Contestants, profiteers, and the political dynamics of marketization: How shareholders gained control rights in Britain, Germany, and France
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12596 |
| Author | Mark Thatcher |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
REVIEWS
An organizational approach to public governance:
Understanding and design
Morten Egeberg and Jarle Trondal
Oxford University Press, 2018, 192 pp., £60.00 (hb), ISBN: 9780198825074
In this volume, Egeberg and Trondal put forward an ‘organizational approach to public governance’(p. 1) that, in their
view, complements existing explanations for organizational change and behaviour in governance processes (‘Under-
standing’) and produces relevant advice for practitioners, specifically anyone involved in reorganizing public adminis-
tration (‘Design’). Following the authors’introduction of the theoretical reasoning behind their approach (chapter 1),
they present supporting findings that are based on new material (chapters 2 and 9), but mainly draw on six previously
published research articles (chapters 3–8). Egeberg and Trondal conclude with possible ‘design implications’of said
findings (chapter 9). Their ‘organizational approach’focuses on the impact of selected organizational characteristics
on decision-making in and on behalf of government organizations in policy-making generally (‘public governance’)
and administrative politics more specifically (‘meta-governance’). The authors concentrate on three sets of ‘classical’
organizational characteristics: structure (mainly vertical and horizontal specialization), demography (personnel compo-
sition), and locus (geographical location). The conceptual part of the volume convincingly summarizes ‘formal organi-
zation matters’—arguments from the literature for each of the individual organizational factors. Their main, already
well-established argument is that the way an organization is formally set up makes some (reform) decisions more
likely than others—a line of reasoning that the authors present as neglected in governance literature.
In the following five empirical chapters, the authors show that aspects of horizontal and vertical specialization—
mainly operationalized by Gulicks’principles of horizontal specialization and the idea of primary versus secondary
affiliation of staff—affect organizational behaviour. Readers learn that whether government levels are organized
according to a territorial or non-territorial principle impacts the power relationship between levels: non-territorial
organization at the supranational level tends to empower the centre against lower levels of government. There are
two chapters on the decision-making behaviour of commissioners and officials in the European Commission, both
showing that organizational affiliation trumps demographic background factors such as nationality, even with tempo-
rary staff.
Chapter 5 addresses coordination dynamics in the European multi-level system and finds that coordination at
the territorially organized national level thwarts non-territorially organized coordination at the supranational level,
resulting in the phenomenon of ‘direct’national administration bypassing their national executives. Further, the
authors show that vertical specialization—while controlling for other factors such as issue salience—has an effect on
officials’behaviour at the national level: agency officials in Norway report significantly less sensitivity towards politi-
cal signals from the political executive than their colleagues in ministries. Chapter 7 discusses the relevance of geo-
graphical location for the relationship between subordinated organizations and their political executive. The authors
find that the site of Norwegian agencies does not significantly affect their autonomy, influence, or inter-institutional
coordination with the superior ministry.
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12590
Public Administration. 2019;97:483–486. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 483
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