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• W3048341190 abstract "There is much to the argument that, before a great invention, there was a great idea (cf. Schmidt 2010). The modern bureaucracy is undoubtedly one of the great inventions as it embraces a pivotal role in the implementation side of politics. Although bureaucracies rest on the shared objective of implementing politics, they have developed into quite different entities in a comparative perspective. Why some bureaucracies have developed meritocratic-based recruiting systems or why some are governed by managerial versus legalistic procedures are subjects for both theoretical and empirical controversy. Besides, how this variation relates to contemporary political outcomes is still ambiguous and in need of extensive further examination. This timely book by Sager et al. (2018) contributes to these questions by providing detailed descriptions of the historical developments of the public administrations in the United States, France, and Germany. Its main contribution is that it nuances our understanding of how the intellectual discourses of the public administration have traveled back and forth across the Atlantic. In a nutshell, the American bureaucracy is not entirely American but rests on doctrines from German and French thinkers and vice versa. For example, the authors show how Friedrich Hegel's idea of the state influenced the identity of the early U.S. public administration; that Henri Fayol's ideas of managerialism have influenced U.S. practices of planning, coordinating, recruiting, and budgeting; and that Max Weber's ideal type of a rational bureaucracy with emphasis on legal domination is mirrored in the development of the U.S. public administration (p. 17–67). Likewise, post-World War II Germany and France gathered ideas from the United States not only in redemocratizing electoral and constitutional fundamentals but also to improve the bureaucracy by adhering to scientific findings of which the United States was the most prominent producer (p. 68–128). This captivating book covers about 170 years of transatlantic administrative history and integrates rich material written in German, French, and English into a very legible synthesis. Apart from the obvious contribution in the descriptive empirical findings, I have some concerns with the theoretical framing and, consequently, theoretical contributions. The remainder of this review pays attention to these issues. The book takes its point of departure from the scholarly field of administrative traditions. This field draws on historical institutionalist arguments of path dependency, sequencing, and timing to finally understand if and, if so, how much history plays a role in responses to contemporary challenges (cf. Pierson 2004). As the authors note, the field has not been thoroughly examined in applied studies, and the broad brushes of traditions (e.g. the Scandinavian, the Napoleonic, the Eastern European; cf. Painter and Peters 2010) are best seen as conceptual maps rather than empirical realities. The general conclusion in Sager et al. (2018) is that administrative traditions should be considered invalid, a conclusion I believe is too hasty. Instead, their application of a transfer-of-ideas approach sheds new light on how administrations develop in a complex way, and the substance in their work is rather a contribution to the argument of administrative traditions, that is, that history matters for the nature of the current public administration. In the final chapter, the authors argue that “[t]his book questions the dominant claim in comparative Public Administration that administrative traditions explain empirical phenomena of administrative practice in different nations (p. 150).” Two claims are questionable here; first, the administrative traditions approach is not the dominant explanatory model of administrative practice; it is merely a history-laden endeavor to understand administrative behavior. One could argue that, for example, principal agent models are as influential as a general model. Second, they fail to falsify the theory of administrative traditions—based on their material and qualitative application—however impressive and significant. Rather, they contribute to its theory development by demonstrating how current administrative practices can be traced back in history. Moreover, I miss an explicit definition of administrative traditions. This makes it hard to conceptualize what polemic aspects they seek to investigate. For example, the general definition in Painter and Peters (2010, 6), “the enduring pattern in the style and substance of public administration,” can comprise a plethora of things. In addition, the definition is not limited to account for endogenous development, which the authors seem to assume. Instead, a key indicator of administrative traditions is bureaucracies’ capacities and willingness to accept exogenous ideas and routines, as examined in Briesbroek et al. (2018). [w]e may thus conclude that the focus of the US public administration on the relation between Weberian bureaucracy and efficiency has led to creative misinterpretations […] which have contributed to a much deeper understanding of the inherent characteristics of organizations and the political influence of public administration. (p. 66). In my view, it is quite uncontroversial that foreign ideas have mattered for domestic bureaucracy. At least to my knowledge, no part of the literature on administrative traditions assumes that bureaucracies develop in a vacuum. Therefore, I believe that their argument rests on doubtful premises. Without providing reference to key works in this vein, they write that “public administration scholars continue to interpret and compare administrative developments as inheritance, assuming continuity (p. 9).” This claim would be interesting to hear more about as my strong belief is that administrations develop both endogenously and exogenously and through both continuity and discontinuity. One of the merits of the book is that it involves agents and institutions in a dynamic way. It investigates how thinkers’ ideas are received by key actors in the recipient countries and the intellectual discourse to ultimately affect the progress of macro institutions. As the authors write in the final chapter, “[i]deas need actors who select them, and ideas need a set of actors who spread them among the receiving web of beliefs” (p. 151). It nuances and improves our overall understanding of institutional change to account for both endogenous and exogenous factors. A fruitful extension of their work would be to develop a causal chain of institutional change based on this ideational discourse. For example, in his influential theory of democratization, Dankwart Rustow (1970) differentiates between primary conditions and sustaining factors. In a nutshell, the initial cause of an institution must not be the one upholding it over time. In this line of thinking, Weber's ideas might have been decisive for the U.S. public administration, but once put in motion and interacted with other variables, the institutional development might not be explained by the intellectual adoption at the time of the creation. The book uses an appropriate method to examine rich and important empirical material. The three countries are arguably essential for the history of thought surrounding issues of bureaucracy. How these countries have interacted through the course of almost two decades is an inspiring read. In order to draw causal conclusions of how and why the transfer-of-ideas affect domestic public administrations, the material should be extended in both time and space. Moreover, ruling out rival explanations would substantiate their argument. Inter alia, potential factors could be industrialization with an increased standard of living and stronger states; a higher degree of globalization; and more general ideas of sovereignty, liberalism, and government that had started after Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. To summarize, the book contributes to the field of administrative traditions by displaying, in a detailed way, how ideas of the public administration have traveled across the Atlantic over 170 years. It is a highly educational read for anyone interested in the history of public administration and an accessible and well-synthesized textbook for students who wish to better understand how and why history matters. Daniel Carelli is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg. His dissertation investigates the link between administrative traditions and collective action around the issue of antibiotic resistance in the European Union. Email: daniel.carelli@gu.se" @default.
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• W3048341190 title "FritzSager, ChristianRosser, CélineMavrot, and Pascal Y.Hurni. A Transatlantic History of Public Administration: Analyzing the USA , Germany and France. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2018). 224 pp. $108 (hardback), ISBN : 9781788113748" @default.
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