The partisan–professional dichotomy revisited: Politicization and decision‐making of senior civil servants

Abstract

Politicization has an ambivalent reputation among public administration scholars. While considered an effective instrument to safeguard political control over ministerial bureaucracy, partisanship of senior civil servants is likewise associated with patronage and is deemed detrimental to professionalism and meritocracy. To scrutinize this contradiction, the article examines how the party‐political background of senior civil servants influences their decision‐making behaviour. Two theoretically derived conceptions of loyalty are therefore put to the test: responsiveness and responsibility. Effects are captured by using the vignette technique in 40 in‐depth interviews with former senior civil servants from ministerial departments at federal and state level in Germany. The results are surprising in so far as they reveal that politicized senior civil servants act neither more responsively nor less responsibly than their non‐politicized peers. These findings challenge common assumptions and call for a more refined analysis of the conditions under which politicization leads to negative effects.

Public servant stereotypes: It is not (at) all about being lazy, greedy and corrupt

“…Given that the public sector is inherently associated with the political field, negativity about the sector might be related to, or even the result of, negative stereotypes about politicians rather than public servants. A substantial body of literature has focused on the role of political affiliations of public servants in their decision-making (Ebinger et al 2019;Shaw and Eichbaum 2020).…”

Politics and Administration in Germany

“…They not only develop draft laws and draft policies but also play a prominent role in intra-governmental coordination as well as negotiation and coordination with other levels of government and external actors, such as interest groups (see also Mayntz and Scharpf 1975). A replication of CES in the second half of the 1980s (Mayntz and Derlien 1989) as well as more recent studies (Ebinger et al 2018;Ebinger et al 2019) confirm these findings and underline that most senior officials in federal ministries not only appreciate the political side of their job but also anticipate political considerations when fulfilling their tasks. Thus, the main focus of the federal level on policymaking is reflected in a high degree of functional politicisation among civil servants in federal ministries.…”

Bubbling up or cascading down? Public servants, political advisers and politicization

“…The second, however, invites reflection on the extent to which those who see political advisers as the primary threat to an impartial civil service may be looking in the wrong place. The Westminster narrative regarding a professional civil service that is hard‐wired to provide free, frank and fearless advice to ministers is challenged by our respondents—themselves civil servants—who make it clear that continued recourse to this ‘convenient shield’ (Ebinger et al 2019, p. 863) obscures a material state of affairs in which bureaucratic self‐censorship is both on the march and a function of factors that have little to do with political advisers.…”

“…Such a distinction—which echoes calls for the ‘analytical dismantling’ of the responsiveness–responsibility binary (Ebinger et al 2019, p. 872)—would render the Westminster narrative more capacious. It would also enable better sense to be made of the different ways in which civil service advisers have responded to the advent of their political colleagues.…”