Wiley: Public Administration Review: Table of Contents

How a Government Bureaucracy Works. Review Essay on Caroline Howard Grøn and Anne Mette Møller. 2024. Public Bureaucracy and Digital Transformation: Structures, Practices and Values. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (etcetera).

Peter Hupe — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 20:49:44 -0700

Public Administration Review, EarlyView.

Which Type of AI‐Based Public Services Are Citizens More Willing to Accept?

Qing Miao, Lin Han Yu — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:09:31 -0700

ABSTRACT

While AI is reshaping public services, the acceptance of diverse AI-based public service innovations by citizens has not been fully examined. This study conducted a video-based experiment involving 2254 citizens and four types of AI: mechanical, empathetic, analytical, and intuitive. The results show that mechanical AI was significantly more accepted by citizens, whereas empathetic AI was significantly less accepted. Acceptance of the other two types of AI was moderate, with no significant differences found between them. AI types affected acceptance through two paths: perceived usefulness and novelty. The mediating effect of AI's perceived usefulness was found to be stronger than its novelty. Furthermore, citizens' trust in the government positively moderated the impact of the perceived novelty of AI. Thus, we recommend that governments adopt a gradual promotion strategy when introducing AI-based public services.

Rethinking Budgeting? An Analysis of Budget Theory and Reform for Modernizing Municipal Practice

Emily Boykin, Clifford McCue, David Goldman — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 06:51:31 -0700

ABSTRACT

This study examines the persistent gap between budget theory and practice in local governments, using the Government Finance Officers Association's (GFOA) Rethinking Budgeting Initiative as a case study. Analyzing 32 GFOA publications from 2020 to 2024, we identify four key themes in the GFOA's attempt to modernize budgetary decision-making: public values, behavioral science, coordination and collaboration, and fiscal prudence. Through a narrative synthesis grounded in budget theory, we find normative theories align with reforms emphasizing participatory practices and public values, while descriptive theories underpin traditional fiscal approaches. The endurance of incremental budgeting, despite reformist rhetoric, underscores the challenge of transforming budget practice. Our findings suggest meaningful reform depends on integrating behavioral insights, stakeholder collaboration, and value-driven goals with theoretical frameworks. Ultimately, this study contributes to scholarly discourse by highlighting opportunities to advance budget theory and improve practitioner engagement, offering a pathway for more adaptive and responsive local government budgeting practices.

Governing Street‐Level Bureaucracies: The Organizational Shaping of Caseworkers. By Kerstin Jacobsson and Håkan Johansson, London: Routledge, 2025. 166 pp. $160.00 (hardcover) ISBN: 978‐1‐03‐233194‐2

Niyazi Karabulut — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 02:30:32 -0700

Public Administration Review, EarlyView.

The Politics of Collaborative Public Management: A Primer. By Robert Agranoff and Alexei Kolpakov, New York: Routledge, 2023. 278 pp. $55.99 (hardback). ISBN: 978‐1‐03‐247362‐8

Mashal‐E‐ Zehra — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 02:15:09 -0700

Public Administration Review, EarlyView.

Framing Decolonization: Case Study of the Pan‐Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change

River Doxtator, Jennifer Wallner, Lydia Zhou — Sun, 31 May 2026 16:14:13 -0700

ABSTRACT

This article considers the relationship between formal policy discourse and dynamics of decolonization. Initiatives of decolonization implicate the political status of Indigenous peoples, wherein peoples can be understood as agents or dependents within the state. Adapting Schneider and Ingram's model of social constructions, informed by the political sociology of policy instruments, and drawing upon Two-Eyed Seeing, we theorize that agent-frames lend support to decolonization, whereas dependent-frames could undermine decolonization. To illuminate this approach, we assess the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. Applying interpretations of frames institutionalized in the text from diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities and scholars across Canada, data indicates that most references to Indigenous Peoples reflect a dependent-frame while also exposing “ambiguous” depictions of Indigenous agency within the confines of the settler-state. Formal discourse institutionalized in policy plays a (inadvertent) role in the (re)production of (colonial) mindsets.

From Threat to Challenge: Addressing Resistance to Diversity Through Holistic Diversity Previews and Tools

Ines Jurcevic, Felix Danbold, Miguel M. Unzueta — Sun, 31 May 2026 16:10:09 -0700

ABSTRACT

Support for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is a core public value and central to public administration. Yet, as diversity is realized through shifts in employee representation, organizational norms, and implementation practices, some members of socially privileged groups (e.g., White employees, men) experience discomfort and anxiety in intergroup interactions and perceive status or resource threat. This creates a gap between diversity-as-communicated (how organizations communicate the benefits and relevance of DEI to the public sector) and diversity-as-experienced (how public employees with privileged identities experience the implementation of diversity efforts), reducing employee engagement with diversity efforts and slowing implementation in public organizations. Integrating a multidisciplinary foundation, we propose a framework to increase socially privileged group participation by reframing diversity as a challenge to meet rather than a threat to avoid. We outline practical strategies to build DEI implementation capacity in public organizations while remaining anchored to public values and equity commitments.

How Democratic Backsliding Shapes the Entry, Non‐Entry, and Waiting of Potential Civil Servants

Reut Marciano, Ilana Shpaizman, Sharon Gilad — Thu, 28 May 2026 20:25:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Democratic backsliding is coupled with politicians' undermining of the civil service's professionalism and commitment to liberal democratic values. Existing research has examined civil servants' responses. Nonetheless, politicians' attacks on democracy and the bureaucracy also affect potential recruits' career choices. Based on existing research and in-depth interviews in Israel, we extend Hirschman's model to develop an abductive mirror-image typology of the narratives deployed by potential recruits and civil servants to explain their career choices amid democratic backsliding. We find that, unlike civil servants who often choose to stay and fight, those outside the civil service either forgo entering it or wait for a trustworthy government. Additionally, we find tentative associations between the variation in interviewees' narrations of their career choices and their beliefs about the scope of bureaucratic politicization, the role of civil servants vis-à-vis politicians, and their attachment to the nation.

Context, Mechanism, and Outcome: Explaining Gendered Administrative Burdens on Abortion Access in Italy

Debra Lanfranconi, Markus Hinterleitner — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:24:51 -0700

ABSTRACT

Abortion access in Italy provides a case to examine how gendered administrative burdens emerge through the interplay of legal provisions, informal frontline practices, and contextual influences. Drawing on the Context–Mechanism–Outcome framework from realist evaluation, the analysis shows how legal access to abortion is constrained by procedural requirements, widespread conscientious objection among healthcare providers, and the institutional presence of anti-abortion actors. Using qualitative data from Obiezione Respinta—a user-generated platform mapping abortion access barriers across Italy—we demonstrate how everyday bureaucratic processes (re)produce gender inequalities. Three contributions follow. First, the analysis extends the gendered administrative burden literature by highlighting how informal policy design and contextual factors contribute to gender inequality. Second, it introduces the C-M-O framework to administrative burden research as a structured yet parsimonious approach to studying how burdens emerge. Third, it centers on women's experiences to offer a qualitative account of how burdens are perceived and navigated.

Exploring the Role of Gene, Traumatic Experiences, and Religious Participation in Public Service Employment: A Gene–Environment Interaction Perspective

Hailun Liang, Lei Tao, Tao Huang — Fri, 22 May 2026 17:55:11 -0700

ABSTRACT

Previous studies on sectoral choice have examined environmental and genetic factors in isolation, with little consideration of how gene–environment interactions influence public service employment selection. Notably, altruism-related genes have been found to play a critical role in shaping prosocial behaviors. This study investigates how early traumatic experiences affect individuals' choice of public service employment through the mediating role of religious participation. It further investigates whether the altruism-related gene moderates the effect of early traumatic experience on religious participation, thereby establishing a moderated mediation model. Using a nationally representative UK dataset, we find that religious participation mediates the relationship between traumatic experiences and public service employment selection. Additionally, individuals carrying more alleles of the altruism-related gene exhibit greater sensitivity to traumatic experiences, which in turn influences their religious participation and subsequent career choice.

Functional Politicization in Practice. From Responsive Competence to Reflexive Functional Politicization

Amalie Trangbæk — Thu, 21 May 2026 21:39:01 -0700

ABSTRACT

This study addresses how senior civil servants navigate the tension between responsiveness and competence through functional politicization. Based on rich observational data (300 h) and interview material (42 interviews), the article theorizes how senior civil servants navigate this tension by providing advice that integrates political considerations with professional technical knowledge to challenge the minister, provide alternative solutions, and clarify consequences. I call this practice reflexive functional politicization and hereby contribute to the literature on politicization by conceptualizing how politicization is practiced by civil servants in action. Their practice is motivated by the conviction that true neutrality is rare or nonexistent and thus that they must instead strike a balance between political responsiveness and technical competence.

The Routledge Handbook of Policy Advisory Systems. By Giliberto Capano, Jonathan Craft, and Michael Howlett (eds.), London: Routledge, 2025. 696 pp. €295.00 (hardback); €46.49 (eBook). ISBN: 978‐1‐03‐273745‐4

Mehdi Khosravi — Thu, 21 May 2026 01:12:10 -0700

Public Administration Review, EarlyView.

How Was Democracy Under the Administrative Presidency Supposed to Work?

Ben Merriman — Tue, 19 May 2026 18:36:36 -0700

ABSTRACT

Aggressive use of the administrative power of the presidency is a major source of public administrative concern about the health of American democracy. Many of these powers stem from executive branch reorganization in the late 1930s, which was conceived and implemented by founding figures in the modern field. Fear for democracy defined reorganization. Reorganizers elaborated a working theory about the conditions under which strong presidential administration could preserve and strengthen democracy: structured internal friction in the executive branch to recreate traditional checks on administrative conduct; identification and promotion of a corps of socially and politically astute administrators; and a watchful Congress. This design relied on a political approach to administration that created few managerial or legal safeguards. As subsequent polarization has altered the political order under which executive reorganization was conceived, the institutional powers of the presidency have emerged as a threat to democratic arrangements, rather than a bulwark.

Walking the Regulatory Line: The Effects of a Disbursement Quota on Foundations

Nathan J. Grasse, Elizabeth A. M. Searing, Susan D. Phillips — Mon, 18 May 2026 19:49:58 -0700

ABSTRACT

Foundations exist to support charitable causes over an extended period, allowing investment returns to improve social conditions. In many countries, this is regulated by a required payout percentage each year. The existing research, overwhelmingly from the United States, has examined foundations' regulatory compliance under the static conditions of the longstanding rule of distribution of 5% of assets annually. Drawing on regulatory behavior theory, this research takes advantage of the rare opportunity presented by a decrease in the disbursement rate in Canada to determine whether foundations altered their behavior and assesses the factors associated with differential responses. This facilitates the assessment of whether a mandated disbursement quota functions as a floor, a norm, or is irrelevant in guiding payouts, which will assist practitioners and policymakers in assessing the policy relevance for foundation compliance or over-compliance.

Seeking Legitimacy Through Accountability: Is Institution‐Based Accountability More Legitimate Than Campaign‐Based Accountability?

Yanwei Li, Ziqiang Han, Hui Yin — Mon, 11 May 2026 16:34:18 -0700

ABSTRACT

While institution-based accountability, rooted in rational-legal authority and procedural regularity, is widely seen as the gold standard for ensuring legitimacy, limited empirical evidence supports this belief. Drawing on a preregistered conjoint experiment with 2611 Chinese public servants, this study examines how two distinct approaches of account-holding, campaign-based and institution-based, impact their perceptions of legitimacy. Our study has found that the differences between institution-based and campaign-based accountability, in terms of two attributes, information collection methods and the types of implementers involved in discussion, significantly influence public servants' perceived legitimacy. However, the differences in two other attributes, feedback styles on account-holding decisions and the scope of information disclosure, do not reach statistical significance. These findings challenge the dominant view that emphasizes rational-legal authority as the main source of legitimacy. This research adds to the current public administration literature by clarifying the complex relationships between authority and legitimacy in accountability practices.

Navigating the Power of the Purse—Fiscal Irresponsibility, Process Failures, and the New Constitutional Stress Test

Sun, 10 May 2026 16:43:10 -0700

ABSTRACT

The federal government, and its budget process, are facing unprecedented challenges. The federal debt is at historic levels, the process is in disarray, and the constitutional balance of powers is being challenged as never before. The debt, driven by growth in entitlement spending, stands at $38 trillion and is projected to continue to grow if no changes are made. The appropriation process has completely broken down. Thirty years have passed since all appropriations bills were signed into law prior to the beginning of the fiscal year, and the government has just endured the longest government shutdown in history. At the same time, the Trump administration has challenged both the laws and norms that have governed relationships between the executive and legislative branches. While many of the problems facing the process are political, there are procedural changes that would assist in achieving a return to both fiscal and constitutional equilibrium.

Promoting Inclusive Workplaces: Conceptualizing and Measuring Inclusive Leadership in Public Organizations

Tanachia S. Ashikali, Mads Pieter Van Luttervelt — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 06:07:56 -0700

ABSTRACT

Inclusive leadership has become a central theme in public management research to foster equity and workplace inclusiveness. While prior studies demonstrate its potential to enhance inclusiveness, psychological safety, and performance, existing conceptualizations and measures remain fragmented, emphasizing leader attitudes rather than observable behaviors. This article addresses these gaps by advancing a behavior-focused conceptualization of inclusive leadership, grounded in an inclusivity perspective and an integration-and-learning perspective. Inclusive leadership is defined as leader behaviors that seek to enable employees' full participation in work processes by supporting employees in balancing needs for uniqueness and belongingness and by stimulating the exchange, discussion, and integration of diverse perspectives. Building on this, a two-dimensional measurement is developed and validated through cognitive interviews and surveys among Dutch public employees (N = 304) and Danish upper secondary school teachers (N = 1275). The scale enables systematic assessment of inclusive leadership and its outcomes across contexts and diversity types.

Celebrating 85 Years

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

Public Administration Review, Volume 86, Issue 3, Page 580-580, May/June 2026.

American Society for Public Administration Code of Ethics

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

Public Administration Review, Volume 86, Issue 3, Page 579-579, May/June 2026.

Issue Information

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

Public Administration Review, Volume 86, Issue 3, Page 577-578, May/June 2026.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Public Sector. By Wendy D. Chen and David B. Audretsch, New York: Oxford University Press, 2025. 221 pp. $39.95. ISBN: 978‐0‐19‐767944‐9

Albert N. Link — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

Public Administration Review, Volume 86, Issue 3, Page 866-866, May/June 2026.

Populism as Governmental Practice Spatial, Operational and Temporal Dynamics By Toygar Sinan Baykan, New York: Routledge, 2024. 296 pp. £32.79 (paperback). ISBN: 978‐1‐03‐227914‐5

V. Kalyani, Fayaz Ahmad Paul, A. Nithyakarpagam — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

Public Administration Review, Volume 86, Issue 3, Page 869-870, May/June 2026.

The Day the Chariot Moved: How India Grows at the Grassroots. By Subroto Bagchi, New Delhi: Penguin, 2025. xix+371 pp. ₹699.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 978‐0‐14‐347125‐7

Aaqib Anjum Aafi — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

Public Administration Review, Volume 86, Issue 3, Page 864-865, May/June 2026.

Designing Behavioural Insights for Policy: Processes, Capacities and Institutions By Ishani Mukhurjee and Assel Mussagulova, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: UK, 2024. 84 pp. $23. ISBN: 978‐1‐00‐926446‐4

Colette Einfeld — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

Public Administration Review, Volume 86, Issue 3, Page 867-868, May/June 2026.

Disciplinary Tensions and Institutional Diversity in the Study of Public Administration in Chile

Nicolas Didier, Juan Pablo Araya‐Orellana — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

The nature and epistemological foundations of Public Administration (PA) have long been debated, primarily by scholars from the Global North who draw on their own historical and institutional contexts. Recently, leading international journals in Public Administration have increasingly and proactively incorporated the experiences of Global South countries, recognizing the diversity and heterogeneity in how PA is understood and taught. However, these contributions often stop short of engaging with the deeper epistemological and ontological tensions within the PA discipline's intellectual development. This article aims to represent how the Chilean PA community engages the field-discipline tension through the qualitative analysis of 18 interviews with directors of undergraduate PA programs. The findings highlight a dual challenge: first, a limited understanding of the intellectual traditions shaping PA, which hinders its consolidation as a discipline; and second, a fragmented discourse on interdisciplinarity that lacks coherence and strategic integration. The study contributes to broader discussions on the identity of PA in the Global South.

Practice Without Theory? The Wonder of Bethpage Black

Odd J. Stalebrink — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Bethpage State Park's Black Course offers a rare historical case of administrative capacity emerging under conditions of uncertainty, fiscal constraint, and urgent public purpose during the Great Depression. Built with relief labor and without the benefit of fully developed public administration or budgeting doctrines, the project required administrators to invent workable practices as construction unfolded. Drawing on extensive archival records, this article reconstructs Bethpage as a historical case of administrative capacity emerging through practice rather than formal design. The analysis identifies four interrelated mechanisms through which capacity developed: alignment of ambition and necessity, coordination through routine budgeting and reporting, discipline embedded in oversight, and endurance through institutional memory. Together, these mechanisms show how effective governance can arise from improvisation, constraint, and learning under pressure. The case demonstrates that administrative discipline and creativity need not be opposites and offers practical insights for contemporary public managers facing complex, uncertain, and time-sensitive challenges.

Evidence and Policy‐Making: An Organizational Approach

Johan Christensen — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Strengthening the role of evidence in policy-making is increasingly seen as crucial for the quality and legitimacy of public policies. Both among practitioners and scholars, there is a growing awareness that evidence-informed policy-making not only depends on the rigor and relevance of the research, science communication or features of policy-makers. It also depends on how expertise arrangements in public organizations are organized. Yet, we currently lack a solid understanding of how organization matters for the role of evidence in policy-making. The article presents an organizational-theoretical perspective on how the formal organization of public bureaucracies shapes evidence use in policy-making, with important implications for both analysis and design of expertise arrangements in public administration. The article thereby sets a new research agenda at the intersection of organizational theory and scholarship on evidence and policy-making, which speaks directly to public administration practice.

A Chequered History but Positive Future for British Public Administration

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Public services, public servants, and the study of Public Administration are operating in a context of global turbulence. Our review of the state of the discipline suggests that a core strength of British Public Administration has been the complementarity between scholarship and practice, responding to existential threats. We analyze changing relationships between the discipline and practice in British public administration over three eras: Applied, fragmented, and impactful. The applied era saw mutual exchange, but a lack of criticality. The fragmented era was one of a retreat to over-specialization and identity crises. The impactful era has tried to revivify synergies but has struggled for coherence and criticality. Looking to the future, the nascent sub-field of Positive Public Administration is identified as providing an opportunity to radically redefine the scientific quality and social relevance of the discipline due to the way it blends constructive engagement with independent criticality.

Administrative Burden in Higher Education: Race, Criminal Records, and Street‐Level Bureaucrats in College Admissions

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how administrative burden in college admissions affects individuals with criminal records, with attention to racial disparities. Grounded in administrative burden theory and the role of street-level bureaucrats, it examines how admissions representatives respond to applicants with disclosed criminal histories. Through a correspondence audit experiment, fictitious applicants—Tyrone (presumed Black) and Christopher (presumed White)—sent inquiries to institutions of higher education (IHE) about how a criminal record might affect admissions. While most responses did not differ significantly in tone, warmth, or encouragement, Tyrone faced greater administrative burden in two key areas: Tyrone was more likely to receive a list of formal procedural requirements and to experience longer response times. These differences reflect psychological and compliance costs that disproportionately affect minoritized applicants. Findings underscore the need for targeted policy reforms that reduce discretionary barriers and promote more equitable pathways into IHEs for individuals with criminal justice involvement.

A Window of Opportunity: Anti‐Corruption and Performance Data Quality Enhancement

Jingyu Zhang, Yuxin Pan, Xiao Tang — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Data manipulation plagues principals for providing noisy performance data. Yet, it also has pitfalls for agents, which receive relatively little attention in the literature. Due to the performance data manipulated by previous agents, incumbent agents fall into the dilemma regarding whether to continue or curb data manipulation. We argue that to navigate the dilemma, political agents leverage the anti-corruption opportunity window to curb data manipulation. Using panel data from China's local governments spanning 2001–2018, we find evidence supporting this claim. Local government leaders reduce data manipulation when their predecessors are expelled. Furthermore, leaders reduce data manipulation to a greater extent in response to the negative performance feedback. It is also more likely for leaders promoted from outside of the jurisdiction to reduce data manipulation during the opportunity window. These results advance the literature on data manipulation and have implications for performance management.

Team Gender Composition Correlates With Ratings of Women and Men Leaders: On the Role of Group Prototypicality

Matthias Döring, Alexander Kroll — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Leadership research has emphasized the crucial role of gender and documented how women leaders are rated more negatively regarding essential behaviors and competencies. Drawing on social identity theory, studies show, however, that perceptions of women leaders are more positive if evaluated by female employees. This article contributes to this body of research, arguing that it is not necessarily the dyadic gender match between supervisor and employee that matters. Instead, gender-based group identities deserve more attention, since teams, and the social peer interactions they facilitate, can shape how individual employees, independent of their own gender, experience women and men leaders. Based on Danish local government data from 3400+ employees, we find that employees working in teams whose composition is more female (more male) provide more favorable ratings of women (men) leaders, while controlling for dyadic gender matches. The findings point to the importance of team design, evaluation protocols, and training for debiasing leadership assessments.

The Effect of Performance Failures on User Satisfaction: Evidence From a Natural Experiment

Mads Thau, Maria Falk Mikkelsen, Nathan Favero — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Despite long-standing interest in satisfaction with public services and organizations, our knowledge of how responsive user satisfaction is to real-world performance fluctuations remains limited. Existing cross-sectional studies may suffer from selection bias, while survey experiments may overstate performance information effects, as the salience of such information is artificially primed. We exploit a unique opportunity to study the link between performance failure and user satisfaction dynamically, as news of a major performance failure within the Danish National Board of Social Services happened to break during fielding of a satisfaction survey among the Board's users. Our analysis shows no negative effects of the performance failure on user satisfaction. These findings suggest that in real-world settings—where citizens draw on many information sources when forming judgments—performance effects on satisfaction are weaker than prior studies suggest. Thus, satisfaction data cannot be assumed to automatically reflect changes in service providers' performance and reputation.

Protecting the Citadel of Democracy: A Political and Administrative Response

William T. Jackson, Ryan J. Lofaro — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Our study contributes to the representative bureaucracy theory literature by testing the significance of majority identity, masculinity, and partisanship on responsiveness to social unrest. This study analyzes the responsiveness of police chiefs within the first week of the U.S. Capitol attack in Washington, D.C., on January 6th, 2021. Data are retrieved from social media accounts of police chiefs within local jurisdictions with at least 200,000 residents. An event history analysis is used to understand why some officials responded faster than others or not at all. Findings reveal that White male police chiefs and those with a Republican mayor were less responsive, while White male police chiefs were more responsive in localities with larger White populations due to the presence of minoritized mayors. The study adds to the literature by expanding representative bureaucracy theory to include the role of whiteness and masculinity, as well as mayoral identity, in shaping bureaucratic responsiveness.

Inclusive Growth in Africa: Do Democracy and Regime Sustainability Matter?

Jacques Simon Song, Borice Augustin Ngounou — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Institutional quality in Africa has evolved over the last two decades, fuelling an extremely fertile literature. In this article, we examine the effects of democracy and regime sustainability on inclusive growth. Based on a sample of 48 African countries, we specify and estimate a panel data model by Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and the Driscoll–Kraay method, whose robustness is confirmed via the Lewbel 2SLS method, and a dynamic panel data model proved by the System Generalized Method of Moments (S-GMM) over the period 1995–2020. Our results show that democracy and regime sustainability significantly and statistically improve inclusive growth in Africa. The robustness of these results is confirmed by taking into account governance indicators and the homogenization of resource-poor countries. However, regime sustainability and democracy significantly reduce inclusive growth in resource-rich countries. Plausible explanations for the contradictory results lie in the curse of natural resources and the rentier behavior of certain political leaders, which complicate the structural transformation of natural endowments. We suggest an institutional optimisation by consolidating the institutional environment through the establishment of economic and political rules.

Motivation, Meaning, and Burnout: Understanding Frontline Public Service Workers' Work Experiences During Turbulent Times

Bradley E. Wright, Shahidul Hassan, Darwin A. Baluran — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Understanding how public organizations can lower employee burnout is important because burnout negatively affects both employee well-being and service effectiveness. This study explores whether public service motivation (PSM) can help alleviate burnout among frontline public sector workers, who frequently encounter high job demands and conflicting roles that heighten burnout risks. Analyzing two-wave matched survey data from police officers collected in 2019 and 2021, this study examines whether PSM reduces burnout by strengthening perceptions of work prosocial impact. Results show that PSM's impact on burnout varies by burnout type, with a stronger effect on work depersonalization than on emotional exhaustion. By focusing on work prosocial impact as a mediating factor, this study helps to explain past conflicting findings. It enhances understanding of the PSM-burnout link and suggests that fostering a sense of positive impact could be an effective strategy for public organizations to reduce frontline worker burnout, especially during crisis periods.

Promoting Policy Implementation Through Demonstration Program Construction

Peng Liu, Yijing Zhang, Xueyong Zhan, Wai‐Hang Yee — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Implementation programs, such as demonstration programs (DPs), have garnered significant attention in both research and practice. Existing literature on DPs predominantly focuses on their impact on participant performance, overlooking the mechanisms through which DPs shape policy implementation processes. This study investigates how DPs are systematically constructed to facilitate broader implementation by disentangling their core design requirements. Through a mixed-methods analysis of China's National Food Safety Demonstration City program, the research identifies that DPs ensure the demonstration function and program scalability through recognizing performance-relevant demonstrations and dynamically adjusting participant selection criteria from effectiveness to relevance. They provide participants with reputational incentives and incorporate quality measures that safeguard and enhance demonstration quality with evolving priorities. These adaptive strategies strengthen participants' implementation efforts, stimulate program enrollment, and garner support from local authorities. This research advances understanding of policy implementation and offers practical insights for optimizing the deployment of demonstration-based instruments.

Local Leaders' Informal Networks and Policy Tourism

Wenhui Yang, Ruoyan Zhu — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Most networking activities in the public administration literature focus on formal networks, yet less attention has been paid to the function of informal networks, which are critical mechanisms for transmitting information and knowledge. This study fills this gap by examining the impact of informal networks on policy tourism, an important channel for policy learning and intergovernmental collaboration. Using China as a case, we indicate that local leaders' informal networks facilitate the initiation of policy tourism. Stronger informal networks are more likely to motivate local leaders to initiate a policy visit. However, informal networks are fluid and vulnerable to disruption. Adverse shocks to a local leader's career may undermine their effectiveness. In particular, the downfall of local leaders in destination cities evidently reduces the likelihood of policy tourism. Local leaders are less likely to visit cities where leaders are under corruption investigation, especially when they share career ties with them.

Bureaucrats in Campaigns: Elections Increase Dysfunctional Behaviors Among Civil Servants

Gustavo M. Tavares, Joana Story, Gabriela Lotta — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Elections are essential for democracy, but the turbulence and uncertainty they bring can disrupt the functioning of public organizations. This study investigates how elections may trigger dysfunctional interpersonal dynamics and behaviors among civil servants. We specifically examine the relationship between elections and both increased interpersonal conflicts within public organizations and heightened counterproductive behaviors among civil servants. Using a longitudinal pretest–posttest design and panel regression analysis, we compare behavioral variables of 283 career civil servants during Brazil's polarized election of 2022 to those of 2023 (post-election). The findings indicate that elections, as situations of political instability, are associated with increased dysfunctional behaviors among civil servants, particularly in public organizations with higher susceptibility to politicization.

Job Switching Motives and Employer Attractiveness: A Comparative Analysis of Sector Switchers and Non‐Sector Switchers

Adrian Ritz, Kristina S. Weißmüller, Lorenza Micacchi, Samir P. Gomezjurado — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Attracting talent to public administration is a highly relevant issue of practical concern and scholarly debate. Building on unique survey data of 424 individuals who switched jobs to join public administration, this study explores public employer attractiveness in a multi-incentive setting, accounting for the experiences of a less explored population (i.e., job switchers) that may have different preferences regarding public sector employment compared with the more commonly investigated student samples. Combining fit theory and the expectancy-disconfirmation model, this study reveals that intrinsic attributes and person-job fit significantly predict job switchers' perceptions of public employer attractiveness. In contrast, extrinsic attributes—both instrumental and symbolic—are less influential factors. Moreover, public service-related attributes have an unexpected negative effect for non-sector switchers, suggesting a “belated” reality shock effect. These novel insights suggest public management should adopt more nuanced recruitment and retention strategies in the face of labor shortages and the war for talent.

Entrepreneurial Leadership, Well‐Being, and Inclusion in Public Sector Organizations

Michael Olumekor, Emre Cinar, Roberto Vivona, Mehmet Akif Demircioglu — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Entrepreneurship is increasingly promoted as a way to make public sector organizations (PSOs) more effective. However, there is little evidence on how it impacts the working lives of public employees. Therefore, this study investigates whether entrepreneurial leaders in PSOs enhance organizational effectiveness while promoting employee inclusion and well-being. Based on a large survey of Australian Government employees (n = 127,436), we found that entrepreneurial leaders significantly increase effectiveness and promote inclusion and well-being. Furthermore, by comparing the various components of entrepreneurial leadership, we found that factors associated with entrepreneurship and general leadership both separately influence PSOs. However, while entrepreneurship factors have a stronger impact on organizational effectiveness and the promotion of well-being, the more generic leadership factors are more strongly associated with inclusion promotion. Amid increasing demands on PSOs, this study highlights the value of training leaders in entrepreneurial and good leadership practices to improve organizational performance and employee support.

Beyond Traditional Civil Service Hiring: Alternative Pathways for Recruiting Technical Expertise

Christos A. Makridis — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

The federal government continues to face persistent challenges in recruiting and retaining skilled talent, particularly in high-demand technical fields such as artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity. While compensation gaps are often cited, growing evidence suggests that institutional rigidities and non-pecuniary disincentives—ranging from opaque hiring procedures to limited flexibility—constrain the public sector's ability to attract and retain expertise. This paper provides a comprehensive review of federal hiring pathways and opportunities to expedite the attraction of talent under existing authorities. Using the establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in February 2025 as a case study, I contextualize how it was used to facilitate personnel reforms via alternative hiring mechanisms. The paper concludes with a set of practical policy recommendations for personnel reform for both the short and long run.

Balancing Digital Transformation and Modernization: Pathways for Public Managers

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:21:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

This study examines the interplay between digital modernization and transformation in the public sector, challenging the notion that they are mutually exclusive strategies. Through interviews with public sector leaders, we find that modernization and transformation can be jointly implemented rather than managed as competing efforts. Thus, we highlight hybrid strategies that integrate both approaches, allowing public organizations to balance operational stability with innovation in their overall digital evolution. Our findings offer practical insights for practitioners seeking to align system structures, methodologies, and procurement strategies with the realities of digital change. For scholars, this article lays the groundwork for future research on how modernization and transformation can co-evolve in public administration, thus challenging existing dichotomies and opening new avenues for investigation.

Regulatory Agency Reputation Acquisition With Regulatees: A Q Methodology Analysis

Lauren A. Fahy, Erik‐Hans Klijn — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 22:26:27 -0700

ABSTRACT

Empirical studies examining how independent regulatory agencies acquire their reputation with regulatees are scarce. This gap is notable given established links between regulator reputation and regulatee compliance. To address this, this paper presents results of an online, self-administered Q methodology study with 286 regulatees of 10 Dutch independent regulatory agencies. This study finds respondents generally form impressions of regulators primarily based on direct interactions with agency staff. Second-hand information, notably from mass and social media, is far less influential. Regulatees differ, however, on whether they form their impressions based on agency- versus inspector-level performance, and based on evaluations of how well the agency serves citizens versus the regulated sector. This study provides theoretical insights into regulatees as a distinct stakeholder audience, and practical implications for regulatory agency reputation management targeting this group.

Contracting Services for Response to Extreme Weather Events in Public Organizations

Tipeng Chen, Eric W. Welch — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 18:54:53 -0700

ABSTRACT

Public organizations facing emergencies often coordinate with other local public and non-profit organizations for assistance. Yet we know little about the contractual relationships public organizations build with external organizations for emergency responses. Drawing from organizational theories, we explore organizational factors behind public organization decisions to contract for responses to extreme weather events. Using agency-level data merged from three national sources, we find an inverted U-shaped relationship between organizational uncertainty about extreme weather events and contracting for immediate emergency responses: contracting is most likely at a moderate level of uncertainty and least likely at a very high level. Greater reliance on contracting for daily services is associated with increased contracting for long-term emergency planning, while receipt of dedicated financial resources is associated with increased contracting for both immediate emergency responses and long-term emergency planning. We connect findings with the contracting and emergency management literatures and discuss implications for practice.

When Do Citizens Support Corrupt Politicians? The Trade‐Offs Between Corruption and Competence

Wenyan Tu, Hanyu Xiao, Xing Ni — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:58:30 -0700

ABSTRACT

The intriguing paradox of wide public disdain for corruption alongside popular corrupt politicians exists globally. By speaking to public ethics theory and rational choice theory, this study examines the trade-off in which citizens tolerate corrupt officials in exchange for their competence to deliver public benefits. Using a conjoint experiment embedded in a sample of 30,521 surveys across 60 cities from 33 nationalities (regions) in 2023, this study yields three findings. First, mayoral candidates' economic performance mitigates the negative impacts of corruption on citizens' support. Second, although citizens are more likely to tolerate corrupt yet competent politicians, they still value honesty considerably more than competence. Third, citizens in contexts with less corruption and lower-income citizens are less inclined to support corrupt politicians and more resistant to exchanging integrity for competence. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the mechanisms underlying citizens' mixed attitudes toward political corruption and competence.

An Unstable Hierarchy: Departmental Dynamics in Local Government Organizations

Bradley M. Johnson, Kimberly L. Nelson, Mary Beth Spoehr — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 06:04:45 -0700

ABSTRACT

Local governments offer untapped insights into public organizational change. Despite their large number and variety, internal departmental dynamics are poorly understood, with implications for information processing, service delivery, and democratic accessibility. Using data from 272 municipalities collected 5 years apart (2014–2019) analysis finds that 88% changed at least one department name and 69% experienced an increase or decrease in the total number of departments. To understand what contextual elements may lead to these changes, capacity and institutional triggers are explored. Findings indicate that turnover of executive leadership increases the likelihood of change, while population and employment change affect the scale of change. Other commonly discussed conditions such as changes in financial resources, the turnover in legislative bodies, and the independence of executives are not significantly associated. For public administration, the consequences of continuous change in organizational hierarchies could affect assumptions of bureaucratic stability, democratic responsiveness, administrative burden, and organizational legibility.

Conditional Embeddedness: Local Government Attention Under Institutional Incentives

Jiali Wang, Junming Zhu, Huibin Du — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700

ABSTRACT

Government attention is crucial to policy change and outcome. For local agents, their attention is explained by various factors, and a thorough understanding is needed to integrate diverse perspectives. Combining vertical, horizontal, local, and personal influences, we formulate a conditional embeddedness framework for local agents. The framework explains that agents' attention is primarily directed by principals, but this directed shift is horizontally and locally shaped by political and economic contexts, conditional on agents' traits. Empirically, we test attentional responses of 328 prefecture-level governments to an environmental reform in China. Results corroborate our hypotheses, showing that local government attention generally increases following a reform, but the increases vary due to promotion competition and firm dominance and are further moderated by mayors' education and work experience. The findings demonstrate the importance of interactions between contextual and individual features in the shifts of local government attention and their responsiveness in a principal-agent relationship.

Green Budgeting in South Korea: Issue Ownership and Ministerial Leadership

Minjung Kim, Rosa Minhyo Cho — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 01:27:08 -0700

ABSTRACT

As climate governance gains urgency, green budgeting has emerged as a vital policy tool to align fiscal systems with environmental goals. Yet, institutional and leadership factors shaping its success remain underexplored. This study examines how issue ownership and ministerial leadership jointly influence green budgeting outcomes in South Korea. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of 13 central government bodies implementing green budgeting in 2023, we identify four pathways to high performance. Institutionalized long-term environmental planning emerges as a necessary condition. Two key mechanisms are identified: alignment between ministerial leadership and issue ownership, and politically experienced ministers who leverage institutional and external resources despite weak personal environmental commitment. These findings suggest that effective green budgeting depends not only on leadership but also on embedded institutional arrangements. Our study contributes to the public management literature by offering a dynamic understanding of issue ownership and expanding the scope of ministerial leadership in environmental governance.

Do Performance Budgeting Reforms Reduce Corruption? Evidence From a Quasi‐Experimental Study

Andong Zhuge, Can Chen, Weijie Wang, Ping Zhang — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:46:49 -0700

ABSTRACT

Performance budgeting has been widely advocated as a tool to strengthen fiscal accountability and improve public spending efficiency. However, its role in deterring corruption remains underexplored. This study examines the impact of performance budgeting reforms on corruption in Chinese local governments. Using a difference-in-differences approach with the staggered implementation of performance budgeting reforms across Chinese provinces, we find significant reductions in actual corruption cases and perceived corruption levels. These effects are particularly pronounced in provinces with early pilot experience and incorporated external oversight during the implementation of the reform. Mechanism analyses indicate that the performance budgeting reforms curb corruption by improving fiscal transparency, reducing financial irregularities, enhancing expenditure efficiency, and increasing public scrutiny of government activities. This study contributes to the literature by providing robust empirical evidence and advancing theoretical understanding of how well-designed budgeting systems can promote fiscal accountability and ethical governance.

Managing Value Conflicts Through Formal and Informal Institutions: A Longitudinal Case Study in Local Government Service Reform

Jin Hong Kim — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:33:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

When governments adopt private-sector techniques to reform public services, a tension arises between efforts to improve administrative efficiency and to secure democratic values. While scholars acknowledge this tradeoff, the specific institutional processes through which managers resolve these competing values in practice remain a puzzle. To bridge this gap, this study presents a longitudinal case study of Lean Government initiatives, based on 2.5 years of ethnographic fieldwork in an Ohio municipality. Using Constructive Grounded Theory, the analysis reveals that public managers are not passive executors of efficiency mandates; rather, they actively reconstruct public values through sophisticated social and institutional interactions. This research introduces a conceptual framework for the dynamic construction of good governance, demonstrating how value conflicts are mitigated via meso-level institutional processes. By illustrating how good government and equity are operationalized in managerial decision-making, the research findings offer a practical roadmap for maintaining democratic legitimacy amid administrative reform.

Digital Sentiments: Toward a Theory of Emotions in Digital Governance

Galina Vissoky, Eran Vigoda‐Gadot, Evgeny M. Styrin — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 05:35:46 -0700

ABSTRACT

We propose an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that integrates insights from political science, public administration, organizational theory, economics, psychology, sociology, and cognitive science to better understand the role of emotions in governance in the digital age. We argue that citizens' sentiments and emotional responses are central to their relationships with government institutions and bureaucracies. Building on bounded rationality and technology acceptance models, we develop a conceptual model that captures the bi-directional relationship between emotions and digital governance interactions. This gap is increasingly important as traditional human-to-human interactions are progressively replaced by citizen engagement with digital platforms, where emotional responses are directed toward technological systems rather than human officials. We therefore introduce a theory of emotional digital governance and propose a set of propositions that incorporate cultural values as key moderating factors. Finally, we outline the theoretical, methodological, empirical, and practical contributions of this framework for advancing research on digital governance and data-driven public administration.

Toward a Theory of Value as Praxis: Linking Public Values and Public Value

Bishoy L. Zaki — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:08:50 -0700

ABSTRACT

Literature on value developed along two influential interpretations: public values as normative expectations about policymaking and governance and public value expressing added or lost benefits experienced through public action. Although normatively linked, these interpretations evolved as separate streams, limiting conceptual clarity and cumulative analysis. In response, this article develops “value as praxis” as an analytical framework that treats the relationship between public value and public values as a translation-and-mediation process. It specifies how public values travel from articulation and prioritization to encoding within rules and resources, embedding in organizational and sociotechnical arrangements, enactment in design and implementation, and eventually experiences of “value” or “disvalue” in the form of benefits and burdens. The framework illustrates this translation-and-mediation process across five recurring process groups (families of mechanisms): institutional, regulatory, sociotechnical, design, and learning. It offers a basis for studying value creation, destruction, and disvalue, and for diagnosing where the translation of public values into public value breaks down across contexts and populations.

Interpersonal Connections and Career Mobility in Bureaucratic Labor Markets: Evidence From Brazil

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:58:53 -0700

ABSTRACT

Interpersonal networks are pervasive in state bureaucracies around the world. To what extent do they explain bureaucratic career trajectories? And are they driven more by political patronage and connections to influential bosses, or by information-sharing and trust-building among peers? We address these questions by constructing measures of the stock of interpersonal connections for the universe of over 440,000 Brazilian federal civil servants for the period 2000–2018. Individuals' networks strongly predict their future career mobility. Connections to higher-ranking officers or to members of the same political party have a strong effect, but the overall influence of individuals' networks on their career trajectories is dominated by non-political connections to their peers, not connections to bosses or party colleagues. We show that these patterns are similar for politically appointed and career positions, and explore heterogeneity across various demographic groups. We discuss implications for theory and policy, as well as potential wider methodological applications.

Sea‐Level Rise Adaptation and Collaboration in Polycentric Governance: A Comparison of Three Regions

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 17:44:14 -0700

ABSTRACT

Adaptation to sea-level rise confronts coastal communities worldwide with a new set of collective action problems that require collaboration. When does collaboration result in concrete action for adaptation? To address this question, we combine the Ecology of Games and Collaborative Governance frameworks using a comparative analysis of three coastal regions in the United States. We leverage original survey data from the San Francisco Bay Area in California (2018, N = 878), the Tri-County (Charleston) Area in South Carolina (2022, N = 152), and the Hampton Roads region in Virginia (2023, N = 153), three regions that differ in terms of vulnerability, institutional capacity, and political culture. Across all three regions, we find that collaboration in sea-level rise adaptation is driven by a core set of high-capacity actors who build and participate across multiple planning forums in polycentric governance arrangements.

Updating Tocqueville's Remedies Against Democratic Despotism: Civic Engagement, Local Self‐Governance, and Public Administration

Shui‐Yan Tang — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 17:10:04 -0700

ABSTRACT

Tocqueville's Democracy in America offers fundamental insights into the mutually supportive relationship between civic engagement and local self-governance, which has become more critical as the United States faces rising authoritarianism. The governance context of the United States has changed: diminished incentives for civic engagement, national partisanship swaying local public affairs, bureaucratic machinery even at the local level, more complex policy problems, increasing tensions across units and levels of government, and social media shaping citizens' political perceptions. Tocqueville's remedies against democratic despotism—the art (institutions) and habits of liberty—remain relevant. Yet we must update his remedies by strengthening secondary bodies, cultivating the habits of liberty through local self-governance and civic engagement, reinforcing constitutional forms, protecting individual rights, and mitigating revolutionary impulses. Public administrators must exercise leadership to renew our commitment to the art and habits of liberty from the bottom up, maintaining resilience against the imminent and long-term threats of democratic despotism.

Regulatory Offsetting Schemes as Effective Governmental Self‐Binding Device? Lessons From the German Experience

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 05:56:59 -0700

ABSTRACT

Governments in advanced democracies often implement self-binding mechanisms like regulatory offsetting schemes to counteract short-term political incentives. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of Germany's offsetting scheme by analyzing over 3000 legal acts for restrictive clauses and passages related to replacing or repealing existing regulations. Despite Germany being a “least likely” case for failure, our analysis indicates that the scheme has not reduced regulatory burdens. These findings suggest that self-binding measures struggle to override political incentives for rule production, especially with inadequate monitoring. We contribute to the literature by systematically assessing governmental self-binding effectiveness, introducing a novel methodological approach based on large language models, and employing a robust difference-in-differences design to estimate counterfactual effects. Our study highlights the challenges of implementing effective self-binding mechanisms in democratic governance.

Behavioral Charity: Third‐Party Ratings of Nonprofits as Salience and Heuristics

Ashraf Haque — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 17:50:32 -0700

ABSTRACT

Financial disclosure through tax returns is the primary regulatory mechanism for holding nonprofits accountable to donors in the USA. The assumption that donors will make rational decisions using disclosed information when giving to nonprofits is central to this regulation. But what if they rely on mental shortcuts instead? This study examines how donors respond to a third-party nonprofit rating that is simple, unverified, and based on self-reported data. Using a five-year panel dataset covering over a million nonprofit-year records, we find that even these basic ratings have a significant impact on donation behavior. Donors use ratings via two mental shortcuts. First, ratings increase a nonprofit's salience, boosting donations by 7%. Second, donors process higher ratings as a mental accounting shortcut, giving up to 34% more to the top-rated nonprofits. The findings suggest the limits of information disclosure alone in making nonprofits accountable to donors.

Connected Yet Distinct: The Evolution and Role of Korean Public Administration in Bridging Theory and Practice

Jinsol Park, Hyungjo Hur, Sangmook Kim, Keon‐Hyung Lee, Donwe Choi — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 23:10:47 -0700

ABSTRACT

Over the past seven decades, South Korea has developed a distinctive trajectory in its public administration (PA) through balancing the domains of research, education, and engagement with government. Our analysis shows that it embodies a connected yet distinct character, closely linked to Western administrative science and global PA scholarship, yet continually reshaped by Korea's bureaucratic culture, Confucian legacies, and pragmatic governance needs. To map this evolution systematically, we examine the entire Korean PA ecosystem by (1) analyzing 4447 scholarly articles published in four leading domestic and international journals over the past two decades, (2) reviewing PA curricula across Korean universities, and (3) tracing government-funded research projects and faculty appointments to senior public positions over the same period. The findings suggest that the strong institutional linkages between research, education, and government have enhanced Korea's administrative capacity and responsiveness, while also highlighting the need for greater intellectual independence and theoretical inquiry.

Biased by Design? Case Managers' Multidimensional Preferences Toward the Design of Algorithmic Decision Support Systems

Martin Dietz, Christopher Osiander, Mareike Sirman‐Winkler, Markus Tepe — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 23:00:59 -0700

ABSTRACT

This study examines whether street-level bureaucrats' preferences toward algorithmic decision support (ADS) induce a unilateral shift of technology-related risks onto clients of the public employment service. Expanding on public value theory and research on moral agency in public service work, we argue that case managers' choices of ADS designs are shaped by a plurality of professional, service, and efficiency values. To test this argument, we conducted a conjoint experiment on a representative sample of German Federal Employment Agency case managers. Respondents compared pairs of hypothetical ADS systems that differed in their design features, reflecting varying degrees of the realization of public values. The empirical results indicate that case managers' choices do not result in biased design. Instead, case managers balance design features reflecting professional and service values while maintaining administrative efficiency. Case managers appreciate ADS support but firmly reject the mandatory use of such advice.

Time Matters: Under/Overperformance Duration and Performance Improvements in the Public Sector

Shaowei Chen, Jianxia Wu — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 21:20:28 -0800

ABSTRACT

Prior research on public organizations' strategic responses to performance feedback has focused solely on the intensity of performance feedback while neglecting its temporal dimensions. This study aims to fill this gap by incorporating the lens of time and investigating how performance feedback duration affects performance improvements in the public sector. Drawing on various theoretical perspectives, we theorize an inverted U-shaped relationship between underperformance (negative performance feedback) duration and public organizations' subsequent performance improvements, and a U-shaped relationship for overperformance (positive performance feedback) duration. Empirical analyses using the case of China's official city air quality ranking provide evidence supporting our theory. Our findings reveal that “time” (duration) can shape public organizations' responses to performance feedback in nonlinear ways and help reconcile inconsistencies in the existing literature, highlighting the importance of incorporating temporal dimensions of performance to advance performance feedback theory in the public sector.

Beyond Psychological Costs: How Negative Bureaucratic Encounters Influence Citizens' General Psychological Well‐Being

Hanchen Jiang — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 22:24:35 -0800

ABSTRACT

The administrative burden framework suggests that citizens experience psychological costs when interacting with the state. Previous research has primarily focused on context-specific psychological costs, such as stress and loss of autonomy related to particular policies or encounters. This study expands the framework by integrating it with the relational model of authority and the stress and coping theory, and proposes that negative bureaucratic encounters have an adverse impact on citizens' general psychological well-being, with cognitive human capital serving as a mitigating factor. Using a large-scale representative longitudinal survey dataset from China, we test relevant hypotheses. The empirical analysis demonstrates that exposure to negative bureaucratic encounters is associated with poorer mental health, while formal education helps mitigate the impact. These findings underscore the significant influence of bureaucratic encounters on citizens' well-being.

Contextualizing the Effect of Community Social Capital on Racial Health Disparities: The Moderating Role of Racial Segregation and Citizen Ideology

Jing Peng, Kaifeng Yang — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 05:46:40 -0800

ABSTRACT

While public administration research has made important strides in understanding social capital, less is known about how its effects vary across populations and contexts. This study investigates how racial segregation and citizen ideology shape the relationship between community social capital and flu vaccination rates among White and Black Medicare beneficiaries. Findings reveal that although social capital is associated with higher vaccination rates, its benefits are unequally realized, favoring Whites over Blacks. Racial segregation weakens the positive effect of social capital for Blacks and exacerbates health disparities. Liberal ideology amplifies the influence of social capital on vaccination rates for Whites, but this amplifying role is not statistically significant for Blacks or the racial gap. The results highlight the need for scholars to incorporate social equity more explicitly into social capital research, to measure group-specific social capital, and to account for the structural and cultural contexts that condition its effects.

When Network Meets Bureaucracy: Direct and Indirect Effects of Mandates on Crisis Response Collaboration

Minyoung Ku — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 01:57:44 -0800

ABSTRACT

Mandated networks, as a distinct form of collaborative governance, have received increasing scholarly attention in recent years. Yet their effectiveness remains debated, and the mechanisms through which mandates shape interorganizational collaboration in crisis response are not well understood. Drawing on institutional and network perspectives, this article examines the direct and indirect effects of mandates on collaborative tie formation during crises. Using social network analysis of collaborative ties among 424 organizations—including members of 62 legally mandated safety and disaster committees—during the 2015 epidemic in South Korea, the study shows that both direct bureaucratic and network-mediated mechanisms shaped these ties, with indirect effects predominating. It reveals how relational dynamics at the dyadic and group levels mediated collaborative ties, accounting for sequential and feedback effects between levels and comparing these effects in mandated versus voluntary ties. The findings highlight mandated networks' potential as institutional arrangements for preserving governance stability under turbulent conditions.

Re‐Imagining the Epistemic Possibilities of GPT for Public Administration Research in Competitive Settings

Yanto Chandra, Jianxiang Tan — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 17:50:37 -0800

ABSTRACT

Innovation is desirable for the public sector. Yet understanding what and how some innovation projects survive and thrive in a competitive landscape—or public sector innovation—is often challenging. The challenges not only rest in the invisibility of the features of an innovation to human eyes but also in the lack of their accessibility for analysis. This study showcases a methodological framework using a generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) for scale development and synthetic data generation to measure, predict, retrodict, and calibrate innovation outcomes using real-world and synthetic data and a human-in-the-loop process. This study demonstrates the epistemic gains of the framework in predicting and manipulating competitive texts to simulate the past, present, and possibly the future. The approach offers avenues for future research on a wide range of competitive phenomena using large-scale text analysis across the social sciences.

The Organizational Dynamics of Bureaucratic Resistance to Undemocratic Pressures: A Conjoint Experiment in Brazil

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0800

ABSTRACT

Democratic backsliding raises new challenges for bureaucracies as politicians undermine democratic institutions and the rule of law. Although bureaucracies can play a central safeguarding role, little is known about the organizational conditions that foster resistance to undemocratic pressure. This study tests whether organizational networks (peers and professional associations) and resources (expertise and voice mechanisms) influence bureaucrats' willingness to oppose undemocratic demands from political superiors. Drawing on a preregistered conjoint survey experiment with Brazilian bureaucrats (N = 2481; 14,886 evaluations), we find that support from peers, professional associations, and credible voice channels increases open resistance, whereas peer disagreement reduces silent resistance. This study is among the first large-scale survey experiments to manipulate organizational attributes in democratic backsliding. We advance scholarship by developing a meso-level organizational framework that connects networks and resources to micro-level resistance, bridging research on democratic backsliding and behavioral public administration, and providing practical guidance for strengthening democratic guardianship in organizations.

Religious Beliefs in Collaborative Environmental Governance: Evidence From Indonesia

Yuhao Ba, Yinfeng Liang — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 02:50:27 -0800

ABSTRACT

We examine how formal and informal institutional logics interact to shape the effectiveness of Collaborative Environmental Governance (CEG). Using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) of 34 CEG projects in Indonesia, we identify three distinct pathways to effectiveness: co-faith-based, multifaith-collaborative, and secular-market, each reflecting a unique configuration of authority, market, and social and community logics. Importantly, our findings challenge essentialist views of religion by reconceptualizing it as a context-dependent institutional logic that can enable or constrain collaboration depending on its institutional embeddedness. Religion represents a dynamic informal force, especially salient where formal institutions are underdeveloped or contested. These insights extend theories of institutional design and collaborative governance, particularly in culturally diverse and institutionally uneven settings. Our study offers practical implications for designing context-sensitive CEG systems, emphasizing the importance of inclusive leadership and institutional alignment.

Complexity in Service Provision: Unpacking Administrative Capacity to Understand Differential Performance

Renzo de la Riva Agüero — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 18:55:25 -0800

ABSTRACT

Understanding municipalities' local governance conditions is crucial for addressing environmental sustainability worldwide, especially regarding their ability to deliver increasingly complex services with environmental implications. Administrative capacity issues significantly hinder municipal performance. While previous studies have established that general capacity impacts public organizations' performance, the role of service-specific administrative capacity remains underexplored. Local conditions demonstrate the importance of assessing specific capacity, as some municipalities effectively deliver services of varying complexity due to specialized resources, including political support, while others fail due to uniform allocation and poor task understanding. This research uses nested qualitative fieldwork methods to examine municipal waste management, comparing simple waste collection with complex waste disposal, to explore the mechanisms through which service-specific administrative capacity influences performance. The study argues that specialized capacity, at three different hierarchical levels, is essential for complex service performance, whereas general capacity suffices only for simpler services.

Collaboration as a Tool for Equity? Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare Access

Jiho Kim, Tina Nabatchi — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 22:01:51 -0800

ABSTRACT

Despite its importance in theory and practice, little is known about whether, how, when, and for whom a collaborative governance strategy achieves socially equitable outcomes. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design and data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we analyze how well Oregon counties that adopted collaborative governance bridge racial disparities in healthcare access compared to non-adopting counties. We find that collaborative governance is associated with reducing racial and ethnic disparities in financial barriers to visiting a doctor after 3 years of implementation and that such effects grow stronger over time. In addition, the estimated effect of collaborative governance on having a personal doctor is greatest for Hispanics. This article points to potential benefits of a collaborative governance strategy that designs and scales collaboration through a collaborative platform and collaborative governance regimes, sustains long-term efforts to meet health equity goals, and identifies and serves the most vulnerable populations.

State Budgetary Outcomes: Do CEO Governors Make a Difference?

Can Chen, Boyuan Zhao, Qiushi Wang — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0800

ABSTRACT

The personal background and traits of top organizational leaders matter for organizational strategies, policymaking, and outcomes. Drawing on upper echelons theory, imprinting theory, and scholarship on managerial decision-making and the transferability of private-sector management approaches to the public sector, this study examines the relationship between US governors' top business experience and budgetary outcomes. Competing hypotheses are proposed and tested to assess whether governors with significant business experience enhance or hinder budgetary outcomes. Using a panel dataset of 48 states spanning 1960–2010 and a regression discontinuity design, the analysis finds that electing governors with high-level business experience leads to improved budget equilibrium during their terms. These findings suggest that governors with business backgrounds are likely to be better able to align revenues with expenditures, thus reducing deviations from the budget. The results are robust across alternative model specifications and offer critical theoretical and practical insights into leadership dynamics and fiscal governance.

Anticipated Stigma and Burnout: The Impact of Concerns About Being Perceived as Racist Among Law Enforcement Officers

Shahidul Hassan, Bradley E. Wright, Justine E. Tinkler — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 11:08:15 -0800

ABSTRACT

The “racist cop” stereotype is one of the most prominent social representations of law enforcement in the United States. Drawing on theories of stereotype threat and stigma, this article suggests that this negative stereotype creates an identity threat that heightens anxiety and stress among law enforcement officers, increasing the risks of their burnout. Using survey data collected from officers in a state-level law enforcement agency in 2021, we find that White officers, as well as those who reported greater stress during the 2020 protests, express stronger concerns about being perceived as racist. These concerns are associated with elevated levels of burnout, and efforts to maintain a positive self-image partially mediate this relationship. These findings hold even after controlling for burnout levels reported by the same officers in 2019. Overall, our results extend stereotype-threat research to a high-power public service context and underscore the need for organizational interventions that reduce stereotype-related stress and support officer well-being.

Navigating Institutional Distance: How Private Partners Accumulate Network Positional Advantages in Cross‐Country Public–Private Partnership Projects

Ge Wang, Wenbo Song, Tao Wang, Shurui Jiang, Yang Li — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 23:34:39 -0800

ABSTRACT

Institutional distance shapes how private partners participate in cross-country public–private partnership (PPP) projects, yet its effects remain underexplored. Drawing on organizational institutionalism, we argue that institutional distance generates adaptation pressures that prompt private partners to engage in sustained collaborations. Such collaborations lead private partners to build relationships and connect into networks, within which positional advantages are accumulated. Using data on 3223 PPP projects across 91 countries from 1998 to 2022, we establish longitudinal networks and measure three types of positional advantages: linkage, brokerage, and independence. Our results show that greater institutional distance is associated with the accumulation of these advantages over time. Moreover, host countries' involvement in economic-political alliances moderates these relationships in contrasting ways, weakening the effect on linkage and brokerage advantages while strengthening the effect on independence advantages. We highlight implications for how governments can better support private partners' participation in cross-country PPP projects.

Explaining Burden Reduction in Municipal Service Delivery: The Case of Streamlined Electric Vehicle Charger Permitting in California

Shan Zhou, Emma Mast — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 00:57:01 -0800

ABSTRACT

Administrative burdens are deliberate policy choices, as governments can proactively design rules and procedures to shape burdens experienced by citizens. While existing research has examined the effects of burden reduction strategies, less is known about the factors driving burden reduction actions at the local level. This paper investigates why city governments adopt streamlining ordinances to reduce burdens in permit service delivery, focusing on the electric vehicle charging station permitting process. Using data from 482 California cities between 2015 and 2023, we find that cities with stronger fiscal capacity, more climate-concerned, and whiter populations are more likely to institutionalize burden reduction practices in streamlining ordinances. Contrary to expectations, neither mass political ideology nor political leader (mayoral) partisanship has a significant impact on municipal permitting reforms. Our findings demonstrate how capacity constraints, distributive politics, and policy-specific constituency preferences jointly shape local governments' willingness to reduce burdens in public service delivery.

Strategic Use of Ad Hoc Commissions for Blame Avoidance: Evidence From Chile

Carla Cisternas — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 19:36:29 -0800

ABSTRACT

Ad hoc commissions are well known in policymaking, yet their strategic deployment during crises remains less understood. This study examines how governments rely on expert commissions to manage blame and political risk in response to critical events. I argue that while commissions facilitate blame avoidance, their use is constrained when delegating authority to experts poses greater risks than benefits. Using logit models on longitudinal data from Chile (1990–2022), I assess how critical events affect commission appointments. The study draws on a novel dataset constructed through archival research and develops an original indicator of critical events using billions of media records from Google Jigsaw's Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT). The findings reveal a conditional logic: high presidential disapproval and frequent critical events are associated with greater use of commissions, whereas sustained or severe events are linked to lower use. These results suggest that the deployment of expert commissions as a blame avoidance strategy is conditional on governments' political risk calculus.

e‐Government Adoption in Ghana: Structural Conditions and Employee Affective Orientation

Sandy Zook, Peter Adjei‐Bamfo, Thema Monroe‐White, Justice N. Bawole — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 01:14:23 -0800

ABSTRACT

Globally, technological innovations are driving governments towards e-government adoption. Digitization efforts have met with more resistance and challenges in the Global South context due to high levels of financial, logistical, and technical constraints. The information and communication technology for development literature provides two lenses for examining e-government adoption: structural conditions (e.g., infrastructure, financial resources) and the affective orientations (e.g., attitudes, beliefs, values) of actors towards technology. Connecting these two lenses frames the analysis of a case study on a nascent digital nonprofit registration process in Ghana built by drawing on historical information, country context, observations, and interviews with public bureaucrats representing the central government and 17 local government authorities. The findings identify key structural conditions and affective orientations, including informal bring-your-own-device norms, that have become necessary for leveraging technological capabilities. Insights may be extended to other world regions and contexts that face similar constraints in their pursuit of digital transformations.

40 Years of Rural Research in Public Administration: Conceptualization, Evidence, and Future Avenues for Research

Colt Jensen — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 23:39:23 -0800

ABSTRACT

This manuscript systematically reviews 221 peer-reviewed studies on rural public sector organizations published in 15 leading public administration journals between 1980 and 2022. It addresses three core questions: (1) How has rurality been conceptualized and measured? (2) What outcomes are attributed to rurality? and (3) Where is further research most needed? Key trends in publication patterns, geographic focus, citation networks, research design, and measurement strategies are analyzed. Findings reveal growing academic interest and increasingly sophisticated approaches to defining and studying rurality. However, the literature remains fragmented, often relying on inconsistent definitions and underrepresenting non-US contexts. For both scholars and practitioners, the review highlights the need for clearer conceptual frameworks and more consistent measures to better understand how rural settings shape governance, service delivery, and administrative capacity. Improved conceptual clarity and global inclusion are critical for building a more cohesive, policy-relevant research agenda for rural public administration.

Unpacking Resilience in Public Administration: Insights From a Meta‐Narrative Review

Jixiang Li, Shui‐Yan Tang, Bo Wen — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 20:50:39 -0800

ABSTRACT

Increasing environmental complexity and uncertainty have made organizational resilience a key concern in public administration. Yet its inherent ambiguity calls for a systematic examination of its conceptualizations, operationalizations, and applications. This meta-narrative review synthesizes 49 studies, advancing the discourse by identifying three distinct narratives—maintenance, recovery, and adaptability—and exploring how they intersect when public institutions encounter acute shocks versus slow-burn disturbances. Our analysis further identifies networking and collaboration as the most frequently studied antecedents of resilience, followed by digital technology and leadership. Resilience outcomes are also highlighted—continuous service delivery, enhanced public policy value, and strengthened institutional identity. A key epiphany emerges: Resilience is not merely about responding to crises but also about embedding strategic principles into long-term governance—balancing top-down authority with decentralized decision-making to functionally and structurally address short-term needs and long-term transformation. We conclude by identifying implications for research, practice, and education.

Safeguarding Merit: Citizen Support for Civil Service Protections Against Political Interference

Colt Jensen, Jaclyn Piatak — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:24:26 -0800

ABSTRACT

President Trump altered the U.S. federal civil service system by reducing merit-based protections for bureaucratic expertise and expanding the scope of political appointments, shifting the balance long established under the Pendleton Act of 1883. Similar reforms have occurred at the state level with moves to at-will employment. These shifts raise questions about what shapes public support for merit system protections. Using data from the 2023 Cooperative Election Survey, we examine how public service motivation (PSM), political knowledge, and ideology influence support for political neutrality and protection from political coercion. We find that political knowledge and PSM are positively correlated with favorable perceptions of current merit system protections. Interestingly, there is no significant association between ideology and support for merit protections. These findings suggest that informed and motivated citizens are more likely to support meritocratic principles, highlighting the need for public education on merit systems' role in sustaining democratic governance.

Tuition‐Free College Policies and Workforce Diversity: How Policy Incentives and Environmental Favorability Shape Representation

Emily Boykin, Elizabeth Bell — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 23:45:27 -0800

ABSTRACT

While scholars have built considerable evidence on representative bureaucracy as a transformational independent variable, less is known about the organizational and policy conditions that motivate public institutions to invest in workforce diversity. Drawing on resource dependency theory, we argue that tuition-free college policies (‘Promise Programs’) will alter organizational incentives by expanding financial resources and diversifying clientele. In turn, we argue that colleges will expand workforce diversity and enhance passive representation of diverse clientele. In our staggered difference-in-differences analysis, we find that Promise Programs significantly increased the hiring of Hispanic faculty and staff. However, these gains lagged behind the rapid diversification of the student population, limiting progress toward a representative bureaucracy. These effects were driven by public and two-year colleges. Our results suggest that Promise Programs can promote workforce diversity but may fail to create a representative bureaucracy.

Citizen‐Centric Approaches to AI in Government Programs: Lessons From Experimental Studies

Donavon Johnson — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 23:19:01 -0800

ABSTRACT

Emerging technologies have far-reaching effects on public governance. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one such technology. Yet, given concerns of privacy, accountability, and bias with AI use, public managers grapple with deciding if, and to what extent, AI should be included in delivering public services. Current research has made attempts to unpack the determinants of AI use in these settings, but with greater focus on the technology rather than its users. The current study shifts focus to citizens' perceptions and asks what the conditions are under which citizens would embrace high-performing AI government service delivery. The study leverages a sample of 612 U.S. residents in two experiments that investigate public sentiments towards AI in public service contexts where it is implemented well. Findings reveal citizens' nuanced support for AI in simplifying complex programs delivering tailored services and reducing fraud. These insights can guide decision-making on AI use in public service delivery.

Frontline Workers and Civic Tech: Bridging the Responsiveness Gap in Digital Client Encounters

Gregory A. Porumbescu, Vishal Trehan, Agbonlahor Edomwonyi — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 23:15:16 -0800

ABSTRACT

As governments increasingly digitalize client encounters, there are growing concerns that standardized platforms may reduce bureaucratic responsiveness, particularly for historically underserved communities. We examine whether frontline workers help close that gap through their use of civic-tech platforms. Analyzing 8037 service requests from Newark's Open311 system (2019–2022) using machine learning classification and spatial analysis, we find that frontline workers submitted nearly 25% of all requests on this platform. Worker submissions concentrated in low-income areas, while resident requests clustered in more affluent neighborhoods. Interviews reveal that human-centered design features encourage frontline worker reporting, while their community commitment and organizational priorities explain proactive engagement in underserved areas. We conceptualize this pattern of engagement as digitally afforded discretion, where frontline workers leverage platform features to address community needs before formal complaints arise. Our findings suggest that human-centered digital platforms can complement frontline discretion, offering novel insight into how technology and human judgment interact to shape equity and responsiveness.

Do Markets Shape Management? Experimental Evidence for the Effects of Competition on Contract Management

Alice Moore — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:00:00 -0800

ABSTRACT

A central aim of contracting is to introduce competition into public service delivery. Public organizations are facing calls to generate more competition for their contracts, yet there is conflicting evidence about the effects of competition in practice. This research aims to explain some of those mixed findings by investigating the effects of different levels of competition on contract management. It examines two crucial elements of contract management that previous literature has shown can substantially influence performance outcomes: flexibility and monitoring. In highly contested markets, relationships are likely to be shorter and the payoffs from more restrictive styles of management are higher, thereby encouraging managers to be less flexible and monitor more. Findings, from an online survey experiment with 576 public managers, indicate that high competition does indeed lead to less flexibility and more monitoring, while low competition leads to less intense monitoring.

Public Sector Work and Happiness

Michael Howell‐Moroney, Nevbahar Ertas — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 01:21:13 -0800

ABSTRACT

Are public sector workers happier than their private sector counterparts? Recent research has found an association between public sector employment and happiness but leaves many questions unanswered. The major question that remains is why this association exists. Scholars have speculated that job-related characteristics like financial satisfaction and union status may be mediators, but this has not been established empirically. Our article provides the first empirical evidence of mediation in the relationship between public sector work and happiness. Using large sample data from the World Values Survey (n = 124,541), we find that financial satisfaction and union status both mediate the association between public sector work and happiness, with financial satisfaction being the dominant mediator in most cases. When the association between public sector work and subjective well-being is stratified by household income and country income, we find that the effects are strongest among low-income government workers in low-income countries.

Agency, Interrupted: Does Organizational Restructuring Improve Managerial Gender Parity? Testing a Disruption Hypothesis

Rebecca A. E. Kirley, Carlotta Varriale — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 -0800

ABSTRACT

Administrative restructuring is an organizational phenomenon suggested to improve under-represented groups' managerial representation by disrupting networks and institutions. However, extant tests of a ‘disruption hypothesis’ are collectively inconclusive. We elaborate and test it with a qualitative-to-quantitative study of local health agency managers and mergers across the Italian NHS from 2014 to 2020. Agency leader interviews reveal disruption indicators: number of agencies merging, staff rationalization, changes in geographical scale, and agency heterogeneity. Using administrative data, we find disruption measures have some positive associations with women's share of management, post-merger retention, and new hires, providing modest support for the disruption hypothesis. However, there is an unexpected ‘winners-and-losers’ dynamic: incumbent women had higher post-merger attrition than men, but merged agencies hired more women than non-merging agencies. We offer three abductively developed interpretations of this finding, extending the disruption hypothesis' connections with public management theory on the informal, organizational antecedents of diversity in senior management.

Visualizing Qualitative Research

Merlijn van Hulst, E. Lianne Visser — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 23:54:29 -0800

ABSTRACT

Although qualitative research is typically seen as working with verbal text, visual representations are frequently used in qualitative research in our field. This paper examines visualization as a research practice, aiming to encourage its reflective use and further development. We contribute to the literature on qualitative research in public administration, first, by discussing key concepts and the work visuals do. Second, we explore the way visualization can enrich the research process by shaping interactions within texts and with audiences. Third, we connect the practice of visualizing to the dialogue on methodological understandings and traditions in our field. For this, we outlined two distinct approaches to visualizing that researchers may draw upon: an iterative-progression approach (inductive) and a pragmatic-bricolage approach (abductive). We conclude by connecting visualization to thick description, suggesting how visuals can add layers of meaning in qualitative public administration research.

Rhetoric Versus Reality? A Comparative Study of Public and Non‐Public Sector Employees' Perceptions of Discrimination

Lihi Lahat, Chen Sharony, Jessica E. Sowa — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 16:19:25 -0800

ABSTRACT

How people are treated in the workplace is of increasing concern, with many scholars arguing that the government, as an employer, should set the standard for equitable treatment. While attention to equity in public administration has grown in research and practice, minimal work has comparatively explored discrimination in the public and non-public sectors. Drawing on data from the 2018 European Social Survey, this study explores possible differences in how public and non-public employees perceive discrimination and how perceptions vary across countries. In most countries, the differences between the sectors were not significant, but the findings show that the country, administrative culture, and sociodemographic variables play a role in perceptions of discrimination. This exploratory study makes an important empirical contribution by accumulating evidence of perceptions of discrimination across countries and has practical implications for human resource management practitioners.