Explaining bureaucratic power in intergovernmental relations

A network approach

Bibliographic Data

ID10390754
AuthorsYvonne Hegele (0000-0003-1567-0317, Leibniz Center for Science and Society Leibniz University Hannover Germany, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume96
Issue4
Pages753-768
Publication date2018-08-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePublic Administration (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0033-3298 • E-ISSN: 1467-9299
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/padm.12537
OpenAlexW2888198565
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited38

The core assumption of the bureaucratic politics model and a large part of public administration scholarship is that bureaucrats influence politicians and political decisions via their crucial role in preparing, coordinating and formulating policy. While this influence has been analysed in a vertical direction, that is, how much do bureaucrats influence politicians, the horizontal perspective has been mostly neglected: which bureaucrats are most powerful and influential during the process of bureaucratic coordination and decision‐making? Deducing hypotheses from bargaining theory and testing them with a novel network dataset on German Intergovernmental Relations (IGR), this contribution finds that bureaucrats indeed possess varying degrees of power. Jurisdictional and organizational power resources, such as voting, financial and institutional power, and also party politics, can best explain these variances in bureaucratic power. Personal characteristics, such as experience and education, however, are not used as power resources

Bureaucracy · Core (optical fiber · Corporate governance · Economic system · Economics · German · Management · Organizational theory · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Power structure · Scholarship · Voting · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Public Administration · Public Policy and Administration Research · Social Capital and Networks