High-ranking Civil Servants Research Articles

The Young Caliph and his Wicked Advisors: Women and Power Politics under Caliph Al-Muqtadir (r. 295–320/908–932)

The eighteenth ‘Abbāsid caliph, al-Muqtadir, was still a boy when he ascended the throne. Contemporary reports assert that the caliph's young age and consequent weakness resulted in a take-over by the women of his court. More specifically, chroniclers blamed the caliph's harem for the decline of the ‘Abbāsid empire during this period. However, the actual strategies and achievements of these women do not corroborate such an image. Moreover, women were not the only group trying to influence the caliph and seize power. On the contrary, they had to compete with high-ranking military and civil servants, local elites and court attendants. This article explores the role of women as contenders for power at al-Muqtadir's court.

Reform failure: The processes of devolution and centralisation in Norway

This article addresses the relationship between central and local government in Norway after two decades of devolution reforms. The aim of the reform process was to provide more freedom for local government. However, recent research has revealed that local government is actually less autonomous now than before. We argue that one reason for this is new regulation and control measures initiated by central government. Based on interviews with MPs, cabinet members and high-ranking civil servants, we argue that these regulation and control measures have been introduced and strengthened in order to counteract the effects of devolution reforms.

Social Networks in the Boardroom

This paper provides empirical evidence consistent with the facts that (1) social networks may strongly affect board composition and (2) social networks may be detrimental to corporate governance. Our empirical investigation relies on a unique dataset on executives and outside directors of corporations listed on the Paris stock exchange over the 1992-2003 period. This data source is a matched employer employee dataset providing both detailed information on directors/CEOs and information on the firm employing them. We first find a very strong and robust correlation between the CEO’s network and that of his directors. Networks of former high ranking civil servants are the most active in shaping board composition. Our identification strategy takes into account (1) differences in unobserved directors’ “abilities” and (2) the unobserved propensity of firms to hire directors from particular networks, irrespective of the CEO’s identity. We then show that the governance of firms run by former civil servants is relatively worse on many dimensions. Former civil servants are less likely to leave their CEO job when their firm performs badly. Secondly, CEOs who are former bureaucrats are more likely to accumulate directorships, and the more they do, the less profitable is the firm they run. Thirdly, the value created by acquisitions made by former bureaucrats is lower. All in all, these firms are less profitable on average.

Comparing two Korean Ministries from a Time Perspective

This paper proposes a new approach to organizational studies that places greater empahsis upon the temporal dimension. Time is seen to be a key variable to explain the observed differences in organizational effectiveness. To explore the relationship between a ministry's core function and its internal operation, this study examines two polar cases for the Republic of Korea: the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), and the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC). The hypothesis is that the time span required by the core fucntions of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is greater than that of the Ministry of Information and Communication. In order to test this hypothesis, this study administered questionnaires to high-ranking civil servants in both ministries. From their responses, we find that the hypothesis is rejected. Indeed, the opposite hypothesis is supported with a statistical significance of 0.10. This finding can be explained by the uniform standard operating procedures used by Korean ministries in areas such as planning, decision-making procedure, career system, etc. To interpret this pshenomenon from a time perspective, we argue that there is a discrepancy betwen task time and sequential time and the role of politics in the bureaucracy. This paper proposes to consider time variable as important in the sense that to become more effective, each ministry must differentiate between its organizational structures and internal operational principles with explicit reference to the temporal characteristics of the ministry's core function.

Making Sense of Governance: Empirical Evidence from 16 Developing Countries

Making Sense of Governance: Empirical Evidence from 16 Developing Countries. By Goran Hyden, Julius Court, and Kenneth Mease. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004. 262p. $55.00.This is an unusual and intriguing book. It is both erudite and exploratory (as the authors acknowledge), brilliant in conception, and problematic in execution. It is based on the results of the World Governance Survey (WGS) of “well-informed people” (WIPs), such as high-ranking civil servants, long-standing parliamentarians, businesspeople, academics, and so on. At least 35 WIPs were surveyed in each of the 16 developing countries in the study. No one can doubt the importance of the topic that Goran Hyden, Julius Court, and Kenneth Mease address, particularly given the increasing prominence that it occupies in development theory and practice. The authors define governance as “the rules that regulate the public realm” (p. 16). They rightly seek to give badly needed analytical depth to its study.

From life: Julia Margaret Cameron & Victorian photography

Acknowledged as the outstanding portrait photographer of her generation, Julia Margaret Cameron was a very late starter. She was born to English and French parents in Calcutta in 1815, five days before the Battle of Waterloo. Her father was a high-ranking civil servant in the British East India Company, and it was expected that Julia would follow the example of her sisters by connecting herself to an established Anglo-Indian professional. She did exactly that in 1838 when she married Charles Hay Cameron, a legal scholar, and settled down to the quiet life of a typical Victorian colonial matron. But beneath this conventional exterior, Cameron was becoming increasingly interested in photography, and particularly in new technologies that would allow photographic images to be reproduced and preserved in a permanent form. Shortly after her marriage, she began a long and affectionate correspondence with Sir John Herschel, the world-renowned scientist, and he took great delight in keeping her informed about new developments in photography. Herschel and Cameron believed that in the medium of photography, science and art had become one. In 1863, at the advanced age of 48, Julia Margaret Cameron began to emerge as the leading portrait photographer of the day. At a time when photography's status as an artistic form was the subject of fierce debate, she championed the merits of the medium by producing a series of large, striking portraits of distinguished Victorians including Tennyson, Carlyle and Darwin. These pictures, many of which are reproduced in this book, vividly convey a sense of the powerful personalities Cameron chose as models.

The Courtship Letters and Poems of Philip Wodehouse (1633)

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)In early January 1633 Philip Wodehouse, of Kimberley, Norfolk, courted Mistress Anne Bacon, of Culford, Suffolk. He was twenty-five and she was eighteen years old. There remain in manuscript a few letters and poems which, whilst they engage briefly with the conventions and formal approaches of the prospective seventeenth-century suitor, also provide evidence of the poetic devices of a witty lover anticipating both frustration and failure. They are to be found amongst the correspondence of Anne's mother, Lady Jane Meautys Cornwallis Bacon (c.1581-1659).1 Although the verse is addressed to the daughter, the letters, dating from 2 February to 1 July 1633, are to the mother and to Mr Pead, a gentleman intermediary whose help Wodehouse tried to enlist. Much as the young man longed for a union with Anne, it was to his greatest regret that his advances were considered unwelcome. Not only did he lack the necessary financial resources to marry the daughter of the wealthy Lady Bacon, but he had already been rejected by another aristocratic family, for reasons she sought to ascertain through her brother-in-law, Sir Edmund Bacon. Wodehouse's reluctant acceptance of defeat is held in check by the restrained politeness of his correspondence, and there is an underlying wit in the poems which, together with the letters, indicate a young man of some civility, grace and good humour.We know little of Anne Bacon at this time, except that she was born in 1615, the first daughter of Lady Bacon and her second husband, the gentleman painter Sir Nathaniel Bacon (1585-1627). The fact that the love poems had been hidden away gives some indication as to Lady Bacon's desire to keep control of her daughter's marriage, but there was reason for this. Two years earlier Frederick, her elder son and heir to the Cornwallis estates, had upset delicate negotiations she had set in train by secretly choosing and marrying, without his mother's knowledge or consent, a lady-in-waiting to the court of Queen Henrietta Maria. A rift had developed with the angry Lady Bacon, healed only through the good auspices of the king and queen. Evidently fearing that her daughter might lose her own large 'portion' to a bounty hunter, she did not wish for a repetition of this kind.The brief courtship between Anne and Philip was therefore over by the summer of 1633 when he realised that, even if she returned his affection, a union must be out of the question. We can only venture to guess her sentiments, but the light-hearted poems do give some hint as to the warmth of friendship and probable fondness shared by the young couple.Six years later Anne married her mother's cousin, Thomas Meautys (c.1592-1649), whom she had known since childhood. He was twice her age and a high-ranking civil servant. Formerly the private secretary to his distant cousin Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, he had been made Clerk to His Majesty's Council in 1619, and had entered Parliament for Cambridge Borough in 1621. When his patron died in 1626 he inherited Gorhambury, Hertfordshire, and subsequently succeeded to the Clerkship of the Writs and Processes in the Star Chamber. In 1634 he became Clerk to his Majesty's Privy Council Extraordinary, the duties of which he performed until August 1645 when the office became virtually extinct. Anne lived with her husband at Gorhambury and, in February 1641, he was knighted at Whitehall. On his death the estate was inherited by their only daughter, Jane, who died at the age of ten years in 1652. Gorhambury then passed to Thomas's elder brother, Henry Meautys.2 Anne married again, to Sir Harbottle Grimston (Speaker of the House of Commons and Master of the Rolls, 1660) who bought back Gorhambury with the aid of his mother-in-law, Lady Bacon. They had one daughter, Anne, who also died young, being only four years old.Philip Wodehouse entered Parliament for Norfolk in 1654, and succeeded to the Baronetcy of Kimberley in 1658. …

Do Ministers Matter? The Individual Style of Ministers in Programmed Policy Change

Many social science approaches to governmental work suggest, mainly through models of policy analysis, that individuals (ministers) ‘make’ little ‘difference’ to (policy) processes. This article argues that, on the contrary, individuals are able to influence, through their policy style, change processes. It draws from field research on 19 ministers and three policy sectors in four political systems (Britain, France, Germany, Spain) and interviews with 179 (former) ministers, cabinet members and high-ranking civil servants. It follows in B. Headey and J. Blondel’s footsteps: the ‘consequences’ or the ‘impact’ of ministers. It claims to look at ministerial ‘efficiency’ less by evaluating the work of certain ministers than by comparing types of minister in the ways in which they tackle and overcome (or fail to overcome) the constraints bearing upon the various ‘compartments’ of their policy work.

Changing urban policies towards sustainability in the Mediterranean

Serge Antoine, a high-ranking civil servant (Conseiller-Maître à la Courdes Comptes) who, among his other distinguished posts, has been responsible for international relations at the French Ministry of the Environment and originator of the Mediterranean Blue Plan, is President of the Claude Nicolas Ledoux Foundation for future-oriented studies, member of the board of the international association Futuribles, and member of the World Society for Ekistics (WSE). The text that follows is an edited, revised and expanded version of a paper presented at the WSE Symposion "Defining Success of the City in the 21st Century", Berlin, 24-28 October, 2001.

Louis Hautecœur et Vichy: pensée et action politiques d'un historien de l'architecture

Louis Hautecœur and Vichy: Political Thought and Action of an Architecture historian, by Caroline Poulain. Above all well-known as Art and Architecture historian, Louis Hautecœur was also a high-ranking civil servant: he was head of the Beaux-Arts administration from July 1940 to March 1944, when Goering decided to remove him from office. It remains difficult to define his political opinions. Though he was congratulating himself for the revenge of 1940 on 1936 events, he was unconcerned of the reality of the Vichy government. He very seldom intervened in political debates, and his administrative work claimed a lot of his time. But he never hesitated to run counter to the Vichy state of mind in several particular cases, for example by supporting Jean Cassou. On the other hand, facing the German, he was never blind, and he sometimes rebelled against them without joining the Resistance. Moved by a thought developed since the 1920s, he believed that he did his duty by fulfilling his administrative purposes and by improving a French legislation considered as weak and deficient. So numerous laws were passed in every field, for example Archaeology, Museums, Architecture and National Heritage. That is the reason why the 1940-1944 period was so rich and exciting on the matter.

Twentieth Century Ireland: Nation and State by Dermot Keogh

BOOK REVIEWS Twentieth Century Ireland: Nation and State, by Dermot Keogh, pp. 504, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994, $39.95. Dermot Keogh, the Jean Monnet Professor of History at University College, Cork, has tackled one of the most diYcult tasks facing the historian—writing a survey text. A survey text’s purpose is to serve either as a handy reference book at the side of the desk or as a basic source for students in a history course. As such, readers expect to be able to trace the development of large themes over time, review information about pivotal events, and learn how important individuals acted in key situations. The successful survey must balance its coverage of the various themes and put a human face on the transient individuals who make history happen. It must also maintain a steady narrative beat to make the themes march, sustain its analysis of the events and the actions of individuals, and, perhaps most challenging of all, present the author’s grand synthesis of what it all means. Keogh structures his narrative of Ireland since 1922 around the battles within, between, and among the political parties; the role of the bureaucracy; the relationship between church and state; the conduct of foreign policy; and the contributions that artists and women have made to the development of the nation. His survey excludes Northern Ireland, except when that region’s aVairs aVect the course of political life in the Republic. Keogh places his roots toward an emphasis on rational economic planning and a more inclusive approach to the making of public policy. Keogh’s prescience on this development provides a context for understanding the formation of the Fine Gael, Labour, and Democratic Left government in December, 1994. The contours of Keogh’s narrative of Irish diplomacy appear in the politician’s and diplomats’ ability to provide leadership on the European and world stages. It is a story of highs and lows. In the 1930s, de Valéra was a forceful voice for the rights of small nations in the League of Nations, yet his attempt to trade NATO membership for an end to partition was crude, at best. More recently, Ireland has played a full part in decision making within the European Community. In Anglo-Irish aVairs concerning Northern Ireland, Keogh observes that there is no doubting the signiWcance of the series of diplomatic agreements that began with the New Ireland Forum in 1983; these actions maintained the eYcacy of the constitutional approach to resolving problems between the three states into 1995. The best chapter in the book is devoted to a foreign policy issue—Irish neutrality in World War II. His convincBOOK REVIEWS 177 ing argument is that de Valéra and his diplomatic corps maintained an oYcial neutrality throughout the war, but operated within an evolving modus vivendi that favored the Allies. Nevertheless, Keogh does not underestimate the bitter resentment that the British maintained towards Ireland during and after the defeat of fascism. He concludes the chapter with Louis MacNeice’s chilling poem, “Neutrality”: But then look eastward from your heart, there bulks A continent, close, dark, as archetypal sin, While to the west oV your own shores the mackerel Are fat—on the Xesh of your kin. Keogh breaks the conventions of the survey text in three noteworthy ways that enhance the eVectiveness of his treatment of themes and characters. He smoothly integrates his research in the archives and newspapers with the secondary literature . This technique allows him to expand the narrative at key points, thereby giving the reader a more intimate glimpse at the unfolding of events. His story is also enhanced by information he gathered in the course of conducting interviews with major Wgures in Irish public life. This oral history material, when combined with archival work, illuminates the inXuence of the high ranking civil servants who have consistently advised government ministers on administrative policy in a professional manner from the critical days during founding of the state. And, drawing perhaps on his earlier career as a journalist, Keogh has a knack for the droll afterword that adds spice to the 400 page book. For example, noting that William T. Cosgrave...

Administrative Reforms in Malaysia Strategies for Promoting Efficiency and Productivity in the Public Service, 1981-91

This article is a macro-analysis of reform in the Malaysian civil service, covering the ten-year period between 1981 and 1991. These reforms were dictated by the need to increase efficiency, effeclivcness and productivity in order to speed up the implementation of development policies and deliver the economic goods to lhe people. This article brings into focus the opinions of high-ranking civil servants about reforms initialed during this period. The article concludes that though more effort is still needed, especially in determining how close programmes and policies have come to achieving their target, bureaucratic reforms carried out in Malaysia between 198] and] 99] have generally been successful in changing attitudes of civil servanl.S towards lhe goals of efficiency, effectiveness and productivity.

Vichy, la guerre et les entreprises

Abstract The Burden of economic circumstance and the controls exerted by the Occupants, on the activities of French firms, proved stronger by far, and more decisive, than any of the constraints set up by the Vichy authorities. The purpose of achieving «rational» guidance of the economy led to the economy led to the establishment of a bureaucratic command framework, conditioned at the same time by ideological factors, that did intervene in the outlook of high ranking civil servants, who discovered industrial policy as a new object of their function.

A Layman’s Ministry in the Byzantine Church: The Life of Athanasios of the Great Meteoron

The line between things spiritual and things temporal, between religious and secular, was never very precisely drawn in the Byzantine world. It was not unusual that a man of affairs should be an erudite theologian, that a priest should be a a married man with a family, that a holy man should remain unordained, or that a layman should be appointed as Patriarch of Constantinople. Thirteen of the 122 Byzantine patriarchs were elevated from the laity, four of them in the eighth and ninth centuries. Among them were the Patriarch Tarasios in 784 and his formidably learned nephew Photios in 858, Neither was a priest. Both were high-ranking civil servants and scholars. The popes disapproved of this practice and said so rather forcibly in the case of Photios; but the Byzantines saw nothing odd in it. They continued, from time to time, to appoint a layman rather than a priest to the highest office in their Church. The tenth canon of the Council of Sardica in 343 had recommended that laymen should not be made bishops until they had been ordained and moved up the various rungs of the hierarchical ladder to the top. This, according to the later Greek canonists, required a minimum of seven days on each rung. In later times, Gregory of Cyprus, an admirable lay scholar and theologian, was ordained and elevated to the patriarchal throne in 1283, though he claims in his autobiography that he was ‘pushed’ on to it against his will. John XIII Glykys, who was made patriarch in 1315, had been a distinguished civil servant with an academic turn of mind and a teacher of philology. The facts of his preferment are outlined by his learned friend Nikephoros Gregoras. Not only was John amarried man with sons and daughters; he also suffered from an ailment which, his doctors declared, required him to eat meat. He was therefore excused the customary tonsure as a monk before his ordination. A carnivorous monk would not do; a carnivorous patriarch was all right. John’s wife, in accordance with the canons, obligingly left him and entered a convent.

Recent Case Law of the French Conseil d'Etat

France is characterized by the existence of a large, powerful, and authoritarian public administration which is confident in its autonomous role vis-a-vis French political and economic powers. This well-established element of the French scheme is generally considered to be honest, although it is criticized and the butt of jokes. It is also a favorite subject of plays and literary works, which traditionally depict its failings. Nevertheless, it is respected, and even feared, for it has its means of influence. For the simple citizen, to challenge the administration is to engage in a hopeless battle. Such a powerful administration has been a constant feature of French history. Many studies, notably those undertaken by the French Institute of the Administration Sciences, have demonstrated that the body of high-ranking civil servants existing under the Ancien Re'gime remained in place without significant change during the French Revolution of 1789, constituted a base for modernization in the Napoleonic era, and constituted the foundation of both the Second Empire and the Third Republic. Studies have also been done on the dynasties of high-ranking civil servants under the Ancien Re'gime, as well as during the modern-day period. Neither should our country's Roman tradition be overlooked: after the major invasions the foundations of the Roman Empire were continued by the Church, the only administrative structure enduring throughout those centuries. Similarly, many characteristics of the French administration can be traced, by more or less continuous links, to the efforts of the Monarchy to assure national unity, or, in other words, the manifestation of the King's authority in all parts of the territory. This administration is often described or perceived of as an army, composed of high-ranking civil servants such as engineers from the Grand Ecoles or administrators from the prestigious Ecole Nationale dAdministration, as well as of well-educated lower and mid-level civil servants who are self-confident in their role in the hierarchy. At all social and educational levels, civil servants are easily recruited. In modern France, the administration has a continuously growing presence due to urban development, industrialization, and the