Elite Deliberation at the Local Level ‐ Politicians and Civil Servants Reaching Agreements in a Swedish Municipality

Human resource management in public administration considers the civil service broadly to include all those employed in mostly noncommercial entities funded by the state. These entities may range from government bureaus and departments to agencies and authorities with varying degrees of uniformity, at both the central and local levels, and include those in such nonprofit services as health and education that are completely or mostly publicly funded. The terms civil servants, government employees, and public servants are used interchangeably. Human resource management may include such functions as planning, recruitment and selection, performance management, training, compensation, and labor relations. Key challenges of managing human resource functions include motivating and compensating public employees to reward passion for public service, managing the political roles of civil servants and their political responsiveness, selecting for salient identities to achieve representation and diversity, and reforming the civil service. These challenges impact individual and organizational performance. Motivation and compensation focus on what binds individuals to organizations and energizes those individuals. One approach, inspired by rational choice, identifies self-interest and extrinsic incentives, including performance-based pay, monitoring and surveillance to manage employees. A second approach, inspired by self-determination theory, focuses on altruism and prosocial values, and prioritizes intrinsic incentives, job design, and careful selection to nurture a passion for public service. A key challenge is to identify and nurture those with public service motivation, and reward competence and passion for public service. Selecting and nurturing those with a passion for public service includes taking care that compensation policies and practices do not crowd out public service motivation. An additional challenge focuses on the political roles civil servants play in government and the extent to which civil servants are politically responsive. Selecting civil servants based on merit, with separate career structures for politicians and civil servants, is generally associated with more effective governance and economic growth, with some important exceptions. The tasks, role perceptions, and behavior of the senior civil service are dependent on historical tradition and political culture, and on structural characteristics, such as the presence or absence of political advisors, and the support civil servants receive or need beyond government from clients and interest groups. The role of senior civil servants also depends on their specialization and the capacity of political appointees. Systems that encourage more explicit political roles for senior civil servants do not appear to sacrifice public interest. Preparing senior civil servants for these roles is a critical human management resource challenge. Authorities also use human resource tools to increase political responsiveness, including training, discipline, and changes to civil servants’ security of tenure. As identities such as race and gender become politically salient, representation becomes another key challenge for human resource management in public administration. Passive representation has had wide currency in both Western-style democracies and in the developing world. Passive representation has symbolic effects and may increase citizen trust in the bureaucracy, making bureaucratic action more legitimate in the eyes of minority communities. Moreover, minority civil servants may affect outcomes directly—for example, by influencing the implementation of a policy—or indirectly—for example, by influencing minority clients to change their behavior, or influencing nonminority bureaucratic colleagues to change their behavior or influencing organizational policy. Active representation may thus affect overall public service performance. Representation is mediated by a number of variables including discretion, salience of identity, agency mission, socialization, professionalism, and administrative level among others. Human resource managers also need to manage diversity training, which can improve outcomes. The final challenge, civil service reform, cuts across public human resource functions and themes. Civil service reform is a fraught domain, littered with experiments and not amenable to evaluation, which is a long-term enterprise. Still, some radical reforms have fundamentally altered the terms of the public service bargains between politicians and civil servants. Introducing “radical” reform, such as at-will employment, undermines commitment and fails to produce the expected performance payoffs.

In France, the notion of a senior civil servant is a social rather than a legal one, and senior civil servants may be defined through their role as privileged partners of political power and participation in government decision‐making; they are a heterogeneous group of senior managers of the state public administration, whose members share neither the same careers nor prestige nor professional culture, and regard themselves generally as intellectuals rather than as managers. The relationship between senior civil servants and politicians is more ambiguous and closer in the 1990s than it was during the 1960s, and the politicization of the senior civil service has been considerably strengthened, but senior civil servants still consider themselves as representing the permanence of the state, and are still reluctant to talk freely about their political involvements. Whatever the social changes that have occurred during the last 15 years and whatever the political changes, the senior civil service remains strong. An overview of the higher French civil service has to take into account three variables that interact simultaneously: the fundamentally individualistic culture acquired during years of professional training; the decisive role of the grand corps in the career path and in the representation of what is ‘good administrative work’; and the privileged social rank of the higher civil service. This chapter presents the main characteristics of senior public managers in France by trying to highlight signs of an evolution since the 1960s; the different sections look at recruitment and promotion methods, the political activity and mobility of senior civil servants, the internal hierarchy of the civil service, the sociological characteristics of senior public managers, the professional relationships of senior civil servants, the absence of any higher civil service policy, and the debated question of the erosion of higher civil service social status.

This contribution discusses the politicization of the civil service system in Kosovo as a framework through which politicians exert influence in the system. The article employs the concept of formal-political discretion, as a means of explaining and elucidating the extent to which both the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and current legislation regulating civil service preconditions/pre-favours the politicization of the senior civil service in Kosovo. It first discusses the concept of politicization based upon current scholarship and gives hints on the way in which these concepts fit with both UNMIK and Kosovo’s current situation. Next, the article discusses and compares the previous civil service system built by UNMIK with the current one – built in post-independence Kosovo based upon the formal-political discretion model. The article further argues that the former system of civil service – in contrast to the current system – provided less formal-political discretion to political elites with which to politicize the senior civil service. The article concludes by suggesting that the current post-independence legislation regulating the civil service grants the executive institutions a significant level of formal-political discretion in the appointment, dismissal and promotion of civil servants.Points for practitionersThe articles offers a thorough, both theoretical and practical, policy explanation of the model and structure of Kosovo's civil service, hinting on the previous and current legislative gaps that allow for partisan influence and control. The article also portrays the routes via which the politicization of the civil service in Kosovo is being developed, giving insights on how civil servants perceive such a process. Comparing the previous civil service system with the current one, the article informs practitioners on the directions that the new reform on Kosovo's civil service should take. Finally, the article provides in-depth policy information on the means to redesign the key protection mechanisms of Kosovo's senior civil service management.

The aim is to describe the current senior civil service in Britain; in order to do this, recent changes instigated by the Thatcher and Major governments have to be addressed. To explain these developments, four analytical themes are used that run through the different reforms of the senior civil service that are to be discussed. These themes are managerialism (private‐sector management styles in the civil service), marketization (introducing markets into civil service operations), agencification (‘hiving off’ civil service functions to separate agencies), and politicization (breaking down the barriers between political and non‐partisan tasks in government). The introduction to the chapter characterizes these four themes. The second section defines the British senior civil service, and further sections assess change through various aspects of the senior civil service: recruitment and promotion; mobility; sociological characteristics of senior officials; and the relationship with the political machinery of government.

Dutch society takes pride in its egalitarian character, and political and administrative officeholders are neither separated off nor placed on a pedestal. This general attitude originates in the predominantly middle‐class nature of Dutch society, in which the idea of formal incorporation of top civil servants in a separate class of administrative personnel is foreign; however, at the same time, there is a striving for unity in the national administration. The issue of tension between unity and fragmentation forces an assessment in this chapter of current developments in the higher civil service in comparison with the situation as it existed from the Second World War up to the early 1990s, with the emphasis on developments in the past two decades in which the most important event was the formation of a Senior Public Service (the Algemene Bestuursdienst, or ABD) after 1 July 1995. The first main section of the chapter (section II) examines what is meant by a ‘senior civil service’ in the Dutch context, where even the creation of the ABD does not provide a conclusive answer, since there are many senior civil servants outside it. In order to address this issue, the characteristics of the Dutch personnel management system are examined, and a brief outline given of the ABD and of the number of top civil servants working at central government level in the period 1976–1995. Section III turns to the political–administrative organization and the consultative structures at the top of the central government departments, and discusses the structure of the ABD, while section IV discusses the political affiliation (politicization) of top civil servants, and section V looks at functional mobility at the top, with special attention to the functional motives for creating the ABD. Finally, the social political structure of the civil service is reviewed, with sections on social (VI) and educational (VII) background.

The first part of this chapter discusses retrenchment, recent institutional changes, and senior civil servants in Sweden; it attributes the recent changes in the senior civil service to the budgetary crisis of the state and the emergence of a less interventionalist control regime, in which the heyday of state‐driven economic and social change has gone. The main source of uncertainty now concerns the final destination of the rapid changes in many core aspects of Swedish politics and public administration. The different sections of the chapter look at: the size and structure of the Swedish civil service; ranks of senior civil servants; systems of recruitment and promotion; party membership among senior civil servants; inter‐ministerial mobility of civil servants; status in the civil service; the social and educational backgrounds of top officials; informal contacts across ministries and between ministries and agencies; the relationship between national and sub‐national officials and those working in agencies; political party policies towards the civil service; and the social status of the senior civil service.

ABSTRACTThis study investigates how the relationships between senior civil servants and ministers are formed and how the relationships thus formed shape these civil servants’ responsive behaviors toward ministers. We conducted in-depth interviews and surveys with high-level officials of S. Korean sociocultural ministries, and analyzed the data through mixed methodology to construct a grounded model of the behaviors of the officials vis-à-vis ministers. The results show that the civil servants’ substantive behavior varies from loyalty to tacit resistance, a consequence of the tension between bureaucratic conditions and relations with the minister. In the case of conflicts with ministers, however, senior civil servants tend to become quickly submissive in that they perceive themselves as implementers of ministerial policy and thus as needing to be adaptively accommodative to the political appointees with democratic legitimacy.

British civil servants have a clear constitutional duty to obey their ministers. Yet civil servants may be confronted with situations in which they believe, on the basis of their knowledge or expertise, that the course of action a minister favours would have sharply damaging consequences for the government or the country. What should higher civil servants do then? We use data gathered in two rounds of interviews with senior civil servants (Grades 1–3) in 1989–90 and 1993–94 to explore how far civil servants feel able to go in challenging either inappropriate ministerial requests for services or policies they believe to be sharply damaging. Senior civil servants are divided on the appropriate course of action in such circumstances.

Competency management has only recently been introduced into personnel management in Dutch central government. The decentralized nature of Dutch central government and its personnel management systems generates marked variation in the degree to which competency management is being applied across the Dutch civil service. The success or otherwise of competency management schemes in both government departments and the higher civil service in The Netherlands, the Senior Public Service, show mixed results. Although all departments have taken steps in the direction of competency management, a few well-developed programmes are in use. The competency management system of the Senior Public Service, then, serves as a basic tool for its management development programmes. Its aim is to enhance civil service professionalism among senior civil servants. The practical effects of competency management programmes, however, can be questioned. Because competency management links personnel development to pay and career decisions, it could well elicit strategic behaviour by staff members; at worst, it could run the risk of becoming a self-defeating initiative.

In this article we explore the specifics of career and recruitment channels for the senior civil servants (SCS) in Russian federal ministries using methods of document analysis, content analysis of the websites, comparative biographical analysis, regression-correlation and factor analysis. We introduce the concept of the SCS in the Russian practice. We hypothese the recruitment methods and the relationship between the type of career of the SCS and the effectiveness of the ministries, based on a sample of 381 biographies of the active SCS. We show that career bureaucrats and technocrats prevail among the SCS, but the share of political appointees in the ministerial corps is high. The SCS can be refered to as elite of the society by their characteristics. The SCS layer is heterogeneous, and the predominance of the command principle of the SCS recruitment was not confirmed. The ministries, headed by career bureaucrats, successfully implement public programs; the dynamics of development in the sectors they lead are higher. We propose to create in Russia a Service of Senior Civil Servants with the functions of selecting and evaluating the SCS.

As the experiences of Singapore, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States demonstrate effective and responsive civil service systems often have a senior civil servicelevel. It is named differently in different countries, for instance, inthe Netherlands – de Algemene Bestuursdienst (or in short – ADB),in the UK – Senior Civil Service, in Singapore – Administrativeservice. In Kazakhstan it has been named “corps A”. Corps A is an executive level of civil service envisioned to ensure the link between the strategic decision-making and implementation, as well as provide continuity of human resources policy and long-termperformance of a state agency. The current civil service reform in Kazakhstan, particularly introduction of the executive level – corps A, promotes the ideals of serving the people and society at large. Such profound changes that require civil service transparency, public accountability and efficient delivery of quality public services aim at increasing the number of civil servants for whom integrity, professionalism and ethics are paramount principles.

Civil Servants and Globalization brings together insights on how globalization influences senior civil servants, with a focus on MENA countries. This book builds a typology of civil servants’ responses to globalization: traditional, professional, engaged, and rebel types of civil servants. The response model proposed by the authors uses bureaucratic accountability and socialization as two critical parameters. The approach is tested on three dimensions of globalization – the global push for performance, engagement through development support, and global open government movement – in four focus countries from the MENA region – Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia. Based on new data gathered through vignette techniques and in-depth interviews with senior civil servants, this book offers new insights on how globalization affects civil servants and what factors determine, enhance, or reduce its impact. Among the key findings are the following: First, civil servants across countries have become more professional and are more likely to utilize evidence-based approaches to persuade politicians to safeguard national interest. The emphasis on performance and accountability (via international performance indicator systems) is a disrupter of and accelerator towards performance management and evidence-based policy making, leading to the emergence of the engaged and, in some cases, rebel types of civil servant. Second, deepened direct engagement with international actors contributes to the socialization of international norms, and contributes to a shift towards civil service professionalization. Finally, there is overall agreement on values associated with indices across the countries, though less so with transparency and participation. Thus, while the global movement towards open government has the strong potential to influence civil servants and civil service systems, a shift towards the internalization of more inclusive and transparent decision making has not yet occurred in the countries under review. On this aspect, a more traditional response type continues to predominate.

Deliberative democracy can be defined as a decision-making process in which (i) participants exchange impartial arguments about common good, and (b) all those affected by the decision have equal access. Both aspects were experienced in a process, held in the Province of Turin, where local communities were involved in a decision concerning the siting of two facilities for waste treatment (an incinerator and a landfill). The process lasted 17 months and ended with an agreed choice. The article presents the main features of the process and then discusses some theoretical issues emerging from that experience: actors constellation in a Nimby case, deliberation and problem definition, deliberation and the problem of access, building a deliberative setting, interests and arguments in the deliberative process, multicriteria analysis as a tool for deliberation, deliberation and social capital, political actors and the deliberative process. The analysis helps focusing aspects that theoretical investigation often overlooks: the importance of mediation and of a very structured process. It shows also that trust among people can be easily built, if they are put in a deliberative setting in which all their arguments are taken seriously into account.

In this article, I ask how senior civil servants (SCSs) practice functional politicisation. The literature suggests that they balance responsiveness with astuteness towards ministers, while maintaining neutral competence. However, functional politicisation is prone to affect this balance. Drawing on 160 h of ethnographic shadowing in Dutch government, I show three faces of functional politicisation; while directly advising ministers, in the preparation of policy advice and while working in the public eye. The findings suggest that senior civil servants actively try to align their fellow civil servants with their version of the minister’s wishes. This practice of ‘proxy politics’ calls for a shift in functional politicisation research from political ‘skills’ to ‘authority claims’ among senior civil servants. I conclude with urgent implications for politicisation theory and civil service practice.

In the wake of the Copernic reform, Belgium’s senior federal civil servants are now appointed for a fixed term and guided on performance via management plans. This article sets out to assess the impact of the introduction of the fixed-term system on the autonomy of senior civil servants with regard to the horizontal departments responsible for the budget, on the one hand, and human resources, on the other hand, within Belgium’s federal administration. Based on the so-called ‘inconsistencies’ approach, the article focuses briefly on three inconsistencies: internal, discursive and contextual. An analysis of these inconsistencies confirms one of the forms of ‘cheating’ in the relationship between ministers and senior civil servants formulated by Hood and Lodge (2006), namely that the first can be inclined to reduce the margin of discretion of the latter by maintaining formal or informal mechanisms to exercise control over the provision of resources. Points for practitioners Greater managerial autonomy for senior civil servants, as advocated by NPM, cannot succeed without a transformation of the traditional modes of operation of the political-administrative relationship accompanying structural reforms. The low degree of autonomy of senior civil servants does not stem so much from the introduction of a ‘contractual’ relationship, but from the lack of support shown by the latter in the implementation of such reforms. In the case studied, senior civil servants can only be made more accountable and given greater autonomy if the ‘pyramid’ of control is reformed and internal audit activities developed.