Administration & Society

Stelbotsky, Brian; Fowler, Luke

doi: 10.1177/00953997231157743pmid: N/A

Wisconsin’s Campus Free Speech Act provides a distinctive case study to examine the intersection of venue shopping and the multiple streams framework. After some initial traction, entrepreneur ran into roadblocks in the state legislature; then, shifted their attention to the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, where they were able to take advantage of an open policy window. When these events are considered holistically, they illustrate how manipulating institutional structures and fragmented authorities can help entrepreneurs achieve their goals.

Nielsen, Mathias Herup; Monrad, Merete

doi: 10.1177/00953997231157750pmid: N/A

The further involvement of citizens in the processing of their own cases is attracting attention as a possible strategy for improving the quality of employment services across national borders. However, employment services are characterized by detailed regulation and strong elements of conditionality. This article utilizes Bernardo Zacka’s framework on morality at the street level, drawing on focus group interviews to analyze how caseworkers in Denmark experience and deal with such demands for increased client participation. (1) We map four normative considerations that are emphasized by our informants: legality, authenticity, realism, and resonance. (2) In doing so, we outline two central cross-pressures that arise as they strive to balance client participation with conditionality in practice, namely between legality and authenticity, on the one hand, and between realism and resonance, on the other hand. (3) Finally, we unfold three coping strategies pursued by caseworkers to dampen such tensions: dividing the self, dissolving contradictions, and disassembling clients’ wishes. We add to the literature by studying coping strategies from a perspective that carefully highlights the normative elements of employment service work—the values frontline workers attribute particular importance to and strive to actualize in their work.

Guan, Bin

doi: 10.1177/00953997231157744pmid: N/A

With the increasing attention paid to environmental protection and sustainable development in various countries worldwide, the relationship between local government competition and environmental governance has become more subtle and complex. This paper provides new insight into their relationship based on public value theory and media sentiment perspective. Utilizing panel data from 2012 to 2019 in 216 cities in China, this study integrated Data Envelopment Analysis, Conflicting Attitudes Model, Computer-Aided Text Analysis, and machine learning-based sentiment analysis, as well as nonlinear mediation model to empirically test the relationships among local governments’ competition pressure, public value conflict, media sentiments, and environmental governance performance. The study found that: (1) Competition pressure and environmental governance performance exist in a “U-curved” relationship. (2) The core mechanism of the above relationship lies in the mediating role of public value conflict. Within a specific range, the public value conflict faced by local governments increases as competition pressure increases. This conflict would push local governments into a dilemma and induce them to commit misconduct. However, when competition pressure exceeds this range, the public value conflict faced by local governments will be weakened, leading environmental governance performance to rebound. (3) Negative media sentiments significantly alleviate the negative impact of public value conflict on environmental governance performance. This study helps researchers and policymakers recognize government competition’s influence on environmental governance from a public value perspective, with further exploration and confirmation of the moderating role of media sentiments. It also provides theoretical and policy enlightenment for rethinking the behavior logic of local government and solving the dilemma of local government environmental governance.

Jensen, Didde Cramer; Pedersen, Michael Mulbjerg

doi: 10.1177/00953997231157752pmid: N/A

This study tests the hypothesis that the role identity of street-level bureaucrats is related to variation in their discretionary decisions in relation to the behavior of citizen-clients. The study draws on crosssectional survey data on 465 officers from prisons in Denmark. Results from the study show a negative correlation between prison officers role identity as formalistic (state-agent) and the likelihood of differentiating in response to citizen-clients’ behavior. Correspondingly, the results shows a positive relationship between informal rule identification (citizen-agent) and differential responses against citizen-client behavior. The findings indicate a causal relationship between street-level bureaucrats’ role identity and their discretionary decisions.

Cho, Beomgeun

doi: 10.1177/00953997231157753pmid: N/A

I trace the bibliometric evolution of “New Public Management Is Dead” by Dunleavy et al. to investigate how the seminal paper influenced the administrative reform debate. They suggested Digital-Era Governance as the main post-NPM idea. My bibliometric analysis discovers public value, administrative reform trajectories, and digital government as influential themes. Unlike Dunleavy et al., the literature found the managerial reform wave is not linear, reform ideas are supplementary, and NPM remains a major toolkit. Future research should focus on reintegration and need-based holism, linking digital government to administrative reform, and the negative impact of digital government on democracy.

Colaux, Émilien; Schiffino, Nathalie; Moyson, Stéphane

doi: 10.1177/00953997231157748pmid: N/A

How do frontline judges perceive managerial reforms, and how do they cope with them? We relied on concepts from street-level bureaucracy to systematically review the effects of managerial techniques on frontline judges in 35 studies. We find that judges’ attitudes toward managerialization are more heterogeneous than might be anticipated. Beyond facing an increasing caseload, judges are pressed to reduce treatment times and costs as well as to play managerial roles. Judges’ mechanisms to cope with pressures include rationing, prioritizing, and routinizing. While managerialization is a solution to the increasing caseload, it might well affect the quality of justice.

Hwang, Kwangseon

doi: 10.1177/00953997231165261pmid: N/A

This study empirically examines the relationship between several accountability aspects and perceived work performance in the specific context of child-welfare services in the State of Virginia. The results show mixed evidence. For example, legal and ethical accountabilities positively affect performance, but each type of accountability (formal and informal) influences the work performance of child-welfare caseworkers differently—directly or indirectly—through a compliance strategy. Hierarchical accountability and the adoption of a discretionary strategy do not affect performance, at least in this context. Accountability management appears to play a meaningful role as a mediator within the accountability-performance link.

Mayer, Duncan J.; Fischer, Robert L.

doi: 10.1177/00953997231165255pmid: N/A

The organizational niche is a concept integral to organizational ecology, reflecting an organization’s mission, expertise, capacity, and resource requirements. The choice of niche is crucial to the viability of the organization; however, the reasons organizations alter their niche are poorly understood. We hypothesize that nonprofit organizations alter their niche to reduce environmental pressure and gain access to resources. The results indicate that niche alteration predicts increases in total revenue with average increases in revenue from program services and contributions (depending on the measure). Additionally, nonprofits that are younger, larger, and have more concentrated revenue, are more likely to alter their niche.

Scanni, Francesco Maria

doi: 10.1177/00953997231158341pmid: N/A

The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of two political phenomena: populism and technocracy. Often seen as opposites, the two factors are linked by some elements: both are described by their proponents as remedies to the legitimacy crisis that modern representative democracies are going through; both tend to define certain practices and principles of constitutional democracy that are insufficient to ensure effective governance of society; both see as their main remedy a restriction of the classical functions of representation and of the institutions of mediation (parties and parliament among all). Nevertheless, the two phenomena seem to follow the dynamics of opposite extremes: in the phases when the democratic order is increasingly identified with technocracy, the populist democratic eschatology gains confidence on the basis of the promise to return to citizens the power stolen from them by non-elective institutions. We will attempt to identify some key features that unite the two phenomena and we will highlight the differences in principle, the possible relationships as part of a more general democratic vulnus and the different types of impact they have on democracy and its principles.