Explaining government bureaucrats’ behaviour: On the relative importance of organizational position, demographic background, and political attitudes
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0952076718814901 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Explaining government
bureaucrats’ behaviour:
On the relative
importance of
organizational position,
demographic background,
and political attitudes
Morten Egeberg
Department of Political Science and ARENA, Centre for
European Studies, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Inger Marie Stigen
Oslo Business School, OsloMet—Oslo Metropolitan University,
Oslo, Norway
Abstract
A basic insight in public administration research is that career officials play an important
role in public policy development as well as in its implementation. Surprisingly, however,
despite being an enduring theme on the research agenda, the jury still seems to be out
regarding how to account for bureaucrats’ actual decision behaviour, a fact reflected in
the numerous competing theories and perspectives available. By applying a novel large-
N questionnaire survey as well as an alternative method, this article sheds new light on
this highly contested area of research. We find that government bureaucrats’ (formal)
organizational position is by far the most important explanatory factor, while classical
demographic factors like geographical background, gender and age play a rather minor
role. Among officials’ many early experiences, only their educational background and
former job experience really count. The political attitudes of officials do not matter. The
crucial role of bureaucrats’ organizational position for understanding their behaviour
does not depend on intra-organizational socialization. Importantly, the key role of fac-
tors that may be relatively subject to deliberate change, such as organization structure
Public Policy and Administration
2021, Vol. 36(1) 3–18
!The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0952076718814901
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Corresponding author:
Inger Marie Stigen, Oslo Business School, OsloMet—Oslo Metropolitan University, P.O. Box 4, St. Olavs Plass,
NO-0130 Oslo, Norway.
Email: inger-marie.stigen@oslomet.no
and the former job experience and educational background of those recruited, entails a
considerable potential for organizational design.
Keywords
Bureaucrats, decision-making, civil servant, demographical composition, formal organ-
izational position, organizational design
Understanding bureaucratic behaviour: An enduring theme
Explaining and understanding the behaviour of government officials is a persistent
topic in the study of public administration, governance and public policy. There
are, arguably, two reasons for this. First, the basic insight that bureaucrats tend to
play an important role with regard to both policy formulation and policy imple-
mentation (see e.g. Page and Jenkins, 2005) makes it crucial to understand why
they act as they do. Second, despite considerable research efforts, the jury still
seems to be largely out concerning the relative importance of various explanatory
factors (for overviews of the literature on the role of organizational and demo-
graphic variables, see e.g. Egeberg, 2012; Egeberg and Trondal, 2018; Meier and
Capers, 2012). The aim of this article is to contribute to this scholarly debate by
presenting novel large-N data which measure how bureaucrats assess what explains
their role behaviour and priorities, and further: under which conditions – related to
the bureaucrats’ organizational and demographic characteristics – various explan-
ations are important. We have collected the responses of 4285 central governments
officials on how important they deem their organizational position, background
and political attitudes to be, in order to understand their own behaviour and
priorities in the current job situation. While the common approach so far has
been to analyse the relationship between, on the one hand, organizational and
demographic factors and, on the other, behavioural patterns, our approach is to
ask the officials about their own assessment of what actually causes their behaviour.
We do not at all consider this method superior to the common approach (see
Method section below); however, in a highly contested area of research, we think
studies applying different methods may complement each other. Thus, if studies
built on different methods produce similar results, these findings stand out as par-
ticularly robust.
We also include the political attitudes of officials and their former job experi-
ences on a par with organizational and traditional demographic variables. As far as
we know, analyses on this topic have not usually included these factors. Job experi-
ence is relevant because it relates to socialization dynamics. The political attitudes
of bureaucrats are expected to be a minor predictor of bureaucrats’ behaviour in
administrations practising merit-based recruitment, but under certain conditions,
this factor may show relevant. In the second part of our analysis, this question is
explored, as we in a multivariate analysis probe into the conditions under which
organizational position, background and political attitudes are considered
4Public Policy and Administration 36(1)
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