The politics of bureaucracy in the face of different legal futures
| Published date | 01 August 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148119842026 |
| Author | Marleen Brans,Geert Bouckaert |
| Date | 01 August 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Breakthrough Commentaries |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148119842026
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2019, Vol. 21(3) 530 –540
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148119842026
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
The politics of bureaucracy
in the face of different legal
futures
Geert Bouckaert and Marleen Brans
Keywords
bureaucracy, central world government, corporatist state, failed states, government by Google,
legal capacity, legal futures, national administrative state, neo-Weberian state, partner state,
United Nations World Government
Introduction
‘The Politics of Bureaucracy’ (Peters, 2018b) describes the development, in theory and in
compared practice, of public administrations (PAs) in a political context. While there are
many merits to the book, three stand out: the crossing of sub-disciplines, the holistic
approach to studying public bureaucracies, and the comparative purport of the book. ‘The
Politics of Bureaucracy’ was and is a great exercise in marrying political science, public
policy and public management scholarship, having different relevant literatures speak to
each other on such major themes as administrative culture, public service personnel
recruitment, politico-administrative relations, accountability, budgeting, and public sec-
tor reform. The book explicitly places public bureaucracies in a political context, as well
as treating public bureaucracies as actors in their own right. Both as collective actors and
as collections of individuals, the book understands bureaucracies in their varying interac-
tions with political and societal institutions, with political masters and overseers, with
interest groups, social movements, and citizens. The book moreover presented a break
with parochialism in the PA discipline, by adding to a comparative understanding of
bureaucracies in, albeit predominantly, consolidated democracies. To some extent, the
book was and is a grand project of comparative politics and administration calling for
involvement of the broader academic community, rather than a finished tour de force by
a single scholar.
Yet, this project is a challenging one, because of developments both in society and
academia. With the current threats and realities of populism (Borins, 2018; Stoker, 2017;
Peters and Pierre, 2018), pressures on democratic traditions, significant distrust levels
and discontentment (Van de Walle, 2017), reinventions of nationalism and extremism,
Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Corresponding author:
Marleen Brans, Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Parkstraat 45, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium.
Email: marleen.brans@kuleuven.be
842026BPI0010.1177/1369148119842026The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsBouckaert and Brans
research-article2019
Breakthrough Commentary
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