The concept of administrative styles

Bayerlein, Louisa; Knill, Christoph und Zink, Dionys (2021): The concept of administrative styles. In: Howlett, Michael und Tosun, Jale (Hrsg.): The Routledge Handbook of Policy Styles. London ; New York: Routledge, Taylor&Francis Group. S. 153-164

Abstract

Administrative styles are informal routines and standard operating procedures that characterise the behaviour and activities of public administrations in the policy-making process. They can be understood as the meso level of organisational culture. The ‘first generation’ of administrative styles can be considered a continuation of the policy styles and regulatory styles research tradition. As such they have been mostly employed to describe state-society relationships. Recently, a ‘second generation’ of administrative styles scholarship has emerged, which broadens the scope of the concept to also account for politico-administrative interactions and bureaucratic influence potentials. Administrative styles are guided by two orientations, namely positional and functional orientations. Depending on the prevalence of positional and functional orientations in behavioural patterns, it is possible to distinguish four ideal-typical administrative styles that apply to administrative routines of influencing policy-making processes and outputs: a servant style, an advocacy style, a consolidator style, and an entrepreneurial style. Variation in administrative styles across different organisations can be explained by the internal and external challenges organisations perceive. Understood this way, administrative styles could enable comparative assessments of bureaucratic routines and influence in policy-making across different countries or sectors as well as in sub-, supra-, and international bureaucracies.

• Dokumententyp: Buchbeitrag
• Fakultät: Sozialwissenschaften > Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 320 Politik
• ISBN: 978-0-429-28632-2 ; 978-0-367-25143-7 ; 978-0-367-71369-0
• Ort: London ; New York
• Sprache: Englisch