Bureaucratic Coordination Research Articles

Assessing R&D Investment Policy in the Indonesian Defense Sector: Towards Long-Term Sustainability

The research examines the current state of research and development (R&D) investment policies in the Indonesian defense sector, focusing on their sustainability and long-term impact. It uses institutional, implementation, network, and innovation diffusion theories and secondary data analysis. The findings reveal institutional influences, challenges in implementation, bureaucratic coordination, and measures to enhance long-term sustainability. Historical, cultural, and regulatory factors influence R&D policies, while limited resources make implementation difficult. The study emphasizes the importance of collaboration between the public and private sectors and continuous monitoring and evaluation. The findings provide recommendations for fostering innovation, overcoming challenges, and ensuring the sector's resilience.

From big data to higher bureaucratic capacity: Poverty alleviation in China

AbstractThis study explores how big data technologies can create an “information commons” shared by all policy stakeholders to alleviate the corruption and information asymmetries long endemic to poverty alleviation programs. We argue that the information commons can transform discrete data first into information with clear policy purposes and then into actionable knowledge. This process increases bureaucratic competence by improving policy accuracy and the efficiency of bureaucratic coordination and augments bureaucratic reliability by facilitating the investigation and prevention of corruption. We substantiate our propositions through extensive field interviews with officials and citizens in a Chinese province that is using China's first monitoring platform powered by big data technology to implement anti‐poverty policies. Our study illustrates the importance of data–information–knowledge chains in improving governance.

Public administration and politics meet turbulence: The search for robust governance responses

Public administration and politics meet turbulence: The search for robust governance responses

Implementasi Peraturan Gubernur Nomor 3 Tahun 2021 Tentang Tambahan Penghasilan Pegawai Dalam Meningkatkan Kinerja dan Disiplin Pegawai Pada Dinas Perindustrian dan Perdagangan Provinsi Sumatera Utara

The purpose of this study is to analyze the implementation and obstacles of the Governor's Regulation Number 3 of 2021 concerning Additional Employee Income in Improving Employee Performance and Discipline at the Industry and Trade Office of North Sumatra Province. Descriptive method is used by using a qualitative approach. How to collect data related to the problem under study so that it can be explained descriptively. Data analysis is a process of systematically finding and compiling data obtained from interviews and field observations. The results of the study show that the implementation is still less than optimal, such as: Communication not all the information needed is conveyed and some employees have a poor level of understanding; Resources are still not maximized starting from internet facilities and applications used by employees; Disposition Honesty of employees is not optimal because the data with reality do not match; The structure of the Bureaucratic Coordination has not been maximized because the employees have their respective activities. The inhibiting factors are that employees are considered less informative, internet connections are slow and the applications used often experience interference, the honesty level of some employees is not good, the busyness of each employee causes coordination to take longer.

From Bureaucratic Coordination to a Data-Driven Model: Transformation and Capacity Building of Community-Based Prevention and Control of Public Health Events.

Communities are the first line of defense in responding to major public health events. Taking the community-based prevention and control cases of COVID-19 in China as samples, this paper constructs an analytical framework for the generation of community-based prevention and control capacity of public health events from the perspective of governance elements optimization based on the methods of text analysis and limits-to-growth archetype analysis. According to the research, the community-based prevention and control of public health events realizes the integration of governance elements of key actors through the bureaucratic coordination mode and maximizes the prevention and control efficiency with the primary goal of epidemic prevention and control in a short period of time, which presents a “reinforcing feedback” loop in the “limits-to-growth” model system. However, with the development of the epidemic showing a strong trend of being latent and wide spread, the “reinforcing feedback” from the bureaucratic coordination model on the effect of epidemic prevention and control encounters the “regulatory feedback” that inhibits the growth at the data-driven level. On the basis of discussing the practice of the public health prevention and control mode in the grassroots communities under the established political framework, this paper attempts to construct an institutional reform system from technological governance to technological empowerment, so as to effectively realize the mode transformation of community-based prevention and control of public health events.

The Japanese prime minister and the executive institutional setting

This article explores the institutional arrangements surrounding the Japanese prime minister and offers an analysis of the core executive style in accordance with the classifications introduced by Dunleavy and Rhodes. The constitutional arrangement was set out to establish a ‘prime ministerial government’ in Japan. However, Japanese bureaucrats, who feared strong individual authority, instead sought to create a ‘cabinet government’ which exercises strong authority as a collective body. In addition, two developments weakened the prime minister’s power over the cabinet, namely the ceremonial role of cabinet meetings and strong factionalism within the ruling party, which led to a ‘bureaucratic coordination model’. Since the 1990s, institutional reforms have shifted the Japanese core executive towards a ‘prime ministerial government’.

Suspicious Citizenship, Bureaucratic Coordination, and the Deportation of Cambodian American Refugees

AbstractIndividuals of Cambodian descent who came to the United States as refugees following the Khmer Rouge, American war in Vietnam, and secret bombings in Southeast Asia (i.e., Cambodian American refugees) who were granted Lawful Permanent Residency (LPR) can be deported to Cambodia upon conviction of certain crimes, even if they lack Cambodian documentation and citizenship. This article traces how Cambodian American refugees are transformed from LPRs to illegalized deportable refugees to deportees entitled to Cambodian documentation and citizenship after arrival. This documentation process is predicated on transnational bureaucratic coordination, resulting in exclusion from the United States and inclusion in Cambodia to create new Cambodian citizens. This article argues that deportees endure a subject unmaking and remaking process that engenders suspicious citizenship: when individuals who are objects of suspicion by both the United States and Cambodian state become suspicious of these same state powers. Through their experiences with the suspicious citizenship process, deportees engage in complaint about documentary opacity, illegibility, falsification, and corruption to challenge the sociolegal normalization of their deportations and their alleged inherent belonging in Cambodia while remaining legible to the Cambodian state. [deportation, documentation, bureaucracy, citizenship, suspicion]

Automated Neoliberalism? The Digital Organisation of Markets In Technoscientific Capitalism

The core contradiction in neoliberalism (studies) is that markets are organised and require significant bureaucratic coordination and governance. In light of the increasingly technoscientific nature of contemporary capitalism, it is important to examine exactly how markets are organised and their governance configured by digital processes. In this article, I argue that the entanglement of digital technoscience and capitalism has led to an 'automated neoliberalism' in which markets are configured by digital platforms, personal lives are transformed through the accumulation of personal data, and social relations are automated through algorithms, distributed electronic ledgers, and rating systems. Two issues arise as a result of these changes: first, are markets being automated away, in that market exchange no longer underpins social organisation? And second, does individual and social reflexivity problematise techno-economic automation, in that new platforms, data assets, ranking algorithms, etc. are all dependent on individuals telling the 'truth'? My aim in this article is to answer these questions and to consider the political implications of automated neoliberalism and our reflexive enrolment in it.

Friction and bureaucratic control in authoritarian regimes

AbstractDemocracies deliberately create “friction” in bureaucratic processes, using inefficiencies to mitigate the impact of government transitions and asymmetric information on leaders' ability to exert control. With far more centralized power, would authoritarians prefer less friction? We argue that they do not. In fact, excess friction is actively supplied to hinder bureaucratic coordination independent of or even in opposition to top‐down control, leaving the central leaders the only player powerful enough to organize complex actions. Our analysis of data on the Chinese government indicates that bureaucrats are systematically sent to unfamiliar work environment, and that agencies that are more exposed to the resultant inefficiencies are also more likely to come under direct control by senior Politburo members. The pattern of targeted intervention indicates that bureaucratic control in authoritarian regimes is predicated not only on centralized power in general but also the deliberate supply of friction to obstruct independent actions from the bottom up.

Explaining bureaucratic power in intergovernmental relations: A network approach

The core assumption of the bureaucratic politics model and a large part of public administration scholarship is that bureaucrats influence politicians and political decisions via their crucial role in preparing, coordinating and formulating policy. While this influence has been analysed in a vertical direction, that is, how much do bureaucrats influence politicians, the horizontal perspective has been mostly neglected: which bureaucrats are most powerful and influential during the process of bureaucratic coordination and decision‐making? Deducing hypotheses from bargaining theory and testing them with a novel network dataset on German Intergovernmental Relations (IGR), this contribution finds that bureaucrats indeed possess varying degrees of power. Jurisdictional and organizational power resources, such as voting, financial and institutional power, and also party politics, can best explain these variances in bureaucratic power. Personal characteristics, such as experience and education, however, are not used as power resources.

Whole of Government: the Solution to Managing Crises?

The frequency and severity of natural disasters has placed a clear emphasis on the role of governments in responding to these crises. During the past decade, disaster events have had a significant impact on the relevant communities as well as raising questions regarding the role of government and the bureaucratic coordination of planning and response processes. These events have placed a renewed focus on the ability of governments to plan, prepare, and respond in an effective way to crises. They have also tended to indicate that there remain serious challenges to government coordination and that crises create a unique series of challenges for the public sector. At the heart of understanding how governments respond to crises are notions of bureaucratic coordination. It has been suggested that joined‐up or whole of government arrangements may provide an appropriate means in which to approach crisis management. As a result a number of key themes emerge including the nature of crisis management, role of leadership, understanding coordination, impact of organisational culture, and the interactions between individuals and institutions. This paper will consider these issues and provide a review of the relevant literature, to understand the synergies that exist in connected responses to crises.

Kantei diplomacy? Japan's hybrid leadership in foreign and security policy

ABSTRACTThis article operationalizes Japanese leadership in foreign and security policy, specifically the Abe administrations’ consistent China balancing. It will do so to dispel instances of Premier-centered diplomacy and posit that Abe's diplomatic agenda has rested on a ‘hybrid’ policy-making authority, where the leverage enjoyed by the Prime Minister's office (the Kantei) rested on little-appreciated politicized personnel appointments and demotions within the bureaucratic apparatus, specifically the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Moreover, successful Japanese leadership has functioned especially when operating within the scope of the US strategic framework towards East Asia. While structural constraints, such as the ever-present influence of the USA and bureaucratic coordination, may constrain options, effective leadership in foreign policy-making can indeed make a difference within those boundaries.

Configuration and coordination of international marketing activities

With this paper, we contribute to the literature of configuration and coordination in international firms. While previous literature emphasized that headquarters decide upon the configuration and coordination of their foreign subsidiaries, we suggest that the configuration–coordination decision takes place at the level of activities. With a focus on international marketing activities, our study on German firms from the automotive industry comes up with the following major findings: (1) With respect to configuration, firms tend to centralize the planning and the control of marketing activities, but to decentralize the implementation of marketing activities. (2) For the coordination of marketing activities, direct personal supervision and informal communication are preferred to other approaches, such as socialization or formal bureaucratic coordination. (3) When combining configuration and coordination of marketing activities, we identified distinct clusters. Firms that have a high decentralization of marketing activities and that use a high level of coordination yield better coordination results than firms from other configuration–coordination clusters.

An “Assertive” China? Insights from Interviews

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a more assertive China. What happened to China's “peaceful rise” and “charm offensive”? What explains the changes in China's foreign policy? According to interviews with Beijing and Shanghai-based analysts, China's assertiveness between 2008 and 2010 can be divided into two waves, each triggered by a different cause. The first wave seems triggered by a sense in Beijing that Washington, DC was more differential to China's interests, and less committed to East Asia. The second wave seems best explained as China's response to what it perceived as a far more assertive and threatening United States. Both waves were amplified by two domestic challenges: Chinese leaders’ hypersensitivity to popular nationalism and poor bureaucratic coordination among an expanding number of foreign policy actors.

Making Sense of Carbon Market Development in China

China has recently begun promoting market-oriented policy instruments to reduce carbon emissions as part of its domestic climate strategy. A centerpiece of this new policy approach has been the launch of pilot carbon markets in seven distinct regions. Based on extensive field visits to all pilot markets under development, this analysis assesses the implications of this “bottom-up” approach to carbon market development for the prospects for nationwide carbon trading in China. It concludes that initiating carbon trading in the seven regions across China with insufficient capacity building, an extremely compressed time frame, and little bureaucratic coordination has engendered challenges for the development of a national carbon market. Nevertheless, these pilots have advanced the prospects for sustained climate action in China at the local level through their contribution to indigenous technical and human capacity as well as through engaging new stakeholders, including domestic and international actors, supportive of the development of an eventual national trading scheme.

Die Allokation der Waldbetretung, ein Beispiel für das Problem gesellschaftlicher Kosten (Essay)

The allocation of rights of access to forests as an example of the problem of social cost (essay) This paper analyses the allocation of rights of access to forests in Switzerland. The starting point is the fact that free access to forests, such as is seen in Switzerland, is leading to an increase in the use of forests for recreation and subsequent competition with other rights of forest use. A four-stage analysis is implemented in this paper. In the first stage, the well-known farmer-rancher-approach proposed by Coase is applied in order to explain the conflict of use between the two groups, recreational forest users and forest owners. In the second stage, the number of conflicts of use is multiplied by dividing the recreational forest users into subgroups and adding further user groups, such as hunters or nature conservationists. The observed conflicts of use and the solutions with regard to rights of access to forests are very diverse, specific and subject to spatial variability. Since all solutions incur transaction costs, these are the focus of the third stage of the paper. The cost of political and bureaucratic coordination is given special consideration, since this is where Buchanan says the allocation of transaction costs takes on a special dimension, namely, the gradual loss of individual rights, caused by the growth of bureaucracy and politically motivated interests. Thus, the fourth and final stage suggests stronger use of civil law options in solving conflicts of use involving access to forests, since civil law is based on historic and evolutionary rules of just conduct. These rules, in which private and public property is managed by associations, have evolved over a long period of time and are strongly anchored in the common heritage of Swiss society.

Domestic Europeanization – Institutional Entrepreneurs and Welfare State Change

In this paper, we examine the domestic Europeanization of employment policy in two Continental countries — Germany and France. While both countries have experienced substantial labour market reforms in the last decade, the reform fields differ considerably. This paper argues that this is because the appropriation of European resources depends on the domestic patterns of bureaucratic co-ordination. Our analysis reveals that, in Germany horizontal co-ordination has fostered a discursive strategy of a unit in the labour ministry that contributed to the cognitive change towards activation. In France, centralistic co-ordination has blocked the labour ministry from substantial discursive strategy, but by a programmatic strategy it has contributed to improving existing schemes of insertion.

The Social Dimension of the New Generation of EU FTAs with Asia and Latin America: Ambitious Continuation for the Sake of Policy Coherence

This article examines the commitment of the European Union (EU) to advance social goals through the ‘new generation’ of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with partner countries in Asia and Latin America. It does so by analysing the positions of the relevant policy actors on the inclusion of social issues in these prospective agreements. The study finds that the EU is pursuing an ambitious social agenda for the future bilateral trade arrangements while building on existing EU initiatives to strengthen the Social Dimension of Globalization (SDG). It will be argued that this high level of social commitment should be attributed to the Commission’s pro-activeness and entrepreneurial ability in rallying the Member States behind the incorporation of social issues in the negotiating mandates. In asking why the Commission is so committed to promoting social justice through the new trade agreements, the article offers three explanations, one referring to the goal of increasing policy coherence in the social-trade nexus, one drawing on the issue of legitimacy and one relating to the pursuit of bureaucratic interests. The article concludes that the EU’s ambitious agenda nevertheless needs to be qualified. The Commission’s attempts to face policy incoherence between the trade and social spheres risk being hampered by a number of internal and external factors, including weak bureaucratic coordination, contradictory policy goals and opposition by the negotiating partners.

Co-Operative Business Strategies in Eastern Europe

This paper discusses the mechanisms of corporate governance in a centrally planned economy, following Kornai’s classical work on the Socialist system. We evaluate the role of different co-ordination mechanisms used in central and east European countries. A critical analysis of the five co-ordination mechanisms proposed by Kornai (bureaucratic, market, self-governing, ethical and family co-ordination) reveals well established institutions in East European societies and their failure to facilitate efficient economic transactions. A model of corporate governance in a socialist economy is proposed. An examination of managerial strategies in the centrally planned economies considers the dynamic system of negotiation and bargaining between firms and governmental agencies that characterised the system in the past. The uncertainty of outcomes of these former negotiation practices is compared with the uncertainty of the business environment during the current transition period. A thorough discussion of the elements of business environment in transition economies is based on the work of Frydman and Rapaczynski (1994), which highlights the contradictions in the effort of governments to design markets. The macro-economic instability as a result of these efforts is discussed as a major factor in determining firms’ strategic responses. Business risks in Central and Eastern Europe are compared with business risks in developed market economies. Intra- and inter-firm dependency on resources and information is highlighted as an important factor determining managerial strategies and relationships. The concept of business networks is introduced as a strategic solution to high risk, uncertainty and dependency. The evolution of business networks is linked with the former professional and political structures, used as a vehicle for information supply, influence on decisions, and the control of behaviour. The vertical subordination in decision making and the top control of information from the past, has generated a framework for the establishment of new co-operative relations. A secondary analysis of published business case studies from Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania is conducted. Some of the findings show that the main risks that companies face are related to inadequate information, rapid changes with uncertain implications, lack of (or inability to identify) alternative solutions and contradictory objectives that have to be satisfied. The co-operative strategies of managers aim to increase the information supply about market opportunities, and to secure financial resources from government funds or banks. These strategies are facilitated by former links and relationships but are applied at the cost of reaffirming former dependencies.

Co-ordination and public administration in a global economy — A Hungarian point of view

The purpose of social co-ordination mechanisms is to co-ordinate the activities of individuals and organisations specialised in the distribution of work. The paper reviews five basic types of mechanisms: market, bureaucratic, ethical, aggressive and co-operative co-ordination. Today’s world operates on the basis of a duality: international cooperation is based on nation states, in which the public administrations work according to bureaucratic coordination. However, the increasingly globalised market responds to the logic of market coordination. The article argues that in terms of understanding the working of public administration, the various coordination mechanisms are of crucial importance, especially where various mechanisms meet, such as the relationship between nation states and multinational corporations.