Governing the purple zone: How politicians influence public managers

Abstract

One of the issues raised by the New Political Governance (NPG) is the independence of senior management from politicians in public sector organizations. This article investigates how politicians influence managerial activities by providing empirical evidence for the existence of a deep form of politicization and a partisan management of public service in Italy. This relationship is also called the “purple” zone, where the “blue” of political strategy and the “red” of public administration merge in “strategic conversation”.Based on the results obtained from a questionnaire that was completed by 568 public managers, results show that they perceive a political influence on the decision-making process, the setting of action plans, and the existing rewards/promotions policies. Managers also believe that politicians influence what objectives must be given priority, thus undermining considerations of the outputs of the decision-making process (i.e., the planned objectives). In addition, managers believe that the equity of the evaluation system is not guaranteed due to the influence of politicians. The article also proposes a categorization of public managers based on two dimensions related to the influence of politicians on the activities of public managers: (1) managerial responsibility and (2) managerial autonomy/power to act on this responsibility.