Between Detachment and Responsiveness: Civil Servants in Europe and North America

Abstract

The article shows that civil servants who believe that the long-term interest of society is best served by their detached policy advice to policy-makers also hold on to their opinion more than any other actor involved in policy development. However, more civil servants currently emphasise responsiveness, at the expense of detached analysis, owing to increased exposure to international consultancy and forums. As a consequence, the attitude of civil servants in developing public policy is more likely to be indistinguishable from that of actors who have political functions, without significant variation from country to country. Evidence supporting this argument is provided by an analysis of the results of a survey first conducted in 2006 and repeated in 2008. The two waves of the survey drew responses from civil servants, interest group representatives and non-governmental experts who contribute to biotechnology policy development in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and the European Union.

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I would also like to thank James Ian Gow, André Blais and the journal's reviewers for useful comments as well as audiences at the Université catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, the University of Ottawa and the Université de Montréal, where a previous version of this article was presented.

Notes

1. The participation rate was a little above average in Canada and a little under average in France.

2. This measure is a proxy for detachment, as it does not measure detachment directly. It assumes that civil servants who believe that policy decisions in their country are well-served by long-term perspectives, by those working on policy decisions and by rigorous analysis will apply these standards in their own work. Direct observations of their work would have been preferable, although questions pertaining directly to their work might have failed to draw honest answers. In addition, the measure can underestimate the number of respondents who display detachment. It can do so by attributing zeros to those who believe that decisions fail to serve the public interest because they think that detachment is insufficient. I am however confident that the problem is minor, as 70 per cent of the civil servants believe that decisions serve the public interest. These same limitations apply to the measurement of responsiveness.