decision-making, considering not only impacts on current local users but also long-term consequences and effects along global supply chains – asking, for example: ‘Who is affected here and now , and who is affected there and then ?’
This editorial paper synthesizes recent high-impact scholarship in public administration to articulate a coherent research agenda aligned with the aims and scope of the International Review of Administrative Sciences ( IRAS ). Drawing on top-tier publications from 2020 to 2025, it systematically structures the field around six interconnected domains: public governance and management; public policy and administrative processes; institutional analysis and reform; public sector innovation and digital governance; social equity and participatory governance; and crisis governance and administrative resilience. Across these domains, the analysis shows that effective public value creation depends on the interaction between institutional design, administrative and policy capacities, participatory mechanisms, and increasingly data-intensive and artificial intelligence-enabled digital infrastructures. The editorial paper identifies cross-cutting gaps − including limited longitudinal and comparative evidence beyond Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development contexts, insufficient integration of equity and intersectionality in digital participation research, and weak links between innovation and concrete governance outcomes such as trust and distributive effects − and proposes six future research lines on: (a) integrating policy capacity and digital transformation; (b) institutional adaptation and resilience in complex environments; (c) equity, participation and digital inclusion; (d) crisis governance, administrative learning and resilience; (e) connecting innovation to measurable public value outcomes; and (f) methodological advancements through longitudinal, multilevel, network and configurational designs. In doing so, it positions IRAS as a central venue for theoretically ambitious, methodologically rigorous and normatively grounded research that addresses the intertwined challenges of digitalization, societal complexity and crises in contemporary public administration.
The study aims to examine the opportunities and risks associated with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into public administration processes. For this purpose, the advantages and disadvantages of using AI were analysed. The study employed a qualitative comparative analysis of policy and legal documents from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Ukraine to identify patterns of AI integration in public administration. Three forms of AI deployment are identified by the analysis: technocratic, participative and adaptive. These models each represent varying degrees of institutional readiness and governance maturity. The results show that although AI improves decision-making, efficiency and transparency, scattered data systems, uneven institutional coordination and restricted interoperability frequently impede its practical application. The study presents the Administrative AI Readiness Model, a conceptual framework that connects the adoption of AI's technological, ethical and human-capital aspects. Limitations include the use of secondary data, findings that are interpretive rather than empirical and the fact that regulatory developments are provisional. In spite of this, the study advances understanding of how ethical and institutional factors influence responsible AI governance in government. Artificial intelligence (AI) enables automation of routine tasks in public administration, improving service delivery. AI integration enhances data-driven decision-making and resource allocation in government. Implementation challenges include cybersecurity, privacy protection and ethical considerations.
This article examines how populist radical right government reshapes state bureaucracy within a patronage-based administrative system. While patronage and personnel politicization are common features of such systems across governments of different ideological orientations, we argue that populist radical right governments pursue a distinct pattern of bureaucratic control with implications for administrative backsliding. Drawing on longitudinal data on political and bureaucratic turnover across Slovak ministries between 2015 and 2025, we analyze two substantive areas of personnel management, purges and patronage appointments, and the treatment of institutionalized bureaucratic expertise, across temporal and spatial dimensions. The findings show that, compared with previous governments operating in the same patronage context, populist radical right governments sustain exceptionally high and prolonged levels of bureaucratic turnover beyond the initial post-electoral period, expand formal political appointments, and generate extreme levels of personnel replacement in ideologically salient policy areas. More broadly, the analysis suggests that administrative backsliding may unfold across diverse administrative contexts when populist radical right incumbents intensify and repurpose existing mechanisms of bureaucratic control, regardless of whether these originate in merit-based or patronage systems.
Public Administration (PA) teaching aims to prepare the next generation of public sector professionals. Given its strong connection to practice, it should align with civil service requirements. Research on the relationship between PA teaching and public sector professions in Africa in general, and in Ethiopia in particular, is scarce. Using a deductive content analysis approach, this study examines the competencies required in the civil service and evaluates the relevance of PA curricula. The findings show a general but insufficient alignment. PA teaching curricula do not adequately integrate critical areas of public governance, local politico-administrative traditions, sociocultural values, the political economy of the country and the broader African context. Weak collaboration among actors further exacerbates the problem. The study calls for curricula and pedagogical reforms and a stronger collaboration among academic institutions and stakeholders. It contributes to the debate on the relevance of PA teaching by offering both theoretical and empirical insights. Points for practitioners Public governance competencies are essential for effective performance in today's public sector. Strengthening these competencies should be a priority for improving governance and ensuring societal well-being. Public Administration education programs must remain closely aligned with the real needs of the public service. Strong collaboration between public sector institutions and universities is essential to ensure graduates are well prepared for professional roles. Active involvement of practitioners in teaching and engagement of faculty in public service activities helps develop graduates with practical skills, transferable competencies, and technical expertise relevant to local contexts. This, in turn, strengthens bureaucratic capacity. Revitalizing Public Administration programs and reforming public sector job design are necessary to improve productivity, enhance professional standards, and build a more capable and professional civil service. As international accreditation bodies, NASPAA accreditation standards and UNDESA/IASIA Standards of Excellence for PA programs should include indicators in their standards that reflect the unique features of the local context across countries.
An online panel survey experiment tested whether 'content explanation' improved the understanding of government financial reporting, and explored its relationship to participation. This is situated within a literature examining transparency, understanding, and engagement. A representative Japanese sample of 1400 was divided into control and treatment groups of 700. Each was provided with fictional financial reports of a local government, either with (treatment) or without (control) attached explanations of reporting concepts used. Testing eight hypotheses, we found explaining the concepts used did not improve the subjective (perceived) or objective (actual) understanding of the reports. Perceived understanding of accounting was not associated with actual understanding of the reports. Both objective and subjective understanding of reports was associated with types of participation. We found those with less actual understanding of government reports claimed a greater understanding and confidence in that understanding, consistent with a Dunning-Kruger effect found in other literature.
The third wave of autocratization has triggered changes in politico-administrative dynamics that scholars are beginning to unravel. We contribute to this endeavor by studying the role of perceived organizational protections in mitigating the impacts of democratic backsliding on state and rule of law dismantling. Through an original survey of public servants in Brazil, we test a theoretically informed model of six agency features shaping individual intentions to react to political attacks during the Bolsonaro presidency (2019-2022). The findings suggest that while some features effectively operate as protections and strengthen resistance intentions, others contradict theoretical expectations, inviting alternative explanations and new research. In addition to confirming the overall importance of agency-level factors in the fight against democratic backsliding, we emphasize the theoretical importance of the interaction between individual and organizational aspects in shaping conflictive politico-administrative dynamics.
This study examines the factors influencing the adoption of digital government platforms by public officials in Chile, within the context of the State's digital transformation. Based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), the model incorporates job satisfaction as an organizational outcome variable. A quantitative approach was employed using partial least squares structural equation modelling, based on data collected from 298 public employees. The results show that effort expectancy and social influence significantly affect intention to use, whereas performance expectancy does not. Effective use of the platforms is mainly explained by the intention to use and facilitating conditions, and is modestly associated with job satisfaction. These findings suggest that the organizational context and institutional resources are more decisive than perceived usefulness in contexts where the adoption of digital government platforms is strongly influenced by institutional mandates. The application of the UTAUT model in the Latin American public sector context highlights the importance of considering technical, human and cultural factors in digital transformation policies. It is recommended that future research include additional variables and explore longitudinal or comparative designs. Points to practitioners Institutional mandates and regulatory pressures influence the adoption of digital platforms in local governments. The successful implementation of digital government platforms depends on facilitating conditions such as infrastructure, training and technical support. The use of digital government platforms may positively influence job satisfaction, highlighting the importance of employee experience.
Governments increasingly rely on digital channels to support public service delivery and facilitate citizen participation. This study examines how perceived social support, defined as citizens' subjective experience of receiving informational and emotional assistance from peers, shapes citizen coproduction in social media-based e-government contexts. Drawing on survey data from 768 users of Chongqing Release, a municipal government Weibo account in China, the study applies structural equation modelling to analyse the motivational mechanisms underlying peer-to-peer interaction and voluntary contribution. The findings show that perceived social support has a significant direct effect on coproduction. In addition, it operates through psychological mechanisms associated with the satisfaction of basic needs, particularly relatedness and autonomy. These results indicate that citizen participation in digital governance is driven both by reciprocal responses to received support and by internally experienced social connection and autonomy. They further suggest that digital government platforms can support coproduction through formal service design as well as by facilitating low-cost, peer-to-peer interactions. Such participation appears to rely less on competence or expertise and more on relational and affective factors. This study shifts the focus of coproduction research from institutional arrangements toward everyday digital interactions and highlights the importance of socially embedded, lightweight forms of citizen contribution.Points to practitioners center dot Government social media should be managed not only as a channel for information delivery, but also as an interactional space in which citizens can generate public value through mutual support and peer-to-peer exchange.center dot Public agencies should pay greater attention to emotional support, not only informational usefulness. In this study, emotional support showed the stronger overall effect on coproduction intention, suggesting that encouragement, recognition and responsive interaction may be especially important for sustaining citizen participation.center dot Effective digital participation depends less on citizens' expertise than on whether they feel socially connected and able to participate on their own terms. This implies that governments may achieve more by lowering psychological barriers and offering flexible, low-threshold participation formats than by relying on highly skilled users alone.center dot The role of government in digital governance should extend beyond service provision to the facilitation of citizen-to-citizen interaction. Designing platforms that support visibility, acknowledgement and open engagement can help create the relational conditions under which coproduction emerges and persists.
This study examines how city diplomacy activities relate to different dimensions of urban resilience. Focusing on metropolitan municipalities in T & uuml;rkiye, it analyses city diplomacy practices between 2014 and 2023 through content analysis and maps these activities onto different dimensions of urban resilience. The study has adopted an exploratory approach to identify policy and service areas where city diplomacy could potentially contribute to different dimensions of resilience, rather than measuring resilience outcomes. Taking metropolitan municipalities in T & uuml;rkiye as an instrumental empirical setting, this study contributes to the literature by linking city diplomacy to urban resilience from a public policy perspective and providing concrete examples from metropolitan municipalities in T & uuml;rkiye.
Information technology has altered the way governments have traditionally governed, and there are differing perspectives on the influence of this shift on government trust. Using 2016, 2018, and 2020 China Family Panel Studies and Statistical Yearbook data, this paper explores how e-government development affects public trust in the government. According to this study, e-government development increases public trust in the government by approximately 1.9%. This might be because the development of e-government facilitates better government performance and encourages public interest in politics, both of which increase public trust in the government. The research examines the heterogeneity of different demographic groups and reveals that the beneficial effects of e-government development on public trust in government exist among young people, men, and people with high levels of government trust. These findings help explain the link between digital governance and political trust and have important policy implications for enhancing urban governance in the digital era.
Governments, private enterprises, civil society organizations and social economy (SE) actors increasingly recognize the importance of structured cross-sector partnerships. While existing tri-sector and collaborative governance frameworks have advanced our understanding of cross-sector relationships, they tend to focus primarily on actor interactions and governance arrangements. This study proposes the “Sectoral Corridor” framework as a heuristic lens for examining how policy programmes can structure and support connections between sectors. Drawing on the island biogeography metaphor to organize and interpret public policy instruments that structure cross-sectoral relationships involving the SE, this study analyses the sectoral relationship between the SE and other sectors and develops the analytical framework of the Sectoral Corridor public policy to examine government interventions aimed at institutionalizing and sustaining cross-sectoral collaboration between the SE and other sectors. The research shifts the focus from temporary, project-based partnerships to policy-driven, long-term intersectoral relationships. It highlights how Sectoral Corridor policies function as bridges that embed the SE into broader social, economic and policy frameworks, thereby promoting sustainability.
During the tenure of the second democratically elected president, Thabo Mbeki, the South African government tried to deal with the problem of uncoordinated government activities by creating a mechanism known as the Cluster System. The aim of this paper is to examine the Cluster System and posit it as an innovative method for improving coordination and performance across agencies, as well as highlighting its contribution to improving 'what works' in South African governance. It is informed by an exploratory and desktop research methodology which sought to determine how the Cluster System has faired since the Mbeki era. Its findings point to a mixed performance of the Cluster System. The paper contributes to ongoing efforts to identify 'what works' in governance beyond dominant narratives of dysfunction.
Although research on illiberal threats to public administration is growing, limited attention has been given to how illiberalism manifests in the attitudes of civil servants. This article addresses this gap by focusing on whether public workers exhibit illiberal attitudes to a greater or lesser extent compared to their counterparts in the private sector, and how these attitudes are shaped by the macro-political context. Using data from the 2019 European Election Study across 28 European countries, the results reveal attitudinal isomorphism. Civil servants display illiberal attitudes to a similar degree as private sector workers, accounting for variation in illiberalism at the country level. These findings hold important implications for the study of public administration and for efforts aimed at curbing the rise of illiberalism within public institutions.
