Search results for "Public Administration"
showing 10 items of 1623 documents
Invisible Rulers: The ‘Latent Power Structure’ in Two Spanish Governments (2004 and 2012)
2022
Abstract Beyond the observation of official positions and incorporating the ‘Latent Power Structure’ (LPS), this article offers a broadened view of the organization of democratic governments. We define the LPS as a set of former officials, parliamentary and party members, and business directors who are closely related to government members, since they have recruited one or more of them for certain positions in the past. Applied to a Social Network Analysis of two Spanish governments, the LPS reveals a more concentrated structure of power with a far greater range of resources. The LPS analysis shows that governments rely on certain influential organizations in the social structure, to a grea…
Conceptualizing and Measuring the Quality of Democracy: The Citizens' Perspective
2018
In recent years, several measurements of the quality of democracy have been developed (e.g. Democracy Barometer, Varieties of Democracy Project). These objective measurements focus on institutional and procedural characteristics of democracy. This article starts from the premise that in order to fully understand the quality of democracy such objective measurements have to be complemented by subjective measurements based on the perspective of citizens. The aim of the article is to conceptualize and measure the subjective quality of democracy. First, a conceptualization of the subjective quality of democracy is developed consisting of citizens’ support for three normative models of democracy …
Educational intervention planning for children in foster care in Finland : A case study
2018
Children in foster care may face difficulties during their school years. When it comes to academic achievement, there is reported low school performance and lower grades. However, school may be strong protective factor in difficulties if supports are individual. School-based interventions represent a possibility for supporting children whose home life may make them vulnerable. This discussion paper presents Finnish initiative, which is based on Skolfam® model used in several Nordic countries. peerReviewed
A partial micro-foundation for the ‘two-worlds’ theory of morality policymaking: Evidence from Germany
2020
The two-worlds framework is currently the most important account of morality policymaking in Europe. For this theory of elite behaviour to be valid, a number of implicit assumptions about political belief systems at the mass level must hold. This contribution spells out these assumptions and tests them within a structural equation modelling framework, using original survey data from Germany, a country that constitutes a crucial case for the two-worlds theory. The results showed that the implicit individual-level preconditions of the two-worlds framework were fulfilled. Political secularism and partisanship were strongly associated. Political secularism also had strong effects on morality p…
Candidate geolocation and voter choice in the 2013 English County Council elections
2014
The degree of ‘localness’ of candidates, including their residential location, has long been theorised to influence voters at election time. Individual-level tests of distance effects in the 2010 British general elections demonstrated that, controlling for standard explanations of vote, the distance from a voter’s home to that of the candidate was negatively associated with the likelihood of voting for that candidate. To test this theory in a sub-national electoral context more likely to produce distance effects than a national election, this paper builds upon previous analysis by using the 2013 English County Council elections. It improves upon the previous analysis in a number of ways, a…
Strange bedfellows: the Bundestag’s free vote on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) reveals how Germany’s restrictive bioethics legislation is …
2015
Germany’s bioethical legislation presents a puzzle: given structural factors, the country should be at the forefront of reproductive medicine, but its embryology regime remains one of the strictest in Western Europe. Past research has linked this fact to an unusual coalition of Christian and New Left groups, which both draw a connection from modern embryology to eugenics under the Nazis. In this article, the workings of this alleged alliance are demonstrated at the micro-level for the first time. The behaviour of individual MPs in a crucial free vote on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is modelled using data on their political, sectoral and religious affiliations. Identifying as a …
Nordic Cooperation in the Nuclear Safety Sector: High, Low, or Differentiated Integration?
2020
Nordic cooperation has been depicted as eroding due to the increased importance of EU-related cooperation and integration. However, scholars propose that longstanding Nordic networks, grounded in professions and located in the state administration, may prove to be more robust toward external changes. This article discusses this proposal by looking at Nordic cooperation between the national radiation protection and nuclear safety authorities in Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The article maps behavioural perceptions of agency staff based on a dataset of 37 interviews to illustrate if the cooperation between the Nordic authorities is characterized by high integration, low integ…
Disciplinary contextualisation of transversal competence in Finnish local curricula : the case of multiliteracy, mathematics, and social studies
2020
Competence-based education is a widely implemented educational approach, but more research is needed into the relationship between transversal competences and individual disciplines. In this article, we present the results of a study focusing on how the transversal competence of multiliteracy is contextually defined in Finnish local curricula in the disciplines of mathematics and social studies. The article offers new insights into the discussion between content- and competence-based educations by introducing the concept of disciplinary contextualisation. Based on the qualitatively analysed data, four different types of disciplinary contextualisation are presented and further discussed. The…
Vernacular budgeting and accounting routines – a longitudinal constructive case study
2022
PurposeThis case study aims to report a longitudinal analysis of the development and use of local “vernacular” accounting practice and a digital rolling-forecast system known as TeamBudget in a public sector organization.Design/methodology/approachThe study employs the constructive research approach which utilizes participative observation in the development of TeamBudget over the 15 years since 2004. The empirical data utilized includes eight interviews and documentary data for the system created.FindingsThe study demonstrates how the actions of employees responsible for developing a locally relevant financial planning system, TeamBudget, facilitated the emergence of new accounting routine…
Teaching Public Administration Abroad through the Fulbright Specialist Program
2011
The purpose of this article is to promote the benefits of the Fulbright Specialist Program—which was created in 2001 as a short-term complement to the Fulbright Scholar Program—and to encourage more public administration scholars to consider teaching abroad. After providing an overview of the Fulbright Specialist Program and the collaborative teaching approach we used for the preparation and delivery of instructional materials, it presents a number of lessons learned from the perspective of the Fulbright Specialist and the host institution for maximizing the experience of teaching abroad. This article also is dedicated to the work of Fulbright, which has pursued its mission to increase mutu…