State Bureaucracy Research Articles

Features of Intergovernmental Consultations.The case of Germany

The article explores interstate dialogue focusing on the contacts of highest state bureaucrats and to diplomatic missions. The author analyzed the format of intergovernmental (interstate) consultations and presents the key features of its functioning. The case study is Germany, which has developed a rather comprehensive system of the interstate formats. The difficulties of the creation of Germany’s interstate dialogue with the US, the UK, Anglo-Saxon states as a whole are presented. The article explains the reduction (2019‒2023) in the frequency of German-French interministerial meetings and the ability of the format to overcome the crisis of trust in tandem. The securitization of the negotiation agenda in 2013‒2023 of Germany-Netherlands (as the closest ally of Germany) dialogue is highlighted. The paper determined the causes of the long-term interruption of intergovernmental consultations with NATO member-states and Israel as an increasingly common phenomenon in German foreign policy. Rather illustrative is Germany’s approach to the formats with Russia and China as the key objects for containment by the West. “Bottle necks of the formats used by Germany in Euro-Atlantic community and in the world is underlined.

The legal politics of Islamic bioethics: drunk driving and the reconfiguration of privacy in the modern Gulf

ABSTRACT Science and technology have been long-standing dimensions of the political legitimation of monarchic, shaikhly and imperial rule in the modern Gulf. Scientific development has been supported by attendant sociotechnical imaginaries, but these imaginaries have not been without fissures or contradictions. In the modern Gulf sheikhdoms, sociotechnical imaginaries were fashioned at the intersection of local, regional, and imperial processes. A range of actors participated in these contestations, drawing on shifting cultural ideas about human frailty and progress, continuing social and economic exchanges across the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian Ocean, and varying experiences of imperial constraint and possibility. This article examines how Islamic legal actors in Qatar shaped sociotechnical contestations in the course of the twentieth century. Focusing on medical technology and the problem of drunk driving in the 1960s, I show how Islamic procedural law became connected to new regimes of expertise and modern forms of power inextricably tied to the Qatari nation-state. I suggest that the Islamic legal concepts mobilized by the ulama, which initially served to protect a space of Muslim privacy against technological anonymity and the regulatory ambitions of the modern state, became increasingly unintelligible as the expansive logics of state bureaucracy were adopted and naturalized.

Poverty porn or poverty planning? Slum photography and the politics of spatial representation

This forum article critically examines the politics of visual representation in urban informality, interrogating the genealogies and contemporary manifestations of what we term the “slum gaze.” Drawing on postcolonial theory, feminist visual studies, and critical urban geography, we trace how colonial visualities continue to shape aesthetic constructions of urban marginality through “poverty porn” and spectacles of abjection. We argue that dominant visual regimes not only reflect but actively produce urban informality as a pathologized state of being, rationalizing dispossessive planning interventions while obscuring subaltern spatial knowledges and practices. The article unpacks the contradictory role of visuality in urban planning and policymaking, where GIS mappings and documentary photography paradoxically render informal settlements simultaneously hyper-visible and illegible to state bureaucracies. Against reductive visual grammars inherited from colonial modernity, we advocate for participatory visual methodologies that amplify resident-driven representational practices. By centering community-based visual epistemologies, we gesture toward more emancipatory modes of seeing and narrating the heterogeneous spaces of urban informality. Ultimately, this intervention calls for a paradigmatic shift in how urban scholars and practitioners engage visually with marginalized communities. We contend that cultivating critical visual literacies attuned to the politics of representation is essential for imagining and enacting more just urban futures. This requires moving beyond simplistic denunciations of “poverty porn” toward a praxis of critical visuality that unsettles universalizing gazes while legitimizing plural ways of seeing, knowing, and inhabiting the city.

Labor coercion, fiscal modernization, and state capacity: Evidence from colonial Indonesia

What explains the emergence of centralized fiscal institutions and information-intensive monetary taxation? This is the first study to estimate the effect of state capacity expansion on labor coercion as taxation, a practice known as corvée labor. To do so, I construct a new database covering eighteen Indonesian residencies over thirty-two years (1874–1905) during the period of Dutch colonial rule. I document the wide use of corvée labor and find that national-level policy centralized state finances by gradually replacing corvée with a head tax. At the same time, a residency-level panel data analysis shows that local state capacity expansion, primarily indigenous officials working as agents for the state, slowed the movement away from corvée. These estimates are supported by an IV strategy that uses effective distance to the capital as an instrument for local state capacity. The relationship between state capacity expansion and fiscal modernization therefore depends on what part of the state is expanding and whether interests across types of taxation differ within the state bureaucracy. Opposing interests of different state actors can be key in understanding fiscal modernization and public labor coercion.

Women on the Move: Prostitution on Syros and Corfu in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract: Governments across Europe began to implement systems of state-regulated female prostitution during the nineteenth century. Starting in the 1830s, authorities in British-protected Corfu and Greek Syros marshaled the bureaucracy of the modern state to protect public health—both biologically and morally—from the so-called public woman. Women working as prostitutes on both islands were registered with local authorities, inspected regularly, and hospitalized at the discretion of police and health inspectors. Despite moral and legal prescriptions, prostitution in the Greek world was a highly permeable trade. These women, who came from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, not only moved into and out of prostitution but also traversed the changing political boundaries of the eastern Mediterranean, living and working among its various port cities. Indeed they were a central component of a transforming yet still integrated region, demonstrating the persistence of a connected Mediterranean world from the early modern into the modern period.

Social Movements and Policy Entrenchment

A vast scholarship shows that social movements can play pivotal roles in bringing about policies that benefit marginalized groups. However, the role of social movements in entrenching those policies—ensuring they take root—remains insufficiently studied. We set a research agenda for the study of how social movements shape policy entrenchment by calling attention to three commonly used strategies—occupying state bureaucracies, engaging in pressure and persuasion tactics, and building alliances with political parties—and analyzing the relationships among them. We illustrate these strategies through short case studies of social movements that achieved significant change benefitting marginalized groups in Latin America: the health movement in Brazil, the unemployed workers’ movements in Argentina, and peasant and indigenous movements in Bolivia.

Implementasi Sistem Pemerintahan Berbasis Elektronik (SPBE) di Dinas Komunikasi dan Informatika Kabupaten Sijunjung

Abstract: This research reveals how the Electronic-Based Government System is implemented in the Sijunjung Regency Communication and Information Service. In accordance with Sijunjung Regent Regulation Number 29 of 2019, the Sijunjung Regency Communication and Information Service was appointed as the agency responsible for the application of information and communication technology in the implementation of SPBE in Sijunjung Regency. Based on the results of monitoring and evaluation carried out by the Ministry of State Apparatus Empowerment, Reform and Bureaucracy (Kemen PAN RB) in 2022, Sijunjung Regency achieved the lowest SPBE index number 2 in West Sumatra Province with an index value of 2.18% (fair). Researchers used a quasi-qualitative research method (Quasi Qualitative) with a simple research design (SRD) approach. The informants in this research consisted of 9 people consisting of the regional secretary, three employees of the Communication and Information Department and 5 employees from each OPD who the author chose for research using purposive sampling. The data collection techniques applied in this research are observation, interviews and documentation. Meanwhile, the data analysis applied in this research uses triangulation techniques. Based on the results of the analysis using e-Government implementation theory according to Indrajit, the results obtained were that in application development not all OPDs coordinated with the Communication and Information Department in developing applications. Then training and competency development has been carried out by the Sijunjung district communications and information services office for all operators in agencies implementing SPBE. Regarding the availability of network infrastructure, there are still many network flashing spots in Sijunjung Regency. Regional regulations related to SPBE management have been prepared by the regional government of Sijunjung Regency. Human resource procurement is focused on adding employees who understand programming, and the capital used in implementing SPBE uses APBD with a limited budget.

‘Let’s not be afraid to sort them out’: analysing Australia’s carceral representations of RAMSI

ABSTRACT The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) was an Australian-led and largely Australian-funded state-building project, which included the strengthening of the police force and state bureaucracy and which took place over a 14-year window from 24 July 2003 to 30 June 2017. A few months beforehand, former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer argued that the deployment of Australian troops to the Solomon Islands would be unjustifiable to Australian taxpayers and likely resented in the region. In this article, I argue that RAMSI became thinkable and legitimate through representations of Solomon Islands in Australian political discourse and media during the mission’s early years (2003–2007) which depended on carceral and colonial logics of containment, control and intervention. The credibility of RAMSI depended on the existence of a perpetrator of violence to be contained and innocents to be saved. These representations reproduce colonial constructs of the dangerous, racialised Other and depend on the carceral assumption that criminality is an individual aberration or failure, rather than one which is socially, culturally and historically produced. These discourses have carceral effects as they contribute to the naturalisation of policing and (neo)colonial control as solutions to social and economic problems.

Islamic Law, Oil Wealth, and the Modern State in the Gulf: The Scope of the Sharia in Twentieth-Century Qatar

Abstract How can one write the modern legal history of the Gulf states without projecting onto the past the contemporary hegemony of the modern nation-state? What narratives other than secularization stories might be told? And what archives are available to us to facilitate such an endeavor? This paper addresses these questions with reference to Qatar, where a powerful sharia judiciary developed under the British Protectorate maintained its autonomy until the 1990s. The publications of the Presidency of Sharia Courts (est. 1958) and the work of its long-time president, Shaykh ʿAbdallāh b. Zayd Āl Maḥmūd (1911–97), suggest that oil wealth, modern state bureaucracy, and the British legal order expanded – rather than curtailed – the scope of sharia law in Qatar in the course of the twentieth century. Sharia scholars and institutions reinforced the rule of law, contributed to minimizing the role of customary norms in society, replaced commercial courts and alternative modes of dispute resolution, and helped establish an autonomous legal sphere separate from political power.

Bureaucratic Politicisation and Insurgent Bureaucrats: A Theoretical Framework

AbstractMunicipal bureaucrats in the United States—mostly on the social side of the state (e.g. public health, welfare, educators, housing, and sometimes urban planners) but not exclusively so (e.g. district attorney offices)—have shown growing willingness to engage in political battles within the bureaucracy, connect with social movements, and construct oppositional identities centred on social and racial justice. Critical urban theories of the state highlight important constraints that shape state strategies, functions, and policies but tell us little about the contradictions propelling some bureaucrats into political contests over power and legitimacy. Consequently, we turn to theorists who conceive of the bureaucratic state as a contradictory and relatively autonomous field where conflicts between dominated and dominant bureaucrats overlap and converge with conflicts between dominated and dominant class forces (Bourdieu, Gramsci, Hall, and Poulantzas). Their observations are used to formulate the three propositions that underpin our theoretical framework. These propositions draw attention to the structural, relational, and conjunctural processes involved in forming individual bureaucrats into an insurgent political subject.

Money and cooperative federalism: evidence from EPA civil litigation

Abstract The federalism structure of the US government requires active cooperation from state governments to successfully enforce federal environmental regulations. What explains the variation in state governments’ participation in lawsuits against firms that are accused of violating major environmental statutes? We argue that firms’ political connections with state politicians affect a state government’s decision to join the litigation process. By constructing a novel dataset on the EPA’s civil cases and settlements for the period 1998–2021, we show that state environmental agencies are less likely to join the EPA in court when the defendant firms contributed to Republican state legislators. We do not find the same pattern when firms have connections with Democratic legislators. We present various mechanisms of how state politicians influence behaviors of state bureaucrats. Our findings highlight how state politics can be an avenue for firms to exert influence on federal environmental regulations.

The politics of policing in Pakistan: decentralisation of power in a federalised political landscape

ABSTRACT How do political parties establish partisan control over police forces in federalised hybrid regimes with powerful militaries? Focusing on Pakistan, this paper examines how, in the context of limited and ambiguous administrative decentralisation after the 18th Amendment to the constitution, and continued military embeddedness in state bureaucracies, parties have sought to control provincial police forces. Focusing on clashes over appointments in the leadership of provincial police forces, we argue that: firstly, turnover in the leadership of provincial police forces is more likely under new governments than under incumbent governments; and, secondly, provincial police leadership is more likely to pushback against partisan control when the hybrid political system is vertically fragmented, i.e, when the provincial political leadership and the federal military leadership are not aligned. We analyse the politics of policing in two provinces, Sindh and Punjab, since 2017. This comparative analysis contributes to debates on the politics of policing in hybrid federations.

The Instrumentalization of Cultural Heritage in Ceausescu’s Romania

This article analyzes the heritagisation policies and the instrumentalization of cultural heritage by Ceausescu's regime for political purposes. I argue that Ceausescu’s political regime was neopatrimonial, a system where rules took place within the framework of legal bureaucracy of a modern state in which formal structures and rules did exist, although in practice, the separation of the private and public sphere was not always observed. This system was characterized by insecurity about the behavior and role of state institutions, but primarily the actions of the supreme leader that were erratic and unpredictable. In this regime, the rural cultural heritage was used for political-ideological purposes, in close connection with the cult of the personality of the supreme leader. In this context, the heritigisation of folk creations such as folk plays did not mean the preservation of these rural cultural forms under threat in a society undergoing major economic and social transformations that imperiled traditional community life. Instead, it was a form of symbolic political manipulation used to acquire political legitimacy. Received: 17 January 2024 / Accepted: 29 May 2024 / Published: 02 July 2024

Identity Politics within Kentucky’s Civil Service and the Growth of the Bureaucratic State

AbstractFor five decades now the various levels of government in the United States, through the use of affirmative action and diversity policies, have sought a more racially and gender-wise equitable society with respect to equal employment opportunity. Governments established hiring goals for women and racial minorities. Goals became quotas as state and local governments (and private employers) that were dependent on federal money made certain that goals produced desired results by preferring people based on their race or gender. This article is a case study of how the Commonwealth’s welfare cabinet over two decades ago used long-standing civil service regulations and policies to pursue preferential employment practices while conterminously pursuing greater societal equity by reducing governmental oversight of welfare programs. All this foreshadowed President Biden’s iteration of affirmative action—federal equity directives regarding employment preferences and greater conditions of equality. After the events described herein, Democratic Kentucky transformed itself into a Republican state.

When Individual Politics Become Public: Do Civil Service Protections Insulate Government Workers?

This paper examines whether the civil service system protected state bureaucrats from political interference following a recall petition against the governor of Wisconsin. I find that most classified workers, who were covered by the state civil service laws, were paid equally by signing status following the public disclosure of the petition list. Conversely, signers in the unclassified service, a smaller set of government positions, were paid about 3 percent less annually relative to nonsigners in the postdisclosure period. These results indicate that the civil service insulated qualified bureaucrats, while uncovered workers faced retribution. (JEL D72, D73, H75, H83, J31, J45)

Henri Lefebvre and the criticism of everyday life: reflections from the film ‘I, Daniel Blake’ by Ken Loach

This essayistic work intends to perform an interpretation of the film “I, Daniel Blake” by English filmmaker Ken Loach in the light of Henri Lefebvre's critique of everyday life. Using the method of narrative decoupage, the work analyzes excerpts from the story that illustrate a worker's struggle against state bureaucracy and the precariousness of public services in the United Kingdom, reflecting spatial segregation in a urban life of few possibilities. The analysis reveals how capitalist structures shapes everyday life by reinforcing social exclusion.

From Laissez Faire to a Market Mechanism: the Formation of Housing Finance in Taiwan

Abstract The literature on East Asian developmental states has mostly focused on economic policies; few studies have investigated how developmentalism affects urbanisation. This study addresses this gap by analysing the formation of a housing system by the developmental state and the role of the housing sector in the transition from an economic miracle in the 1960s to stagnation after the 1990s. Wang, Lee, and Chen (2017) argued that Taiwan’s state bureaucrats played a gradually diminishing role in directing the market. This article takes a different approach by arguing that the government’s interventions on housing intensified after the 1990s; housing finance sectors were formalised, squatters were removed, and interventions based on market mechanisms were employed to stimulate the housing market. However, the lack of an effective state intervention on housing made speculation difficult to control and created an obstacle to economic development. Such housing speculation increased social inequality.

Working Class Peripheries or State Bureaucracy Settlements? Case Studies of Social Democratic Parties Electoral Support in Capital Cities of Hungary and Poland

Working Class Peripheries or State Bureaucracy Settlements? Case Studies of Social Democratic Parties Electoral Support in Capital Cities of Hungary and Poland

A German DJ, Postmodern Dreams, and the Ambivalent Politics of East–West Exchange at the First Exhibition of Approximate Art in Riga, April 1987

Organized as part of the annual Art Days festival in the capital of the Latvian SSR, the First Exhibition of Approximate Art comprised a cacophonous and provocative mashup of music, dance, performance art, and design. At the center of the event was a demonstration of mixing and scratching records by Maximilian Lenz, also known as Westbam, one of the leading DJs in West Berlin. Mining archival sources in Berlin and Riga, this article reconstructs the complicated path by which the DJ came to perform at the event. It reveals a surprising network of relations and alliances operating in tandem behind the scenes, featuring a Riga artist dedicated to enacting a vision of postmodern performance in his city, an ambitiously networking émigré Latvian living in exile in West Germany, and a pair of Soviet offices under direct control of the KGB, charged with managing cultural exchanges with the West in hopes of currying sympathies for Soviet culture and policy. Complementing and extending research on the “gaps” and “holes” in the Soviet system that sometimes allowed for the staging of otherwise unacceptable works of art, the story of the First Exhibition of Approximate Art reveals how personal connections and interpersonal networks within even the most highly monitored parts of the system itself—the state security apparatus—could open doors for artistic projects unanticipated and even undesired by the bureaucratic state.

James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and Punitive Child Loss in the Modern Bureaucratic State

The intense ambivalence of James Joyce’s references to Oscar Wilde throughout Joyce’s literary career poses a riddle to which scholars have proposed an array of answers. This article seeks the basis for Joyce’s simultaneous identification and disidentification with Wilde in the strata of painful affect that informs collective subjectivity in the modern nation-state. In late 19th century Britain, two nebulous new crimes, coined at the urging of the Social Purity movement—gross indecency, and custodial neglect—rendered families and communities newly vulnerable to punitive child loss. The enforcement of these new laws created conditions under which one might lose custody of one’s children based on a charge that could be brought by anyone, based on anything, or nothing. Gross indecency and child neglect were both ill-defined and highly stigmatizing. Both were difficult to defend against, while their most terrible consequences were often extra-judicial. In De Profundis, Oscar Wilde conveys the dehumanizing anguish of extra-judicial punishments that could be indiscriminately imposed on a new kind of moral criminal by depicting the loss of his children as a figurative crucifixion. This article charts accounts by social historians describing the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children’s early years in Dublin, and the organization’s impact on socially precarious families, alongside episodes from Joyce’s biography, and his literary reinventions of these episodes. Using passages from De Profundis that influenced Joyce’s writing, historical accounts of moral policing introduced by the Social Purity movement, and Joyce’s biographical materials, letters, and published writing, this article connects changing affect in Joyce’s childhood family to the intense aversion, outrage and empathy that color his recurrent allusions to what he termed Oscar Wilde’s ‘civil death.’