Niels Karsten

Reflecting on the Role of Literature in Qualitative Public Administration Research Learning From Grounded Theory

When undertaking qualitative research, public administration scholars must walk a thin line between being theoretically sensitive and imposing preconceived ideas on their work. This article identifies opportunities and pitfalls in using literature in qualitative public administration research. Although the opportunities are already well known within the discipline, the pitfalls remain underexposed. The authors identify potential pitfalls by using insights from the grounded theory approach. To illustrate how opportunities can be optimally exploited, and pitfalls avoided, they provide examples of high-quality public administration research. Finally, the authors derive recommendations for public administration scholars when using literature in their qualitative research. These recommendations can help improve qualitative methods in the public administration discipline.

Explaining and Justifying Authoritative Decisions: The Case of Controversial Facilities for the Homeless in Rotterdam

This article analyses the ways in which local executive leaders rendered account for the decisions taken on where to locate 19 controversial facilities for the homeless in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. Despite the non-participatory nature of the decision-making process, executive leaders acquired a remarkable level of authority for their decisions. The analysis suggests that the accountability strategies employed by local executive leaders contributed substantially to this success. Specific ways of rendering account for the decisions made concerning the locations enabled local executives to develop the political repertoires necessary to make the authoritative decisions they deemed indispensable. Most important among these ways were the executives’ recognition of the importance of forming direct, informal accountability relationships with local residents, the proactive rendering of account and the executives’ partial control over the forums to which account was rendered. The author concludes that an authoritative ‘Decide-Announce-Defend’ approach may not yet be out of fashion in modern local governance. The findings suggest that we will better understand the practice of public accountability if we supplement the existing conceptual frameworks for analysing and assessing public accountability arrangements with an alternative conception of accountability that focuses on the strategic aspects of rendering account.

Innovations in Sub-National Government in Europe

Improvement in government is often rooted in decentralised layers of government. In this article the authors discuss the recent history of innovations in sub-national government in Europe. They focus on two general trends and developments. Cases of interesting practices and developments illustrate the general trends. For each general trend a distinction is made between two kinds of innovations: structural reforms and new ways of working within existing institutional settings. The first trend concerns changing relations between government, civil society and citizens, in response to the increased contestation of the nature of traditional representative democracy. Examples of structural reforms are: increased citizen participation, the expanded use of referenda and the introduction of the directly elected mayor. New ways of working are: forms of coproduction between the public sector and the third sector. The second trend described in this article is change within government itself, mainly the rise of ‘governance’ and changing administrative scales. Structural reforms take several forms: scale enlargement to enhance system capacity, scale reduction to enhance system capacity, scale enlargement to enhance citizen effectiveness, and scale reduction to enhance citizen effectiveness. Next to them, new ways of working can be observed within governments: cross-boarder co-operations, inter-municipal co-operations, and new forms of performance assessment and fiscal management. The authors conclude the article with a few challenges to both academics and governments.

The Dutch Anomaly: Appointed Mayors Can Appointed Mayors Cope with Role Changes and Societal Demands?

In many European countries mayors are local political leaders. Dutch mayors, however, are neither local nor political, as national government appoints them. Their office is subject to serious changes. While it still carries a lot of ‘natural’ authority, its content has changed rather drastically. In this article we first of all give an overview of the mayoral office in Western Europe and sketch the Dutch mayorship. The next step is to discuss recent developments: councils gaining influence on the actual mayoral selection, mayors getting more legal capacities and responsibilities, and society demanding stronger (mayoral) leadership. We will explore the ways present mayors cope with the emerging tensions between these developments, and between the responses to them. The focus is on tensions between the various developments and the risks the mayorship runs.

Don’t call me a leader, but I am one: The Dutch mayor and the tradition of bridging-and-bonding leadership in consensus democracies

In some democratic contexts, there is a strong aversion to the directive, individualistic and masculine expressions of leadership that have come to dominate the study of political leadership. Such leadership is antithetical to consensus democracies in parts of continental Europe, where the antipathy to leadership has linguistic, institutional as well as cultural dimensions. Political-administrative and socio-cultural contexts in these countries provide little room for heroic expressions of leadership. Consequently, alternative forms of leadership and associated vocabularies have developed that carry profound practical relevance but that have remained underexplored. Based on an in-depth mixed-methods study, this article presents the Dutch mayoralty as an insightful and exemplary case of what can be called ‘bridging-and-bonding leadership’; it provides a clear illustration of how understandings of democratic leadership can deviate from the dominant paradigm and of how leading in a consensus context brings about unique practical challenges for office holders. The analysis shows that the important leadership task of democratic guardianship that is performed by Dutch mayors is in danger of being overlooked by scholars of political leadership, as are consensus-oriented leadership roles in other parts of the world. For that reason, a recalibration of the leadership concept is needed, developing an increased theoretical sensitivity towards the non-decisive and process-oriented aspects of the leadership phenomenon. This article specifies how the future study of leadership, as a part of the change that is advocated, can benefit from adopting additional languages of leadership.

Regionalisation and the democratic legitimacy of local governments

Throughout Europe, local authorities are facing face problems of scale. Municipalities have various tasks, such as the delivery of services and local policymaking. In addition, they represent local society at other levels of government. The size of local authorities is unsuitable for many of these tasks because they are sometimes too small and sometimes they are too big. Many local issues demand answers at the regional level. Therefore, in many cases, policymaking is not the exclusive responsibility of single local governments.

Gezocht integere en daadkrachtige verbinder (m/v) : Het onderscheidend vermogen van profielschetsen voor Nederlandse burgemeesters beoordeeld

Op de profielschetsen waarin gemeenteraden de eisen verwoorden die ze stellen aan een nieuw te benoemen burgemeester is veel kritiek. Ze zouden te veel op elkaar lijken en weinig echte keuzes bevatten. In dit artikel beschrijven we de eisen die gemeenteraden aan kandidaat-burgemeesters stellen en analyseren we het onderscheidend vermogen van profielschetsen. Uit een inhoudsanalyse van 231 profielschetsen en gesprekken met vijf focusgroepen blijkt, dat gemeenteraden in het bijzonder vragen om integere netwerkers en verbinders die vooral daadkrachtig, inlevend en communicatief zijn. De verschillen tussen gemeenten zijn daarbij klein, en gemeentegrootte maakt nauwelijks verschil. Gemeenteraden benutten in profielschetsen niet ten volle de mogelijkheden voor lokaal maatwerk en vertalen de lokale omstandigheden niet tot nauwelijks in specifieke eisen. De verklaring daarvoor is deels gelegen in isomorfe processen, die leiden tot eenvormigheid: gemeenteraden laten zich leiden door de handreiking voor het benoemingsproces en kopieren teksten van elkaar. Tegelijk vraagt het Nederlands burgemeestersambt om een specifieke invulling, die we vertaald zien in profielschetsen. Het is daarom maar de vraag of de kritiek op profielschetsen volledig terecht is. Ze hebben namelijk wel degelijk onderscheidend vermogen. Maar gemeenteraden kunnen wel veel scherpere keuzes maken in wat ze van een burgemeester verwachten, passend bij de uitdagingen waar de gemeente voor staat.