An Organizational Approach to Public Governance

Abstract

Political science is often criticized for being insufficiently relevant for coping with governance challenges of our time. This book aims to fill this void by launching a general organizational approach to public governance. To achieve this, the book 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 in this book represent classical dimensions in the organization literature that are generic in character. This allows for generalizations across time and space. The volume addresses how organizational characteristics of the governmental apparatus (within international organizations, the European Union, national governments, and sub-governments) systematically enable, constrain, and shape public governance processes, thus making some policy choices more likely than others. The second ambition of the volume is to focus on (organizational) design implications: 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 book offers a knowledge base for organizational design.