Abstract The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 posed significant administrative challenges for the Dalmatian state administration. Reports by the governor Marius Attems to the government in Vienna identified various stress factors, like excessive workload, inadequate salaries, and the loss of civil servants to military service. Other burdens included malnutrition, inflation, mobilisation tasks, refugee care, supply agendas, internal irregularities and preparations for an invasion of Entente forces. These factors substantially impacted civil servants’ health, with many experiencing symptoms similar to modern-day burnout (called »neurasthenia« then). In response, Attems implemented personnel measures to alleviate the situation, such as bringing back civil servants from the military administration, retiring those who were sick or unfit, and providing convalescent leave. Despite these challenges, the Dalmatian state administration remained functional until the end of the monarchy.

Abstract At the beginning of the 1950s, two Atlantic institutions, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), converged and nearly merged over the issues of economic co-operation and rearmament. This article seeks to explore this process ›inside-out‹, from the perspective of the international officials and diplomats who executed it. It demonstrates how the OEEC Secretariat, under the leadership of Secretary-General Robert Marjolin, managed to prevent the organisation from being absorbed by the military alliance; and, in turn, infused the NATO Secretariat with its bureaucratic procedures and economic competences.

Abstract Confronted with dramatic numbers of refugees from the collapsed Russian empire, national bureaucracies and emerging international organisations struggled to provide an adequate response. In 1922, the High Commission for Russian Refugees organized and carried out a census, collecting data on the population and labour potential of refugees. The following article reconstructs this unique experiment in multilateral cooperation between local bureaucracies, humanitarian organisations, and the League. Strategic decisions on the design of the census, dictated by the Commission’s lack of staff and their resorting to experts who were liable for other humanitarian players, affected the census and yielded results hardly usable for effective relief action.

Abstract This introduction offers a conceptual framework for analyzing stress within public administration from a historical perspective. It argues for a broad and social constructivist understanding of stress, attentive to historical contexts. While stress is often associated with modern Western societies, the contribution argues for a wider geographical and temporal frame. Key elements of such a broader definition of stress include a substantial workload that requires higher than usual effort of individuals or organizations, creates pressure and is articulated as such. The contribution considers various analytical perspectives and considers closely related concepts such as ›crisis‹ and ›turbulence‹ and outlines the analytical value of the concept of ›stress‹: It has the potential to integrate macro-(crisis), meso-(turbulence) and micro-levels of analysis as societal discourses, organizational structures as well as practices and individual perceptions shape historical phenomena of stress. The contribution suggests sharpening the analysis of stress by distinguishing between the following dimensions: individual and organizational stress; subjective perceptions and objective indicators of an increased workload; external and internal stressors; ›strong‹ and ›weak‹ forms of statehood.

Abstract The riots of 1897 accentuated divides in the society. One of the most visible conflicts erupted between the Habsburg Austrian state administration and self-government. Although existing since the 1860s, the Badeni crisis accentuated the discontent. Local cooperation was essential for maintaining order but often failed due to differing goals, political pressures, and poor communication. Despite broad authority, the state authorities could not rule autocratically. As individuals, district captains relied on local support, exposing the limits of their power. These struggles revealed a shift toward the participatory style of governance, which was driven by societal change and mass politics of Cisleithania.

Abstract The study examines how the Federal Employment Agency ( Bundesanstalt für Arbeit , BA) and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety ( Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit , BMU) coped with the pressures of German reunification in 1989/90. It analyzes how both institutions faced unprecedented organizational stress from political, social, and administrative challenges. The BA struggled with soaring unemployment and mass migration, while the BMU focused on environmental cooperation and the creation of a ›environmental union.‹ By comparing strategies, resources, and stress responses, the paper highlights how these institutions shaped and adapted to the transformative period of unification.

Abstract The Napoleonic episode in European history was a perpetual crisis of war and dislocation, a prolonged exercise in stress across European society which engulfed the conquered populations of the empire and the bureaucracy set to rule over them. The Napoleonic bureaucracy is increasingly evaluated in terms of an imperial bureaucracy. Bureaucracy stood at the heart of the Napoleonic state. Historians’ attention has inevitably been drawn to the inter-action of French and non-French administrators, and to the impact of specific Napoleonic policies and practices on the non-French subjects of the empire, in which stress was intrinsic, and so an essential conceptual tool.

Abstract The subject of investigation is a distinct type of administrative organization: the council collegium in the federal administration of Minden. In 1764, a personnel decision made in the head office in Berlin disrupted the harmonious working environment of the authority. In relation to the overarching theme of the journal volume, the essay puts forward a paradoxical thesis: the council prevented stress by causing stress. It resisted the decision from the ministerial administration in order to maintain cohesion within the plenary body - and thus its ability to make decisions.

Abstract The article considers the transformations in Italian public administration induced by the Great War. In particular, it focuses on the birth and spread of economic public bodies that changed the relationship between state and market between the two wars; they introduced a new organizational formula parallel to ordinary public administration; they redesigned the relationship between public and private sector; they created a technocratic elite that went through fascism and played a fundamental role in the first phase of the republic. The Italian State, with the birth of public bodies, suffered a flight from the center of government administration in favor of new financial and industrial administrations which played a central role in the economy and politics for decades. Thus, it was born the archipelago state and the government through public bodies which characterized the first fifty years of republican history and whose influences on the Italian political system are still evident today.

Abstract This paper proposes the concept of »sentiment of crisis« as a collective affective and cognitive response that can trigger rapid institutional change in, for example, state bureaucracies. Timm Sureau argues that the refugee crisis 2015 in Germany led to an administrative crisis within the IT department of Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), triggering a shared sentiment of crisis among its employees. Leveraging Turner’s theory of ritual, Sureau examines how this sentiment created a transitional phase during which old bureaucratic procedures were temporarily suspended and new technological innovations were introduced. Failing to attract sufficient IT staff, BAMF resorted to outsourcing programming and maintenance to external IT companies. The post-crisis ›new normal‹, therefore also included a quasi-permanent dependency on IT companies. Drawing on Blumenberg’s concept of technicisation, Sureau demonstrates how this process of institutional change produced a new, seemingly self-evident reality, where recently introduced technologies – and dependencies – became accepted as a matter of fact. The paper contributes to understanding the complex interplay between crises, collective emotions, technological innovation, and institutional change.