J P Olsen
Biographic Data
| ID | 15747 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J P Olsen |
| GIVEN NAMES | J P |
| FAMILY NAME | Olsen |
| SIGNATURE | OLSEN J P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oslo |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1383-8318 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2884 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
The Reforming Organization
Originally published in 1993. Organizations have become larger, more professionalized, more differentiated, and wealthier. At the same time, they are often subject to large-scale changes: either as a result of mergers and acquisitions, or simply in response to changed market conditions or new technologies. In this climate the people who run organizations frequently find themselves acting as "reformers". The central concern of this study is to ana…
Reform as routine
Democratic accountability and the terms of political order
This paper explores the shifting significance of accountability processes and why they sometimes attract considerable public attention and citizens’ involvement, whereas at other times they escape public notice. Accountability processes are conceived of as order-maintaining or order-transforming processes and I interpret the recent obsession with democratic accountability as part of a struggle over the terms of political order. This paper attends…
Democratic Order, Autonomy, and Accountability
Accountability is a principle for organizing relations between rulers and ruled, and making public officials accountable is a democratic achievement. There are, however, competing claims about what is involved in demanding, rendering, assessing, and responding to accounts; what are effective accountability institutions; and how accountability regimes emerge and change. This article provides a frame for thinking about institutional aspects of acco…
Elaborating the “New Institutionalism”
This article expands on ideas that were presented over two decades ago in the article ‘The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life’. Here, some theoretical ideas were suggested that clarify certain aspects of the role of institutions in political life. This article aims to continue on elaborating the ideas presented in the aforementioned article, and does not try to replace more comprehensive reviews of the different instit…
The Logic of Appropriateness
This article focuses on the rules of appropriateness in the context of formally organized political institutions and democratic political orders. It tries to determine how an understanding of the role of rule-driven behaviour in life may clarify thinking about political life. It sketches the basic ideas of rule-based action, and then describes some of the characteristics of contemporary democratic settings. It examines the relationship between ac…
The Institutional Basis of Democratic Accountability
This article offers an institutional approach to accountability in representative democracies. Theorising accountability comprises both settled polities with well-entrenched institutions and unsettled polities with weak or contested institutions, and it is argued that agency theory and formal principal–agent models giving priority to compliance and control usually make assumptions that are unlikely to apply to the latter type of polity. An instit…
Governing through Institution Building
'Governing Through Institution Building' offers an organization theory-based institutional approach to understanding political organization and government by examining large-scale institutional reforms.
Change and Continuity
While it is commonplace to argue that political institutions are a source of inertia and resistance to change and that the New Institutionalism is unable to explain change, this paper takes the opposite view. First, the problem of change is reformulated and it is observed that institutions have a role in generating both order and change and in balancing the two. Second, the concepts of institution and institutionalization are elaborated. Third, i…
Organization Studies
Elaborating the “New Institutionalism”
This article expands on ideas that were presented over two decades ago in the article ‘The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life’. Here, some theoretical ideas were suggested that clarify certain aspects of the role of institutions in political life. This article aims to continue on elaborating the ideas presented in the aforementioned article, and does not try to replace more comprehensive reviews of the different instit…
The Logic of Appropriateness
This article focuses on the rules of appropriateness in the context of formally organized political institutions and democratic political orders. It tries to determine how an understanding of the role of rule-driven behaviour in life may clarify thinking about political life. It sketches the basic ideas of rule-based action, and then describes some of the characteristics of contemporary democratic settings. It examines the relationship between ac…
Democratic Government, Institutional Autonomy and the Dynamics of Change
Against the backdrop of decades of public sector reforms in Europe, this essay aims to make sense of the processes through which institutions, democratic government included, achieve and lose autonomy or primacy and why it is difficult to find a state of equilibrium between democratic government and institutional autonomy. The analytical value of autonomy as detachment-from-politics and the apolitical dynamics of change assumed by npm reformers a…
Change and continuity
While it is commonplace to argue that political institutions are a source of inertia and resistance to change and the New Institutionalism is unable to explain change, this paper takes the opposite view.First, the problem of change is reformulated and it is observed that institutions have a role in generating both order and change and in balancing the two.Second, the concepts of institution and institutionalization are elaborated.Third, instituti…
Bokanmeldelser
The Ups and Downs of Bureaucratic Organization
Why do democracies give birth to bureaucracies and bureaucrats? How and why has a seemingly undesirable and unviable organizational form weathered relentless criticism over many years, and why do some see it experiencing a renaissance? Normative democratic theory, theories of formal organizations, and Weber's ideas are used in this essay to explore debureaucratization efforts since the late 1970s and the rediscovery of bureaucracy since the mid 1…
Neo-institucionalismo
As teorias políticas contemporâneas tendem a retratar a política como um reflexo da sociedade; os fenômenos políticos como as conseqüências agregadas do comportamento individual; a ação como o resultado de escolhas baseadas no interesse pessoal calculado; a história como sendo eficiente no alcance de desfechos singulares e adequados e a tomada de decisões e a alocação de recursos como os focos centrais da vida política. Entretanto, um pensamento …
Europe in Search of Political Order
This book deals with ongoing processes of European cooperation and integration, processes that may have a potential to change the political organization of Europe. Based on ideas from ‘the new institutionalism’ the book offers a systematic perspective on institutional change and in particular the role of institutions in relation to four central and durable issues in the study of political life. These are: (1) the mediation between unity and diver…
The Institutional Dynamics of the European University
Europeiske endringsprosesser og høyere utdanningsinstitusjoner
Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Bureaucracy
This article questions the fashionable ideas that bureaucratic organization is an obsolescent, undesirable, and non-viable form of administration and that there is an inevitable and irreversible paradigmatic shift towards market- or network-organization. In contrast, the paper argues that contemporary democracies are involved in another round in a perennial debate and ideological struggle over what are desirable forms of administration and govern…
Survey Article
Citizens, Public Administration and the Search for Theoretical Foundations
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
What is a Legitimate Role for Euro-citizens
Towards a European administrative space
Has there been a trend towards a "European administrative space', understood as convergence on a common European model? How can we recognize an EAS if one has emerged? A methodological purist can with good reason argue that we lack the concepts, methodology and data to answer such questions. A more pragmatic approach is to accept that the public administration is a key institution of government and that understanding administrative change is an i…
The New Institutionalism
Contemporary theories of politics tend to portray politics as a reflection of society, political phenomena as the aggregate consequences of individual behavior, action as the result of choices based on calculated self-interest, history as efficient in reaching unique and appropriate outcomes, and decision making and the allocation of resources as the central foci of political life. Some recent theoretical thought in political science, however, bl…
The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders
The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic…
The Many Faces of Europeanization
Is ‘Europeanization’ as disappointing a term as it is fashionable? Should it be abandoned, or is it useful for understanding European transformations? Five uses are discussed and it is argued that research need not be hampered by competing definitions as long as their meaning, the phenomena in focus, the simplifying assumption used, the models of change and the theoretical challenges involved, are clarified and kept separate. The research challen…
Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Bureaucracy
This article questions the fashionable ideas that bureaucratic organization is an obsolescent, undesirable, and non-viable form of administration and that there is an inevitable and irreversible paradigmatic shift towards market- or network-organization. In contrast, the paper argues that contemporary democracies are involved in another round in a perennial debate and ideological struggle over what are desirable forms of administration and govern…
Institutional Perspectives on Political Institutions
This article examines some basic assumptions about the nature of political institutions, the ways in which practices and rules that comprise institutions are established, sustained, and transformed, and the ways in which those practices and rules are converted into political behavior through the mediation of interpretation and capability. We discuss an institutional approach to political life that emphasizes the endogenous nature and social const…
Change and continuity
While it is commonplace to argue that political institutions are a source of inertia and resistance to change and the New Institutionalism is unable to explain change, this paper takes the opposite view.First, the problem of change is reformulated and it is observed that institutions have a role in generating both order and change and in balancing the two.Second, the concepts of institution and institutionalization are elaborated.Third, instituti…
The Uncertainty of the Past
Classical theories of omniscient rationality in organizational decision‐making have largely been replaced by a view of limited rationality, but no similar concern has been reflected in the analysis of organizational learning. There has been a tendency to model a simple complete cycle of learning from unambiguous experience and to ignore cognitive and evaluative limits on learning in organizations. This paper examines some theoretical possibilitie…
Towards a European administrative space
Has there been a trend towards a "European administrative space', understood as convergence on a common European model? How can we recognize an EAS if one has emerged? A methodological purist can with good reason argue that we lack the concepts, methodology and data to answer such questions. A more pragmatic approach is to accept that the public administration is a key institution of government and that understanding administrative change is an i…
The Ups and Downs of Bureaucratic Organization
Why do democracies give birth to bureaucracies and bureaucrats? How and why has a seemingly undesirable and unviable organizational form weathered relentless criticism over many years, and why do some see it experiencing a renaissance? Normative democratic theory, theories of formal organizations, and Weber's ideas are used in this essay to explore debureaucratization efforts since the late 1970s and the rediscovery of bureaucracy since the mid 1…
Garbage Cans, New Institutionalism, and the Study of Politics
Bendor, Moe, and Shotts want to rescue some of the ideas of the garbage can model and the new institutionalism. Their rescue program, however, is alien to the spirit of not only our work but also some recent developments that may promise a climate of dialogue between different approaches in political science. Bendor, Moe, and Shotts place themselves closer to a tradition of unproductive tribal warfare than to more recent attempts to explore the l…
The Institutional Basis of Democratic Accountability
This article offers an institutional approach to accountability in representative democracies. Theorising accountability comprises both settled polities with well-entrenched institutions and unsettled polities with weak or contested institutions, and it is argued that agency theory and formal principal–agent models giving priority to compliance and control usually make assumptions that are unlikely to apply to the latter type of polity. An instit…
Democratic Order, Autonomy, and Accountability
Accountability is a principle for organizing relations between rulers and ruled, and making public officials accountable is a democratic achievement. There are, however, competing claims about what is involved in demanding, rendering, assessing, and responding to accounts; what are effective accountability institutions; and how accountability regimes emerge and change. This article provides a frame for thinking about institutional aspects of acco…
Local Budgeting, Decison‐making or a Ritual Act
Modernization Programs in Perspective
Contemporary reform programs give students of comparative public administration a new chance to update their theoretical ideas about organization and organizing. Do forms of government and political institution matter? If so, what are the effects of different organizational forms? Why do we have the institutional forms we have? How can we explain their origins, persistence and development?This article explores the possible value of organization t…
Popular Sovereignty and the Search for Appropriate Institutions
This paper is about criteria for assessing alternative political institutions in a society committed to popular sovereignty. The issues are classic, and we do not attempt a comprehensive review of the ways in which they run through political and economic thought since Aristotle. An aggregative perspective on political institutions, which describes politics in terms of aggregating exogenous, prior preferences of citizens, is contrasted with an int…
Democratic Government, Institutional Autonomy and the Dynamics of Change
Against the backdrop of decades of public sector reforms in Europe, this essay aims to make sense of the processes through which institutions, democratic government included, achieve and lose autonomy or primacy and why it is difficult to find a state of equilibrium between democratic government and institutional autonomy. The analytical value of autonomy as detachment-from-politics and the apolitical dynamics of change assumed by npm reformers a…
Institutional Design in Democratic Contexts
Public Policy‐Making and Theories of Organizational Choice
Voting, 'Sounding Out', and the Governance of Modern Organizations
An attempt is made to provide a theoretical framework by which one can understand variations in the procedures used in organizational decision-making. Two types are presented; a procedure of confrontation, where the use of voting is emphasized and preliminary discussions are missing, and a sounding out procedure, where voting is avoided and values and beliefs are synthesized indirectly or implicitly through social interaction. The analytical fram…
Neo-institucionalismo
As teorias políticas contemporâneas tendem a retratar a política como um reflexo da sociedade; os fenômenos políticos como as conseqüências agregadas do comportamento individual; a ação como o resultado de escolhas baseadas no interesse pessoal calculado; a história como sendo eficiente no alcance de desfechos singulares e adequados e a tomada de decisões e a alocação de recursos como os focos centrais da vida política. Entretanto, um pensamento …
Democratic accountability and the terms of political order
This paper explores the shifting significance of accountability processes and why they sometimes attract considerable public attention and citizens’ involvement, whereas at other times they escape public notice. Accountability processes are conceived of as order-maintaining or order-transforming processes and I interpret the recent obsession with democratic accountability as part of a struggle over the terms of political order. This paper attends…
What is a Legitimate Role for Euro-citizens
Survey Article
Citizens, Public Administration and the Search for Theoretical Foundations
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Reforming European Institutions of Governance
The European Union has combined a belief in institutional engineering with the experience that comprehensive reform is difficult to achieve. The long–term development has been in a consistent direction. Yet, the history of the Union is one of founding acts and deliberate institution–building, as well as informal and gradual institutional evolution where common practices have been codified into formal–legal institutions. Institutional arrangements…
Local Budgeting, Decison‐making or a Ritual Act
Public Policy‐Making and Theories of Organizational Choice
Voting, 'Sounding Out', and the Governance of Modern Organizations
An attempt is made to provide a theoretical framework by which one can understand variations in the procedures used in organizational decision-making. Two types are presented; a procedure of confrontation, where the use of voting is emphasized and preliminary discussions are missing, and a sounding out procedure, where voting is avoided and values and beliefs are synthesized indirectly or implicitly through social interaction. The analytical fram…
The Uncertainty of the Past
Classical theories of omniscient rationality in organizational decision‐making have largely been replaced by a view of limited rationality, but no similar concern has been reflected in the analysis of organizational learning. There has been a tendency to model a simple complete cycle of learning from unambiguous experience and to ignore cognitive and evaluative limits on learning in organizations. This paper examines some theoretical possibilitie…
The Structure of Chaos
Ambiguity and Choice in Organizations
The New Institutionalism
Contemporary theories of politics tend to portray politics as a reflection of society, political phenomena as the aggregate consequences of individual behavior, action as the result of choices based on calculated self-interest, history as efficient in reaching unique and appropriate outcomes, and decision making and the allocation of resources as the central foci of political life. Some recent theoretical thought in political science, however, bl…
Research on European Parliaments
Democracy and Political Power in Denmark, Norway and Sweden
Popular Sovereignty and the Search for Appropriate Institutions
This paper is about criteria for assessing alternative political institutions in a society committed to popular sovereignty. The issues are classic, and we do not attempt a comprehensive review of the ways in which they run through political and economic thought since Aristotle. An aggregative perspective on political institutions, which describes politics in terms of aggregating exogenous, prior preferences of citizens, is contrasted with an int…
Administration and Politics
Scienza Politica E Teoria Dell'organizzazione. Le Possibili Convergenze
IntroduzioneChe cosa possono sperare di imparare gli studiosi della politica dando maggiore attenzione alla teoria dell'organizzazione? In questo dopoguerra questa domanda ha ricevuto il più delle volte una risposta pessimistica. Gli scienziati politici non hanno mostrato una tendenza a considerare la teoria dell'organizzazione particolarmente rilevante, interessante o importante. Nonostante ci sia stato qualche significativo esempio di fertilizz…
Modernization Programs in Perspective
Contemporary reform programs give students of comparative public administration a new chance to update their theoretical ideas about organization and organizing. Do forms of government and political institution matter? If so, what are the effects of different organizational forms? Why do we have the institutional forms we have? How can we explain their origins, persistence and development?This article explores the possible value of organization t…
The Territorial Imperative
The Reforming Organization
Estructurando la política. El papel de las instituciones
Institutional Perspectives on Political Institutions
This article examines some basic assumptions about the nature of political institutions, the ways in which practices and rules that comprise institutions are established, sustained, and transformed, and the ways in which those practices and rules are converted into political behavior through the mediation of interpretation and capability. We discuss an institutional approach to political life that emphasizes the endogenous nature and social const…
Institutional Design in Democratic Contexts
The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders
The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic…
Symposium
(2000). Symposium: Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic? Journal of European Public Policy: Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 310-324
Garbage Cans, New Institutionalism, and the Study of Politics
Bendor, Moe, and Shotts want to rescue some of the ideas of the garbage can model and the new institutionalism. Their rescue program, however, is alien to the spirit of not only our work but also some recent developments that may promise a climate of dialogue between different approaches in political science. Bendor, Moe, and Shotts place themselves closer to a tradition of unproductive tribal warfare than to more recent attempts to explore the l…
The Many Faces of Europeanization
Is ‘Europeanization’ as disappointing a term as it is fashionable? Should it be abandoned, or is it useful for understanding European transformations? Five uses are discussed and it is argued that research need not be hampered by competing definitions as long as their meaning, the phenomena in focus, the simplifying assumption used, the models of change and the theoretical challenges involved, are clarified and kept separate. The research challen…
Reforming European Institutions of Governance
The European Union has combined a belief in institutional engineering with the experience that comprehensive reform is difficult to achieve. The long–term development has been in a consistent direction. Yet, the history of the Union is one of founding acts and deliberate institution–building, as well as informal and gradual institutional evolution where common practices have been codified into formal–legal institutions. Institutional arrangements…
What is a Legitimate Role for Euro-citizens
Towards a European administrative space
Has there been a trend towards a "European administrative space', understood as convergence on a common European model? How can we recognize an EAS if one has emerged? A methodological purist can with good reason argue that we lack the concepts, methodology and data to answer such questions. A more pragmatic approach is to accept that the public administration is a key institution of government and that understanding administrative change is an i…
Political science (42 works) · Sociology (33 works) · Law (30 works) · Politics (27 works) · Economics (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Public Administration (16 works) · Democracy (14 works) · Political economy (13 works)