Public Administration in Contested Societies

K. O'Connor

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137298157
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique publique

Why are some conflicts managed better than others? Social scientists have used various disciplinary lenses to answer this question but until now, public administration has not been used to understand how conflict is managed. This book explores the everyday management of conflict in two cases of power-sharing from the view of elite level bureaucrats

1

Representative Bureaucracy in Plural Societies

Introduction: The theory of representative bureaucracy

This chapter identifies the absence of scholarly interest in determining the role of the bureaucrat in sustaining conflict management mechanisms. It finds that conflict management research has much to learn from public administration research within uncontested societies. It is not sufficient to understand what policies to implement, nor is it sufficient to understand the structures that are conducive to good governance: scholarship must also extend to understanding how elite level bureaucrats influence/skew policies and decision-making processes. What follows is a review of existing empirical research useful for understanding the role of the bureaucracy in conflict management. It is expected that this chapter will inform the reader on the nature of existing bureaucratic governance research within contested environments, shedding light on potential avenues of further research and current problems facing professional administrators in ethnically and culturally divided societies. Incorporating both conflict management research and public administration research, the need for a greater understanding of how bureaucratic mechanisms are exploited by the bureaucrat becomes more apparent.

Nearly seventy years ago, Donald Kingsley (1944) first articulated the idea of representative bureaucracy. His thesis was based on the premise that the British bureaucracy was successful in implementing the policies of the political elite as they both shared similar norms and values, originating from their shared (primary) socio-economic backgrounds. Kingsley’s thesis has been expanded upon by numerous scholars of public administration as a mechanism to understand what guides bureaucrat discretion within the bureaucracy. This in itself was for many years controversial, as in traditional Weberian doctrines of public administration the bureaucrat was supposed to serve, not represent. Nonetheless the appeal of representative bureaucracy grew. Within the developed uncontested society, bureaucratic discretion has been acknowledged to exist within the public administration. The theory was further developed by Van Riper (1958: 552), proposing that decisions made by the bureaucracy should mirror the preferences, ‘ethos and attitudes’ of the society which they govern. In turn Mosher (1968) significantly advanced the theory differentiating between active and passive representation. Passive representation refers to the extent to which a group’s representation in society is reflected within the composition of the bureaucracy. Active representation on the other hand refers to the extent to which the individual bureaucrat acts on behalf of this identity. Pitkin (1967) describes this as the difference between that which the bureaucrat ‘is’ (passive) and that which the bureaucrat ‘does’ (active). Put differently, passive representation would simply concern itself with the number of Turkmen, Kurds and Arabs within the Kirkuk bureaucracy relative to the population of the city. Active representation on the other hand concerns itself with the actions of each group within the bureaucracy, attempting to determine if or when representation within the administration equates with the flow of benefits to that particular group. Active representation, it can therefore be said, delves deeper looking at who the individual bureaucrat actually represents within the bureaucracy.

Of late representative bureaucracy has also provided insight into the balance of power within the politico-administrative axis. In one of the leading works on political control Meier and O’Toole (2006a: 69) suggest that:

without understanding the values held by the bureaucracy relative to the values held by the political institutions, one cannot determine whether correlations between policy outputs and political actions are the result of political control or simply the result of administrative units doing what they would have done anyway. Because the theory of representative bureaucracy explicitly relies on bureaucratic values, it works well in determining the extent of political control.

The theory of representative bureaucracy fits very well with the aims of this book. Not only is the theory informative in establishing the power dichotomy between the political and bureaucratic level but it also seeks to explain the motivations of bureaucrats. As the role of the bureaucrat in both sustaining consociational mechanisms of conflict management and in the governance process is unknown, the book seeks to further understand this power dichotomy. Within the uncontested society a substantial body of literature acknowledges that the bureaucrat possesses significant levels of discretion in the allocation of resources. The extent of bureaucrat discretion within the consociational society is less understood. Throughout this research I investigate the extent of discretion available to the bureaucratic elite within the consociational society.

I am also interested in how this discretion is employed. Literature from uncontested societies suggests that active representation exists within the public administration. Scholars differ however in their empirical findings as to what bureaucrats actually actively represent. Studies by Rehfuss (1986) indicate that an organisational identity supersedes a primary (gender and racial) identity within the workplace. As we will see later in the chapter, he finds male and female bureaucrats to ‘share a management ideology’ (Rehfuss, 1986: 459). If this were the case within the contested society we would then expect bureaucrats to actively represent an institutional or organisational identity. However, others such as Keiser et al (2002), and Meier and Nicholson-Crotty (2006) suggest that under certain circumstances bureaucrats actively represent their primary identities within the bureaucracy. If this were the case within the contested society, it would be expected that each minority would represent the interests of their counterparts in society; for example in the case of Kirkuk, Turkmen would represent Turkmen interests, Arabs would represent Arab interests and Kurds would represent Kurdish interests. What therefore causes bureaucrats to actively represent on behalf of a particular identity? Grissom et al (2009) find that it is not the institution that determines the extent to which a bureaucrat will actively represent his or her co-ethnics in society, but that the environment in which the institution is set plays a significant role. They find Blacks within southern American states to represent Blacks in society more so than Blacks in northern states. Their findings would therefore tend to support the assertion that within the contested society we would expect bureaucrats to actively represent their primary identities. Further, in more vociferously contested societies such as Belfast, active representation on behalf of a primary identity should be more likely than in less vociferously contested societies such as Brussels. Lim (2006) too acknowledges that minority representation increases as their numbers increase within the bureaucracy. However, differing from his counterparts, (and building on Rehfuss, 1986) he submits that this is due to the traditional minority altering the norms of the traditional majority and not due to direct representation by the minority on behalf of their representatives in society. Despite disagreement among public administration scholars on what bureaucrats actively represent, and the causes of active representation, there is general agreement that active representation exists, be this on behalf of institutional norms or primary identities. Further, whichever study one subscribes to, the belief that identity guides behaviour is accepted.

In his seminal work on representative government Niskanen submits that ‘any theory of the behaviour of bureaus that does not incorporate the personal preferences of bureaucrats…will be relevant only in the most authoritarian of environments’ (1971: 5, emphasis added). Similar deductions can also be made from the literature within the contested society. The large majority of public administration research within the contested society concerns the numerical representativeness of various ethnicities within the various levels of the administration (passive representation). Dresang’s (1974) study of the 1970s Zambian bureaucracy provides an exception, demonstrating that bureaucrats represent an organisational identity, not a personal identity, while a later normative study by Mengistu and Vogel (2006) suggests a national identity should replace a tribal identity within the Ethiopian bureaucracy. Both studies go beyond the study of passive representation, examining instead who bureaucrats actually represent. Most noteworthy however is that both studies (within conflict management research) validate the claim that identity is an important factor in guiding bureaucrat decision-making in instances where bureaucrats have discretion.

The importance of the bureaucrat to conflict management research

A variety of studies to date have examined the advantages of various electoral systems, political and institutional arrangements and the role of civil society in the reconstruction process. Esman (1997: 528) and Brown (1999: 369) however draw our attention to the fact that the literature on ethnopolitics ignores the importance of public administration in the conflict management and development process. Schneckener (2002: 203) underlines the importance of getting decision-making mechanisms right: if ‘bad…rules and procedures prevail, then even the presence of comparatively beneficial factors will probably not avoid failure’. In Afghanistan, Wimmer and Schetter (2003: 534) too recommend that ‘establishing institutions that are able to perform the basic functions of modern states should represent the main strategic goal of the reconstruction programme’. Thier and Chopra (2002) investigate the shape these institutions in Afghanistan should take. In his recent research, Brinkerhoff (2010a: 76) reasserts that ‘competent capacity developers’ are a key component of capacity development, while Lee (2009) investigates how a politically neutral bureaucracy can develop within an emerging democracy. The design of bureaucratic institutions is therefore fundamental to conflict management, yet we know very little about how a bureaucracy within a contested society should look. Starting at the most rudimentary level this chapter explores one of the simplest, yet crucial questions in the establishment of a functioning state: who should staff the organisation that is tasked with both providing services to the people, and supporting the political level.

Reforms in bureaucratic recruitment are found to be essential for staffing the public sector (Hanson, 1995). As alluded to by Brinkerhoff and Morgan (2010), an organisation’s recruitment policy is central to successful capacity development. Each of the ‘capabilities’ that (they submit) is required for administrative capacity development relies not only on a legitimate administration, but also on a high level of expertise within the administration.¹ Drawing on the experience of Belfast, one of the most heavily contested cities in Europe, merit-based recruitment is found to be integral to the design of the administration and need not be sacrificed in the name of achieving a passively representative bureaucracy (cfr. Chapter 5). Developing administrative capacity (expertise) and the attainment of a passively representative bureaucracy (representation) need not therefore be contradictory ambitions.

Thus far I have demonstrated that existing research within both public administration (representative bureaucracy) and conflict management supports the assumption that identity guides behaviour. Existing literature indicates that a bureaucrat may represent either an organisational or a personal identity/attachment. However if we further advance representative bureaucracy theory, merging representative bureaucracy research with bureaucrat typology research it becomes clear that bureaucrats may represent something other than either their primary identities or organisational identities. Reissman (1949), Downs (1967), Nachmias and Rosenbloom (1978) and Selden et al (1999) draw on different research methodologies to generate different ‘types’ of bureaucrat, based on bureaucrat role perceptions. Emerging from this literature we see that a number of bureaucrat typologies possess allegiances not to their primary identities or the organisation but to professional norms and values – attachments to a particular policy area or to a particular social objective. These attachments can of course be more or less altruistic in nature, depending on their content. Merging these two research areas provides the theoretical basis for a bureaucrat to actively represent a professional set of norms and values.

European integration researchers have established that epistemic communities, or communities of experts, may emerge at the European level (Haas, 1992; Mitrany, 1975). Radaelli and O’Connor (2009) find elite level bureaucrats from a variety of EU nation-states to possess shared governance beliefs. To what extent is this the case within the contested society? As further developed towards the end of this chapter (cfr. Conceptual framework), the bureaucrat may possess simultaneous attachments to his/her personal community, to the organisation, or to a professional set of values. Alternatively the bureaucrat could be completely responsive to the political level. While deductions from research within the uncontested society would lead us to believe that bureaucrats within the contested society represent their primary identities, this has yet to be tested. Findings from bureaucrat typology research indicate that alternative attachments may exist. In one of the only studies of active representation within the contested society, Mengistu and Vogel (2006) propose that a ‘national’ identity could supersede these primary identities in guiding resource allocation. This study finds no evidence of a shared national identity emerging among bureaucrats within our two contested societies. Relying on bureaucrat typology research the research examines the extent to which a shared professional attachment or identity exists among bureaucrats.

To summarise, existing scholarship does not inform us of the role of the bureaucrat within the power-sharing society. Studies from the uncontested society however have found identity, norms and values to determine how discretion is employed by the bureaucrat. Based on existing public administration and conflict management research, this study therefore assumes that identity guides behaviour. Representative bureaucracy research from the uncontested society submits that a bureaucrat may actively represent an organisational identity or a primary personal identity (usually race or gender). However findings from bureaucrat typology research indicate that the bureaucrat may also actively represent professional attachments. Within the consociational society, do the bureaucratic elite have similar discretion to their counterparts within the uncontested society and if so what guides this bureaucrat discretion? Looking at the bureaucratic elite within two most different models of consociationalism, this book advances this understanding.

Conflict management

There exist various mechanisms of conflict management, ranging from coercive domination (hegemonic) or oppression on the one hand to power-sharing on the other. Various actors determine the success of such mechanisms – the military, the political level, the bureaucratic level, non-governmental organisations, civil society organisations, international actors, interest groups etc. Each of these actors will of course exploit the rules of the game to achieve their own personal, societal, or organisational, objectives. Each actor therefore has a varying influence on the management of conflict. It is this realm of interaction that has now widely been considered by the generic term: ‘governance’. The concept of good governance is not new; however of late one cannot talk of public administration, organisational structure or policy implementation without being confronted with the term ‘governance’. The literature on governance is as vast as it is diverse, examining how best to run health and education trusts to entire bureaucracies and organisations. There is however a growing interest in examining the contribution of governance actors to conflict management. It is found that the literature on governance in contested societies covers, in some detail, the roles of democracy, poverty and social exclusion (Beall et al, 2002), participatory budgeting (Koonings, 2004; Roussopoulos and Benello, 2005), legitimacy (Carroll and Carroll, 1999), non-governmental organisations and civil society organisations (Gerometta et al, 2005; Byrne, 2001), the role of militia groups and state forces (Nilsson, 2008; Glassmyer and Sambanis, 2008; Hoddie and Hartzell, 2003), political stability and economic growth (Jong-A-Pin, 2009) and electoral systems (Norris, 2005, 2008; Binningsbø, 2005; Riphenburg, 2007; Wolff, 2006). Broader research briefs take more encompassing approaches to conflict resolution, examining a variety of mechanisms leading to successful power-sharing² (Lijphart, 1969, 1977; Nordlinger, 1972; Lake and Rothchild, 1996; Kliot and Mansfield, 1999; Horowitz, 2000; McGarry and O’Leary, 2004; Roeder and Rothchild, 2005; Kerr, 2005; and Varshney, 2001; Norris, 2008; Wolff and Yakinthou, 2011). Studies by Carroll and Carroll (2000) and Stanfield (1996) look at how governance works in successfully managed plural societies. Persistently occasional however is research into the role of the bureaucracy in conflict management.

Binningsbø (2005) hypothesises a relationship between lasting peace and proportional representation, grand coalitions, segmental autonomy, number of power-sharing institutions and the size of the society. A strong stable bureaucracy however does not directly feature as an independent variable. Similarly Schneckener (2002) too investigates how power-sharing works. Despite acknowledging the dangers of poor decision-making, precedence is given to the ‘role of political elites in sustaining shared rule’, again avoiding any analysis of the bureaucracy (Schneckener, 2002: 203). Supporting this assertion, Bissessar (2009: 4) finds that ‘there has been little attempt to date to investigate the challenges that will face senior public officers in developed countries and even less so in developing countries, more particularly plural societies’. Thier and Chopra (2002) set out the institutional challenges facing Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the war, however little is known about how bureaucrats would behave within such emerging institutional frameworks. A review of the most prominent journals in public administration/conflict management from the past ten years emphasises the lack of scholarly interest in developing our understanding of how the bureaucracy affects conflict management. Stanisevski and Miller (2009) suggest that government institutions can have a role in the normalisation and stabilisation process within the Macedonian context. While concurring with their thesis, a greater knowledge of the individual role perceptions of the bureaucrat in these environments will inform us how the bureaucracy is likely to behave in these circumstances.

One of the foremost reasons for attaining a greater understanding of the bureaucracy in a divided society originates from its failures, as highlighted by current empirical research on other aspects of divided governance. Bollens (2000: 318) finds policy-making in both Belfast and Jerusalem to be ‘associated with bias’. Beall et al (2002: 200) question the capacity of municipal officials and politicians ‘to keep up with the extended responsibilities of government’. The executive director of UNCHS (Habitat) has called for ‘a sea change in the management approach of many city governments’ (Kajumulo Tibaijuka, 2001). Whether perceived or actual, the bureaucracy is seen at best as disregarding conflict or at worst enhancing societal conflict through resource allocation. As ‘the public service has a major role to play in reconciling, reconstructing and developing society’ (Ncholo, 2000: 87), a more comprehensive understanding of the service is a necessity for conflict management.

Mistaking symptoms for cause, much of the governance research in divided societies has failed to acknowledge the importance of bureaucratic reform. Apart from a number of notable exceptions, efforts...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• Outline of the Book
• Acknowledgements
• List of Acronyms
• 1 Representative Bureaucracy in Plural Societies
• 2 Researching in Contested Cities: Belfast and Brussels
• 3 Belfast: Everyday Policy-making in a Contested Environment
• 4 Brussels: Power-sharing at the Lowest Common Denominator
• 5 The Merit Principle in a Representative Bureaucracy: Belfast
• 6 Active Representation Within the Power-sharing Society: The Values Guiding Administrative Decision-making in Belfast and Brussels
• 7 Concluding Remarks: Bureaucrats and Conflict Management
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index