Administrative Traditions: Concepts and Variables

Contemporary administrative systems are shaped in part by their past and by the conceptions of good administration that are embedded in administrative culture. Administrative traditions shape contemporary administration in Europe and have been heavily influenced by European models. Administrative tradition means an historically based set of values, structures, and relationships with other institutions that define the nature of appropriate public administration. Seven dimensions can be used to both define these traditions and categorize public administration into four groups of nations. This explanation is similar to cultural explanations, but it includes the influence of structures as well as ideas. While the model of traditions developed is based largely on European and North American experiences, it can also be applied to a much broader range of administrative systems.

Information Processing and Digitalization in Bureaucracies

Bureaucracies and their processing of information have evolved along with the formation of states, from absolutist to welfare state and beyond. Digitalization has both reflected and expedited these changes, but it is important to keep in mind that digital-era governance is also conditioned by existing information resources as well as institutional practices and administrative culture. To understand the digital transformations of states, one needs to engage in contextual analysis of the actual changes that might show even paradoxical and unintended effects. Initially, the studies on the effects of information systems on bureaucracies focused on single organizations. But the focus has since shifted toward digitally enhanced interaction with the society in terms of service provision, responsiveness, participatory governance, and deliberation, as well as economic exploitation of public data. Indeed, the history of digitalization in bureaucracies also reads as an account of its opening. But there are also contradictory developments concerning the use of big data, learning systems, and digital surveillance technologies that have created new confidential or secretive domains of information processing in bureaucracies. Another pressing topic is automation of decision making, which can range from rules-based decisions to learning systems. This has created new demands for control, both in terms of citizen information rights as well as accountability systems. While one should be cautious about claims of revolutionary changes, the increasing tempo and interconnectedness characterizing digitalization of bureaucratic activities pose major challenges for public accountability. The historical roots of state information are important in understanding changes of information processing in public administration through digitalization, highlighting the transformations of states and new stakeholders and forms of collaboration, as well as the emerging questions of accountability. But instead of readily assuming structural changes, one should engage in contextualized analysis of the actual effects of digitalization to fully understand them.

UPAYA E-GOVERNMENT MELALUI BUDAYA INTRANET E-LEARNING PADA SEKOLAH DASAR DI KOTA MALANG (Studi pada Dinas Pendidikan Kota Malang)

The formation of an orderly culture of administration for educators and students in schools cannot be separated from the routines that were born in school policy. Mastery of the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) media will have a major impact on efforts to carry out of e-Government in Indonesia, which is implemented as a government program in effectively streamlining public services. Conventional administrative culture is still secure in person management to the level of institutionalization. Like routine measurement, administration and reporting still use conventional culture. Other conventional cultures such as accreditation, school control in governance, and documentation are clear. This conventional routine can affect the slow pace of government programs, especially in the transformation efforts towards e-Government. Research with this qualitative approach focuses on issues about the culture of e-Learning intranet implementation in schools in Malang, as well as factors that support and hinder the implementation of e-Learning intranet in schools. Analysis of the data used is interactive model analysis and force field analysis. The results showed that the culture of using the e-Learning intranet can be used as a habit towards e-Government efforts. Optimization of e-Government can be realized if the basis of administrative activities that cultivate e-Learning intranet routinely at school. By cultivating the e-Learning intranet in schools, government programs especially the transformation towards e-Government can be achieved.

Understanding Comparative Bureaucracy

Public bureaucracies are central institutions in the delivery of public services. There has been, however, some tendency to consider all bureaucracies as fundamentally the same. This chapter rejects that assumption and examines a number of different ways of comparing public bureaucracies, including rational choice theory, administrative culture, organization theory, and institutionalism. These approaches have supplied both qualitative and quantitative data for the comparison of administrative systems, and demonstrate the diversity of public administration around the world. These approaches serve as the background to the study of administrative traditions as another powerful approach to understanding how public bureaucracies function.

¿Por qué es tan complicado implantar el archivo electrónico en las administraciones públicas españolas?

La implantación en España del archivo electrónico está sufriendo grandes retrasos a pesar del interés profesional. Las causas son varias y diversas, algunas de ellas son de índole estructural y tienen mucho que ver con la crisis económica, con la cultura administrativa española y con el envejecimiento de los empleados públicos. Otras son debidas a la situación de los archivos en nuestras organizaciones, a la inexperiencia de los profesionales en el tratamiento de los documentos electrónicos y a la ambigüedad de los modelos de archivo electrónico propuestos por las normas legales. En este artículo se intenta describir estas causas y mostrar su impacto entre los archiveros y archiveras españoles. Despite the professional interest, the implement of the electronic archives in Spain is suffering great delays. The causes are various and diverse. Some of them are structural in nature and they have a lot to do with the economic crisis, with the Spanish administrative culture and with the aging of public employees. Others are specific to the archives situation in the organizations, to the professional inexperience in the management of electronic documents and to the vagueness of the electronic archives conceptions proposed by legal regulations. This paper intends to describe these causes and to reveal their impact among the Spanish archivists.

Participatory Administration and Co-production

The German administrative system is well known for its time-honoured subsidiarity principle regarding the delivery of social and welfare services, especially at the local level. The public (municipal) sector is only allowed to provide these welfare services if the civil society, welfare organisations and citizens’ initiatives are not able to do it on their own. Against this background, the co-production of public services is deeply rooted in the German administrative culture. However, in more recent times, often prompted by fiscal problems, but also triggered by an increasing demand for more citizen participation, the co-production of services and the involvement of multiple actors have gained increasing importance. Against this backdrop, the chapter outlines these shifts from ‘traditional’ modes of service delivery and decision-making to co-producing features and participatory elements. It also addresses some of the resulting key problems and pitfalls, such as accountability, transparency and legitimacy.

Administrative Federalism

The German federal architecture is shaped by a peculiar mix of strong decentralisation and high autonomy at lower levels of government coupled with an administrative culture of uniformity, solidarity and coordination. This system has been described as ‘administrative federalism’ to emphasise the prominent role of executives and administrations in policymaking and policy implementation. The federal level relies on the Länder for executing its tasks; in turn, the Länder executives possess rights of co-decision in federal legislation via the Bundesrat. While formal jurisdictions are strongly decentralised, a dense web of interlocking powers and processes, as well as institutions of coordination, creates incentives for territorial governments to closely cooperate with each other. The German-style administrative federalism has been successful, but is requiring adaptation and developments caused by trends like the upward shift of tasks from the Länder to the federal level and increasing party-system fragmentation.

Max Weber (1864-1920) and Public Administration Today

Max Weber passed away on 14 June 1920 at the early age of 56, from consequences of the last pandemic – the Spanish Flu (Kaesler 2014, 15-16). During the last 100 years, Weber’s positionas one of the world’s great economists, sociologists, social science theorists, and public administration scholars has been secure (see Whimster 2004), if with ups and downs. Weber’seminence is probably the least contested in the last field – not uncontested, for sure, as eminence must attract criticism. Ups and downs yes, but Weber remains central. At a minimum, we may say that he is the most important public administration thinker of his time, even of modern public administration. One can think with or against Weber in public administration, but by and large, not really without him. We therefore decided that it was not only fitting, but even necessary, to include a short tribute to him in a Halduskultuur issue this year, a fortioriseeing that this journal has carried several studies of Max Weber, Weberianism, and the Neo-Weberian State (e.g. Samier 2005; Drechsler 2005; 2009; Kostakis 2011), and indeed, that the concept of Administrative Culture is particularly Weberian.

International Students’ Experiences of Public Administration Activity in the Host Country: Revealing Patterns of Administrative Culture

The conducted research is aimed to identify those patterns in which administrative culture is distinguished while addressing the immigrants’ experiences related to administrative behaviour of state institutions and public servants in the host country. The conducted research particularly focuses on international students’ experiences in Lithuania. Therefore the analysis draws insights using a qualitative survey data where the international students’ of Kaunas municipality in Lithuania reveal their experiences, related to the behaviour of public service officials. For so, the conducted research explores students’ socio-demographic characteristics in their relation to experiences while carrying administrative activities. Consequently, the data is being used to support and illustrate the given arguments in how administrative culture distinguishes itself in the migration-related performance field. The main findings from the analysed data support arguments that in those cases when migrant's situation is being addressed, the administrative culture of the host country is admitted to have its own distinctive features. The case study of Kaunas municipality of Lithuania reveals that the immigrant-related administrative culture distinguishes oneself while facilitating such features as (I) restrictiveness in language usage policy which in turn creates obstacles for immigrants to obtain optimal access to information and (II) features of not sufficiently responsive administrative behaviour. Overall, the originality and the value the research gives additional input by revealing in what way administrative culture distinguishes oneself while addressing the immigrants case and at the same time, indicates the scope for public leadership in migrant related public administration activity.