New Public Governance in the Baltic States: Flexible Administration and Rule Bending

Abstract

The New Public Governance approach advocates a more flexible and participatory public administration as means to higher efficiency and increased legitimacy. Increasing flexibility and thereby public employees’ discretion, however, may pose a risk to equality and impartiality, core values in democratic and rule-of-law societies. Using a survey among Baltic public employees, this article explores this risk. We ask whether public employees’ preferences for flexible rule application go hand in hand with acceptance of bending the rules, even if it means a breach of impartiality. We find that this is the case. We also find that contrary to what the New Public Governance approach expects, neither citizen participation nor generalized trust works as a control on rule bending. On a positive note, however, we find that control mechanisms associated with Weberian Public Administration lessen acceptance for bending the rules.

Keywords:

• Baltic states
• flexibility
• impartiality
• meritocracy
• New Public Governance
• participation
• postcommunist
• trust

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Thomas Bryer and two anonymous reviewers for extremely helpful comments, criticism, and suggestions. Remaining shortcomings are our responsibility.

Notes

1 The survey was carried out in April 2011 with assistance from TNC-Gallup International Denmark and the national offices. The survey was funded by The Danish Research Council, grant no. 10-080446.

2 The question was as follows: “Some people claim that more flexibility with fewer rules and more discretion for the individual civil servant will improve public administration. On a scale from 1 to 7, where 7 means that you ‘totally agree’ and 1 means that you ‘totally disagree,’ to what extent do you agree with this statement?” Moreover, we used a split-framing experiment in which we gave half of the respondents the frame if they were in favor of more flexibility and discretion as an improvement of the public administration—given the economic and social problems of their country. The framing experiment did not produce any meaningful or significant differences on central parameters, such as country, gender, or age. We, therefore, disregarded the split framing and collapsed the responses into one variable.

3 The variable is collapsed from a framing experiment. The question was as follows: “On a scale from 1 to 7, where 7 means ‘in all cases’ and 1 means ‘in no cases,’ given the risk of not treating all citizens equally, are you in favor of bending the rules in order to achieve policy objectives?” However, the framing experiment did not produce any meaningful or significant differences on central parameters, such as country, gender, or age. We therefore chose to collapse the responses into one variable.

4 The question was as follows: “On a scale from 1 to 7, where 7 means ‘always’ and 1 means ‘never,’ when thinking about the relation between your organization and other actors, how often do you think that tasks relating to your organization and other actors are highly coordinated?”

5 The question was as follows: “On a scale from 1 to 7, where 7 means ‘always’ and 1 means ‘never,’ how often do you think that recruitment of employees is based on the skills and merits of the applicant?”

6 The question was as follows: “On a scale from 1 to 7, where 7 means ‘always’ and 1 means ‘never,’ when thinking about the relation between your organization and other actors, how often do you think that private parties (individuals, firms, NGOs) are involved in the implementation of the organization’s policy objectives?”

7 The question was as follows: “On a scale from 1 to 7, where 7 means that ‘most people can be trusted’ and 1 means that ‘you can’t be too careful,’ do you think that most people can be trusted, or can’t you be too careful?”

8 The question was as follows: “According to you, how many of the following items would make a decisive and positive change for your organization? 1: Increase in citizen participation.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karin Hilmer Pedersen

Karin Hilmer Pedersen, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark.

Lars Johannsen

Lars Johannsen, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark.