Wiley: Governance: Table of Contents

From the Administrative Presidency to Personalist Consolidation: Trumpism and Executive Control of the Regulatory State

William G. Resh — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:11:10 -0700

ABSTRACT

This essay investigates the evolving relationship between Trumpism and the United States regulatory state, focusing on how Donald Trump has reshaped American administrative governance to one of personalist consolidation. Drawing on scholarship of the administrative presidency, I argue that Trumpism represents a strategic fusion of structural deregulation in sectors like environmental protection, energy, and finance with robust state intervention in domains tied to a right-wing populist definition of national sovereignty. Trumpism reflects a personalist style of governance rooted in the exploitation of institutional tools of the administrative presidency that have developed across both Democratic and Republican administrations over the past century. By situating Trump within the broader institutional evolution of executive power, I highlight how his manipulation of the regulatory state entrenches executive dominance and preserves an illiberal reform in governance through electoral legitimation paired with the erosion of liberal-democratic accountability standards in administration.

When the Regulatory State Meets Populism: Regulatory Agencies in Mexico

Mauricio I. Dussauge‐Laguna, Martin Lodge, Daniel Daza‐Vázquez — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 09:40:29 -0700

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on two questions: what kind of strategies of de-institutionalization of the regulatory state have been chosen, and to what extent can they be linked to an explicit ‘populist’ agenda guided by a ‘will of the people’- based justification that cuts across different regulatory domains? Applied to the case of Mexico, this article looks at how a populist President (Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO), within one single period in office (from 2018 to 2024), sought to de-institutionalize regulatory agencies that were said to have been institutionally embedded. Mexico offers an important case for the study of populist leadership. López Obrador has been portrayed as a populist leader because of his repeated claims to be speaking ‘in the name of the people’. However, this particular Presidency has not been associated with the typical ‘right-wing’ authoritarianism (e.g., Brazil's Bolsonaro). Nevertheless, during his presidential term, regulatory agencies were exposed to a range of pressures, ranging from ‘de-delegation’, ‘de-legitimization’, and ‘termination’. This article focuses on eight domains (representing the total universe of domains in which regulatory agencies were prominent). The analysis is based on a variety of sources including documentary analysis of government announcements, media coverage, and statutory changes as well as semi-structured interviews. Our comparative approach is aimed at exploring general populist policymaking patterns in a national case, while seeking to better understand specific variation across policy sectors, as well as institutional agency designs. This piece adds to the literature on regulatory institutions in an era of populist times by setting ‘de-delegation’ strategies in the wider theoretical context of institutional de-legitimization. In particular, it highlights the limited institutional ‘hard-wiring’ of regulatory arrangements.

Competition Law and Varieties of Capitalism in the Long Run: The Evolution of Institutional Complementarity, 1890–2010

Chase Foster, Sebastian Kohl — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 21:10:44 -0700

ABSTRACT

Competition law has played a central role in shaping different models of industrial capitalism. Drawing on new competition law indicators spanning 1890–2010, this article examines how competition law has evolved alongside capitalist systems and identifies enduring institutional complementarities between legal regimes and political economies. While competition law has become more stringent in most jurisdictions, the evolution of formal rules and enforcement practices varies systematically across capitalist models. Liberal market economies (LMEs) enforce cartel rules more strictly and are more tolerant of monopoly. Coordinated market economies (CMEs), by contrast, are more permissive of interfirm cooperation and impose stricter constraints on dominant firms. These differences are associated with measures of corporatism, suggesting institutional complementarity between competition regimes and producer group coordination. Overall, the findings show that competition law operates not only as a liberalizing instrument, but also as a key institutional site through which capitalist diversity is reinforced amid long-term institutional change.

Tracing the Trends of Governance in Governance From 1988 to 2023: Achievements and Future Prospects

Kyungdong Kim, Min Han Kim, Brainard Guy Peters — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:40:25 -0700

ABSTRACT

This study employs both quantitative topic modeling using BERTopic and qualitative thematic analysis to investigate how themes in Governance evolved between 1990 and 2023. During that time Governance has become a leading journal in public administration and public governance, and understanding how those fields of scholarship appear in the journal can say a good deal about the development of those fields. Governance has both reflected and influenced changes in public administration by theoretically and empirically exploring executive politics along with administrative reforms and regulatory governance as well as democratic mechanisms. The analysis reveals four main conceptual dimensions, which are Structure, Mechanisms, Process, and Democracy, as each dimension represents separate yet interconnected academic discourses. These developments together demonstrate a larger intellectual movement in public administration which moves away from structural determinism to embrace detailed analyses of governance procedures and democratic practices while responding to global issues like populism and democratic decline. This research delivers a historical and intellectual evaluation of governance studies as it appears in a major journal, while delineating trajectories that will guide future research agendas in governance, public administration and policy.

Responsive to What? Explaining the Information Quality of Public Comments on Bureaucratic Policymaking Using a Text‐as‐Data Approach

Adriana Bunea, Sergiu Lipcean, Christian Rauh — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:11:18 -0700

ABSTRACT

What drives the quality of information that public comments on bureaucratic policymaking provide? We address this question along a text-as-data approach, develop and validate four measures capturing the multidimensional concept of information quality, and apply it to an original dataset covering more than 20,000 public comments across 1036 policy acts issued by the European Commission between 2016 and 2021. We argue that the interplay of information demand and supply and institutional factors matter in particular for varying information quality of public comments. Our results show only mixed evidence regarding the claim that high-quality comments are more likely during the policy formulation stage. Counterintuitively, we find that more informationally dense and syntactically complex EC policy documents generate public comments of higher quality. Regarding policy areas, information quality is unrelated to the age of European policy while more technical fields receive public comments of lower quality on average. Based on developing and validating an innovative empirical strategy, we thus provide novel insights into how the design of public commenting procedures and crafting of policy acts shape the information quality provided through public consultations.

A Certain Set of Skills? Pre‐Appointment Careers of Danish Ministerial Advisors

Harald Brønd — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 21:16:42 -0700

ABSTRACT

Ministerial advisors are politically appointed civil servants who serve at the intersection of politics and public administration. Drawing on the Public Service Bargain (PSB) framework, this article argues that the competencies associated with ministerial advisors reflect a dynamic bargain shaped by broader transformations in the political environment. Using a novel dataset covering the pre-appointment careers of 178 Danish advisors (2001–2024) and applying sequence analysis, the study identifies seven distinct career pathways and traces how their prevalence changes over time. Across all cohorts, ministers consistently recruit advisors with partisan experience, reflecting persistent demand for political-tactical competencies. Over time, journalist backgrounds decline while policy-professional backgrounds, drawn from interest groups, public affairs firms, unions, and private companies, increase. These findings suggest a shift in the competency bargain from media handling toward strategic political coordination within an increasingly professionalized landscape of political influence.

Challenging Conventional Wisdom on Administrative Capacity With Open Data: Could ‘Administrative Throughput’ Be the Missing Link Between Administrative Inputs and Outputs?

Ugo Fratesi, Felipe Livert, Laura Polverari, Cristina Zerbinati — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:55:52 -0700

ABSTRACT

Despite the popularity of the concept, the measurement and the conceptualization of administrative capacity remain ambiguous, based on proxies, and overlook the local level. Conceptualization is weakened by the conflation of exogenous variables. Quantitative and qualitative perspectives are rarely reconciled, leading to fragmentation and to an overestimation of the effect of administrative capacity on policy performance. We tackle these shortcomings through the elaboration of novel indicators derived from open project data to build new measures of administrative capacity at the municipal level. In so doing, we first demonstrate the feasibility and value of open-data-based indicators to generate much-needed local data on administrative capacity. Further, we show that municipalities with similar resources can exhibit significantly different performance, challenging established assumptions of linearity between inputs and outputs in administrative performance. Finally, we introduce the concept of ‘administrative throughput’ as a possible explanation for the mismatch between administrative inputs and outputs, and provide a first theorization of this concept to allow for a more nuanced understanding of administrative capacity and open new avenues for public administration theory, research and practice.

Beyond Democratic Backsliding: Bureaucracy, Elite Dynamics and Administrative Change in Authoritarian Transitions

Kutsal Yesilkagit, Johan Christensen — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 23:31:50 -0700

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how political and administrative elites shape regime transformations under authoritarian rule, proposing an elite-centered analytical perspective that complements prevailing accounts of “democratic backsliding.” We show how embedding political–administrative relations within a broader elite-theoretical framework clarifies the mechanisms through which elite reconfiguration underwrites institutional erosion. Drawing on classical and contemporary elite theory, we argue that shifts in elite coalitions among politicians, bureaucrats, and economic actors drive regime changes more than institutional erosion or ideological movements. Through comparative historical analysis of interwar Italy and Germany, we illustrate distinct elite-driven pathways to authoritarian consolidation: Mussolini's Italy involved strategic alliances with traditional elites, while Hitler's Germany pursued radical elite replacement. Our findings highlight the critical role of elite realignments in transforming institutions and economic policies, often maintaining a façade of electoral legitimacy. This elite-theoretical approach offers nuanced insights into contemporary shifts toward autocratic governance, emphasizing the importance of analyzing elite networks and interactions to comprehend the deeper mechanics of political transformation. Our findings thus contribute to public administration scholarship by theorizing how elite realignments transform bureaucratic structures and alter the nature of political-administrative relationships under authoritarian conditions.

Feeding the Coalition: How Presidents Use State Banks to Buy Legislative Support for Governability

Rodrigo B. DeMello, Carlos Pereira — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 05:00:50 -0700

ABSTRACT

This paper develops and tests a theory of how presidents use government agencies to manage legislative coalitions in multiparty presidential systems. We argue that agency decisions—particularly subsidized credit from state-owned development banks—function as retail coalition goods that sustain legislative support. Legislators are more likely to back the president when agency resources benefit subnational politicians who are both partisan allies and vital to their reelection networks. Using a regression discontinuity design based on close mayoral elections in Brazil and loan-level data from the National Development Bank (BNDES), we find that municipalities governed by coalition-aligned mayors receive significantly more favorable loan terms. Linking these data to roll-call votes, we show that legislators become more supportive of the president after loans are granted in their electoral strongholds managed by co-partisan mayors. These findings reveal how distributive agency decisions translate into legislative support, integrating bureaucratic discretion into theories of coalition management.

AI Innovations in Public Services: The Case of National Libraries. By Ines Mergel and Carsten Schmidt (eds.), Cham: Springer, 2026. 222 pp. Open Access (ebook)

Salman Bin Habib — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 01:09:06 -0800

Governance, Volume 39, Issue 2, April 2026.

The Fiscal Governance of the European Union: Overcoming the Stability Paradigm?. By Tiziano, Zgaga, Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. 2025. €145.59 (hardback); €117.69 (ebook)

Igor Guardiancich — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 03:10:12 -0800

Governance, Volume 39, Issue 2, April 2026.

Bureaucratic Incentives and Government Responsiveness in China

Haemin Jee — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 18:56:34 -0800

ABSTRACT

Citizen complaints have long been considered an important channel of communication between citizens and officials in authoritarian regimes. Existing explanations for responsiveness to citizen complaints in China, however, do not adequately consider the role of local bureaucratic incentives as a driver of responsiveness. This paper seeks to explain local government responsiveness to citizen demands through this lens. Original data of citizen complaints and government responses from a Chinese prefecture and its subordinate counties demonstrate that lower level officials are more likely to respond to citizen complaints when monitored by their superiors. On the other hand, they are less responsive on unmonitored forums. Thus, oversight by higher level officials may be important in increasing actual government responsiveness; citizen complaints alone may not be enough to spur government action. While recent studies emphasize authoritarian accountability arising through quasi-democratic institutions, this paper suggests incentives of local political actors may condition the effectiveness of these institutions.

Evaluating Authoritarian Performance: Historical Legacies and Contemporary Attitudes in Saudi Arabia

Andrew Leber, Jonas Bergan Draege — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 03:59:54 -0800

ABSTRACT

Many authoritarian regimes seek mass support through policy performance – delivering material benefits to citizens. When do citizens respond to these appeals? Standard explanations emphasize national-level outcomes and individual patronage, along with regimes' messaging “spin.” By contrast, we argue that historical legacies of coalition building have an enduring impact on citizens' attitudes regardless of more recent, objective performance. We test this proposition by examining mass perceptions of the Saudi monarchy's job-creation efforts, drawing on time-series polling and an original survey experiment. Saudi citizens from the kingdom's western and southern regions – where narratives of marginalization and exclusion circulate – hold more negative views of regime policy performance compared with individuals from the more-favored Central regions, regardless of the monarchy's objective jobs performance. Messaging strategies are likewise clearly effective only for Central-region respondents. Our findings suggest that historical legacies of development substantially affect perceptions of regime performance in the long run.

Erosion of Competition Policy in the Age of Populism: Cases of Hungary, Mexico and Turkey

Isik D. Özel, Umut Aydin — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0800

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how populist governments politicize competition policy and the agencies responsible for enforcing it, focusing on the cases of Hungary, Mexico, and Turkey. We argue that competition policy has critical importance for populist governments as its control helps them advance their policy objectives and facilitates their political survival. We propose that populist governments interfere in competition policy through one of three strategies, co-optation, sabotage, and dismantling, which we argue are adopted contingent upon the degree of populists' legislative majority. Through a structured comparative analysis of the three cases, we find that although populist governments prefer to co-opt competition agencies, they can do so only if they command large majorities in parliaments, such as in Hungary and Turkey. Those with weaker majorities, such as in Mexico under Andrés Manuel López Obrador, sabotage them, a strategy that may result in agency resistance, and eventually the dismantling of the agency if populists end up gaining a majority in the parliament.

The Generativity of Governance Configurations: How Governance Factors Coalesce to Spur Local Green Co‐Creation

Christopher Ansell, Eva Sørensen, Jacob Torfing — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 19:56:54 -0800

ABSTRACT

Research shows that interactive and networked governance aiming to co-create solutions are potent tools for addressing complex problems and that a configurational approach can improve our understanding of how governance conditions combine to produce effective collaboration and innovative results. We argue that the concept of generativity, which refers to social mechanisms that prompt, drive and scaffold co-creation can complement and improve configurational approaches. To understand how governance factors not only combine but also coalesce into generative social mechanisms spurring co-creation, we conduct a comparative mixed-methods case study of local green partnerships in Denmark, South Africa, the U.S., and Vietnam. Based on this analysis, the paper identifies six generic functions of governance generativity: Catalyzing storylines, distributed action models, institutional templates for action, innovation triggers, productive technologies, and leadership creating internal cohesion and public support. Generative mechanisms with these generic functions can be expected to advance the co-creation of sustainability transitions.

“It's Who You Know:” Bureaucratic Responsiveness in the Rural South

Carolyn Y. Barnes — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 06:50:40 -0800

ABSTRACT

Research examines how decentralized policy implementation creates unequal access to safety net programs in the US. Yet, scholars have not unpacked how community contexts shape how welfare agencies operate on the ground. This is especially the case for the rural South, an oft-overlooked context where local influence has historically undermined the equitable provision of social welfare programs. We know surprisingly little about how “small-town” norms, values, hierarchies, and politics make their way into the day-to-day life of welfare offices. Drawing from 43 in-depth interviews with front-line bureaucrats, I demonstrate how the political and social order of one southern rural community undermines policy implementation. Interviews show that this rural southern welfare office was (1) deeply affected by economic decline; (2) was situated in a community where strong rather than weak social ties determine economic opportunities, and (3) vulnerable to the influence of white power elites in county-level government. These three factors can undermine effective policy implementation, harming vulnerable families.

Opening the Black Box of EU Digital Sovereignty: A Macro‐Level Analysis of the Concept's Development

Aleksei Turobov, Helena Carrapico, Benjamin Farrand — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 20:59:52 -0800

ABSTRACT

Digital sovereignty has emerged as a central organizing principle in European Union governance, yet systematic understanding of its conceptual evolution remains limited. This article provides the first macro-level analysis of how digital sovereignty evolves across institutional and academic domains. Through analysis of 156 academic articles and 808 EU policy documents using Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling, we reveal sophisticated patterns in institutional conceptualization and evolution of digital sovereignty. Our findings demonstrate that its development reflects complex adaptive processes rather than linear policy progression. We identify a significant shift in institutional discourse from 2013 to 2016, where digital sovereignty transitions from a narrow technical concept to a comprehensive policy framework. This conceptual flexibility enhances rather than inhibits digital sovereignty development. The study advances understanding of how institutions construct and deploy new governance concepts in response to technological change while revealing previously obscured patterns in institutional interconnection.

A Blessing or a Curse? Generative AI, Administrative Burdens, and Policy Alienation in Street‐Level Bureaucracy

Hui Huang, Taiping Ma, Jiannan Wu — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 21:39:23 -0800

ABSTRACT

Can the integration of generative AI into public administration ease administrative burdens in street-level bureaucracy? This article examines this question through a 6-month organizational ethnography conducted within a local authority in Shanghai. We find that while generative AI may alleviate certain traditional burdens, it can also paradoxically reinforce existing ones or create new forms. These dynamics, aligned with Moynihan, Herd and Harvey's (2015) conceptual framework, unfold across the interrelated dimensions of learning, compliance, and psychological costs. Critically, we identify a new type of burden—what we term interpretive costs—which emerges in frontline administrators' everyday policy implementation and can be significantly reduced by AI integration. Our findings further suggest that, whether AI reduces, intensifies, or generates new burdens, it inevitably leads to policy alienation, characterized by an amplified sense of dehumanization, loss of control, and diminished meaning in their work. Through the lived experiences of SLBs navigating AI-assisted tasks, this article extends our understanding of administrative burdens in the age of generative AI.

Issue Information

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 21:20:26 -0800

No abstract is available for this article.