Wiley: Governance: Table of Contents

When Bureaucrats Deviate: Mission Motivation, Autonomy, and Policy Implementation in Thai District Governance

Dan Honig, Eleanor F. Woodhouse — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:36:38 -0700

ABSTRACT

Drawing on interviews and survey data from street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) in eight Thai districts, we examine how mission motivation and autonomy combine to shape key SLB behaviors: policy compliance, policy customization, self-directed action, and pro-social rule-breaking. We focus on how SLBs navigate the tension between delivering “up” to Bangkok and delivering “down” to citizens when they perceive these demands to be in conflict. We find substantial variation in how bureaucrats respond to this dilemma, which is potentially mediated by their professional environment (peer and leader interactions) and individual traits (such as rebelliousness and creativity). Leveraging Thailand's unusual combination of high mission motivation and de facto decentralized discretion within a formally centralized system, we show how autonomy can create the space for bureaucrats to prioritize local welfare over strict compliance. In doing so, we highlight the psychological and organizational mechanisms that link mission motivation to SLB behavior and illuminate how de facto decentralization shapes the public administration citizens experience.

Do Medical Health Ministers Make Different Health System Choices?

Marcello Antonini, Joan Costa‐Font, Nicolas Marchi, Debra Winberg — Fri, 29 May 2026 22:55:19 -0700

ABSTRACT

Healthcare decision-making is a highly specialized domain of government, particularly at the central or federal level, which may partly explain why medical professionals are sometimes appointed to ministerial roles within government cabinets. However, does a minister with medical expertise in healthcare make a difference in the outcomes and outputs of a health system? We examine original data on the medical doctor (MD) backgrounds of health ministers in Western countries to disentangle these effects. Drawing on longitudinal evidence from a long panel of OECD countries over 21 years, and a differences in differences design we find that, although MD ministers do not increase overall healthcare spending, they do engage in some level of strategic budget reallocation by spending 11%–14% more on preventative care such as vaccines, irrespective of political leanings, though results are weaker under coalition governments. Notably, we find some evidence that MD ministers reduce overall mortality and increase the density of physicians in European Union (EU) countries and nurses in small countries.

The New Politics of EU Industrial Policy: From the Regulatory State to a Transformational State

Donato Di Carlo, Kathleen R. McNamara, Manuela Moschella — Tue, 19 May 2026 01:45:50 -0700

ABSTRACT

Across advanced economies, states are reasserting a more directive role in shaping markets. One prominent expression of this shift is the resurgence of industrial policy as a form of interventionist economic governance. This introduction develops a tripartite framework to analyze contemporary industrial policy in terms of goals, instruments, and authority structures—asking for what ends states intervene, through what means, and by and for whom. Applying this lens to Europe and the European Union (EU), the special issue shows how a polity long seen as the archetype of the regulatory state is increasingly departing from this model through a renewed embrace of industrial policy. We identify four ideal-typical phases of EU industrial policy since the postwar era and argue that, since the 2020s, the EU has entered a distinct Transformational Phase. This phase is marked by the geopoliticization of interventionist goals, hybrid fiscal, geoeconomic and regulatory instruments, and a vertical and horizontal decentering of European market interventionism. Together, the introduction and contributions to the special issue offer a conceptual and empirical lens on industrial policy as a defining feature of twenty-first-century activist economic governance.

The Financialization of European Social Care: A Descriptive Network Analysis

Simon Demuynck, Wouter Van Dooren — Mon, 04 May 2026 00:03:06 -0700

ABSTRACT

Social services in Europe underwent significant changes in recent decades. Using our unique dataset covering the ownership networks of over 100,000 child care, disability care, and care for older adults facilities across 27 EU countries and the UK, we conduct a macro-level network analysis to answer (1) who the main financial industry actors are in European social care markets; (2) where in these markets financialization is taking place; and (3) what position the financial industry occupies in the ownership networks of social care. The analysis reveals how a significant part of European social service facilities across differing types of European welfare states is indirectly owned by financial corporations. We demonstrate that network approaches can provide a more effective method for computing variables related to service ownership, as they capture indirect ownership links not visible in traditional datasets. The highly networked and financialized nature of social provision raises questions about systemic risks in social care sectors. Moreover, financialization could also erode the government's ability to achieve public goals in social care.

Health and Climate Risks: Can Policy Attention Persistence Enhance the Resilience of Aging Societies?

Lulin Xu, Zhenhao Ma, Ge Xin — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 02:03:51 -0700

ABSTRACT

The allocation of policy attention serves as the foundational engine of government action. However, the contemporary risk societies render governance resilience increasingly dependent on its vital but under-theorized temporal dimension: persistence. This study interrogates the conditions under which persistent policy attention becomes a prerequisite for effective governance. Integrating advanced machine learning-based (Guided LDA) text analysis of Chinese local government reports, longitudinal health data (CHARLS), and a double threshold regression model, this paper examines the interplay between policy attention, its persistence, and climate risk. The findings demonstrate that the persistent allocation of policy attention is indispensable for fostering resilience in healthy aging outcomes, particularly within high climate-risk environments. Ultimately, the study develops the Risk-Oriented Attention Persistence Model, providing a novel analytical framework for diagnosing policy environments and guiding resilient governance strategies for complex, long-term global challenges.

The Supply Chain of Economic Ideas: Institutional Discourse and Policy Change in U.S. Economic Governance, 1945–2024

James D. G. Wood, Valentina Ausserladscheider — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 01:12:00 -0700

ABSTRACT

This paper develops the supply chain of economic ideas framework to address how institutional networks coordinate to achieve both stability and change in economic policymaking, arguing that both are products of the same institutional processes with coherence emerging through differentiation rather than convergence. A quantitative text analysis of 233 documents from the Federal Reserve, Economic Reports of the President, and Joint Economic Committee (1945–2024) reveals that the transition from Keynesianism to neoliberalism in the USA occurred through a reconfiguration of the governing institutional network rather than wholesale replacement of the paradigm; that the Federal Reserve anchored neoliberalism's core objective through vertical integration whilst supporting institutions diverged substantially; and that the paradigm's coherence persisted through the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, providing a criterion for distinguishing paradigmatic reorganisation from genuine paradigmatic change. The framework thus provides a means to assess whether contemporary political challenges to economic governance represent a surface-level reorganisation of existing policies or a fundamental paradigmatic transformation.

Varieties of Authoritarian Policymaking: Housing Policy Across Dictatorships

Emilia Simison — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 22:43:18 -0700

ABSTRACT

Public policies are expected to vary across regime types, but this association remains inconclusive even when further differentiating within types of authoritarian regimes. Focusing on the theoretical mechanisms behind the expected associations between regime type and policy, I propose a novel framework to analyze policymaking and outputs across regimes. I claim that policymaking and how close its results are from the dictator's goal in any authoritarian regime depends on the extent and ways in which the space for contestation over policy is constrained. I apply this framework to an in-depth historical comparative analysis of policymaking and outputs in three Latin American military-led regimes. I show that differences in how the space for contestation was constrained in each explains differences in their policymaking processes and resulting policies despite the shared regime type, policy challenges and goals.

Trust Me, I'm an Expert: Evaluating the Relation Between Expertise and Trust in Regulators

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 22:59:21 -0700

ABSTRACT

Trust is central to research on regulatory governance, underpinning both the legitimacy and effectiveness of regulatory bodies. Yet, while its importance is often assumed, less is known about its organizational drivers. Departing from the idea that regulatory agencies are expert-based organizations within their fields, we argue that trust depends on the composition of regulators' staff, through the mechanisms of competence and goodwill. Using survey data from 1385 respondents across three policy sectors and six countries, combined with biographical information on regulators' staff, we examine how educational attainment and professional experience affect trust. Multilevel analyses show that – contrary to expectations about competence – educational attainment does not significantly influence trust, while prior private sector experience among regulatory staff tends to lower overall trust in regulators. However, this effect is conditioned by actor type: representatives of private interests display higher trust when regulators' staff have private sector experience, whereas public-interest actors trust regulators less. This demonstrates how shared professional backgrounds may signal mutual goodwill among some actors, but also raise concerns about impartiality and capture among others. The paper contributes to scholarship on regulatory legitimacy and organizational design by demonstrating how the expertise and professional backgrounds of regulators' staff shape the perceived trustworthiness of regulatory bodies by various stakeholders.

The Paradox in Citizen's Views Toward Bureaucracy: Exploring Bureauphobia in More Depth

Zeinab Molavi, Hassan Danaeefard, Ali Hamidizadeh — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:40:07 -0700

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how Iranian citizens develop bureauphobia. The process was examined from the perspectives of 59 citizens using the grounded theory method. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, and Corbin and Strauss's constant comparison method was employed for data analysis. In the grounded process model, the core category was the cognitive dissonance, and other categories were: causal conditions—observational learning, media exaggeration, citizens' overgeneralization bias, and citizens' preexisting mental schema; intervening factors—economic conditions and the overall community atmosphere; contextual factors—the self-defensive role of negative attitude, the value-laden negative attitude, and adherence to negative attitude; strategies—self-persuasion and selective avoidance; and consequences —cognitive and behavioral effects. The findings indicate that the negative image of the government is more psychological and less a result of citizens' evaluation of the actual performance of public bureaucracy. This study has theoretical and practical implications for bureaucracy theorists, policymakers, and government managers.

Issue Information

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:34:44 -0700

No abstract is available for this article.