Statsviternes arbeidslivsrelevans utenfor forskning og undervisning er et vedvarende tema. I denne kommentaren vil jeg først si litt om hvordan arbeidslivsrelevansen oppfattes og dernest litt om hvordan universitetet, eksemplifisert ved Institutt for statsvitenskap (ISV) ved UiO, vil håndtere manglende relevans. Dernest vil jeg bruke min egen subdisiplin, offentlig politikk og administrasjon (OPA), som et eksempel på hvordan vi kan bli mer relevante for praktisk problemløsning. En observasjon er at ISV, i sin tilnærming til arbeidslivsrelevans, ikke synes å gjøre et poeng av at praktisk problemløsning ofte er basert på virkemiddeltenkning, dvs. kunnskap om sammenhenger mellom designfaktorer og forhold en ønsker å påvirke.

Well-functioning states are often seen as great pacifiers in the sense that serious societal disputes within their respective territories are usually solved without violence. On the other hand, deep conflicts between states may more easily result in violent situations due to the partly anarchical character of the international system. One could therefore expect that studies of war and peace focused extensively on various ways of organizing interstate relations and the potential for replacing anarchy with political order. However, although several peace studies deal with the role of international organizations (IOs), this research is surprisingly absent in review literature. One reason for this absence may be that findings on the peacemaking role of IOs among member states seem to be ambiguous. The purpose of this review essay is to increase our understanding of under what conditions international institutions could matter in this respect. The fierce debate between realists and institutionalists only marginally touches upon the effect that the various ways of organizing IOs might have on interstate peace. Arguably, the only international organization so far that in its structure and work clearly transcends a basically intergovernmental arrangement is the European Union (EU). This could make the EU, and EU-like structures, more able to avoid polarization along the territorial dimension since its organization structure activates cross-cutting cleavages and a system-wide perspective among policymakers, arguably tying together rather than splitting the system. Interestingly, the peculiar organizational structure of the EU seems very much ignored in the IO literature in general, and in peace research on IOs in particular.

A holistic and extensive exploration of both the dynamic and incremental changes in EU public policy and the decision processes surrounding them, this Elgar Encyclopedia is the definitive reference work in the field of EU public policy.

This volume examines three interconnected themes in political science: the nuts and bolts of government, the complex and evolving relationship between politics and administration, and continuity and change in government. Government ministries and agencies are vital components of the executive branch of government that play fundamental roles in the democratic governing of modern societies. Contemporary public administration is conventionally portrayed as being based on a series of dichotomies: politics versus administration, coordination versus fragmentation, integration versus disintegration, trust versus distrust, etc. As an alternative, this volume, which is composed of a series of case studies from the Nordics and beyond, conceptualises and empirically demonstrates how government bodies at different levels of governance are driven by pragmatism characterised by the co-existence of multiple decision-making premises. To account for the composite aspect of government, this volume illustrates how institutional and organisational factors can structure elements in the policymaking process and how these elements are powerful tools available to purposeful design.

This paper deals with the development of a supranational political executive at the European level, and how such an institution might affect EU governance processes and policies. The paper starts by outlining some theoretical explanations of organizational changes and their consequences for governance processes and policies. It then presents some key steps in the modern history of European international cooperation before focusing on the birth and development of a supranational political executive, i.e. today’s European Commission. Arguably, the coming about of EU agencies should be seen as complementing the consolidation of a supranational executive. Although the EU polity might be considered as sui generis within the current state system, its development and characteristics nevertheless have much in common with former centralization of political power in Europe, e.g. modern state-building. Finally, the paper turns to how a supranational executive actually makes a difference to EU governance processes and policies. An intriguing and important question is to what extent a supranational organization delivers policies that are qualitatively different from those policies that originate from intergovernmental organization?

Whether the relevance and usefulness of a scientific discipline should be a major concern seems contested. To some, scientific research is dedicated to knowledge per se and a human spirit of inquiry. Nevertheless, the theme of scientific relevance is an enduring theme. This also holds for political science where 'relevance' is occasionally placed on the formal research agenda (e.g., Holmberg and Rothstein 2012; Stoker et al. 2015). However, arguably, relevance relates to both providing 'pure knowledge' on polity, politics and policy and to providing instruments for practical problem solving in the political sphere. It would be wise to distinguish between the two: in my view, the relevance of the discipline is indisputable regarding the first concern. Since political order probably constitutes the most important societal component in our lives, it should be rather obvious that citizens in general need research-based knowledge about its organization, recruitment, decision-making and outputs. In particular, this holds for professions like politicians, public bureaucrats, political journalists, lobbyists and schoolteachers in social science. The second concern, however, whether the discipline provides tools for practical problem solving, seems far more contested: to what extent is the discipline equipped to deal with trivial as well as serious challenges such as climate change, migration or pandemics (like Covid-19)? In the following, I will discuss two approaches that both aim at providing such tools, namely a policy design focus and an organizational design focus. Both approaches mainly belong to the sub-discipline Public Policy and Administration (PPA). I argue, inter alia, that the dominance of a policy design focus is highly surprising since the dependent variables (effects to be achieved) in this case tend to be located outside the core area of PPA research. According to Capano and Howlett (2019), the 'technical dimension' of policy design refers to the knowledge of the characteristics of policy tools and their impact on policy target populations. The 'political dimension' refers to the institutional and partisan nature of the context in which policies are decided. Typical policy tools dealt with in the literature are legal (e.g., regulations), financial (e.g., grants) and informational tools (Hood 1983; Howlett 2011). Although one finds studies that explicitly investigate how policy design might affect governance (e.g., May's work on the relationship between policy design and policy implementation; May 2012), most studies of policy tools focus on tools that are used to intervene directly in the economy and society (Peters 2018, p. 95). Moreover, the contributions by Rothstein and colleagues, in their effort to respond to the quest for relevance, fall mainly into this category. They show that a particular policy design, namely impartiality in law application, is associated with a diverse range of phenomena as economic wealth, life expectancy at birth, access to safe water and people's happiness (Holmberg and Rothstein 2012). Finally, the emerging field of Behavioural Public Administration seems to focus most commonly on how citizens respond to particular policy designs based on nudging (James et al. 2017). It has been said that there is nothing as practical as good theory. In order to create a knowledge base for policy design, one therefore needs to establish a set of general relationships between design tools characteristics on the one hand and effect variables on the other. So far, the independent (tool) variables, as we have seen, tend to be more descriptive than theoretical. And the same may be true for the dependent variables. Even more problematic, from a PPA perspective, could be that the dependent variables for the most part are located outside the political sphere, indicating that disciplines other than political science (like economics, sociology and biology) might be better equipped to study the relationships. Arguably, this holds with exception for the political consequences of public policy. Most of the policy design literature has tended to ignore the institutions and organizations that deliver public programmes (Peters 2018, p. 135). Exceptions are Hood (1983) and Howlett (2011). However, in the latter studies, organizational characteristics are descriptive (e.g., ministries, agencies) rather than theoretical. Moreover, they do not analyse the relationship between organizational design and particular policies (Peters 2018, p. 135). A review of the literature on the effects of New Public Management (NPM) reforms and post-NPM reforms (considered as 'organizational tools') concluded that results were often ambiguous due to unspecified independent variables (Lægreid 2018). Arguably, Gulick (1937) was among the first to launch some key elements of an organizational design focus within a PPA context that hypothesized theoretical relationships between organization structure variables ('design tools') on the one hand and behavioural/policy consequences on the other. For example, he argued that public bureaucracies specialized according to purpose (sector) would lead to policy standardization across territorial units, while those arranged by territory (geography) would allow for policy variation between such units (Gulick 1937). Since then, numerous empirical studies on possible associations between organization structure variables and behavioural/policy variables have appeared, although not as many as one would have expected (for overviews of the literature, see Egeberg 2012; Christensen and Lægreid 2018; Egeberg and Trondal 2018). However, an explicitly formulated and comprehensive organizational design focus within a PPA context, specifying dependent and independent variables, has been lacking so far (Lægreid 2018; Hermus et al. 2020; van Buuren et al. 2020). However, Egeberg and Trondal (2018) aim to establish such a framework. Below, I will briefly outline this framework. Organizational characteristics of the governmental apparatus, in a PPA context the executive branch, constitute the independent (tool) variables: First, 'organization structure' denotes a codified system of positions and their respective role expectations. A position makes up the micro-component of a structure. The actual decision behaviour (including preferences) of the person occupying the position is expected to significantly reflect the role expectations due to mechanisms like rewards, punishments, norms about appropriate behaviour and bounded rationality. Concerning the latter, Simon (1965) argued that a decision-maker's position largely determines what kind of information he or she looks for, or becomes exposed to or shielded from. Due to limited cognitive capacities, alternative information will seldom be available in practice. Second, 'organization demography' designates the composition of the personnel in terms of geographical and educational background, gender and former career, for example, but also length of service in the current organization. Third, 'organization locus' means the geographical location and physical arrangement of the organization. Characteristics of governance processes or policy outputs constitute the dependent variables. 'Governance' is defined as the processes through which the steering of society happens, and encompasses agenda-setting, policy development, adopting laws, budgets and policy programmes, and implementation. It is not always clear where the governance process ends. Here, public governance is seen as an activity that takes place predominantly within political and administrative bodies, thus not within hospitals, schools or police stations, for example. Others, however, see 'street-level bureaucrats' as parts of the governance process (Lipsky 1980). 'Meta-governance' denotes governance that aims at structuring, staffing or locating the governmental apparatus itself. A knowledge base for organizational design should therefore consist of, first, knowledge about how organizational factors might shape governance processes and the content of public policy, and, second, knowledge about how such factors might facilitate organizational change itself (meta-governance). Although this knowledge base makes up the key tool kit, organizational designers should in addition have knowledge about the political context within which public governance happens (Olsen 2010). This means, inter alia, that problem definitions and goals should, as a rule, be anchored in the political leadership (since goals are often contested), and that organizational change depends on the power to implement it. In addition, designers can exploit situations in which potential opponents have other important things to do, exploit external shocks as catalysts for change, and formulate reform proposals in accordance with institutional legacies or with current organizational fad and fashion (Olsen 1997). Based on Simon (1969) there seems to be a widespread perception that there is a fundamental difference between retrospective science and prospective design. Whereas science is primarily about studying current (or past) practices, design is about creating future practices (Romme and Meijer 2020, pp. 150–51). Thus, the literature distinguishes between basic and applied research, discipline and policy research, and descriptive and actionable knowledge, for example (Argyris 2005). Egeberg and Trondal (2018) argue, however, that (organizational) design thinking should build primarily on knowledge about causal relationships between organizational variables (design tools) on the one hand, and characteristics of governance processes or policy outputs on the other (although a creative component could be part of it too). Thus, actionable knowledge is not seen as qualitatively different from descriptive knowledge. Design thinking happens when an actor, given his or her goals, wants to change characteristics of governance processes or policy outputs by manipulating organizational variables. Concomitantly, designing presupposes evidence about causal relationships in order to be able to predict (to a certain extent) the effects of alternative organizational designs. In order to build theory and general (and thus actionable) knowledge, variables should be abstract and generic (Egeberg and Trondal 2018). Organization structures are, for example, described as specialized according to purpose, function or geography, as hierarchical or collegial, or as primary or secondary. Similarly, the dependent variables should be relatively abstract in character. Thus, a particular problem waiting for a solution has to be subsumed under a general category. For example, a concrete coordination problem between two units has to be classified as related to vertical or horizontal, inter-organizational or intra-organizational coordination, for example. The organizational (tool) variables selected reflect a concern for focusing on variables that are more amenable to conscious choice than others. Thus, this is one reason for not including organization culture, for example, as a design variable. A deliberate selection of organizational (tool) variables implies, by necessity, that the model becomes a highly partial one; it does not at all aim to provide full explanations for variations in the dependent variables. Rather, the idea is that if the selected organizational factors make a significant difference, this is good enough from an organizational design perspective. Arguably, organizational characteristics of the governmental apparatus cannot, as a rule, be expected to affect the society, economy or environment directly, but only indirectly via public policies. Does the focus on effect variables inside the political-administrative sphere make an organizational design approach less useful and relevant than the policy design approach? Egeberg and Trondal (2018) argue that the two approaches complement each other: in practical problem-solving situations, policy-makers certainly need knowledge on how particular policies might affect the society, economy or environment, but also on how such (desired) policies may actually materialize in a systematic manner. For example, when economists or natural scientists design policies in order to cope with climate change, political scientists should be able to contribute by telling how such trans-border and multilevel policy-making could be organized in order to achieve the desired policies. Moreover, people who run governments, that is, bureaucrats and executive politicians, are routinely involved in structuring, staffing and locating public administration. Thus, the need for evidence-based knowledge on their effects on governance and policies seems obvious.

This chapter provides a general introduction to the European Commission, the main executive body of the European Union (EU). It argues that it is more productive to compare the Commission to national executives or to a government than to a secretariat of a traditional international organization. It begins with a summary of the Commission’s functions within the EU’s policy process. It then considers the question of Commission influence and autonomy, before moving on to look at the structure, demography, and decision behaviour within the organization—that is, at the role of the President of the Commission and the Commissioners, at the Commissioners’ personal staffs, and at the Commission administration. It then examines the committees and administrative networks that link the Commission to national administrations and interest groups, and also deals with the recent growth of EU agencies. The chapter concludes by emphasizing that the Commission is much more of a European(ized) and supranational institution than it was at its inception.

Les études montrent que les administrations publiques qui pratiquent le recrutement au mérite sont nettement moins touchées par la corruption que les autres. Les données sont nombreuses sur la situation des États membres de l’U.E. en ce qui concerne le degré de recrutement au mérite au sein de leurs administrations, ainsi que sur les résultats de l’administration de la Commission européenne à cet égard. En revanche, on en sait beaucoup moins sur les pratiques de recrutement des agences de réglementation (décentralisées) de l’Union européenne, de plus en plus nombreuses. Dans le présent article, nous tentons d’analyser les méthodes de recrutement pratiquées au sein des secrétariats de ces agences. Nous examinons également la question de l’influence potentielle du fait que l’agence de l’Union européenne est située ou non dans un pays caractérisé par une culture administrative non méritocratique. Notre article indique que les agences de l’Union européenne appliquent massivement des instruments méritocratiques lors de l’embauche de personnel, indépendamment de leur localisation. Remarques à l’intention des praticiens Dans le présent article, nous soutenons et démontrons que le recrutement basé sur le mérite favorise la bonne gouvernance et une gouvernance non corrompue. Nous nous intéressons au cas des agences de l’Union européenne. Les données présentées montrent que ces agences appliquent généralement des instruments méritocratiques lorsqu’elles embauchent du personnel administratif. Notre étude montre également que les méthodes de recrutement ne sont pas affectées par la situation géographique des agences de l’Union européenne. Ces agences ont tendance à appliquer les normes communes de l’Union européenne fondées sur le mérite, quel que soit leur lieu d’implantation, étant donné qu’elles font partie de l’administration de l’Union européenne.

This chapter draws attention to the effects of vertical specialization of organizations and how it affects public governance. The chapter documents that agency officials pay significantly less attention to signals from executive politicians than their counterparts within ministerial (cabinet-level) departments. This finding also holds when controlling for variation in tasks, the political salience of issue areas, and officials’ rank. In addition, it is documented that the greater the organizational capacity available within the respective ministerial departments, the more agency personnel tend to assign weight to signals from the political leadership. Expert concerns are strongly emphasized at both levels; however, agency personnel are more sensitive to the influence of affected parties. The chapter applies large-N questionnaire data at four points in time (1986, 1996, 2006, and 2016) that spans three decades and shifting administrative doctrines: New Public Management as well as post-New Public Management.

A basic insight in public administration research is that career officials play an important role in public policy development as well as in its implementation. Surprisingly, however, despite being an enduring theme on the research agenda, the jury still seems to be out regarding how to account for bureaucrats’ actual decision behaviour, a fact reflected in the numerous competing theories and perspectives available. By applying a novel large-N questionnaire survey as well as an alternative method, this article sheds new light on this highly contested area of research. We find that government bureaucrats’ (formal) organizational position is by far the most important explanatory factor, while classical demographic factors like geographical background, gender and age play a rather minor role. Among officials’ many early experiences, only their educational background and former job experience really count. The political attitudes of officials do not matter. The crucial role of bureaucrats’ organizational position for understanding their behaviour does not depend on intra-organizational socialization. Importantly, the key role of factors that may be relatively subject to deliberate change, such as organization structure and the former job experience and educational background of those recruited, entails a considerable potential for organizational design.

This chapter launches a general organizational approach to public governance. It outlines key theoretical dimensions that cut across governance structures and processes horizontally as well as vertically, thus paving the way for integrating separate empirical analyses into a coherent theoretical whole. Moreover, the organizational (independent) variables outlined represent classical dimensions in the organization literature that are generic in character. This allows for generalizations across time and space. The chapter also highlights the potential for organizational design that follows from our approach. By building systematic knowledge on how organizational factors shape governance processes on the one hand, and how organizational factors themselves might be deliberately changed on the other, the chapter offers a framework for developing a knowledge base for organizational design.

This chapter opens by clarifying some main organizational structures within which multilevel public governance takes place. As argued, each organization structure tends to privilege certain interests and this seems to hold as regards ‘upstream’ (policy formulation) processes as well as ‘downstream’ (implementation) processes. Theoretically, the chapter builds on some classic insights from organizational research. Empirically, it draws on studies of international organizations, the European Union, and federal as well as unitary states. The chapter shows how the power of lower-level territories to shape these processes depends on the extent to which organizational structures are arranged according to a territorial principle. In the same vein, higher levels of government tend to strengthen their position when non-territorial principles of specialization prevail.

Chapter 9 concludes the volume by offering the contours of a design approach in political science. The ambition is to use insights from the volume to set out design implications from an organizational approach to public governance. The chapter thus draws a middle ground in an old turf war in organization studies and public administration between science and craft. Insights into how organizational factors affect public governance is a necessary precondition for using organization theory to meta-govern. This concluding chapter advocates that organization theory as craft requires organization theory as science. Understanding and design are thus complementary and not opposed, as is too often assumed.

Chapter 7 offers a large-N study on whether the geographical location of government agencies affects public governance. Two decades of New Public Management have placed agencification high on the agenda of administrative policymakers. Moreover, agencies organized at arm’s length from ministerial departments have sometimes also been located outside of the capital or political centre. Although practitioners tend to assign weight to location as regards political-administrative behaviour, this relationship has been largely ignored by scholars in the field. This chapter shows that agency autonomy, agency influence, and inter-institutional coordination seem to be relatively unaffected by agency site. The chapter also specifies some conditions under which this finding is valid.

This chapter discusses governance dilemmas that are often overlooked in studies that do not encompass the ecology of organization in public governance. The chapter discusses how coordination structures may counteract each other in multilevel systems of government. The ambition of the chapter is twofold: Firstly, a coordination dilemma is theoretically and empirically illustrated by the seeming incompatibility between a more direct (interconnected) and sectorally specialized implementation structure in the multilevel EU administrative system and trends towards strengthening coordination and control within nation states. Secondly, the chapter discusses organizational arrangements that may enable governance systems to live with the coordination dilemma in practice. This coordination dilemma seems to have been largely ignored in the literature on EU network governance and national ‘joined-up government’ respectively.

This chapter offers a ‘critical case’ on the influence of organizational structure in public governance. By examining organizational members who have ambiguous and temporary affiliations to organizations, it shows how organizational structure trumps demographic background when explaining decision-making behaviour. Survey and interview data on temporary staff in the European Commission support an organizational perspective in two ways. First, temporary Commission officials tend to evoke a tripartite representational repertoire consisting of departmental, epistemic, and supranational roles. Second, more importantly, the composite mix of these representational roles is systematically biased by the organizational structures embedding them: (i) the formal organization of the Commission, (ii) the multiple organizational embeddedness of the staff, (iii) their degrees of organizational affiliation towards the Commission, (iv) their modes of interaction within the Commission, but also (v) their educational backgrounds. Thus, a key demographic background factor like nationality seems to have only modest impact on temporary officials’ behaviour.

Chapter 8 draws attention to meta-governance and how the governing of reforms is affected by how reform processes are organized. The chapter asks how reformers can ensure support for large-scale reforms that are likely to attract profound resistance. The focal point of the chapter is a study of geographical decentralization of central government agencies. The chapter argues that successful meta-governance can be provided for by careful organization of the reform process. The empirical case studied is a large-scale relocation of government agencies in Norway during the early 2000s. In carrying out this reform, the government succeeded against the odds. Most importantly, research has revealed huge constraints on the instrumental control of large-scale reforms in general and of geographical relocation of organizations in particular. Yet, this chapter shows that large-scale reforms can be successfully achieved through careful crafting of the reform organization.